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28,054 | false | sparknotes | all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/14.txt | finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_3_part_1.txt | The Brothers Karamazov.book 3.chapter 1 | book 3, chapter 1 | null | {"name": "book 3, Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section4/", "summary": "In the Servant's Quarters The narrator tells the story of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov's servant Grigory, who briefly cares for each of the three Karamazov brothers when they are young. Grigory's wife gives birth to a child with six fingers. The child dies two weeks after it is born. The night Grigory buries it, his wife hears a baby crying in the distance. When Grigory goes to investigate, he discovers a newborn child lying next to a young girl, who has just given birth and is dying", "analysis": ""} | Book III. The Sensualists Chapter I. In The Servants' Quarters
The Karamazovs' house was far from being in the center of the town, but it
was not quite outside it. It was a pleasant-looking old house of two
stories, painted gray, with a red iron roof. It was roomy and snug, and
might still last many years. There were all sorts of unexpected little
cupboards and closets and staircases. There were rats in it, but Fyodor
Pavlovitch did not altogether dislike them. "One doesn't feel so solitary
when one's left alone in the evening," he used to say. It was his habit to
send the servants away to the lodge for the night and to lock himself up
alone. The lodge was a roomy and solid building in the yard. Fyodor
Pavlovitch used to have the cooking done there, although there was a
kitchen in the house; he did not like the smell of cooking, and, winter
and summer alike, the dishes were carried in across the courtyard. The
house was built for a large family; there was room for five times as many,
with their servants. But at the time of our story there was no one living
in the house but Fyodor Pavlovitch and his son Ivan. And in the lodge
there were only three servants: old Grigory, and his old wife Marfa, and a
young man called Smerdyakov. Of these three we must say a few words. Of
old Grigory we have said something already. He was firm and determined and
went blindly and obstinately for his object, if once he had been brought
by any reasons (and they were often very illogical ones) to believe that
it was immutably right. He was honest and incorruptible. His wife, Marfa
Ignatyevna, had obeyed her husband's will implicitly all her life, yet she
had pestered him terribly after the emancipation of the serfs. She was set
on leaving Fyodor Pavlovitch and opening a little shop in Moscow with
their small savings. But Grigory decided then, once for all, that "the
woman's talking nonsense, for every woman is dishonest," and that they
ought not to leave their old master, whatever he might be, for "that was
now their duty."
"Do you understand what duty is?" he asked Marfa Ignatyevna.
"I understand what duty means, Grigory Vassilyevitch, but why it's our
duty to stay here I never shall understand," Marfa answered firmly.
"Well, don't understand then. But so it shall be. And you hold your
tongue."
And so it was. They did not go away, and Fyodor Pavlovitch promised them a
small sum for wages, and paid it regularly. Grigory knew, too, that he had
an indisputable influence over his master. It was true, and he was aware
of it. Fyodor Pavlovitch was an obstinate and cunning buffoon, yet, though
his will was strong enough "in some of the affairs of life," as he
expressed it, he found himself, to his surprise, extremely feeble in
facing certain other emergencies. He knew his weaknesses and was afraid of
them. There are positions in which one has to keep a sharp look out. And
that's not easy without a trustworthy man, and Grigory was a most
trustworthy man. Many times in the course of his life Fyodor Pavlovitch
had only just escaped a sound thrashing through Grigory's intervention,
and on each occasion the old servant gave him a good lecture. But it
wasn't only thrashings that Fyodor Pavlovitch was afraid of. There were
graver occasions, and very subtle and complicated ones, when Fyodor
Pavlovitch could not have explained the extraordinary craving for some one
faithful and devoted, which sometimes unaccountably came upon him all in a
moment. It was almost a morbid condition. Corrupt and often cruel in his
lust, like some noxious insect, Fyodor Pavlovitch was sometimes, in
moments of drunkenness, overcome by superstitious terror and a moral
convulsion which took an almost physical form. "My soul's simply quaking
in my throat at those times," he used to say. At such moments he liked to
feel that there was near at hand, in the lodge if not in the room, a
strong, faithful man, virtuous and unlike himself, who had seen all his
debauchery and knew all his secrets, but was ready in his devotion to
overlook all that, not to oppose him, above all, not to reproach him or
threaten him with anything, either in this world or in the next, and, in
case of need, to defend him--from whom? From somebody unknown, but terrible
and dangerous. What he needed was to feel that there was _another_ man, an
old and tried friend, that he might call him in his sick moments merely to
look at his face, or, perhaps, exchange some quite irrelevant words with
him. And if the old servant were not angry, he felt comforted, and if he
were angry, he was more dejected. It happened even (very rarely however)
that Fyodor Pavlovitch went at night to the lodge to wake Grigory and
fetch him for a moment. When the old man came, Fyodor Pavlovitch would
begin talking about the most trivial matters, and would soon let him go
again, sometimes even with a jest. And after he had gone, Fyodor
Pavlovitch would get into bed with a curse and sleep the sleep of the
just. Something of the same sort had happened to Fyodor Pavlovitch on
Alyosha's arrival. Alyosha "pierced his heart" by "living with him, seeing
everything and blaming nothing." Moreover, Alyosha brought with him
something his father had never known before: a complete absence of
contempt for him and an invariable kindness, a perfectly natural
unaffected devotion to the old man who deserved it so little. All this was
a complete surprise to the old profligate, who had dropped all family
ties. It was a new and surprising experience for him, who had till then
loved nothing but "evil." When Alyosha had left him, he confessed to
himself that he had learnt something he had not till then been willing to
learn.
I have mentioned already that Grigory had detested Adelaida Ivanovna, the
first wife of Fyodor Pavlovitch and the mother of Dmitri, and that he had,
on the contrary, protected Sofya Ivanovna, the poor "crazy woman," against
his master and any one who chanced to speak ill or lightly of her. His
sympathy for the unhappy wife had become something sacred to him, so that
even now, twenty years after, he could not bear a slighting allusion to
her from any one, and would at once check the offender. Externally,
Grigory was cold, dignified and taciturn, and spoke, weighing his words,
without frivolity. It was impossible to tell at first sight whether he
loved his meek, obedient wife; but he really did love her, and she knew
it.
Marfa Ignatyevna was by no means foolish; she was probably, indeed,
cleverer than her husband, or, at least, more prudent than he in worldly
affairs, and yet she had given in to him in everything without question or
complaint ever since her marriage, and respected him for his spiritual
superiority. It was remarkable how little they spoke to one another in the
course of their lives, and only of the most necessary daily affairs. The
grave and dignified Grigory thought over all his cares and duties alone,
so that Marfa Ignatyevna had long grown used to knowing that he did not
need her advice. She felt that her husband respected her silence, and took
it as a sign of her good sense. He had never beaten her but once, and then
only slightly. Once during the year after Fyodor Pavlovitch's marriage
with Adelaida Ivanovna, the village girls and women--at that time
serfs--were called together before the house to sing and dance. They were
beginning "In the Green Meadows," when Marfa, at that time a young woman,
skipped forward and danced "the Russian Dance," not in the village
fashion, but as she had danced it when she was a servant in the service of
the rich Miuesov family, in their private theater, where the actors were
taught to dance by a dancing master from Moscow. Grigory saw how his wife
danced, and, an hour later, at home in their cottage he gave her a lesson,
pulling her hair a little. But there it ended: the beating was never
repeated, and Marfa Ignatyevna gave up dancing.
God had not blessed them with children. One child was born but it died.
Grigory was fond of children, and was not ashamed of showing it. When
Adelaida Ivanovna had run away, Grigory took Dmitri, then a child of three
years old, combed his hair and washed him in a tub with his own hands, and
looked after him for almost a year. Afterwards he had looked after Ivan
and Alyosha, for which the general's widow had rewarded him with a slap in
the face; but I have already related all that. The only happiness his own
child had brought him had been in the anticipation of its birth. When it
was born, he was overwhelmed with grief and horror. The baby had six
fingers. Grigory was so crushed by this, that he was not only silent till
the day of the christening, but kept away in the garden. It was spring,
and he spent three days digging the kitchen garden. The third day was
fixed for christening the baby: mean-time Grigory had reached a
conclusion. Going into the cottage where the clergy were assembled and the
visitors had arrived, including Fyodor Pavlovitch, who was to stand god-
father, he suddenly announced that the baby "ought not to be christened at
all." He announced this quietly, briefly, forcing out his words, and
gazing with dull intentness at the priest.
"Why not?" asked the priest with good-humored surprise.
"Because it's a dragon," muttered Grigory.
"A dragon? What dragon?"
Grigory did not speak for some time. "It's a confusion of nature," he
muttered vaguely, but firmly, and obviously unwilling to say more.
They laughed, and of course christened the poor baby. Grigory prayed
earnestly at the font, but his opinion of the new-born child remained
unchanged. Yet he did not interfere in any way. As long as the sickly
infant lived he scarcely looked at it, tried indeed not to notice it, and
for the most part kept out of the cottage. But when, at the end of a
fortnight, the baby died of thrush, he himself laid the child in its
little coffin, looked at it in profound grief, and when they were filling
up the shallow little grave he fell on his knees and bowed down to the
earth. He did not for years afterwards mention his child, nor did Marfa
speak of the baby before him, and, even if Grigory were not present, she
never spoke of it above a whisper. Marfa observed that, from the day of
the burial, he devoted himself to "religion," and took to reading the
_Lives of the Saints_, for the most part sitting alone and in silence, and
always putting on his big, round, silver-rimmed spectacles. He rarely read
aloud, only perhaps in Lent. He was fond of the Book of Job, and had
somehow got hold of a copy of the sayings and sermons of "the God-fearing
Father Isaac the Syrian," which he read persistently for years together,
understanding very little of it, but perhaps prizing and loving it the
more for that. Of late he had begun to listen to the doctrines of the sect
of Flagellants settled in the neighborhood. He was evidently shaken by
them, but judged it unfitting to go over to the new faith. His habit of
theological reading gave him an expression of still greater gravity.
He was perhaps predisposed to mysticism. And the birth of his deformed
child, and its death, had, as though by special design, been accompanied
by another strange and marvelous event, which, as he said later, had left
a "stamp" upon his soul. It happened that, on the very night after the
burial of his child, Marfa was awakened by the wail of a new-born baby.
She was frightened and waked her husband. He listened and said he thought
it was more like some one groaning, "it might be a woman." He got up and
dressed. It was a rather warm night in May. As he went down the steps, he
distinctly heard groans coming from the garden. But the gate from the yard
into the garden was locked at night, and there was no other way of
entering it, for it was enclosed all round by a strong, high fence. Going
back into the house, Grigory lighted a lantern, took the garden key, and
taking no notice of the hysterical fears of his wife, who was still
persuaded that she heard a child crying, and that it was her own baby
crying and calling for her, went into the garden in silence. There he
heard at once that the groans came from the bath-house that stood near the
garden gate, and that they were the groans of a woman. Opening the door of
the bath-house, he saw a sight which petrified him. An idiot girl, who
wandered about the streets and was known to the whole town by the nickname
of Lizaveta Smerdyastchaya (Stinking Lizaveta), had got into the bath-
house and had just given birth to a child. She lay dying with the baby
beside her. She said nothing, for she had never been able to speak. But
her story needs a chapter to itself.
| 2,083 | book 3, Chapter 1 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section4/ | In the Servant's Quarters The narrator tells the story of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov's servant Grigory, who briefly cares for each of the three Karamazov brothers when they are young. Grigory's wife gives birth to a child with six fingers. The child dies two weeks after it is born. The night Grigory buries it, his wife hears a baby crying in the distance. When Grigory goes to investigate, he discovers a newborn child lying next to a young girl, who has just given birth and is dying | null | 86 | 1 | [
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5,658 | true | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/chapters_14_to_16.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Lord Jim/section_6_part_0.txt | Lord Jim.chapters 14-16 | chapters 14-16 | null | {"name": "Chapters 14-16", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210215030710/https://www.novelguide.com/lord-jim/summaries/chapter14-16", "summary": "Fifteen and Sixteen . Chapter Fourteen returns to the final day of the inquiry. Marlow compares it to attending an execution and says the experience was infinitely worse than a beheading: 'These proceedings had all the cold vengefulness of a death sentence, had all the cruelty of a sentence of exile'. The court finds that the Patna had not been seaworthy for the voyage, but that it had been navigated with care up to the time of the accident. There was no evidence to explain the cause of the accident. For 'disregard of their plain duty', Jim and the skipper's certificates are cancelled. . . When Jim walks away, Marlow thinks he staggers a little. Marlow hears a man say 'man overboard' and recognizes him as Chester. The narrative deviates whilst Marlow explains Chester's idea to collect guano and his wish to buy a steamer. Chester is scornful of Jim for taking the events to heart and wants him to work for him as he sees he is no good anymore. Marlow refuses to advise Jim about this offer and the chapter ends with Chester walking away. . . In Chapter Fifteen, Marlow later catches sight of Jim leaning over the parapet of the quay. They then walk together with Marlow leading the way to his rooms. Marlow sits down at once to write letters. The inquiry has not made Jim invisible as he wished, but Marlow behaves as if he is. He carries on writing whilst Jim stands quietly with his back to the light. . . Marlow explains in Chapter Sixteen that the last time he saw Jim, he was protected by his isolation. However, Marlow sometimes thinks he should not have stood between Jim and Chester's offer. He has heard nothing of Chester since he set off as he has not been seen since and it is thought he may have been killed in a hurricane. . . The narrative then returns to Marlow writing letters. Jim thanks him for this 'bit of shelter' and begins to feel more optimistic about his future. Marlow warns him to be a little cautious, and then fears Jim will now 'begin the journey towards the bottomless pit'. There is a downpour and it is dark outside, but Jim decides to leave. Marlow stops him and asks him to come back in and shut the door. .", "analysis": "Fifteen and Sixteen . With the end of the inquiry, Jim appears to be spent and is seen as 'no good' now . Marlow's faith in this younger man is made evident, however, as he takes him to his rooms and Chapter Sixteen finishes with him stopping Jim from leaving. . . Jim's childlike naivety is made evident, through the interpretation made by Marlow, as he had hoped the inquiry would bring him invisibility. The suggestion is made that Jim believed that doing the 'right thing' would mean he would then be treated fairly. It is implied that his own code of honor differs to that of other men and this is made apparent throughout the story of Jim's life."} | 'I slept little, hurried over my breakfast, and after a slight
hesitation gave up my early morning visit to my ship. It was really
very wrong of me, because, though my chief mate was an excellent man all
round, he was the victim of such black imaginings that if he did not get
a letter from his wife at the expected time he would go quite distracted
with rage and jealousy, lose all grip on the work, quarrel with all
hands, and either weep in his cabin or develop such a ferocity of temper
as all but drove the crew to the verge of mutiny. The thing had always
seemed inexplicable to me: they had been married thirteen years; I had a
glimpse of her once, and, honestly, I couldn't conceive a man abandoned
enough to plunge into sin for the sake of such an unattractive person. I
don't know whether I have not done wrong by refraining from putting
that view before poor Selvin: the man made a little hell on earth for
himself, and I also suffered indirectly, but some sort of, no doubt,
false delicacy prevented me. The marital relations of seamen would make
an interesting subject, and I could tell you instances. . . . However,
this is not the place, nor the time, and we are concerned with Jim--who
was unmarried. If his imaginative conscience or his pride; if all the
extravagant ghosts and austere shades that were the disastrous familiars
of his youth would not let him run away from the block, I, who of course
can't be suspected of such familiars, was irresistibly impelled to go
and see his head roll off. I wended my way towards the court. I didn't
hope to be very much impressed or edified, or interested or even
frightened--though, as long as there is any life before one, a jolly
good fright now and then is a salutary discipline. But neither did I
expect to be so awfully depressed. The bitterness of his punishment was
in its chill and mean atmosphere. The real significance of crime is in
its being a breach of faith with the community of mankind, and from
that point of view he was no mean traitor, but his execution was a
hole-and-corner affair. There was no high scaffolding, no scarlet cloth
(did they have scarlet cloth on Tower Hill? They should have had), no
awe-stricken multitude to be horrified at his guilt and be moved to
tears at his fate--no air of sombre retribution. There was, as I walked
along, the clear sunshine, a brilliance too passionate to be consoling,
the streets full of jumbled bits of colour like a damaged kaleidoscope:
yellow, green, blue, dazzling white, the brown nudity of an undraped
shoulder, a bullock-cart with a red canopy, a company of native infantry
in a drab body with dark heads marching in dusty laced boots, a native
policeman in a sombre uniform of scanty cut and belted in patent
leather, who looked up at me with orientally pitiful eyes as though his
migrating spirit were suffering exceedingly from that unforeseen--what
d'ye call 'em?--avatar--incarnation. Under the shade of a lonely tree
in the courtyard, the villagers connected with the assault case sat in a
picturesque group, looking like a chromo-lithograph of a camp in a book
of Eastern travel. One missed the obligatory thread of smoke in the
foreground and the pack-animals grazing. A blank yellow wall rose behind
overtopping the tree, reflecting the glare. The court-room was sombre,
seemed more vast. High up in the dim space the punkahs were swaying
short to and fro, to and fro. Here and there a draped figure, dwarfed
by the bare walls, remained without stirring amongst the rows of empty
benches, as if absorbed in pious meditation. The plaintiff, who had
been beaten,--an obese chocolate-coloured man with shaved head, one
fat breast bare and a bright yellow caste-mark above the bridge of his
nose,--sat in pompous immobility: only his eyes glittered, rolling
in the gloom, and the nostrils dilated and collapsed violently as he
breathed. Brierly dropped into his seat looking done up, as though
he had spent the night in sprinting on a cinder-track. The pious
sailing-ship skipper appeared excited and made uneasy movements, as
if restraining with difficulty an impulse to stand up and exhort
us earnestly to prayer and repentance. The head of the magistrate,
delicately pale under the neatly arranged hair, resembled the head of a
hopeless invalid after he had been washed and brushed and propped up in
bed. He moved aside the vase of flowers--a bunch of purple with a few
pink blossoms on long stalks--and seizing in both hands a long sheet of
bluish paper, ran his eye over it, propped his forearms on the edge of
the desk, and began to read aloud in an even, distinct, and careless
voice.
'By Jove! For all my foolishness about scaffolds and heads rolling
off--I assure you it was infinitely worse than a beheading. A heavy
sense of finality brooded over all this, unrelieved by the hope of rest
and safety following the fall of the axe. These proceedings had all the
cold vengefulness of a death-sentence, and the cruelty of a sentence of
exile. This is how I looked at it that morning--and even now I seem to
see an undeniable vestige of truth in that exaggerated view of a common
occurrence. You may imagine how strongly I felt this at the time.
Perhaps it is for that reason that I could not bring myself to admit
the finality. The thing was always with me, I was always eager to take
opinion on it, as though it had not been practically settled: individual
opinion--international opinion--by Jove! That Frenchman's, for instance.
His own country's pronouncement was uttered in the passionless and
definite phraseology a machine would use, if machines could speak. The
head of the magistrate was half hidden by the paper, his brow was like
alabaster.
'There were several questions before the court. The first as to whether
the ship was in every respect fit and seaworthy for the voyage. The
court found she was not. The next point, I remember, was, whether up
to the time of the accident the ship had been navigated with proper and
seamanlike care. They said Yes to that, goodness knows why, and then
they declared that there was no evidence to show the exact cause of
the accident. A floating derelict probably. I myself remember that a
Norwegian barque bound out with a cargo of pitch-pine had been given up
as missing about that time, and it was just the sort of craft that would
capsize in a squall and float bottom up for months--a kind of maritime
ghoul on the prowl to kill ships in the dark. Such wandering corpses are
common enough in the North Atlantic, which is haunted by all the terrors
of the sea,--fogs, icebergs, dead ships bent upon mischief, and long
sinister gales that fasten upon one like a vampire till all the strength
and the spirit and even hope are gone, and one feels like the empty
shell of a man. But there--in those seas--the incident was rare enough
to resemble a special arrangement of a malevolent providence, which,
unless it had for its object the killing of a donkeyman and the bringing
of worse than death upon Jim, appeared an utterly aimless piece of
devilry. This view occurring to me took off my attention. For a time I
was aware of the magistrate's voice as a sound merely; but in a moment
it shaped itself into distinct words . . . "in utter disregard of their
plain duty," it said. The next sentence escaped me somehow, and
then . . . "abandoning in the moment of danger the lives and property
confided to their charge" . . . went on the voice evenly, and stopped. A
pair of eyes under the white forehead shot darkly a glance above the
edge of the paper. I looked for Jim hurriedly, as though I had expected
him to disappear. He was very still--but he was there. He sat pink and
fair and extremely attentive. "Therefore, . . ." began the voice
emphatically. He stared with parted lips, hanging upon the words of the
man behind the desk. These came out into the stillness wafted on the
wind made by the punkahs, and I, watching for their effect upon him,
caught only the fragments of official language. . . . "The Court . . .
Gustav So-and-so . . . master . . . native of Germany . . . James
So-and-so . . . mate . . . certificates cancelled." A silence fell. The
magistrate had dropped the paper, and, leaning sideways on the arm of
his chair, began to talk with Brierly easily. People started to move
out; others were pushing in, and I also made for the door. Outside I
stood still, and when Jim passed me on his way to the gate, I caught at
his arm and detained him. The look he gave discomposed me, as though I
had been responsible for his state he looked at me as if I had been the
embodied evil of life. "It's all over," I stammered. "Yes," he said
thickly. "And now let no man . . ." He jerked his arm out of my grasp. I
watched his back as he went away. It was a long street, and he remained
in sight for some time. He walked rather slow, and straddling his legs a
little, as if he had found it difficult to keep a straight line. Just
before I lost him I fancied he staggered a bit.
'"Man overboard," said a deep voice behind me. Turning round, I saw a
fellow I knew slightly, a West Australian; Chester was his name. He,
too, had been looking after Jim. He was a man with an immense girth of
chest, a rugged, clean-shaved face of mahogany colour, and two blunt
tufts of iron-grey, thick, wiry hairs on his upper lip. He had
been pearler, wrecker, trader, whaler too, I believe; in his own
words--anything and everything a man may be at sea, but a pirate. The
Pacific, north and south, was his proper hunting-ground; but he had
wandered so far afield looking for a cheap steamer to buy. Lately he
had discovered--so he said--a guano island somewhere, but its approaches
were dangerous, and the anchorage, such as it was, could not be
considered safe, to say the least of it. "As good as a gold-mine," he
would exclaim. "Right bang in the middle of the Walpole Reefs, and if
it's true enough that you can get no holding-ground anywhere in less
than forty fathom, then what of that? There are the hurricanes, too. But
it's a first-rate thing. As good as a gold-mine--better! Yet there's not
a fool of them that will see it. I can't get a skipper or a shipowner
to go near the place. So I made up my mind to cart the blessed stuff
myself." . . . This was what he required a steamer for, and I knew he
was just then negotiating enthusiastically with a Parsee firm for an
old, brig-rigged, sea-anachronism of ninety horse-power. We had met and
spoken together several times. He looked knowingly after Jim. "Takes
it to heart?" he asked scornfully. "Very much," I said. "Then he's no
good," he opined. "What's all the to-do about? A bit of ass's skin. That
never yet made a man. You must see things exactly as they are--if you
don't, you may just as well give in at once. You will never do anything
in this world. Look at me. I made it a practice never to take anything
to heart." "Yes," I said, "you see things as they are." "I wish I could
see my partner coming along, that's what I wish to see," he said. "Know
my partner? Old Robinson. Yes; _the_ Robinson. Don't _you_ know? The
notorious Robinson. The man who smuggled more opium and bagged more
seals in his time than any loose Johnny now alive. They say he used to
board the sealing-schooners up Alaska way when the fog was so thick that
the Lord God, He alone, could tell one man from another. Holy-Terror
Robinson. That's the man. He is with me in that guano thing. The best
chance he ever came across in his life." He put his lips to my ear.
"Cannibal?--well, they used to give him the name years and years ago.
You remember the story? A shipwreck on the west side of Stewart Island;
that's right; seven of them got ashore, and it seems they did not get
on very well together. Some men are too cantankerous for anything--don't
know how to make the best of a bad job--don't see things as they are--as
they _are_, my boy! And then what's the consequence? Obvious! Trouble,
trouble; as likely as not a knock on the head; and serve 'em right too.
That sort is the most useful when it's dead. The story goes that a boat
of Her Majesty's ship Wolverine found him kneeling on the kelp, naked as
the day he was born, and chanting some psalm-tune or other; light snow
was falling at the time. He waited till the boat was an oar's length
from the shore, and then up and away. They chased him for an hour up and
down the boulders, till a marihe flung a stone that took him behind
the ear providentially and knocked him senseless. Alone? Of course. But
that's like that tale of sealing-schooners; the Lord God knows the right
and the wrong of that story. The cutter did not investigate much. They
wrapped him in a boat-cloak and took him off as quick as they could,
with a dark night coming on, the weather threatening, and the ship
firing recall guns every five minutes. Three weeks afterwards he was as
well as ever. He didn't allow any fuss that was made on shore to upset
him; he just shut his lips tight, and let people screech. It was bad
enough to have lost his ship, and all he was worth besides, without
paying attention to the hard names they called him. That's the man for
me." He lifted his arm for a signal to some one down the street. "He's
got a little money, so I had to let him into my thing. Had to! It
would have been sinful to throw away such a find, and I was cleaned out
myself. It cut me to the quick, but I could see the matter just as
it was, and if I _must_ share--thinks I--with any man, then give me
Robinson. I left him at breakfast in the hotel to come to court, because
I've an idea. . . . Ah! Good morning, Captain Robinson. . . . Friend of
mine, Captain Robinson."
'An emaciated patriarch in a suit of white drill, a solah topi with a
green-lined rim on a head trembling with age, joined us after crossing
the street in a trotting shuffle, and stood propped with both hands on
the handle of an umbrella. A white beard with amber streaks hung lumpily
down to his waist. He blinked his creased eyelids at me in a bewildered
way. "How do you do? how do you do?" he piped amiably, and tottered. "A
little deaf," said Chester aside. "Did you drag him over six thousand
miles to get a cheap steamer?" I asked. "I would have taken him twice
round the world as soon as look at him," said Chester with immense
energy. "The steamer will be the making of us, my lad. Is it my fault
that every skipper and shipowner in the whole of blessed Australasia
turns out a blamed fool? Once I talked for three hours to a man in
Auckland. 'Send a ship,' I said, 'send a ship. I'll give you half of the
first cargo for yourself, free gratis for nothing--just to make a good
start.' Says he, 'I wouldn't do it if there was no other place on
earth to send a ship to.' Perfect ass, of course. Rocks, currents, no
anchorage, sheer cliff to lay to, no insurance company would take the
risk, didn't see how he could get loaded under three years. Ass! I
nearly went on my knees to him. 'But look at the thing as it is,' says
I. 'Damn rocks and hurricanes. Look at it as it is. There's guano there
Queensland sugar-planters would fight for--fight for on the quay, I
tell you.' . . . What can you do with a fool? . . . 'That's one of your
little jokes, Chester,' he says. . . . Joke! I could have wept. Ask
Captain Robinson here. . . . And there was another shipowning fellow--a
fat chap in a white waistcoat in Wellington, who seemed to think I was
up to some swindle or other. 'I don't know what sort of fool you're
looking for,' he says, 'but I am busy just now. Good morning.' I longed
to take him in my two hands and smash him through the window of his own
office. But I didn't. I was as mild as a curate. 'Think of it,' says I.
'_Do_ think it over. I'll call to-morrow.' He grunted something about
being 'out all day.' On the stairs I felt ready to beat my head against
the wall from vexation. Captain Robinson here can tell you. It was awful
to think of all that lovely stuff lying waste under the sun--stuff that
would send the sugar-cane shooting sky-high. The making of Queensland!
The making of Queensland! And in Brisbane, where I went to have a last
try, they gave me the name of a lunatic. Idiots! The only sensible man
I came across was the cabman who drove me about. A broken-down swell he
was, I fancy. Hey! Captain Robinson? You remember I told you about my
cabby in Brisbane--don't you? The chap had a wonderful eye for things.
He saw it all in a jiffy. It was a real pleasure to talk with him. One
evening after a devil of a day amongst shipowners I felt so bad that,
says I, 'I must get drunk. Come along; I must get drunk, or I'll go
mad.' 'I am your man,' he says; 'go ahead.' I don't know what I would
have done without him. Hey! Captain Robinson."
'He poked the ribs of his partner. "He! he! he!" laughed the Ancient,
looked aimlessly down the street, then peered at me doubtfully with sad,
dim pupils. . . . "He! he! he!" . . . He leaned heavier on the umbrella,
and dropped his gaze on the ground. I needn't tell you I had tried to
get away several times, but Chester had foiled every attempt by simply
catching hold of my coat. "One minute. I've a notion." "What's your
infernal notion?" I exploded at last. "If you think I am going in with
you . . ." "No, no, my boy. Too late, if you wanted ever so much. We've
got a steamer." "You've got the ghost of a steamer," I said. "Good
enough for a start--there's no superior nonsense about us. Is there,
Captain Robinson?" "No! no! no!" croaked the old man without lifting
his eyes, and the senile tremble of his head became almost fierce with
determination. "I understand you know that young chap," said Chester,
with a nod at the street from which Jim had disappeared long ago. "He's
been having grub with you in the Malabar last night--so I was told."
'I said that was true, and after remarking that he too liked to live
well and in style, only that, for the present, he had to be saving of
every penny--"none too many for the business! Isn't that so, Captain
Robinson?"--he squared his shoulders and stroked his dumpy moustache,
while the notorious Robinson, coughing at his side, clung more than ever
to the handle of the umbrella, and seemed ready to subside passively
into a heap of old bones. "You see, the old chap has all the money,"
whispered Chester confidentially. "I've been cleaned out trying to
engineer the dratted thing. But wait a bit, wait a bit. The good time is
coming." . . . He seemed suddenly astonished at the signs of impatience
I gave. "Oh, crakee!" he cried; "I am telling you of the biggest thing
that ever was, and you . . ." "I have an appointment," I pleaded mildly.
"What of that?" he asked with genuine surprise; "let it wait." "That's
exactly what I am doing now," I remarked; "hadn't you better tell me
what it is you want?" "Buy twenty hotels like that," he growled to
himself; "and every joker boarding in them too--twenty times over." He
lifted his head smartly "I want that young chap." "I don't understand,"
I said. "He's no good, is he?" said Chester crisply. "I know nothing
about it," I protested. "Why, you told me yourself he was taking it to
heart," argued Chester. "Well, in my opinion a chap who . . . Anyhow, he
can't be much good; but then you see I am on the look-out for somebody,
and I've just got a thing that will suit him. I'll give him a job on
my island." He nodded significantly. "I'm going to dump forty coolies
there--if I've to steal 'em. Somebody must work the stuff. Oh! I mean
to act square: wooden shed, corrugated-iron roof--I know a man in Hobart
who will take my bill at six months for the materials. I do. Honour
bright. Then there's the water-supply. I'll have to fly round and get
somebody to trust me for half-a-dozen second-hand iron tanks. Catch
rain-water, hey? Let him take charge. Make him supreme boss over the
coolies. Good idea, isn't it? What do you say?" "There are whole years
when not a drop of rain falls on Walpole," I said, too amazed to laugh.
He bit his lip and seemed bothered. "Oh, well, I will fix up something
for them--or land a supply. Hang it all! That's not the question."
'I said nothing. I had a rapid vision of Jim perched on a shadowless
rock, up to his knees in guano, with the screams of sea-birds in his
ears, the incandescent ball of the sun above his head; the empty sky and
the empty ocean all a-quiver, simmering together in the heat as far as
the eye could reach. "I wouldn't advise my worst enemy . . ." I began.
"What's the matter with you?" cried Chester; "I mean to give him a good
screw--that is, as soon as the thing is set going, of course. It's as
easy as falling off a log. Simply nothing to do; two six-shooters in his
belt . . . Surely he wouldn't be afraid of anything forty coolies could
do--with two six-shooters and he the only armed man too! It's much
better than it looks. I want you to help me to talk him over." "No!"
I shouted. Old Robinson lifted his bleared eyes dismally for a moment,
Chester looked at me with infinite contempt. "So you wouldn't advise
him?" he uttered slowly. "Certainly not," I answered, as indignant as
though he had requested me to help murder somebody; "moreover, I am sure
he wouldn't. He is badly cut up, but he isn't mad as far as I know." "He
is no earthly good for anything," Chester mused aloud. "He would just
have done for me. If you only could see a thing as it is, you would
see it's the very thing for him. And besides . . . Why! it's the most
splendid, sure chance . . ." He got angry suddenly. "I must have a man.
There! . . ." He stamped his foot and smiled unpleasantly. "Anyhow, I
could guarantee the island wouldn't sink under him--and I believe he
is a bit particular on that point." "Good morning," I said curtly. He
looked at me as though I had been an incomprehensible fool. . . . "Must
be moving, Captain Robinson," he yelled suddenly into the old man's ear.
"These Parsee Johnnies are waiting for us to clinch the bargain." He
took his partner under the arm with a firm grip, swung him round, and,
unexpectedly, leered at me over his shoulder. "I was trying to do him
a kindness," he asserted, with an air and tone that made my blood boil.
"Thank you for nothing--in his name," I rejoined. "Oh! you are devilish
smart," he sneered; "but you are like the rest of them. Too much in the
clouds. See what you will do with him." "I don't know that I want to
do anything with him." "Don't you?" he spluttered; his grey moustache
bristled with anger, and by his side the notorious Robinson, propped
on the umbrella, stood with his back to me, as patient and still as a
worn-out cab-horse. "I haven't found a guano island," I said. "It's
my belief you wouldn't know one if you were led right up to it by the
hand," he riposted quickly; "and in this world you've got to see a thing
first, before you can make use of it. Got to see it through and through
at that, neither more nor less." "And get others to see it, too," I
insinuated, with a glance at the bowed back by his side. Chester snorted
at me. "His eyes are right enough--don't you worry. He ain't a puppy."
"Oh, dear, no!" I said. "Come along, Captain Robinson," he shouted, with
a sort of bullying deference under the rim of the old man's hat; the
Holy Terror gave a submissive little jump. The ghost of a steamer was
waiting for them, Fortune on that fair isle! They made a curious pair
of Argonauts. Chester strode on leisurely, well set up, portly, and of
conquering mien; the other, long, wasted, drooping, and hooked to his
arm, shuffled his withered shanks with desperate haste.''I did not start in search of Jim at once, only because I had really an
appointment which I could not neglect. Then, as ill-luck would have
it, in my agent's office I was fastened upon by a fellow fresh from
Madagascar with a little scheme for a wonderful piece of business. It
had something to do with cattle and cartridges and a Prince Ravonalo
something; but the pivot of the whole affair was the stupidity of some
admiral--Admiral Pierre, I think. Everything turned on that, and the
chap couldn't find words strong enough to express his confidence. He had
globular eyes starting out of his head with a fishy glitter, bumps on
his forehead, and wore his long hair brushed back without a parting.
He had a favourite phrase which he kept on repeating triumphantly, "The
minimum of risk with the maximum of profit is my motto. What?" He made
my head ache, spoiled my tiffin, but got his own out of me all right;
and as soon as I had shaken him off, I made straight for the water-side.
I caught sight of Jim leaning over the parapet of the quay. Three native
boatmen quarrelling over five annas were making an awful row at his
elbow. He didn't hear me come up, but spun round as if the slight
contact of my finger had released a catch. "I was looking," he
stammered. I don't remember what I said, not much anyhow, but he made no
difficulty in following me to the hotel.
'He followed me as manageable as a little child, with an obedient air,
with no sort of manifestation, rather as though he had been waiting
for me there to come along and carry him off. I need not have been so
surprised as I was at his tractability. On all the round earth, which to
some seems so big and that others affect to consider as rather smaller
than a mustard-seed, he had no place where he could--what shall I
say?--where he could withdraw. That's it! Withdraw--be alone with his
loneliness. He walked by my side very calm, glancing here and there, and
once turned his head to look after a Sidiboy fireman in a cutaway coat
and yellowish trousers, whose black face had silky gleams like a lump
of anthracite coal. I doubt, however, whether he saw anything, or even
remained all the time aware of my companionship, because if I had not
edged him to the left here, or pulled him to the right there, I believe
he would have gone straight before him in any direction till stopped by
a wall or some other obstacle. I steered him into my bedroom, and sat
down at once to write letters. This was the only place in the world
(unless, perhaps, the Walpole Reef--but that was not so handy) where he
could have it out with himself without being bothered by the rest of
the universe. The damned thing--as he had expressed it--had not made
him invisible, but I behaved exactly as though he were. No sooner in my
chair I bent over my writing-desk like a medieval scribe, and, but for
the movement of the hand holding the pen, remained anxiously quiet. I
can't say I was frightened; but I certainly kept as still as if there
had been something dangerous in the room, that at the first hint of a
movement on my part would be provoked to pounce upon me. There was not
much in the room--you know how these bedrooms are--a sort of four-poster
bedstead under a mosquito-net, two or three chairs, the table I was
writing at, a bare floor. A glass door opened on an upstairs verandah,
and he stood with his face to it, having a hard time with all possible
privacy. Dusk fell; I lit a candle with the greatest economy of movement
and as much prudence as though it were an illegal proceeding. There is
no doubt that he had a very hard time of it, and so had I, even to the
point, I must own, of wishing him to the devil, or on Walpole Reef at
least. It occurred to me once or twice that, after all, Chester was,
perhaps, the man to deal effectively with such a disaster. That strange
idealist had found a practical use for it at once--unerringly, as it
were. It was enough to make one suspect that, maybe, he really could see
the true aspect of things that appeared mysterious or utterly hopeless
to less imaginative persons. I wrote and wrote; I liquidated all the
arrears of my correspondence, and then went on writing to people who had
no reason whatever to expect from me a gossipy letter about nothing at
all. At times I stole a sidelong glance. He was rooted to the spot,
but convulsive shudders ran down his back; his shoulders would heave
suddenly. He was fighting, he was fighting--mostly for his breath, as it
seemed. The massive shadows, cast all one way from the straight flame of
the candle, seemed possessed of gloomy consciousness; the immobility of
the furniture had to my furtive eye an air of attention. I was becoming
fanciful in the midst of my industrious scribbling; and though, when the
scratching of my pen stopped for a moment, there was complete silence
and stillness in the room, I suffered from that profound disturbance
and confusion of thought which is caused by a violent and menacing
uproar--of a heavy gale at sea, for instance. Some of you may know what
I mean: that mingled anxiety, distress, and irritation with a sort of
craven feeling creeping in--not pleasant to acknowledge, but which gives
a quite special merit to one's endurance. I don't claim any merit
for standing the stress of Jim's emotions; I could take refuge in the
letters; I could have written to strangers if necessary. Suddenly, as I
was taking up a fresh sheet of notepaper, I heard a low sound, the first
sound that, since we had been shut up together, had come to my ears in
the dim stillness of the room. I remained with my head down, with my
hand arrested. Those who have kept vigil by a sick-bed have heard such
faint sounds in the stillness of the night watches, sounds wrung from a
racked body, from a weary soul. He pushed the glass door with such force
that all the panes rang: he stepped out, and I held my breath, straining
my ears without knowing what else I expected to hear. He was really
taking too much to heart an empty formality which to Chester's rigorous
criticism seemed unworthy the notice of a man who could see things as
they were. An empty formality; a piece of parchment. Well, well. As to
an inaccessible guano deposit, that was another story altogether. One
could intelligibly break one's heart over that. A feeble burst of many
voices mingled with the tinkle of silver and glass floated up from the
dining-room below; through the open door the outer edge of the light
from my candle fell on his back faintly; beyond all was black; he stood
on the brink of a vast obscurity, like a lonely figure by the shore of
a sombre and hopeless ocean. There was the Walpole Reef in it--to
be sure--a speck in the dark void, a straw for the drowning man. My
compassion for him took the shape of the thought that I wouldn't have
liked his people to see him at that moment. I found it trying myself.
His back was no longer shaken by his gasps; he stood straight as an
arrow, faintly visible and still; and the meaning of this stillness sank
to the bottom of my soul like lead into the water, and made it so heavy
that for a second I wished heartily that the only course left open for
me was to pay for his funeral. Even the law had done with him. To bury
him would have been such an easy kindness! It would have been so much
in accordance with the wisdom of life, which consists in putting out of
sight all the reminders of our folly, of our weakness, of our mortality;
all that makes against our efficiency--the memory of our failures, the
hints of our undying fears, the bodies of our dead friends. Perhaps he
did take it too much to heart. And if so then--Chester's offer. . . . At
this point I took up a fresh sheet and began to write resolutely. There
was nothing but myself between him and the dark ocean. I had a sense of
responsibility. If I spoke, would that motionless and suffering youth
leap into the obscurity--clutch at the straw? I found out how difficult
it may be sometimes to make a sound. There is a weird power in a spoken
word. And why the devil not? I was asking myself persistently while I
drove on with my writing. All at once, on the blank page, under the very
point of the pen, the two figures of Chester and his antique partner,
very distinct and complete, would dodge into view with stride and
gestures, as if reproduced in the field of some optical toy. I would
watch them for a while. No! They were too phantasmal and extravagant
to enter into any one's fate. And a word carries far--very far--deals
destruction through time as the bullets go flying through space. I said
nothing; and he, out there with his back to the light, as if bound
and gagged by all the invisible foes of man, made no stir and made no
sound.'
'The time was coming when I should see him loved, trusted, admired, with
a legend of strength and prowess forming round his name as though he
had been the stuff of a hero. It's true--I assure you; as true as
I'm sitting here talking about him in vain. He, on his side, had that
faculty of beholding at a hint the face of his desire and the shape
of his dream, without which the earth would know no lover and no
adventurer. He captured much honour and an Arcadian happiness (I won't
say anything about innocence) in the bush, and it was as good to him
as the honour and the Arcadian happiness of the streets to another man.
Felicity, felicity--how shall I say it?--is quaffed out of a golden cup
in every latitude: the flavour is with you--with you alone, and you can
make it as intoxicating as you please. He was of the sort that would
drink deep, as you may guess from what went before. I found him, if not
exactly intoxicated, then at least flushed with the elixir at his lips.
He had not obtained it at once. There had been, as you know, a period of
probation amongst infernal ship-chandlers, during which he had suffered
and I had worried about--about--my trust--you may call it. I don't
know that I am completely reassured now, after beholding him in all his
brilliance. That was my last view of him--in a strong light, dominating,
and yet in complete accord with his surroundings--with the life of the
forests and with the life of men. I own that I was impressed, but I must
admit to myself that after all this is not the lasting impression. He
was protected by his isolation, alone of his own superior kind, in close
touch with Nature, that keeps faith on such easy terms with her lovers.
But I cannot fix before my eye the image of his safety. I shall always
remember him as seen through the open door of my room, taking, perhaps,
too much to heart the mere consequences of his failure. I am pleased,
of course, that some good--and even some splendour--came out of my
endeavours; but at times it seems to me it would have been better for my
peace of mind if I had not stood between him and Chester's confoundedly
generous offer. I wonder what his exuberant imagination would have made
of Walpole islet--that most hopelessly forsaken crumb of dry land on the
face of the waters. It is not likely I would ever have heard, for I must
tell you that Chester, after calling at some Australian port to patch
up his brig-rigged sea-anachronism, steamed out into the Pacific with a
crew of twenty-two hands all told, and the only news having a possible
bearing upon the mystery of his fate was the news of a hurricane which
is supposed to have swept in its course over the Walpole shoals, a month
or so afterwards. Not a vestige of the Argonauts ever turned up; not a
sound came out of the waste. Finis! The Pacific is the most discreet of
live, hot-tempered oceans: the chilly Antarctic can keep a secret too,
but more in the manner of a grave.
'And there is a sense of blessed finality in such discretion, which is
what we all more or less sincerely are ready to admit--for what else is
it that makes the idea of death supportable? End! Finis! the potent word
that exorcises from the house of life the haunting shadow of fate. This
is what--notwithstanding the testimony of my eyes and his own earnest
assurances--I miss when I look back upon Jim's success. While there's
life there is hope, truly; but there is fear too. I don't mean to say
that I regret my action, nor will I pretend that I can't sleep o' nights
in consequence; still, the idea obtrudes itself that he made so much of
his disgrace while it is the guilt alone that matters. He was not--if I
may say so--clear to me. He was not clear. And there is a suspicion he
was not clear to himself either. There were his fine sensibilities,
his fine feelings, his fine longings--a sort of sublimated, idealised
selfishness. He was--if you allow me to say so--very fine; very
fine--and very unfortunate. A little coarser nature would not have borne
the strain; it would have had to come to terms with itself--with a sigh,
with a grunt, or even with a guffaw; a still coarser one would have
remained invulnerably ignorant and completely uninteresting.
'But he was too interesting or too unfortunate to be thrown to the dogs,
or even to Chester. I felt this while I sat with my face over the paper
and he fought and gasped, struggling for his breath in that terribly
stealthy way, in my room; I felt it when he rushed out on the verandah
as if to fling himself over--and didn't; I felt it more and more all the
time he remained outside, faintly lighted on the background of night, as
if standing on the shore of a sombre and hopeless sea.
'An abrupt heavy rumble made me lift my head. The noise seemed to roll
away, and suddenly a searching and violent glare fell on the blind face
of the night. The sustained and dazzling flickers seemed to last for an
unconscionable time. The growl of the thunder increased steadily while I
looked at him, distinct and black, planted solidly upon the shores of a
sea of light. At the moment of greatest brilliance the darkness leaped
back with a culminating crash, and he vanished before my dazzled eyes as
utterly as though he had been blown to atoms. A blustering sigh passed;
furious hands seemed to tear at the shrubs, shake the tops of the
trees below, slam doors, break window-panes, all along the front of
the building. He stepped in, closing the door behind him, and found me
bending over the table: my sudden anxiety as to what he would say was
very great, and akin to a fright. "May I have a cigarette?" he asked. I
gave a push to the box without raising my head. "I want--want--tobacco,"
he muttered. I became extremely buoyant. "Just a moment." I grunted
pleasantly. He took a few steps here and there. "That's over," I heard
him say. A single distant clap of thunder came from the sea like a
gun of distress. "The monsoon breaks up early this year," he remarked
conversationally, somewhere behind me. This encouraged me to turn round,
which I did as soon as I had finished addressing the last envelope. He
was smoking greedily in the middle of the room, and though he heard the
stir I made, he remained with his back to me for a time.
'"Come--I carried it off pretty well," he said, wheeling suddenly.
"Something's paid off--not much. I wonder what's to come." His face did
not show any emotion, only it appeared a little darkened and swollen, as
though he had been holding his breath. He smiled reluctantly as it
were, and went on while I gazed up at him mutely. . . . "Thank you,
though--your room--jolly convenient--for a chap--badly hipped." . . .
The rain pattered and swished in the garden; a water-pipe (it must
have had a hole in it) performed just outside the window a parody of
blubbering woe with funny sobs and gurgling lamentations, interrupted
by jerky spasms of silence. . . . "A bit of shelter," he mumbled and
ceased.
'A flash of faded lightning darted in through the black framework of the
windows and ebbed out without any noise. I was thinking how I had best
approach him (I did not want to be flung off again) when he gave a
little laugh. "No better than a vagabond now" . . . the end of
the cigarette smouldered between his fingers . . . "without a
single--single," he pronounced slowly; "and yet . . ." He paused; the
rain fell with redoubled violence. "Some day one's bound to come upon
some sort of chance to get it all back again. Must!" he whispered
distinctly, glaring at my boots.
'I did not even know what it was he wished so much to regain, what it
was he had so terribly missed. It might have been so much that it was
impossible to say. A piece of ass's skin, according to Chester. . . .
He looked up at me inquisitively. "Perhaps. If life's long enough," I
muttered through my teeth with unreasonable animosity. "Don't reckon too
much on it."
'"Jove! I feel as if nothing could ever touch me," he said in a tone
of sombre conviction. "If this business couldn't knock me over, then
there's no fear of there being not enough time to--climb out, and . . ."
He looked upwards.
'It struck me that it is from such as he that the great army of waifs
and strays is recruited, the army that marches down, down into all the
gutters of the earth. As soon as he left my room, that "bit of shelter,"
he would take his place in the ranks, and begin the journey towards the
bottomless pit. I at least had no illusions; but it was I, too, who a
moment ago had been so sure of the power of words, and now was afraid to
speak, in the same way one dares not move for fear of losing a slippery
hold. It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that
we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings
that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun. It
is as if loneliness were a hard and absolute condition of existence; the
envelope of flesh and blood on which our eyes are fixed melts before the
outstretched hand, and there remains only the capricious, unconsolable,
and elusive spirit that no eye can follow, no hand can grasp. It was
the fear of losing him that kept me silent, for it was borne upon me
suddenly and with unaccountable force that should I let him slip away
into the darkness I would never forgive myself.
'"Well. Thanks--once more. You've been--er--uncommonly--really there's
no word to . . . Uncommonly! I don't know why, I am sure. I am afraid
I don't feel as grateful as I would if the whole thing hadn't been so
brutally sprung on me. Because at bottom . . . you, yourself . . ." He
stuttered.
'"Possibly," I struck in. He frowned.
'"All the same, one is responsible." He watched me like a hawk.
'"And that's true, too," I said.
'"Well. I've gone with it to the end, and I don't intend to let any man
cast it in my teeth without--without--resenting it." He clenched his
fist.
'"There's yourself," I said with a smile--mirthless enough, God
knows--but he looked at me menacingly. "That's my business," he said.
An air of indomitable resolution came and went upon his face like a vain
and passing shadow. Next moment he looked a dear good boy in trouble,
as before. He flung away the cigarette. "Good-bye," he said, with the
sudden haste of a man who had lingered too long in view of a pressing
bit of work waiting for him; and then for a second or so he made not the
slightest movement. The downpour fell with the heavy uninterrupted rush
of a sweeping flood, with a sound of unchecked overwhelming fury that
called to one's mind the images of collapsing bridges, of uprooted
trees, of undermined mountains. No man could breast the colossal and
headlong stream that seemed to break and swirl against the dim stillness
in which we were precariously sheltered as if on an island. The
perforated pipe gurgled, choked, spat, and splashed in odious ridicule
of a swimmer fighting for his life. "It is raining," I remonstrated,
"and I . . ." "Rain or shine," he began brusquely, checked himself, and
walked to the window. "Perfect deluge," he muttered after a while: he
leaned his forehead on the glass. "It's dark, too."
'"Yes, it is very dark," I said.
'He pivoted on his heels, crossed the room, and had actually opened the
door leading into the corridor before I leaped up from my chair. "Wait,"
I cried, "I want you to . . ." "I can't dine with you again to-night,"
he flung at me, with one leg out of the room already. "I haven't the
slightest intention to ask you," I shouted. At this he drew back his
foot, but remained mistrustfully in the very doorway. I lost no time
in entreating him earnestly not to be absurd; to come in and shut the
door.'
| 7,493 | Chapters 14-16 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210215030710/https://www.novelguide.com/lord-jim/summaries/chapter14-16 | Fifteen and Sixteen . Chapter Fourteen returns to the final day of the inquiry. Marlow compares it to attending an execution and says the experience was infinitely worse than a beheading: 'These proceedings had all the cold vengefulness of a death sentence, had all the cruelty of a sentence of exile'. The court finds that the Patna had not been seaworthy for the voyage, but that it had been navigated with care up to the time of the accident. There was no evidence to explain the cause of the accident. For 'disregard of their plain duty', Jim and the skipper's certificates are cancelled. . . When Jim walks away, Marlow thinks he staggers a little. Marlow hears a man say 'man overboard' and recognizes him as Chester. The narrative deviates whilst Marlow explains Chester's idea to collect guano and his wish to buy a steamer. Chester is scornful of Jim for taking the events to heart and wants him to work for him as he sees he is no good anymore. Marlow refuses to advise Jim about this offer and the chapter ends with Chester walking away. . . In Chapter Fifteen, Marlow later catches sight of Jim leaning over the parapet of the quay. They then walk together with Marlow leading the way to his rooms. Marlow sits down at once to write letters. The inquiry has not made Jim invisible as he wished, but Marlow behaves as if he is. He carries on writing whilst Jim stands quietly with his back to the light. . . Marlow explains in Chapter Sixteen that the last time he saw Jim, he was protected by his isolation. However, Marlow sometimes thinks he should not have stood between Jim and Chester's offer. He has heard nothing of Chester since he set off as he has not been seen since and it is thought he may have been killed in a hurricane. . . The narrative then returns to Marlow writing letters. Jim thanks him for this 'bit of shelter' and begins to feel more optimistic about his future. Marlow warns him to be a little cautious, and then fears Jim will now 'begin the journey towards the bottomless pit'. There is a downpour and it is dark outside, but Jim decides to leave. Marlow stops him and asks him to come back in and shut the door. . | Fifteen and Sixteen . With the end of the inquiry, Jim appears to be spent and is seen as 'no good' now . Marlow's faith in this younger man is made evident, however, as he takes him to his rooms and Chapter Sixteen finishes with him stopping Jim from leaving. . . Jim's childlike naivety is made evident, through the interpretation made by Marlow, as he had hoped the inquiry would bring him invisibility. The suggestion is made that Jim believed that doing the 'right thing' would mean he would then be treated fairly. It is implied that his own code of honor differs to that of other men and this is made apparent throughout the story of Jim's life. | 396 | 120 | [
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161 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/15.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Sense and Sensibility/section_2_part_4.txt | Sense and Sensibility.chapter xv | chapter xv | null | {"name": "Chapter XV", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201020004256/https://www.novelguide.com/sense-and-sensibility/summaries/volume1-chapter12-22", "summary": "Mrs. Dashwood, Elinor, and Margaret visit Lady Middleton. Marianne finds an excuse not to go. As Mrs. Dashwood and her party return home, Marianne rushes out of the parlour in tears and runs upstairs. Mrs. Dashwood finds Willoughby in the parlour, looking upset. He tells Mrs. Dashwood that he has to depart immediately for London on business, and admits that he has no intention of returning to Devon in the foreseeable future because Mrs. Smith invites him infrequently. Mrs. Dashwood, surprised that Willoughby does not seem to be considering his friendship with her own family, reminds him that he will always be welcome at her house. Willoughby replies evasively and leaves. Mrs. Dashwood believes that Mrs. Smith, on whom Willoughby is financially dependent, has learned of Willoughby's attachment to Marianne and disapproves because she plans to arrange a more favorable match for him. Elinor finds it understandable that Willoughby would want to conceal his engagement from Mrs. Smith, but cannot excuse him for also concealing it from them. Mrs. Dashwood declares that there is no need for words when Willoughby's actions have clearly told that he regards Marianne as his future wife. Elinor is suspicious about his and Marianne's silence on the matter, and thinks it may indicate that there is no engagement, but Mrs. Dashwood rebukes her for her lack of faith in Willoughby's honor. Marianne briefly joins the family at dinner, but bursts into tears and leaves the room", "analysis": ""} |
Mrs. Dashwood's visit to Lady Middleton took place the next day, and
two of her daughters went with her; but Marianne excused herself from
being of the party, under some trifling pretext of employment; and her
mother, who concluded that a promise had been made by Willoughby the
night before of calling on her while they were absent, was perfectly
satisfied with her remaining at home.
On their return from the park they found Willoughby's curricle and
servant in waiting at the cottage, and Mrs. Dashwood was convinced that
her conjecture had been just. So far it was all as she had foreseen;
but on entering the house she beheld what no foresight had taught her
to expect. They were no sooner in the passage than Marianne came
hastily out of the parlour apparently in violent affliction, with her
handkerchief at her eyes; and without noticing them ran up stairs.
Surprised and alarmed they proceeded directly into the room she had
just quitted, where they found only Willoughby, who was leaning against
the mantel-piece with his back towards them. He turned round on their
coming in, and his countenance shewed that he strongly partook of the
emotion which over-powered Marianne.
"Is anything the matter with her?" cried Mrs. Dashwood as she
entered--"is she ill?"
"I hope not," he replied, trying to look cheerful; and with a forced
smile presently added, "It is I who may rather expect to be ill--for I
am now suffering under a very heavy disappointment!"
"Disappointment?"
"Yes, for I am unable to keep my engagement with you. Mrs. Smith has
this morning exercised the privilege of riches upon a poor dependent
cousin, by sending me on business to London. I have just received my
dispatches, and taken my farewell of Allenham; and by way of
exhilaration I am now come to take my farewell of you."
"To London!--and are you going this morning?"
"Almost this moment."
"This is very unfortunate. But Mrs. Smith must be obliged;--and her
business will not detain you from us long I hope."
He coloured as he replied, "You are very kind, but I have no idea of
returning into Devonshire immediately. My visits to Mrs. Smith are
never repeated within the twelvemonth."
"And is Mrs. Smith your only friend? Is Allenham the only house in the
neighbourhood to which you will be welcome? For shame, Willoughby, can
you wait for an invitation here?"
His colour increased; and with his eyes fixed on the ground he only
replied, "You are too good."
Mrs. Dashwood looked at Elinor with surprise. Elinor felt equal
amazement. For a few moments every one was silent. Mrs. Dashwood
first spoke.
"I have only to add, my dear Willoughby, that at Barton cottage you
will always be welcome; for I will not press you to return here
immediately, because you only can judge how far THAT might be pleasing
to Mrs. Smith; and on this head I shall be no more disposed to question
your judgment than to doubt your inclination."
"My engagements at present," replied Willoughby, confusedly, "are of
such a nature--that--I dare not flatter myself"--
He stopt. Mrs. Dashwood was too much astonished to speak, and another
pause succeeded. This was broken by Willoughby, who said with a faint
smile, "It is folly to linger in this manner. I will not torment
myself any longer by remaining among friends whose society it is
impossible for me now to enjoy."
He then hastily took leave of them all and left the room. They saw him
step into his carriage, and in a minute it was out of sight.
Mrs. Dashwood felt too much for speech, and instantly quitted the
parlour to give way in solitude to the concern and alarm which this
sudden departure occasioned.
Elinor's uneasiness was at least equal to her mother's. She thought of
what had just passed with anxiety and distrust. Willoughby's behaviour
in taking leave of them, his embarrassment, and affectation of
cheerfulness, and, above all, his unwillingness to accept her mother's
invitation, a backwardness so unlike a lover, so unlike himself,
greatly disturbed her. One moment she feared that no serious design
had ever been formed on his side; and the next that some unfortunate
quarrel had taken place between him and her sister;--the distress in
which Marianne had quitted the room was such as a serious quarrel could
most reasonably account for, though when she considered what Marianne's
love for him was, a quarrel seemed almost impossible.
But whatever might be the particulars of their separation, her sister's
affliction was indubitable; and she thought with the tenderest
compassion of that violent sorrow which Marianne was in all probability
not merely giving way to as a relief, but feeding and encouraging as a
duty.
In about half an hour her mother returned, and though her eyes were
red, her countenance was not uncheerful.
"Our dear Willoughby is now some miles from Barton, Elinor," said she,
as she sat down to work, "and with how heavy a heart does he travel?"
"It is all very strange. So suddenly to be gone! It seems but the work
of a moment. And last night he was with us so happy, so cheerful, so
affectionate? And now, after only ten minutes notice--Gone too without
intending to return!--Something more than what he owned to us must have
happened. He did not speak, he did not behave like himself. YOU must
have seen the difference as well as I. What can it be? Can they have
quarrelled? Why else should he have shewn such unwillingness to accept
your invitation here?"--
"It was not inclination that he wanted, Elinor; I could plainly see
THAT. He had not the power of accepting it. I have thought it all
over I assure you, and I can perfectly account for every thing that at
first seemed strange to me as well as to you."
"Can you, indeed!"
"Yes. I have explained it to myself in the most satisfactory way;--but
you, Elinor, who love to doubt where you can--it will not satisfy YOU,
I know; but you shall not talk ME out of my trust in it. I am
persuaded that Mrs. Smith suspects his regard for Marianne, disapproves
of it, (perhaps because she has other views for him,) and on that
account is eager to get him away;--and that the business which she
sends him off to transact is invented as an excuse to dismiss him.
This is what I believe to have happened. He is, moreover, aware that
she DOES disapprove the connection, he dares not therefore at present
confess to her his engagement with Marianne, and he feels himself
obliged, from his dependent situation, to give into her schemes, and
absent himself from Devonshire for a while. You will tell me, I know,
that this may or may NOT have happened; but I will listen to no cavil,
unless you can point out any other method of understanding the affair
as satisfactory at this. And now, Elinor, what have you to say?"
"Nothing, for you have anticipated my answer."
"Then you would have told me, that it might or might not have happened.
Oh, Elinor, how incomprehensible are your feelings! You had rather
take evil upon credit than good. You had rather look out for misery
for Marianne, and guilt for poor Willoughby, than an apology for the
latter. You are resolved to think him blameable, because he took leave
of us with less affection than his usual behaviour has shewn. And is
no allowance to be made for inadvertence, or for spirits depressed by
recent disappointment? Are no probabilities to be accepted, merely
because they are not certainties? Is nothing due to the man whom we
have all such reason to love, and no reason in the world to think ill
of? To the possibility of motives unanswerable in themselves, though
unavoidably secret for a while? And, after all, what is it you suspect
him of?"
"I can hardly tell myself. But suspicion of something unpleasant is
the inevitable consequence of such an alteration as we just witnessed
in him. There is great truth, however, in what you have now urged of
the allowances which ought to be made for him, and it is my wish to be
candid in my judgment of every body. Willoughby may undoubtedly have
very sufficient reasons for his conduct, and I will hope that he has.
But it would have been more like Willoughby to acknowledge them at
once. Secrecy may be advisable; but still I cannot help wondering at
its being practiced by him."
"Do not blame him, however, for departing from his character, where the
deviation is necessary. But you really do admit the justice of what I
have said in his defence?--I am happy--and he is acquitted."
"Not entirely. It may be proper to conceal their engagement (if they
ARE engaged) from Mrs. Smith--and if that is the case, it must be
highly expedient for Willoughby to be but little in Devonshire at
present. But this is no excuse for their concealing it from us."
"Concealing it from us! my dear child, do you accuse Willoughby and
Marianne of concealment? This is strange indeed, when your eyes have
been reproaching them every day for incautiousness."
"I want no proof of their affection," said Elinor; "but of their
engagement I do."
"I am perfectly satisfied of both."
"Yet not a syllable has been said to you on the subject, by either of
them."
"I have not wanted syllables where actions have spoken so plainly. Has
not his behaviour to Marianne and to all of us, for at least the last
fortnight, declared that he loved and considered her as his future
wife, and that he felt for us the attachment of the nearest relation?
Have we not perfectly understood each other? Has not my consent been
daily asked by his looks, his manner, his attentive and affectionate
respect? My Elinor, is it possible to doubt their engagement? How
could such a thought occur to you? How is it to be supposed that
Willoughby, persuaded as he must be of your sister's love, should leave
her, and leave her perhaps for months, without telling her of his
affection;--that they should part without a mutual exchange of
confidence?"
"I confess," replied Elinor, "that every circumstance except ONE is in
favour of their engagement; but that ONE is the total silence of both
on the subject, and with me it almost outweighs every other."
"How strange this is! You must think wretchedly indeed of Willoughby,
if, after all that has openly passed between them, you can doubt the
nature of the terms on which they are together. Has he been acting a
part in his behaviour to your sister all this time? Do you suppose him
really indifferent to her?"
"No, I cannot think that. He must and does love her I am sure."
"But with a strange kind of tenderness, if he can leave her with such
indifference, such carelessness of the future, as you attribute to him."
"You must remember, my dear mother, that I have never considered this
matter as certain. I have had my doubts, I confess; but they are
fainter than they were, and they may soon be entirely done away. If we
find they correspond, every fear of mine will be removed."
"A mighty concession indeed! If you were to see them at the altar, you
would suppose they were going to be married. Ungracious girl! But I
require no such proof. Nothing in my opinion has ever passed to
justify doubt; no secrecy has been attempted; all has been uniformly
open and unreserved. You cannot doubt your sister's wishes. It must
be Willoughby therefore whom you suspect. But why? Is he not a man of
honour and feeling? Has there been any inconsistency on his side to
create alarm? can he be deceitful?"
"I hope not, I believe not," cried Elinor. "I love Willoughby,
sincerely love him; and suspicion of his integrity cannot be more
painful to yourself than to me. It has been involuntary, and I will
not encourage it. I was startled, I confess, by the alteration in his
manners this morning;--he did not speak like himself, and did not
return your kindness with any cordiality. But all this may be
explained by such a situation of his affairs as you have supposed. He
had just parted from my sister, had seen her leave him in the greatest
affliction; and if he felt obliged, from a fear of offending Mrs.
Smith, to resist the temptation of returning here soon, and yet aware
that by declining your invitation, by saying that he was going away for
some time, he should seem to act an ungenerous, a suspicious part by
our family, he might well be embarrassed and disturbed. In such a
case, a plain and open avowal of his difficulties would have been more
to his honour I think, as well as more consistent with his general
character;--but I will not raise objections against any one's conduct
on so illiberal a foundation, as a difference in judgment from myself,
or a deviation from what I may think right and consistent."
"You speak very properly. Willoughby certainly does not deserve to be
suspected. Though WE have not known him long, he is no stranger in
this part of the world; and who has ever spoken to his disadvantage?
Had he been in a situation to act independently and marry immediately,
it might have been odd that he should leave us without acknowledging
everything to me at once: but this is not the case. It is an
engagement in some respects not prosperously begun, for their marriage
must be at a very uncertain distance; and even secrecy, as far as it
can be observed, may now be very advisable."
They were interrupted by the entrance of Margaret; and Elinor was then
at liberty to think over the representations of her mother, to
acknowledge the probability of many, and hope for the justice of all.
They saw nothing of Marianne till dinner time, when she entered the
room and took her place at the table without saying a word. Her eyes
were red and swollen; and it seemed as if her tears were even then
restrained with difficulty. She avoided the looks of them all, could
neither eat nor speak, and after some time, on her mother's silently
pressing her hand with tender compassion, her small degree of fortitude
was quite overcome, she burst into tears and left the room.
This violent oppression of spirits continued the whole evening. She
was without any power, because she was without any desire of command
over herself. The slightest mention of anything relative to Willoughby
overpowered her in an instant; and though her family were most
anxiously attentive to her comfort, it was impossible for them, if they
spoke at all, to keep clear of every subject which her feelings
connected with him.
| 2,357 | Chapter XV | https://web.archive.org/web/20201020004256/https://www.novelguide.com/sense-and-sensibility/summaries/volume1-chapter12-22 | Mrs. Dashwood, Elinor, and Margaret visit Lady Middleton. Marianne finds an excuse not to go. As Mrs. Dashwood and her party return home, Marianne rushes out of the parlour in tears and runs upstairs. Mrs. Dashwood finds Willoughby in the parlour, looking upset. He tells Mrs. Dashwood that he has to depart immediately for London on business, and admits that he has no intention of returning to Devon in the foreseeable future because Mrs. Smith invites him infrequently. Mrs. Dashwood, surprised that Willoughby does not seem to be considering his friendship with her own family, reminds him that he will always be welcome at her house. Willoughby replies evasively and leaves. Mrs. Dashwood believes that Mrs. Smith, on whom Willoughby is financially dependent, has learned of Willoughby's attachment to Marianne and disapproves because she plans to arrange a more favorable match for him. Elinor finds it understandable that Willoughby would want to conceal his engagement from Mrs. Smith, but cannot excuse him for also concealing it from them. Mrs. Dashwood declares that there is no need for words when Willoughby's actions have clearly told that he regards Marianne as his future wife. Elinor is suspicious about his and Marianne's silence on the matter, and thinks it may indicate that there is no engagement, but Mrs. Dashwood rebukes her for her lack of faith in Willoughby's honor. Marianne briefly joins the family at dinner, but bursts into tears and leaves the room | null | 241 | 1 | [
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107 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/28.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Far From the Madding Crowd/section_27_part_0.txt | Far From the Madding Crowd.chapter 28 | chapter 28 | null | {"name": "Chapter 28", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-28", "summary": "Bathsheba and Troy meet out in the forest. Without delay, Troy takes out his sword and starts showing her some super-sexy sword exercises. Then he turns toward her and tells her not to move. He proceeds to stab his sword all around her, chopping off a lock her hair but never actually touching her body. In other words, he's showing her how skilled he is. But the narrator's language in this scene makes the whole thing pretty sexual. Of course, you kind of had to talk about sex in metaphorical ways back in Hardy's time. Anything more direct would have been considered pornographic. Toward the end of the demonstration, Troy draws close to Bathsheba and kisses her on the mouth. Troy pockets the lock of her hair. Then he turns and darts back into the forest. Bathsheba cries from a combination of shame and excitement, and probably also because some dude was stabbing the air around her with a sword.", "analysis": ""} |
THE HOLLOW AMID THE FERNS
The hill opposite Bathsheba's dwelling extended, a mile off, into an
uncultivated tract of land, dotted at this season with tall thickets
of brake fern, plump and diaphanous from recent rapid growth, and
radiant in hues of clear and untainted green.
At eight o'clock this midsummer evening, whilst the bristling ball
of gold in the west still swept the tips of the ferns with its long,
luxuriant rays, a soft brushing-by of garments might have been heard
among them, and Bathsheba appeared in their midst, their soft,
feathery arms caressing her up to her shoulders. She paused, turned,
went back over the hill and half-way to her own door, whence she cast
a farewell glance upon the spot she had just left, having resolved
not to remain near the place after all.
She saw a dim spot of artificial red moving round the shoulder of the
rise. It disappeared on the other side.
She waited one minute--two minutes--thought of Troy's disappointment
at her non-fulfilment of a promised engagement, till she again ran
along the field, clambered over the bank, and followed the original
direction. She was now literally trembling and panting at this her
temerity in such an errant undertaking; her breath came and went
quickly, and her eyes shone with an infrequent light. Yet go she
must. She reached the verge of a pit in the middle of the ferns.
Troy stood in the bottom, looking up towards her.
"I heard you rustling through the fern before I saw you," he said,
coming up and giving her his hand to help her down the slope.
The pit was a saucer-shaped concave, naturally formed, with a top
diameter of about thirty feet, and shallow enough to allow the
sunshine to reach their heads. Standing in the centre, the sky
overhead was met by a circular horizon of fern: this grew nearly to
the bottom of the slope and then abruptly ceased. The middle within
the belt of verdure was floored with a thick flossy carpet of moss
and grass intermingled, so yielding that the foot was half-buried
within it.
"Now," said Troy, producing the sword, which, as he raised it into
the sunlight, gleamed a sort of greeting, like a living thing,
"first, we have four right and four left cuts; four right and four
left thrusts. Infantry cuts and guards are more interesting than
ours, to my mind; but they are not so swashing. They have seven
cuts and three thrusts. So much as a preliminary. Well, next, our
cut one is as if you were sowing your corn--so." Bathsheba saw a
sort of rainbow, upside down in the air, and Troy's arm was still
again. "Cut two, as if you were hedging--so. Three, as if you were
reaping--so. Four, as if you were threshing--in that way. Then the
same on the left. The thrusts are these: one, two, three, four,
right; one, two, three, four, left." He repeated them. "Have 'em
again?" he said. "One, two--"
She hurriedly interrupted: "I'd rather not; though I don't mind your
twos and fours; but your ones and threes are terrible!"
"Very well. I'll let you off the ones and threes. Next, cuts,
points and guards altogether." Troy duly exhibited them. "Then
there's pursuing practice, in this way." He gave the movements as
before. "There, those are the stereotyped forms. The infantry have
two most diabolical upward cuts, which we are too humane to use.
Like this--three, four."
"How murderous and bloodthirsty!"
"They are rather deathly. Now I'll be more interesting, and let you
see some loose play--giving all the cuts and points, infantry and
cavalry, quicker than lightning, and as promiscuously--with just
enough rule to regulate instinct and yet not to fetter it. You are
my antagonist, with this difference from real warfare, that I shall
miss you every time by one hair's breadth, or perhaps two. Mind you
don't flinch, whatever you do."
"I'll be sure not to!" she said invincibly.
He pointed to about a yard in front of him.
Bathsheba's adventurous spirit was beginning to find some grains of
relish in these highly novel proceedings. She took up her position
as directed, facing Troy.
"Now just to learn whether you have pluck enough to let me do what I
wish, I'll give you a preliminary test."
He flourished the sword by way of introduction number two, and the
next thing of which she was conscious was that the point and blade of
the sword were darting with a gleam towards her left side, just above
her hip; then of their reappearance on her right side, emerging as
it were from between her ribs, having apparently passed through her
body. The third item of consciousness was that of seeing the same
sword, perfectly clean and free from blood held vertically in Troy's
hand (in the position technically called "recover swords"). All was
as quick as electricity.
"Oh!" she cried out in affright, pressing her hand to her side. "Have
you run me through?--no, you have not! Whatever have you done!"
"I have not touched you," said Troy, quietly. "It was mere sleight
of hand. The sword passed behind you. Now you are not afraid, are
you? Because if you are I can't perform. I give my word that I will
not only not hurt you, but not once touch you."
"I don't think I am afraid. You are quite sure you will not hurt
me?"
"Quite sure."
"Is the sword very sharp?"
"O no--only stand as still as a statue. Now!"
In an instant the atmosphere was transformed to Bathsheba's eyes.
Beams of light caught from the low sun's rays, above, around, in
front of her, well-nigh shut out earth and heaven--all emitted in
the marvellous evolutions of Troy's reflecting blade, which seemed
everywhere at once, and yet nowhere specially. These circling gleams
were accompanied by a keen rush that was almost a whistling--also
springing from all sides of her at once. In short, she was enclosed
in a firmament of light, and of sharp hisses, resembling a sky-full
of meteors close at hand.
Never since the broadsword became the national weapon had there been
more dexterity shown in its management than by the hands of Sergeant
Troy, and never had he been in such splendid temper for the
performance as now in the evening sunshine among the ferns with
Bathsheba. It may safely be asserted with respect to the closeness
of his cuts, that had it been possible for the edge of the sword to
leave in the air a permanent substance wherever it flew past, the
space left untouched would have been almost a mould of Bathsheba's
figure.
Behind the luminous streams of this _aurora militaris_, she could see
the hue of Troy's sword arm, spread in a scarlet haze over the space
covered by its motions, like a twanged harpstring, and behind all
Troy himself, mostly facing her; sometimes, to show the rear cuts,
half turned away, his eye nevertheless always keenly measuring
her breadth and outline, and his lips tightly closed in sustained
effort. Next, his movements lapsed slower, and she could see them
individually. The hissing of the sword had ceased, and he stopped
entirely.
"That outer loose lock of hair wants tidying," he said, before she
had moved or spoken. "Wait: I'll do it for you."
An arc of silver shone on her right side: the sword had descended.
The lock dropped to the ground.
"Bravely borne!" said Troy. "You didn't flinch a shade's thickness.
Wonderful in a woman!"
"It was because I didn't expect it. Oh, you have spoilt my hair!"
"Only once more."
"No--no! I am afraid of you--indeed I am!" she cried.
"I won't touch you at all--not even your hair. I am only going to
kill that caterpillar settling on you. Now: still!"
It appeared that a caterpillar had come from the fern and chosen the
front of her bodice as his resting place. She saw the point glisten
towards her bosom, and seemingly enter it. Bathsheba closed her eyes
in the full persuasion that she was killed at last. However, feeling
just as usual, she opened them again.
"There it is, look," said the sergeant, holding his sword before her
eyes.
The caterpillar was spitted upon its point.
"Why, it is magic!" said Bathsheba, amazed.
"Oh no--dexterity. I merely gave point to your bosom where the
caterpillar was, and instead of running you through checked the
extension a thousandth of an inch short of your surface."
"But how could you chop off a curl of my hair with a sword that has
no edge?"
"No edge! This sword will shave like a razor. Look here."
He touched the palm of his hand with the blade, and then, lifting it,
showed her a thin shaving of scarf-skin dangling therefrom.
"But you said before beginning that it was blunt and couldn't cut
me!"
"That was to get you to stand still, and so make sure of your safety.
The risk of injuring you through your moving was too great not to
force me to tell you a fib to escape it."
She shuddered. "I have been within an inch of my life, and didn't
know it!"
"More precisely speaking, you have been within half an inch of being
pared alive two hundred and ninety-five times."
"Cruel, cruel, 'tis of you!"
"You have been perfectly safe, nevertheless. My sword never errs."
And Troy returned the weapon to the scabbard.
Bathsheba, overcome by a hundred tumultuous feelings resulting from
the scene, abstractedly sat down on a tuft of heather.
"I must leave you now," said Troy, softly. "And I'll venture to take
and keep this in remembrance of you."
She saw him stoop to the grass, pick up the winding lock which he
had severed from her manifold tresses, twist it round his fingers,
unfasten a button in the breast of his coat, and carefully put
it inside. She felt powerless to withstand or deny him. He was
altogether too much for her, and Bathsheba seemed as one who, facing
a reviving wind, finds it blow so strongly that it stops the breath.
He drew near and said, "I must be leaving you."
He drew nearer still. A minute later and she saw his scarlet form
disappear amid the ferny thicket, almost in a flash, like a brand
swiftly waved.
That minute's interval had brought the blood beating into her face,
set her stinging as if aflame to the very hollows of her feet, and
enlarged emotion to a compass which quite swamped thought. It had
brought upon her a stroke resulting, as did that of Moses in Horeb,
in a liquid stream--here a stream of tears. She felt like one who
has sinned a great sin.
The circumstance had been the gentle dip of Troy's mouth downwards
upon her own. He had kissed her.
| 1,710 | Chapter 28 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-28 | Bathsheba and Troy meet out in the forest. Without delay, Troy takes out his sword and starts showing her some super-sexy sword exercises. Then he turns toward her and tells her not to move. He proceeds to stab his sword all around her, chopping off a lock her hair but never actually touching her body. In other words, he's showing her how skilled he is. But the narrator's language in this scene makes the whole thing pretty sexual. Of course, you kind of had to talk about sex in metaphorical ways back in Hardy's time. Anything more direct would have been considered pornographic. Toward the end of the demonstration, Troy draws close to Bathsheba and kisses her on the mouth. Troy pockets the lock of her hair. Then he turns and darts back into the forest. Bathsheba cries from a combination of shame and excitement, and probably also because some dude was stabbing the air around her with a sword. | null | 160 | 1 | [
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5,658 | true | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/chapters_38_to_40.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Lord Jim/section_15_part_0.txt | Lord Jim.chapters 38-40 | chapters 38-40 | null | {"name": "Chapters 38-40", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210215030710/https://www.novelguide.com/lord-jim/summaries/chapter38-40", "summary": "Eight, Thirty Nine and Forty . The story of Jim's fate begins proper in Chapter Thirty Eight as the narrative returns to Brown, who is described as a 'latter day buccaneer', and to the time when he has stolen the Spanish schooner. He is described as tired of life and unafraid of death, but is 'in mortal fear of imprisonment'. . . After the theft, he and his crew are short of food and water and board several craft to steal from them. Brown does not dare to put into a port as the authorities may arrest him; he plans to go to Madagascar, but needs provisions to do so. He visits Patusan for this very reason. They take a long boat up the river and a shout goes up and cannons are fired. Brown and his men land 900 yards from the stockade and the chapter ends with them out of their boat and lying behind felled trees. Everything around them is described as still, dark and silent. . . In Chapter Thirty Nine, it is related that Jim is away in the interior at this point and Dain Waris leads the first repulse against these intruders. Jewel is in command of the Fort and cares for the refugees; she shows a 'martial ardour'. Dain Waris comes to her at once at the first signs of danger as Jim has the only store of gunpowder . The chief men are also there as they discuss what to do. They organize ways to get rid of Brown and messengers are sent to inform Jim of what is happening. In addition, Kassim opens up communications with Brown and takes Cornelius with him . After talking to Cornelius for half an hour, Brown's eyes are opened 'as to the home affairs of Patusan'. . . Kassim dislikes Doramin and the Bugis, 'but he hated the new order of things still more'. He thinks these men, together with the Rajah's followers, could attack and beat the Bugis before the return of Jim. Brown has only come to the area for food, rubber and some money, but after meeting Kassim he begins to think of stealing the whole country. Brown then pretends to have a big ship full of men at the mouth of the river. This chapter ends with Cornelius offering Brown what he calls 'friend's advice' and tells him about Jim: he says he only has to kill him and he will be king here. . . Brown tries to gain time 'by fooling with Kassim's diplomacy' in Chapter Forty. In truth, he believes Jim is the only one to work with. Brown sees himself as offering Jim the power to take full control and that they would share in it. He sees them working as brothers, 'till the time came for a quarrel and a shot that would settle all accounts'. His machinations are clear when he orders one of his men to shoot at one of the Patusan inhabitants to put fear into the others and sends another of his men to the boat in order to draw the enemy's fire. . . People begin to feel like they should take sides and the social fabric is ready to collapse. Many in the upper classes think they should pay court to the Rajah and only Doramin keeps his countrymen together. . . Brown tells Marlow later that he would have left that night if his boat had been afloat as his men were outnumbered 200 to one. One of his men is shot and Cornelius translates a message from the Bugis informing him that there 'would be no faith, no compassion, no speech, no peace' between the Bugis and the white men on the hill. . . Towards dawn, drumbeat and cannon can be heard in town and Cornelius tells Brown that he has come back. He then predicts Jim will come to Brown, as he is afraid of nothing. He also suggests Brown sends one of his men to kill Jim, as he will then have complete power. .", "analysis": "Eight, Thirty Nine and Forty . In Jim's absence, the outsiders disturb the peace and fabric of Patusan society. This serves to emphasize Jim's importance in the community, and is also a useful dramatic device for bringing about the novel's climax. Because of his absence, it is also possible to highlight the extent of Cornelius's treacherous impulses as he inveigles himself on Brown in order to enact revenge on Jim."} |
'It all begins, as I've told you, with the man called Brown,' ran the
opening sentence of Marlow's narrative. 'You who have knocked about the
Western Pacific must have heard of him. He was the show ruffian on the
Australian coast--not that he was often to be seen there, but because
he was always trotted out in the stories of lawless life a visitor from
home is treated to; and the mildest of these stories which were told
about him from Cape York to Eden Bay was more than enough to hang a man
if told in the right place. They never failed to let you know, too,
that he was supposed to be the son of a baronet. Be it as it may, it is
certain he had deserted from a home ship in the early gold-digging days,
and in a few years became talked about as the terror of this or that
group of islands in Polynesia. He would kidnap natives, he would strip
some lonely white trader to the very pyjamas he stood in, and after he
had robbed the poor devil, he would as likely as not invite him to fight
a duel with shot-guns on the beach--which would have been fair enough
as these things go, if the other man hadn't been by that time already
half-dead with fright. Brown was a latter-day buccaneer, sorry enough,
like his more celebrated prototypes; but what distinguished him from
his contemporary brother ruffians, like Bully Hayes or the mellifluous
Pease, or that perfumed, Dundreary-whiskered, dandified scoundrel known
as Dirty Dick, was the arrogant temper of his misdeeds and a vehement
scorn for mankind at large and for his victims in particular. The
others were merely vulgar and greedy brutes, but he seemed moved by some
complex intention. He would rob a man as if only to demonstrate his poor
opinion of the creature, and he would bring to the shooting or maiming
of some quiet, unoffending stranger a savage and vengeful earnestness
fit to terrify the most reckless of desperadoes. In the days of his
greatest glory he owned an armed barque, manned by a mixed crew of
Kanakas and runaway whalers, and boasted, I don't know with what truth,
of being financed on the quiet by a most respectable firm of copra
merchants. Later on he ran off--it was reported--with the wife of a
missionary, a very young girl from Clapham way, who had married the
mild, flat-footed fellow in a moment of enthusiasm, and, suddenly
transplanted to Melanesia, lost her bearings somehow. It was a dark
story. She was ill at the time he carried her off, and died on board his
ship. It is said--as the most wonderful put of the tale--that over her
body he gave way to an outburst of sombre and violent grief. His luck
left him, too, very soon after. He lost his ship on some rocks off
Malaita, and disappeared for a time as though he had gone down with her.
He is heard of next at Nuka-Hiva, where he bought an old French schooner
out of Government service. What creditable enterprise he might have had
in view when he made that purchase I can't say, but it is evident that
what with High Commissioners, consuls, men-of-war, and international
control, the South Seas were getting too hot to hold gentlemen of his
kidney. Clearly he must have shifted the scene of his operations farther
west, because a year later he plays an incredibly audacious, but not a
very profitable part, in a serio-comic business in Manila Bay, in which
a peculating governor and an absconding treasurer are the principal
figures; thereafter he seems to have hung around the Philippines in his
rotten schooner battling with un adverse fortune, till at last, running
his appointed course, he sails into Jim's history, a blind accomplice of
the Dark Powers.
'His tale goes that when a Spanish patrol cutter captured him he was
simply trying to run a few guns for the insurgents. If so, then I can't
understand what he was doing off the south coast of Mindanao. My belief,
however, is that he was blackmailing the native villages along the
coast. The principal thing is that the cutter, throwing a guard on
board, made him sail in company towards Zamboanga. On the way, for some
reason or other, both vessels had to call at one of these new Spanish
settlements--which never came to anything in the end--where there was
not only a civil official in charge on shore, but a good stout coasting
schooner lying at anchor in the little bay; and this craft, in every way
much better than his own, Brown made up his mind to steal.
'He was down on his luck--as he told me himself. The world he had
bullied for twenty years with fierce, aggressive disdain, had yielded
him nothing in the way of material advantage except a small bag of
silver dollars, which was concealed in his cabin so that "the devil
himself couldn't smell it out." And that was all--absolutely all. He
was tired of his life, and not afraid of death. But this man, who would
stake his existence on a whim with a bitter and jeering recklessness,
stood in mortal fear of imprisonment. He had an unreasoning cold-sweat,
nerve-shaking, blood-to-water-turning sort of horror at the bare
possibility of being locked up--the sort of terror a superstitious man
would feel at the thought of being embraced by a spectre. Therefore the
civil official who came on board to make a preliminary investigation
into the capture, investigated arduously all day long, and only went
ashore after dark, muffled up in a cloak, and taking great care not to
let Brown's little all clink in its bag. Afterwards, being a man of his
word, he contrived (the very next evening, I believe) to send off
the Government cutter on some urgent bit of special service. As her
commander could not spare a prize crew, he contented himself by taking
away before he left all the sails of Brown's schooner to the very last
rag, and took good care to tow his two boats on to the beach a couple of
miles off.
'But in Brown's crew there was a Solomon Islander, kidnapped in his
youth and devoted to Brown, who was the best man of the whole gang. That
fellow swam off to the coaster--five hundred yards or so--with the end
of a warp made up of all the running gear unrove for the purpose. The
water was smooth, and the bay dark, "like the inside of a cow," as Brown
described it. The Solomon Islander clambered over the bulwarks with the
end of the rope in his teeth. The crew of the coaster--all Tagals--were
ashore having a jollification in the native village. The two shipkeepers
left on board woke up suddenly and saw the devil. It had glittering eyes
and leaped quick as lightning about the deck. They fell on their knees,
paralysed with fear, crossing themselves and mumbling prayers. With
a long knife he found in the caboose the Solomon Islander, without
interrupting their orisons, stabbed first one, then the other; with the
same knife he set to sawing patiently at the coir cable till suddenly it
parted under the blade with a splash. Then in the silence of the bay
he let out a cautious shout, and Brown's gang, who meantime had been
peering and straining their hopeful ears in the darkness, began to
pull gently at their end of the warp. In less than five minutes the two
schooners came together with a slight shock and a creak of spars.
'Brown's crowd transferred themselves without losing an instant, taking
with them their firearms and a large supply of ammunition. They were
sixteen in all: two runaway blue-jackets, a lanky deserter from a Yankee
man-of-war, a couple of simple, blond Scandinavians, a mulatto of sorts,
one bland Chinaman who cooked--and the rest of the nondescript spawn
of the South Seas. None of them cared; Brown bent them to his will, and
Brown, indifferent to gallows, was running away from the spectre of
a Spanish prison. He didn't give them the time to trans-ship enough
provisions; the weather was calm, the air was charged with dew, and when
they cast off the ropes and set sail to a faint off-shore draught there
was no flutter in the damp canvas; their old schooner seemed to detach
itself gently from the stolen craft and slip away silently, together
with the black mass of the coast, into the night.
'They got clear away. Brown related to me in detail their passage down
the Straits of Macassar. It is a harrowing and desperate story. They
were short of food and water; they boarded several native craft and got
a little from each. With a stolen ship Brown did not dare to put into
any port, of course. He had no money to buy anything, no papers to show,
and no lie plausible enough to get him out again. An Arab barque, under
the Dutch flag, surprised one night at anchor off Poulo Laut, yielded a
little dirty rice, a bunch of bananas, and a cask of water; three days
of squally, misty weather from the north-east shot the schooner across
the Java Sea. The yellow muddy waves drenched that collection of hungry
ruffians. They sighted mail-boats moving on their appointed routes;
passed well-found home ships with rusty iron sides anchored in the
shallow sea waiting for a change of weather or the turn of the tide; an
English gunboat, white and trim, with two slim masts, crossed their bows
one day in the distance; and on another occasion a Dutch corvette, black
and heavily sparred, loomed up on their quarter, steaming dead slow
in the mist. They slipped through unseen or disregarded, a wan,
sallow-faced band of utter outcasts, enraged with hunger and hunted by
fear. Brown's idea was to make for Madagascar, where he expected, on
grounds not altogether illusory, to sell the schooner in Tamatave, and
no questions asked, or perhaps obtain some more or less forged papers
for her. Yet before he could face the long passage across the Indian
Ocean food was wanted--water too.
'Perhaps he had heard of Patusan--or perhaps he just only happened to
see the name written in small letters on the chart--probably that of a
largish village up a river in a native state, perfectly defenceless, far
from the beaten tracks of the sea and from the ends of submarine cables.
He had done that kind of thing before--in the way of business;
and this now was an absolute necessity, a question of life and
death--or rather of liberty. Of liberty! He was sure to get
provisions--bullocks--rice--sweet-potatoes. The sorry gang licked
their chops. A cargo of produce for the schooner perhaps could be
extorted--and, who knows?--some real ringing coined money! Some of these
chiefs and village headmen can be made to part freely. He told me he
would have roasted their toes rather than be baulked. I believe him. His
men believed him too. They didn't cheer aloud, being a dumb pack, but
made ready wolfishly.
'Luck served him as to weather. A few days of calm would have brought
unmentionable horrors on board that schooner, but with the help of land
and sea breezes, in less than a week after clearing the Sunda Straits,
he anchored off the Batu Kring mouth within a pistol-shot of the fishing
village.
'Fourteen of them packed into the schooner's long-boat (which was big,
having been used for cargo-work) and started up the river, while two
remained in charge of the schooner with food enough to keep starvation
off for ten days. The tide and wind helped, and early one afternoon the
big white boat under a ragged sail shouldered its way before the sea
breeze into Patusan Reach, manned by fourteen assorted scarecrows
glaring hungrily ahead, and fingering the breech-blocks of cheap rifles.
Brown calculated upon the terrifying surprise of his appearance. They
sailed in with the last of the flood; the Rajah's stockade gave no sign;
the first houses on both sides of the stream seemed deserted. A few
canoes were seen up the reach in full flight. Brown was astonished at
the size of the place. A profound silence reigned. The wind dropped
between the houses; two oars were got out and the boat held on
up-stream, the idea being to effect a lodgment in the centre of the town
before the inhabitants could think of resistance.
'It seems, however, that the headman of the fishing village at Batu
Kring had managed to send off a timely warning. When the long-boat came
abreast of the mosque (which Doramin had built: a structure with gables
and roof finials of carved coral) the open space before it was full of
people. A shout went up, and was followed by a clash of gongs all up the
river. From a point above two little brass 6-pounders were discharged,
and the round-shot came skipping down the empty reach, spurting
glittering jets of water in the sunshine. In front of the mosque a
shouting lot of men began firing in volleys that whipped athwart the
current of the river; an irregular, rolling fusillade was opened on the
boat from both banks, and Brown's men replied with a wild, rapid fire.
The oars had been got in.
'The turn of the tide at high water comes on very quickly in that river,
and the boat in mid-stream, nearly hidden in smoke, began to drift back
stern foremost. Along both shores the smoke thickened also, lying below
the roofs in a level streak as you may see a long cloud cutting the
slope of a mountain. A tumult of war-cries, the vibrating clang
of gongs, the deep snoring of drums, yells of rage, crashes of
volley-firing, made an awful din, in which Brown sat confounded but
steady at the tiller, working himself into a fury of hate and rage
against those people who dared to defend themselves. Two of his men
had been wounded, and he saw his retreat cut off below the town by some
boats that had put off from Tunku Allang's stockade. There were six of
them, full of men. While he was thus beset he perceived the entrance of
the narrow creek (the same which Jim had jumped at low water). It was
then brim full. Steering the long-boat in, they landed, and, to make a
long story short, they established themselves on a little knoll about
900 yards from the stockade, which, in fact, they commanded from that
position. The slopes of the knoll were bare, but there were a few trees
on the summit. They went to work cutting these down for a breastwork,
and were fairly intrenched before dark; meantime the Rajah's boats
remained in the river with curious neutrality. When the sun set the glue
of many brushwood blazes lighted on the river-front, and between the
double line of houses on the land side threw into black relief the
roofs, the groups of slender palms, the heavy clumps of fruit trees.
Brown ordered the grass round his position to be fired; a low ring of
thin flames under the slow ascending smoke wriggled rapidly down the
slopes of the knoll; here and there a dry bush caught with a tall,
vicious roar. The conflagration made a clear zone of fire for the rifles
of the small party, and expired smouldering on the edge of the forests
and along the muddy bank of the creek. A strip of jungle luxuriating in
a damp hollow between the knoll and the Rajah's stockade stopped it
on that side with a great crackling and detonations of bursting bamboo
stems. The sky was sombre, velvety, and swarming with stars. The
blackened ground smoked quietly with low creeping wisps, till a little
breeze came on and blew everything away. Brown expected an attack to
be delivered as soon as the tide had flowed enough again to enable the
war-boats which had cut off his retreat to enter the creek. At any rate
he was sure there would be an attempt to carry off his long-boat,
which lay below the hill, a dark high lump on the feeble sheen of a wet
mud-flat. But no move of any sort was made by the boats in the river.
Over the stockade and the Rajah's buildings Brown saw their lights on
the water. They seemed to be anchored across the stream. Other lights
afloat were moving in the reach, crossing and recrossing from side to
side. There were also lights twinkling motionless upon the long walls of
houses up the reach, as far as the bend, and more still beyond, others
isolated inland. The loom of the big fires disclosed buildings, roofs,
black piles as far as he could see. It was an immense place. The
fourteen desperate invaders lying flat behind the felled trees raised
their chins to look over at the stir of that town that seemed to extend
up-river for miles and swarm with thousands of angry men. They did not
speak to each other. Now and then they would hear a loud yell, or a
single shot rang out, fired very far somewhere. But round their position
everything was still, dark, silent. They seemed to be forgotten, as if
the excitement keeping awake all the population had nothing to do with
them, as if they had been dead already.'
'All the events of that night have a great importance, since they
brought about a situation which remained unchanged till Jim's return.
Jim had been away in the interior for more than a week, and it was Dain
Waris who had directed the first repulse. That brave and intelligent
youth ("who knew how to fight after the manner of white men") wished to
settle the business off-hand, but his people were too much for him.
He had not Jim's racial prestige and the reputation of invincible,
supernatural power. He was not the visible, tangible incarnation of
unfailing truth and of unfailing victory. Beloved, trusted, and
admired as he was, he was still one of _them_, while Jim was one of
us. Moreover, the white man, a tower of strength in himself, was
invulnerable, while Dain Waris could be killed. Those unexpressed
thoughts guided the opinions of the chief men of the town, who elected
to assemble in Jim's fort for deliberation upon the emergency, as if
expecting to find wisdom and courage in the dwelling of the absent white
man. The shooting of Brown's ruffians was so far good, or lucky, that
there had been half-a-dozen casualties amongst the defenders. The
wounded were lying on the verandah tended by their women-folk. The women
and children from the lower part of the town had been sent into the
fort at the first alarm. There Jewel was in command, very efficient and
high-spirited, obeyed by Jim's "own people," who, quitting in a body
their little settlement under the stockade, had gone in to form the
garrison. The refugees crowded round her; and through the whole affair,
to the very disastrous last, she showed an extraordinary martial ardour.
It was to her that Dain Waris had gone at once at the first intelligence
of danger, for you must know that Jim was the only one in Patusan who
possessed a store of gunpowder. Stein, with whom he had kept up intimate
relations by letters, had obtained from the Dutch Government a special
authorisation to export five hundred kegs of it to Patusan. The
powder-magazine was a small hut of rough logs covered entirely with
earth, and in Jim's absence the girl had the key. In the council, held
at eleven o'clock in the evening in Jim's dining-room, she backed up
Waris's advice for immediate and vigorous action. I am told that she
stood up by the side of Jim's empty chair at the head of the long table
and made a warlike impassioned speech, which for the moment extorted
murmurs of approbation from the assembled headmen. Old Doramin, who had
not showed himself outside his own gate for more than a year, had been
brought across with great difficulty. He was, of course, the chief man
there. The temper of the council was very unforgiving, and the old man's
word would have been decisive; but it is my opinion that, well aware of
his son's fiery courage, he dared not pronounce the word. More dilatory
counsels prevailed. A certain Haji Saman pointed out at great length
that "these tyrannical and ferocious men had delivered themselves to
a certain death in any case. They would stand fast on their hill and
starve, or they would try to regain their boat and be shot from ambushes
across the creek, or they would break and fly into the forest and perish
singly there." He argued that by the use of proper stratagems these
evil-minded strangers could be destroyed without the risk of a battle,
and his words had a great weight, especially with the Patusan men
proper. What unsettled the minds of the townsfolk was the failure of
the Rajah's boats to act at the decisive moment. It was the diplomatic
Kassim who represented the Rajah at the council. He spoke very little,
listened smilingly, very friendly and impenetrable. During the sitting
messengers kept arriving every few minutes almost, with reports of the
invaders' proceedings. Wild and exaggerated rumours were flying: there
was a large ship at the mouth of the river with big guns and many more
men--some white, others with black skins and of bloodthirsty appearance.
They were coming with many more boats to exterminate every living thing.
A sense of near, incomprehensible danger affected the common people.
At one moment there was a panic in the courtyard amongst the women;
shrieking; a rush; children crying--Haji Sunan went out to quiet them.
Then a fort sentry fired at something moving on the river, and nearly
killed a villager bringing in his women-folk in a canoe together with
the best of his domestic utensils and a dozen fowls. This caused more
confusion. Meantime the palaver inside Jim's house went on in the
presence of the girl. Doramin sat fierce-faced, heavy, looking at the
speakers in turn, and breathing slow like a bull. He didn't speak till
the last, after Kassim had declared that the Rajah's boats would be
called in because the men were required to defend his master's stockade.
Dain Waris in his father's presence would offer no opinion, though the
girl entreated him in Jim's name to speak out. She offered him Jim's own
men in her anxiety to have these intruders driven out at once. He only
shook his head, after a glance or two at Doramin. Finally, when the
council broke up it had been decided that the houses nearest the creek
should be strongly occupied to obtain the command of the enemy's boat.
The boat itself was not to be interfered with openly, so that the
robbers on the hill should be tempted to embark, when a well-directed
fire would kill most of them, no doubt. To cut off the escape of those
who might survive, and to prevent more of them coming up, Dain Waris was
ordered by Doramin to take an armed party of Bugis down the river to a
certain spot ten miles below Patusan, and there form a camp on the shore
and blockade the stream with the canoes. I don't believe for a moment
that Doramin feared the arrival of fresh forces. My opinion is that his
conduct was guided solely by his wish to keep his son out of harm's
way. To prevent a rush being made into the town the construction of a
stockade was to be commenced at daylight at the end of the street on
the left bank. The old nakhoda declared his intention to command there
himself. A distribution of powder, bullets, and percussion-caps was made
immediately under the girl's supervision. Several messengers were to be
dispatched in different directions after Jim, whose exact whereabouts
were unknown. These men started at dawn, but before that time Kassim had
managed to open communications with the besieged Brown.
'That accomplished diplomatist and confidant of the Rajah, on leaving
the fort to go back to his master, took into his boat Cornelius, whom he
found slinking mutely amongst the people in the courtyard. Kassim had a
little plan of his own and wanted him for an interpreter. Thus it came
about that towards morning Brown, reflecting upon the desperate nature
of his position, heard from the marshy overgrown hollow an amicable,
quavering, strained voice crying--in English--for permission to come up,
under a promise of personal safety and on a very important errand. He
was overjoyed. If he was spoken to he was no longer a hunted wild beast.
These friendly sounds took off at once the awful stress of vigilant
watchfulness as of so many blind men not knowing whence the deathblow
might come. He pretended a great reluctance. The voice declared itself
"a white man--a poor, ruined, old man who had been living here for
years." A mist, wet and chilly, lay on the slopes of the hill, and after
some more shouting from one to the other, Brown called out, "Come on,
then, but alone, mind!" As a matter of fact--he told me, writhing with
rage at the recollection of his helplessness--it made no difference.
They couldn't see more than a few yards before them, and no treachery
could make their position worse. By-and-by Cornelius, in his
week-day attire of a ragged dirty shirt and pants, barefooted, with a
broken-rimmed pith hat on his head, was made out vaguely, sidling up to
the defences, hesitating, stopping to listen in a peering posture. "Come
along! You are safe," yelled Brown, while his men stared. All their
hopes of life became suddenly centered in that dilapidated, mean
newcomer, who in profound silence clambered clumsily over a felled
tree-trunk, and shivering, with his sour, mistrustful face, looked about
at the knot of bearded, anxious, sleepless desperadoes.
'Half an hour's confidential talk with Cornelius opened Brown's eyes as
to the home affairs of Patusan. He was on the alert at once. There were
possibilities, immense possibilities; but before he would talk over
Cornelius's proposals he demanded that some food should be sent up as
a guarantee of good faith. Cornelius went off, creeping sluggishly down
the hill on the side of the Rajah's palace, and after some delay a
few of Tunku Allang's men came up, bringing a scanty supply of rice,
chillies, and dried fish. This was immeasurably better than nothing.
Later on Cornelius returned accompanying Kassim, who stepped out with
an air of perfect good-humoured trustfulness, in sandals, and muffled
up from neck to ankles in dark-blue sheeting. He shook hands with Brown
discreetly, and the three drew aside for a conference. Brown's men,
recovering their confidence, were slapping each other on the back, and
cast knowing glances at their captain while they busied themselves with
preparations for cooking.
'Kassim disliked Doramin and his Bugis very much, but he hated the new
order of things still more. It had occurred to him that these whites,
together with the Rajah's followers, could attack and defeat the
Bugis before Jim's return. Then, he reasoned, general defection of
the townsfolk was sure to follow, and the reign of the white man who
protected poor people would be over. Afterwards the new allies could be
dealt with. They would have no friends. The fellow was perfectly able to
perceive the difference of character, and had seen enough of white men
to know that these newcomers were outcasts, men without country.
Brown preserved a stern and inscrutable demeanour. When he first heard
Cornelius's voice demanding admittance, it brought merely the hope of a
loophole for escape. In less than an hour other thoughts were seething
in his head. Urged by an extreme necessity, he had come there to steal
food, a few tons of rubber or gum may be, perhaps a handful of dollars,
and had found himself enmeshed by deadly dangers. Now in consequence
of these overtures from Kassim he began to think of stealing the whole
country. Some confounded fellow had apparently accomplished something of
the kind--single-handed at that. Couldn't have done it very well though.
Perhaps they could work together--squeeze everything dry and then go out
quietly. In the course of his negotiations with Kassim he became aware
that he was supposed to have a big ship with plenty of men outside.
Kassim begged him earnestly to have this big ship with his many guns and
men brought up the river without delay for the Rajah's service. Brown
professed himself willing, and on this basis the negotiation was carried
on with mutual distrust. Three times in the course of the morning the
courteous and active Kassim went down to consult the Rajah and came up
busily with his long stride. Brown, while bargaining, had a sort of grim
enjoyment in thinking of his wretched schooner, with nothing but a heap
of dirt in her hold, that stood for an armed ship, and a Chinaman and
a lame ex-beachcomber of Levuka on board, who represented all his many
men. In the afternoon he obtained further doles of food, a promise
of some money, and a supply of mats for his men to make shelters
for themselves. They lay down and snored, protected from the burning
sunshine; but Brown, sitting fully exposed on one of the felled trees,
feasted his eyes upon the view of the town and the river. There was much
loot there. Cornelius, who had made himself at home in the camp, talked
at his elbow, pointing out the localities, imparting advice, giving his
own version of Jim's character, and commenting in his own fashion upon
the events of the last three years. Brown, who, apparently indifferent
and gazing away, listened with attention to every word, could not make
out clearly what sort of man this Jim could be. "What's his name?
Jim! Jim! That's not enough for a man's name." "They call him," said
Cornelius scornfully, "Tuan Jim here. As you may say Lord Jim." "What is
he? Where does he come from?" inquired Brown. "What sort of man is he?
Is he an Englishman?" "Yes, yes, he's an Englishman. I am an Englishman
too. From Malacca. He is a fool. All you have to do is to kill him and
then you are king here. Everything belongs to him," explained Cornelius.
"It strikes me he may be made to share with somebody before very long,"
commented Brown half aloud. "No, no. The proper way is to kill him the
first chance you get, and then you can do what you like," Cornelius
would insist earnestly. "I have lived for many years here, and I am
giving you a friend's advice."
'In such converse and in gloating over the view of Patusan, which he had
determined in his mind should become his prey, Brown whiled away most
of the afternoon, his men, meantime, resting. On that day Dain Waris's
fleet of canoes stole one by one under the shore farthest from the
creek, and went down to close the river against his retreat. Of this
Brown was not aware, and Kassim, who came up the knoll an hour before
sunset, took good care not to enlighten him. He wanted the white
man's ship to come up the river, and this news, he feared, would be
discouraging. He was very pressing with Brown to send the "order,"
offering at the same time a trusty messenger, who for greater secrecy
(as he explained) would make his way by land to the mouth of the river
and deliver the "order" on board. After some reflection Brown judged
it expedient to tear a page out of his pocket-book, on which he simply
wrote, "We are getting on. Big job. Detain the man." The stolid youth
selected by Kassim for that service performed it faithfully, and was
rewarded by being suddenly tipped, head first, into the schooner's empty
hold by the ex-beachcomber and the Chinaman, who thereupon hastened to
put on the hatches. What became of him afterwards Brown did not say.'
'Brown's object was to gain time by fooling with Kassim's diplomacy. For
doing a real stroke of business he could not help thinking the white man
was the person to work with. He could not imagine such a chap (who must
be confoundedly clever after all to get hold of the natives like
that) refusing a help that would do away with the necessity for slow,
cautious, risky cheating, that imposed itself as the only possible
line of conduct for a single-handed man. He, Brown, would offer him
the power. No man could hesitate. Everything was in coming to a clear
understanding. Of course they would share. The idea of there being a
fort--all ready to his hand--a real fort, with artillery (he knew this
from Cornelius), excited him. Let him only once get in and . . . He
would impose modest conditions. Not too low, though. The man was no
fool, it seemed. They would work like brothers till . . . till the time
came for a quarrel and a shot that would settle all accounts. With grim
impatience of plunder he wished himself to be talking with the man now.
The land already seemed to be his to tear to pieces, squeeze, and throw
away. Meantime Kassim had to be fooled for the sake of food first--and
for a second string. But the principal thing was to get something to eat
from day to day. Besides, he was not averse to begin fighting on that
Rajah's account, and teach a lesson to those people who had received him
with shots. The lust of battle was upon him.
'I am sorry that I can't give you this part of the story, which of
course I have mainly from Brown, in Brown's own words. There was in the
broken, violent speech of that man, unveiling before me his thoughts
with the very hand of Death upon his throat, an undisguised ruthlessness
of purpose, a strange vengeful attitude towards his own past, and a
blind belief in the righteousness of his will against all mankind,
something of that feeling which could induce the leader of a horde of
wandering cut-throats to call himself proudly the Scourge of God.
No doubt the natural senseless ferocity which is the basis of such
a character was exasperated by failure, ill-luck, and the recent
privations, as well as by the desperate position in which he found
himself; but what was most remarkable of all was this, that while he
planned treacherous alliances, had already settled in his own mind the
fate of the white man, and intrigued in an overbearing, offhand manner
with Kassim, one could perceive that what he had really desired, almost
in spite of himself, was to play havoc with that jungle town which had
defied him, to see it strewn over with corpses and enveloped in flames.
Listening to his pitiless, panting voice, I could imagine how he must
have looked at it from the hillock, peopling it with images of murder
and rapine. The part nearest to the creek wore an abandoned aspect,
though as a matter of fact every house concealed a few armed men on the
alert. Suddenly beyond the stretch of waste ground, interspersed with
small patches of low dense bush, excavations, heaps of rubbish, with
trodden paths between, a man, solitary and looking very small, strolled
out into the deserted opening of the street between the shut-up, dark,
lifeless buildings at the end. Perhaps one of the inhabitants, who had
fled to the other bank of the river, coming back for some object of
domestic use. Evidently he supposed himself quite safe at that distance
from the hill on the other side of the creek. A light stockade, set up
hastily, was just round the turn of the street, full of his friends.
He moved leisurely. Brown saw him, and instantly called to his side the
Yankee deserter, who acted as a sort of second in command. This lanky,
loose-jointed fellow came forward, wooden-faced, trailing his rifle
lazily. When he understood what was wanted from him a homicidal and
conceited smile uncovered his teeth, making two deep folds down his
sallow, leathery cheeks. He prided himself on being a dead shot. He
dropped on one knee, and taking aim from a steady rest through the
unlopped branches of a felled tree, fired, and at once stood up to look.
The man, far away, turned his head to the report, made another step
forward, seemed to hesitate, and abruptly got down on his hands and
knees. In the silence that fell upon the sharp crack of the rifle, the
dead shot, keeping his eyes fixed upon the quarry, guessed that "this
there coon's health would never be a source of anxiety to his friends
any more." The man's limbs were seen to move rapidly under his body
in an endeavour to run on all-fours. In that empty space arose a
multitudinous shout of dismay and surprise. The man sank flat, face
down, and moved no more. "That showed them what we could do," said Brown
to me. "Struck the fear of sudden death into them. That was what we
wanted. They were two hundred to one, and this gave them something to
think over for the night. Not one of them had an idea of such a long
shot before. That beggar belonging to the Rajah scooted down-hill with
his eyes hanging out of his head."
'As he was telling me this he tried with a shaking hand to wipe the thin
foam on his blue lips. "Two hundred to one. Two hundred to one . . .
strike terror, . . . terror, terror, I tell you. . . ." His own eyes
were starting out of their sockets. He fell back, clawing the air with
skinny fingers, sat up again, bowed and hairy, glared at me sideways
like some man-beast of folk-lore, with open mouth in his miserable and
awful agony before he got his speech back after that fit. There are
sights one never forgets.
'Furthermore, to draw the enemy's fire and locate such parties as
might have been hiding in the bushes along the creek, Brown ordered the
Solomon Islander to go down to the boat and bring an oar, as you send a
spaniel after a stick into the water. This failed, and the fellow came
back without a single shot having been fired at him from anywhere.
"There's nobody," opined some of the men. It is "onnatural," remarked
the Yankee. Kassim had gone, by that time, very much impressed, pleased
too, and also uneasy. Pursuing his tortuous policy, he had dispatched a
message to Dain Waris warning him to look out for the white men's
ship, which, he had had information, was about to come up the river.
He minimised its strength and exhorted him to oppose its passage. This
double-dealing answered his purpose, which was to keep the Bugis forces
divided and to weaken them by fighting. On the other hand, he had in
the course of that day sent word to the assembled Bugis chiefs in town,
assuring them that he was trying to induce the invaders to retire; his
messages to the fort asked earnestly for powder for the Rajah's men. It
was a long time since Tunku Allang had had ammunition for the score or
so of old muskets rusting in their arm-racks in the audience-hall.
The open intercourse between the hill and the palace unsettled all the
minds. It was already time for men to take sides, it began to be said.
There would soon be much bloodshed, and thereafter great trouble for
many people. The social fabric of orderly, peaceful life, when every man
was sure of to-morrow, the edifice raised by Jim's hands, seemed on that
evening ready to collapse into a ruin reeking with blood. The poorer
folk were already taking to the bush or flying up the river. A good many
of the upper class judged it necessary to go and pay their court to the
Rajah. The Rajah's youths jostled them rudely. Old Tunku Allang, almost
out of his mind with fear and indecision, either kept a sullen silence
or abused them violently for daring to come with empty hands: they
departed very much frightened; only old Doramin kept his countrymen
together and pursued his tactics inflexibly. Enthroned in a big chair
behind the improvised stockade, he issued his orders in a deep veiled
rumble, unmoved, like a deaf man, in the flying rumours.
'Dusk fell, hiding first the body of the dead man, which had been left
lying with arms outstretched as if nailed to the ground, and then the
revolving sphere of the night rolled smoothly over Patusan and came to
a rest, showering the glitter of countless worlds upon the earth. Again,
in the exposed part of the town big fires blazed along the only street,
revealing from distance to distance upon their glares the falling
straight lines of roofs, the fragments of wattled walls jumbled in
confusion, here and there a whole hut elevated in the glow upon the
vertical black stripes of a group of high piles and all this line of
dwellings, revealed in patches by the swaying flames, seemed to flicker
tortuously away up-river into the gloom at the heart of the land. A
great silence, in which the looms of successive fires played without
noise, extended into the darkness at the foot of the hill; but the
other bank of the river, all dark save for a solitary bonfire at the
river-front before the fort, sent out into the air an increasing tremor
that might have been the stamping of a multitude of feet, the hum of
many voices, or the fall of an immensely distant waterfall. It was
then, Brown confessed to me, while, turning his back on his men, he sat
looking at it all, that notwithstanding his disdain, his ruthless faith
in himself, a feeling came over him that at last he had run his head
against a stone wall. Had his boat been afloat at the time, he believed
he would have tried to steal away, taking his chances of a long chase
down the river and of starvation at sea. It is very doubtful whether he
would have succeeded in getting away. However, he didn't try this. For
another moment he had a passing thought of trying to rush the town,
but he perceived very well that in the end he would find himself in the
lighted street, where they would be shot down like dogs from the houses.
They were two hundred to one--he thought, while his men, huddling round
two heaps of smouldering embers, munched the last of the bananas and
roasted the few yams they owed to Kassim's diplomacy. Cornelius sat
amongst them dozing sulkily.
'Then one of the whites remembered that some tobacco had been left in
the boat, and, encouraged by the impunity of the Solomon Islander,
said he would go to fetch it. At this all the others shook off
their despondency. Brown applied to, said, "Go, and be d--d to you,"
scornfully. He didn't think there was any danger in going to the creek
in the dark. The man threw a leg over the tree-trunk and disappeared. A
moment later he was heard clambering into the boat and then clambering
out. "I've got it," he cried. A flash and a report at the very foot of
the hill followed. "I am hit," yelled the man. "Look out, look out--I am
hit," and instantly all the rifles went off. The hill squirted fire
and noise into the night like a little volcano, and when Brown and
the Yankee with curses and cuffs stopped the panic-stricken firing, a
profound, weary groan floated up from the creek, succeeded by a plaint
whose heartrending sadness was like some poison turning the blood
cold in the veins. Then a strong voice pronounced several distinct
incomprehensible words somewhere beyond the creek. "Let no one fire,"
shouted Brown. "What does it mean?" . . . "Do you hear on the hill?
Do you hear? Do you hear?" repeated the voice three times. Cornelius
translated, and then prompted the answer. "Speak," cried Brown, "we
hear." Then the voice, declaiming in the sonorous inflated tone of a
herald, and shifting continually on the edge of the vague waste-land,
proclaimed that between the men of the Bugis nation living in Patusan
and the white men on the hill and those with them, there would be no
faith, no compassion, no speech, no peace. A bush rustled; a haphazard
volley rang out. "Dam' foolishness," muttered the Yankee, vexedly
grounding the butt. Cornelius translated. The wounded man below
the hill, after crying out twice, "Take me up! take me up!" went on
complaining in moans. While he had kept on the blackened earth of the
slope, and afterwards crouching in the boat, he had been safe enough.
It seems that in his joy at finding the tobacco he forgot himself and
jumped out on her off-side, as it were. The white boat, lying high and
dry, showed him up; the creek was no more than seven yards wide in that
place, and there happened to be a man crouching in the bush on the other
bank.
'He was a Bugis of Tondano only lately come to Patusan, and a relation
of the man shot in the afternoon. That famous long shot had indeed
appalled the beholders. The man in utter security had been struck down,
in full view of his friends, dropping with a joke on his lips, and they
seemed to see in the act an atrocity which had stirred a bitter rage.
That relation of his, Si-Lapa by name, was then with Doramin in the
stockade only a few feet away. You who know these chaps must admit that
the fellow showed an unusual pluck by volunteering to carry the message,
alone, in the dark. Creeping across the open ground, he had deviated
to the left and found himself opposite the boat. He was startled when
Brown's man shouted. He came to a sitting position with his gun to his
shoulder, and when the other jumped out, exposing himself, he pulled the
trigger and lodged three jagged slugs point-blank into the poor wretch's
stomach. Then, lying flat on his face, he gave himself up for dead,
while a thin hail of lead chopped and swished the bushes close on his
right hand; afterwards he delivered his speech shouting, bent double,
dodging all the time in cover. With the last word he leaped sideways,
lay close for a while, and afterwards got back to the houses unharmed,
having achieved on that night such a renown as his children will not
willingly allow to die.
'And on the hill the forlorn band let the two little heaps of embers
go out under their bowed heads. They sat dejected on the ground with
compressed lips and downcast eyes, listening to their comrade below. He
was a strong man and died hard, with moans now loud, now sinking to a
strange confidential note of pain. Sometimes he shrieked, and again,
after a period of silence, he could be heard muttering deliriously a
long and unintelligible complaint. Never for a moment did he cease.
'"What's the good?" Brown had said unmoved once, seeing the Yankee, who
had been swearing under his breath, prepare to go down. "That's so,"
assented the deserter, reluctantly desisting. "There's no encouragement
for wounded men here. Only his noise is calculated to make all the
others think too much of the hereafter, cap'n." "Water!" cried the
wounded man in an extraordinarily clear vigorous voice, and then went
off moaning feebly. "Ay, water. Water will do it," muttered the other to
himself, resignedly. "Plenty by-and-by. The tide is flowing."
'At last the tide flowed, silencing the plaint and the cries of pain,
and the dawn was near when Brown, sitting with his chin in the palm of
his hand before Patusan, as one might stare at the unscalable side of a
mountain, heard the brief ringing bark of a brass 6-pounder far away
in town somewhere. "What's this?" he asked of Cornelius, who hung about
him. Cornelius listened. A muffled roaring shout rolled down-river over
the town; a big drum began to throb, and others responded, pulsating and
droning. Tiny scattered lights began to twinkle in the dark half of the
town, while the part lighted by the loom of fires hummed with a deep and
prolonged murmur. "He has come," said Cornelius. "What? Already? Are
you sure?" Brown asked. "Yes! yes! Sure. Listen to the noise." "What
are they making that row about?" pursued Brown. "For joy," snorted
Cornelius; "he is a very great man, but all the same, he knows no more
than a child, and so they make a great noise to please him, because they
know no better." "Look here," said Brown, "how is one to get at him?"
"He shall come to talk to you," Cornelius declared. "What do you mean?
Come down here strolling as it were?" Cornelius nodded vigorously in the
dark. "Yes. He will come straight here and talk to you. He is just like
a fool. You shall see what a fool he is." Brown was incredulous. "You
shall see; you shall see," repeated Cornelius. "He is not afraid--not
afraid of anything. He will come and order you to leave his people
alone. Everybody must leave his people alone. He is like a little child.
He will come to you straight." Alas! he knew Jim well--that "mean little
skunk," as Brown called him to me. "Yes, certainly," he pursued with
ardour, "and then, captain, you tell that tall man with a gun to shoot
him. Just you kill him, and you will frighten everybody so much that
you can do anything you like with them afterwards--get what you like--go
away when you like. Ha! ha! ha! Fine . . ." He almost danced with
impatience and eagerness; and Brown, looking over his shoulder at him,
could see, shown up by the pitiless dawn, his men drenched with dew,
sitting amongst the cold ashes and the litter of the camp, haggard,
cowed, and in rags.'
| 7,763 | Chapters 38-40 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210215030710/https://www.novelguide.com/lord-jim/summaries/chapter38-40 | Eight, Thirty Nine and Forty . The story of Jim's fate begins proper in Chapter Thirty Eight as the narrative returns to Brown, who is described as a 'latter day buccaneer', and to the time when he has stolen the Spanish schooner. He is described as tired of life and unafraid of death, but is 'in mortal fear of imprisonment'. . . After the theft, he and his crew are short of food and water and board several craft to steal from them. Brown does not dare to put into a port as the authorities may arrest him; he plans to go to Madagascar, but needs provisions to do so. He visits Patusan for this very reason. They take a long boat up the river and a shout goes up and cannons are fired. Brown and his men land 900 yards from the stockade and the chapter ends with them out of their boat and lying behind felled trees. Everything around them is described as still, dark and silent. . . In Chapter Thirty Nine, it is related that Jim is away in the interior at this point and Dain Waris leads the first repulse against these intruders. Jewel is in command of the Fort and cares for the refugees; she shows a 'martial ardour'. Dain Waris comes to her at once at the first signs of danger as Jim has the only store of gunpowder . The chief men are also there as they discuss what to do. They organize ways to get rid of Brown and messengers are sent to inform Jim of what is happening. In addition, Kassim opens up communications with Brown and takes Cornelius with him . After talking to Cornelius for half an hour, Brown's eyes are opened 'as to the home affairs of Patusan'. . . Kassim dislikes Doramin and the Bugis, 'but he hated the new order of things still more'. He thinks these men, together with the Rajah's followers, could attack and beat the Bugis before the return of Jim. Brown has only come to the area for food, rubber and some money, but after meeting Kassim he begins to think of stealing the whole country. Brown then pretends to have a big ship full of men at the mouth of the river. This chapter ends with Cornelius offering Brown what he calls 'friend's advice' and tells him about Jim: he says he only has to kill him and he will be king here. . . Brown tries to gain time 'by fooling with Kassim's diplomacy' in Chapter Forty. In truth, he believes Jim is the only one to work with. Brown sees himself as offering Jim the power to take full control and that they would share in it. He sees them working as brothers, 'till the time came for a quarrel and a shot that would settle all accounts'. His machinations are clear when he orders one of his men to shoot at one of the Patusan inhabitants to put fear into the others and sends another of his men to the boat in order to draw the enemy's fire. . . People begin to feel like they should take sides and the social fabric is ready to collapse. Many in the upper classes think they should pay court to the Rajah and only Doramin keeps his countrymen together. . . Brown tells Marlow later that he would have left that night if his boat had been afloat as his men were outnumbered 200 to one. One of his men is shot and Cornelius translates a message from the Bugis informing him that there 'would be no faith, no compassion, no speech, no peace' between the Bugis and the white men on the hill. . . Towards dawn, drumbeat and cannon can be heard in town and Cornelius tells Brown that he has come back. He then predicts Jim will come to Brown, as he is afraid of nothing. He also suggests Brown sends one of his men to kill Jim, as he will then have complete power. . | Eight, Thirty Nine and Forty . In Jim's absence, the outsiders disturb the peace and fabric of Patusan society. This serves to emphasize Jim's importance in the community, and is also a useful dramatic device for bringing about the novel's climax. Because of his absence, it is also possible to highlight the extent of Cornelius's treacherous impulses as he inveigles himself on Brown in order to enact revenge on Jim. | 682 | 70 | [
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161 | false | pinkmonkey | all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/18.txt | finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Sense and Sensibility/section_17_part_0.txt | Sense and Sensibility.chapter 18 | chapter 18 | null | {"name": "Chapter 18", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820034609/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmSenseSensibility33.asp", "summary": "Edward's presence cheers the atmosphere of Barton cottage. Mrs. Dashwood is happy to see him and inquires about his family. Edward is overwhelmed by her hospitality and kindness. Although he does not display high spirits, he feels comfortable in their company. The girls draw him into an animated conversation, and he participates with enthusiasm. He teases Marianne, but when she calls him reserved, he is offended.", "analysis": "Notes The Dashwoods present themselves as a happy and harmonious family. They are delighted to entertain special guests like Edward. Edward's arrival at Barton Cottage subdues the gloom caused by Willoughby's departure. Mrs. Dashwood and the girls do their best to make Edward feel at home. They talk to him like good friends and jest with him. The conversation between Edward and the girls exposes the attitude of each participant. Marianne reveals her idealism when she mocks wealth and grandeur. She is frank and blunt in expressing her views. Elinor's remarks emphasize her pragmatism and common sense. She is cautious but firm in expressing her thoughts. Margaret represents the bubbly teenager with stars in her eyes and fancy wishes in her heart. Edward is frank in his views but is sensitive to others' remarks about him. CHAPTER 18 Summary Elinor is disturbed to see Edward looking forlorn. She begins to doubt his affection for her. During lunch, Marianne notices a lock of hair in Edward's ring and comments on it. Edward puts forward an unconvincing reply. John Middleton pays them a visit and gets acquainted with Edward. He also realizes that Edward is the same man Margaret had mentioned as her elder sister's love. He invites all of them to tea followed by dinner at the Park. At the party John Middleton refers to Willoughby, much to Marianne's delight. Edward is able to guess the extent of the relationship between Marianne and Willoughby. Notes Elinor is observant. She notices the change in Edward's behavior. His forced reserve and aloof manner arouse her suspicions. She is no longer sure of Edward's feelings for herself. She is disturbed but hides her emotions cleverly and behaves normally with Edward. Edward's disturbed mind affects his speech and manner. He is cautious in his behavior towards the family, and he sounds bitter during their conversations. He is critical about himself and confesses his inability to appreciate the beauty of the countryside or to express it in words. His statements shock Marianne, but Elinor looks amused. Marianne is blunt and indiscreet. She inquires about the lock of hair on Edward's ring, much to his and Elinor's embarrassment. The situation is saved by Edward's diplomacy and Elinor's cool manner. CHAPTER 19 Summary Edward spends a pleasant week with the Dashwood family. During one of their conversations, Mrs. Dashwood suggests that Edward to pursue a profession of his choice to keep himself occupied. Edward expresses his helplessness in the matter. When he takes their leave, he looks depressed. Elinor feels disturbed but is discreet enough not to reveal her emotions to others. She keeps herself busy doing household work. One day the Middletons bring two new guests to the cottage. They are Mr. and Mrs. Palmer, the daughter and son-in-law of Mrs. Jennings. Mr. Palmer keeps himself aloof from others. As they leave, Sir John extends an invitation to the Dashwoods to spend the next day at the Park. Notes Jane Austen keeps introducing new guests at Barton. Willoughby, Edward and the Palmers arrive one after the other. Also, each party makes an appearance only after the previous one has left the scene. This device enables the author to direct the reader's attention in a controlled fashion. Edward displays sadness while expressing his thoughts to the Dashwoods and appears dejected before leaving the cottage. He does not appear his normal self; he is inhibited in his behavior. Elinor, unlike Marianne, keeps her sorrow well concealed from the others. Edward's departure from Barton does affect her emotionally, but she does not brood over it, like her sister would. Instead of wallowing in self-pity, she keeps her mind occupied by performing household duties. In contrast to Edward's cautious reserve is Mrs. Palmer's uninhibited manner. She is delighted to meet the Dashwood girls and appreciates the decor of the cottage. She is overexcited, shows enthusiasm and looks cheerful. Mr. Palmer is exactly her opposite in temperament. He is sober and reserved, keeping his thoughts to himself. They make an interesting couple and amuse the readers with their idiosyncrasies. Sir John takes pleasure in entertaining guests and introducing them to the Dashwoods. He is proud of his cultured tenants and is overjoyed at having invited them to the Park. Elinor understands his nature and accepts his hospitality with good- humor, but Marianne is evidently irked by his frequent invitations."} |
Elinor saw, with great uneasiness the low spirits of her friend. His
visit afforded her but a very partial satisfaction, while his own
enjoyment in it appeared so imperfect. It was evident that he was
unhappy; she wished it were equally evident that he still distinguished
her by the same affection which once she had felt no doubt of
inspiring; but hitherto the continuance of his preference seemed very
uncertain; and the reservedness of his manner towards her contradicted
one moment what a more animated look had intimated the preceding one.
He joined her and Marianne in the breakfast-room the next morning
before the others were down; and Marianne, who was always eager to
promote their happiness as far as she could, soon left them to
themselves. But before she was half way upstairs she heard the parlour
door open, and, turning round, was astonished to see Edward himself
come out.
"I am going into the village to see my horses," said he, "as you are
not yet ready for breakfast; I shall be back again presently."
***
Edward returned to them with fresh admiration of the surrounding
country; in his walk to the village, he had seen many parts of the
valley to advantage; and the village itself, in a much higher situation
than the cottage, afforded a general view of the whole, which had
exceedingly pleased him. This was a subject which ensured Marianne's
attention, and she was beginning to describe her own admiration of
these scenes, and to question him more minutely on the objects that had
particularly struck him, when Edward interrupted her by saying, "You
must not enquire too far, Marianne--remember I have no knowledge in the
picturesque, and I shall offend you by my ignorance and want of taste
if we come to particulars. I shall call hills steep, which ought to be
bold; surfaces strange and uncouth, which ought to be irregular and
rugged; and distant objects out of sight, which ought only to be
indistinct through the soft medium of a hazy atmosphere. You must be
satisfied with such admiration as I can honestly give. I call it a
very fine country--the hills are steep, the woods seem full of fine
timber, and the valley looks comfortable and snug--with rich meadows
and several neat farm houses scattered here and there. It exactly
answers my idea of a fine country, because it unites beauty with
utility--and I dare say it is a picturesque one too, because you admire
it; I can easily believe it to be full of rocks and promontories, grey
moss and brush wood, but these are all lost on me. I know nothing of
the picturesque."
"I am afraid it is but too true," said Marianne; "but why should you
boast of it?"
"I suspect," said Elinor, "that to avoid one kind of affectation,
Edward here falls into another. Because he believes many people
pretend to more admiration of the beauties of nature than they really
feel, and is disgusted with such pretensions, he affects greater
indifference and less discrimination in viewing them himself than he
possesses. He is fastidious and will have an affectation of his own."
"It is very true," said Marianne, "that admiration of landscape scenery
is become a mere jargon. Every body pretends to feel and tries to
describe with the taste and elegance of him who first defined what
picturesque beauty was. I detest jargon of every kind, and sometimes I
have kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to
describe them in but what was worn and hackneyed out of all sense and
meaning."
"I am convinced," said Edward, "that you really feel all the delight in
a fine prospect which you profess to feel. But, in return, your sister
must allow me to feel no more than I profess. I like a fine prospect,
but not on picturesque principles. I do not like crooked, twisted,
blasted trees. I admire them much more if they are tall, straight, and
flourishing. I do not like ruined, tattered cottages. I am not fond
of nettles or thistles, or heath blossoms. I have more pleasure in a
snug farm-house than a watch-tower--and a troop of tidy, happy villages
please me better than the finest banditti in the world."
Marianne looked with amazement at Edward, with compassion at her
sister. Elinor only laughed.
The subject was continued no farther; and Marianne remained
thoughtfully silent, till a new object suddenly engaged her attention.
She was sitting by Edward, and in taking his tea from Mrs. Dashwood,
his hand passed so directly before her, as to make a ring, with a plait
of hair in the centre, very conspicuous on one of his fingers.
"I never saw you wear a ring before, Edward," she cried. "Is that
Fanny's hair? I remember her promising to give you some. But I should
have thought her hair had been darker."
Marianne spoke inconsiderately what she really felt--but when she saw
how much she had pained Edward, her own vexation at her want of thought
could not be surpassed by his. He coloured very deeply, and giving a
momentary glance at Elinor, replied, "Yes; it is my sister's hair. The
setting always casts a different shade on it, you know."
Elinor had met his eye, and looked conscious likewise. That the hair
was her own, she instantaneously felt as well satisfied as Marianne;
the only difference in their conclusions was, that what Marianne
considered as a free gift from her sister, Elinor was conscious must
have been procured by some theft or contrivance unknown to herself.
She was not in a humour, however, to regard it as an affront, and
affecting to take no notice of what passed, by instantly talking of
something else, she internally resolved henceforward to catch every
opportunity of eyeing the hair and of satisfying herself, beyond all
doubt, that it was exactly the shade of her own.
Edward's embarrassment lasted some time, and it ended in an absence of
mind still more settled. He was particularly grave the whole morning.
Marianne severely censured herself for what she had said; but her own
forgiveness might have been more speedy, had she known how little
offence it had given her sister.
Before the middle of the day, they were visited by Sir John and Mrs.
Jennings, who, having heard of the arrival of a gentleman at the
cottage, came to take a survey of the guest. With the assistance of
his mother-in-law, Sir John was not long in discovering that the name
of Ferrars began with an F. and this prepared a future mine of raillery
against the devoted Elinor, which nothing but the newness of their
acquaintance with Edward could have prevented from being immediately
sprung. But, as it was, she only learned, from some very significant
looks, how far their penetration, founded on Margaret's instructions,
extended.
Sir John never came to the Dashwoods without either inviting them to
dine at the park the next day, or to drink tea with them that evening.
On the present occasion, for the better entertainment of their visitor,
towards whose amusement he felt himself bound to contribute, he wished
to engage them for both.
"You MUST drink tea with us to night," said he, "for we shall be quite
alone--and tomorrow you must absolutely dine with us, for we shall be a
large party."
Mrs. Jennings enforced the necessity. "And who knows but you may raise
a dance," said she. "And that will tempt YOU, Miss Marianne."
"A dance!" cried Marianne. "Impossible! Who is to dance?"
"Who! why yourselves, and the Careys, and Whitakers to be sure.--What!
you thought nobody could dance because a certain person that shall be
nameless is gone!"
"I wish with all my soul," cried Sir John, "that Willoughby were among
us again."
This, and Marianne's blushing, gave new suspicions to Edward. "And who
is Willoughby?" said he, in a low voice, to Miss Dashwood, by whom he
was sitting.
She gave him a brief reply. Marianne's countenance was more
communicative. Edward saw enough to comprehend, not only the meaning
of others, but such of Marianne's expressions as had puzzled him
before; and when their visitors left them, he went immediately round
her, and said, in a whisper, "I have been guessing. Shall I tell you
my guess?"
"What do you mean?"
"Shall I tell you."
"Certainly."
"Well then; I guess that Mr. Willoughby hunts."
Marianne was surprised and confused, yet she could not help smiling at
the quiet archness of his manner, and after a moment's silence, said,
"Oh, Edward! How can you?--But the time will come I hope...I am sure
you will like him."
"I do not doubt it," replied he, rather astonished at her earnestness
and warmth; for had he not imagined it to be a joke for the good of her
acquaintance in general, founded only on a something or a nothing
between Mr. Willoughby and herself, he would not have ventured to
mention it.
| 1,419 | Chapter 18 | https://web.archive.org/web/20180820034609/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmSenseSensibility33.asp | Edward's presence cheers the atmosphere of Barton cottage. Mrs. Dashwood is happy to see him and inquires about his family. Edward is overwhelmed by her hospitality and kindness. Although he does not display high spirits, he feels comfortable in their company. The girls draw him into an animated conversation, and he participates with enthusiasm. He teases Marianne, but when she calls him reserved, he is offended. | Notes The Dashwoods present themselves as a happy and harmonious family. They are delighted to entertain special guests like Edward. Edward's arrival at Barton Cottage subdues the gloom caused by Willoughby's departure. Mrs. Dashwood and the girls do their best to make Edward feel at home. They talk to him like good friends and jest with him. The conversation between Edward and the girls exposes the attitude of each participant. Marianne reveals her idealism when she mocks wealth and grandeur. She is frank and blunt in expressing her views. Elinor's remarks emphasize her pragmatism and common sense. She is cautious but firm in expressing her thoughts. Margaret represents the bubbly teenager with stars in her eyes and fancy wishes in her heart. Edward is frank in his views but is sensitive to others' remarks about him. CHAPTER 18 Summary Elinor is disturbed to see Edward looking forlorn. She begins to doubt his affection for her. During lunch, Marianne notices a lock of hair in Edward's ring and comments on it. Edward puts forward an unconvincing reply. John Middleton pays them a visit and gets acquainted with Edward. He also realizes that Edward is the same man Margaret had mentioned as her elder sister's love. He invites all of them to tea followed by dinner at the Park. At the party John Middleton refers to Willoughby, much to Marianne's delight. Edward is able to guess the extent of the relationship between Marianne and Willoughby. Notes Elinor is observant. She notices the change in Edward's behavior. His forced reserve and aloof manner arouse her suspicions. She is no longer sure of Edward's feelings for herself. She is disturbed but hides her emotions cleverly and behaves normally with Edward. Edward's disturbed mind affects his speech and manner. He is cautious in his behavior towards the family, and he sounds bitter during their conversations. He is critical about himself and confesses his inability to appreciate the beauty of the countryside or to express it in words. His statements shock Marianne, but Elinor looks amused. Marianne is blunt and indiscreet. She inquires about the lock of hair on Edward's ring, much to his and Elinor's embarrassment. The situation is saved by Edward's diplomacy and Elinor's cool manner. CHAPTER 19 Summary Edward spends a pleasant week with the Dashwood family. During one of their conversations, Mrs. Dashwood suggests that Edward to pursue a profession of his choice to keep himself occupied. Edward expresses his helplessness in the matter. When he takes their leave, he looks depressed. Elinor feels disturbed but is discreet enough not to reveal her emotions to others. She keeps herself busy doing household work. One day the Middletons bring two new guests to the cottage. They are Mr. and Mrs. Palmer, the daughter and son-in-law of Mrs. Jennings. Mr. Palmer keeps himself aloof from others. As they leave, Sir John extends an invitation to the Dashwoods to spend the next day at the Park. Notes Jane Austen keeps introducing new guests at Barton. Willoughby, Edward and the Palmers arrive one after the other. Also, each party makes an appearance only after the previous one has left the scene. This device enables the author to direct the reader's attention in a controlled fashion. Edward displays sadness while expressing his thoughts to the Dashwoods and appears dejected before leaving the cottage. He does not appear his normal self; he is inhibited in his behavior. Elinor, unlike Marianne, keeps her sorrow well concealed from the others. Edward's departure from Barton does affect her emotionally, but she does not brood over it, like her sister would. Instead of wallowing in self-pity, she keeps her mind occupied by performing household duties. In contrast to Edward's cautious reserve is Mrs. Palmer's uninhibited manner. She is delighted to meet the Dashwood girls and appreciates the decor of the cottage. She is overexcited, shows enthusiasm and looks cheerful. Mr. Palmer is exactly her opposite in temperament. He is sober and reserved, keeping his thoughts to himself. They make an interesting couple and amuse the readers with their idiosyncrasies. Sir John takes pleasure in entertaining guests and introducing them to the Dashwoods. He is proud of his cultured tenants and is overjoyed at having invited them to the Park. Elinor understands his nature and accepts his hospitality with good- humor, but Marianne is evidently irked by his frequent invitations. | 66 | 727 | [
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107 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/17.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Far From the Madding Crowd/section_16_part_0.txt | Far From the Madding Crowd.chapter 17 | chapter 17 | null | {"name": "Chapter 17", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-17", "summary": "It's Saturday, and good ol' Boldwood is back in the marketplace as per usual. But now he's a smitten kitten. Bathsheba's joke Valentine has made him fall head over heels in love with her. Boldwood has never claimed to understand women, and he doesn't understand Bathsheba. We can't blame him: Bathsheba seems a little weird what with the prank love letters and all. But Boldwood is kind of weird. He asks around to find out whether Bathsheba's considered good looking. A friend says that she is, so now Boldwood feels good about approaching her. Bathsheba, meanwhile, can feel Boldwood watching her all the time now, and she considers this a bit of a triumph, since he was the only man in town who didn't admire her before.", "analysis": ""} |
IN THE MARKET-PLACE
On Saturday Boldwood was in Casterbridge market house as usual, when
the disturber of his dreams entered and became visible to him. Adam
had awakened from his deep sleep, and behold! there was Eve. The
farmer took courage, and for the first time really looked at her.
Material causes and emotional effects are not to be arranged in
regular equation. The result from capital employed in the production
of any movement of a mental nature is sometimes as tremendous as the
cause itself is absurdly minute. When women are in a freakish mood,
their usual intuition, either from carelessness or inherent defect,
seemingly fails to teach them this, and hence it was that Bathsheba
was fated to be astonished to-day.
Boldwood looked at her--not slily, critically, or understandingly,
but blankly at gaze, in the way a reaper looks up at a passing
train--as something foreign to his element, and but dimly understood.
To Boldwood women had been remote phenomena rather than necessary
complements--comets of such uncertain aspect, movement, and
permanence, that whether their orbits were as geometrical,
unchangeable, and as subject to laws as his own, or as absolutely
erratic as they superficially appeared, he had not deemed it his duty
to consider.
He saw her black hair, her correct facial curves and profile, and
the roundness of her chin and throat. He saw then the side of her
eyelids, eyes, and lashes, and the shape of her ear. Next he noticed
her figure, her skirt, and the very soles of her shoes.
Boldwood thought her beautiful, but wondered whether he was right in
his thought, for it seemed impossible that this romance in the flesh,
if so sweet as he imagined, could have been going on long without
creating a commotion of delight among men, and provoking more inquiry
than Bathsheba had done, even though that was not a little. To the
best of his judgement neither nature nor art could improve this
perfect one of an imperfect many. His heart began to move within
him. Boldwood, it must be remembered, though forty years of age, had
never before inspected a woman with the very centre and force of his
glance; they had struck upon all his senses at wide angles.
Was she really beautiful? He could not assure himself that his
opinion was true even now. He furtively said to a neighbour, "Is
Miss Everdene considered handsome?"
"Oh yes; she was a good deal noticed the first time she came, if you
remember. A very handsome girl indeed."
A man is never more credulous than in receiving favourable opinions
on the beauty of a woman he is half, or quite, in love with; a mere
child's word on the point has the weight of an R.A.'s. Boldwood was
satisfied now.
And this charming woman had in effect said to him, "Marry me." Why
should she have done that strange thing? Boldwood's blindness to
the difference between approving of what circumstances suggest, and
originating what they do not suggest, was well matched by Bathsheba's
insensibility to the possibly great issues of little beginnings.
She was at this moment coolly dealing with a dashing young farmer,
adding up accounts with him as indifferently as if his face had been
the pages of a ledger. It was evident that such a nature as his had
no attraction for a woman of Bathsheba's taste. But Boldwood grew
hot down to his hands with an incipient jealousy; he trod for the
first time the threshold of "the injured lover's hell." His first
impulse was to go and thrust himself between them. This could be
done, but only in one way--by asking to see a sample of her corn.
Boldwood renounced the idea. He could not make the request; it was
debasing loveliness to ask it to buy and sell, and jarred with his
conceptions of her.
All this time Bathsheba was conscious of having broken into that
dignified stronghold at last. His eyes, she knew, were following her
everywhere. This was a triumph; and had it come naturally, such a
triumph would have been the sweeter to her for this piquing delay.
But it had been brought about by misdirected ingenuity, and she
valued it only as she valued an artificial flower or a wax fruit.
Being a woman with some good sense in reasoning on subjects wherein
her heart was not involved, Bathsheba genuinely repented that a freak
which had owed its existence as much to Liddy as to herself, should
ever have been undertaken, to disturb the placidity of a man she
respected too highly to deliberately tease.
She that day nearly formed the intention of begging his pardon on
the very next occasion of their meeting. The worst features of this
arrangement were that, if he thought she ridiculed him, an apology
would increase the offence by being disbelieved; and if he thought
she wanted him to woo her, it would read like additional evidence of
her forwardness.
| 778 | Chapter 17 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-17 | It's Saturday, and good ol' Boldwood is back in the marketplace as per usual. But now he's a smitten kitten. Bathsheba's joke Valentine has made him fall head over heels in love with her. Boldwood has never claimed to understand women, and he doesn't understand Bathsheba. We can't blame him: Bathsheba seems a little weird what with the prank love letters and all. But Boldwood is kind of weird. He asks around to find out whether Bathsheba's considered good looking. A friend says that she is, so now Boldwood feels good about approaching her. Bathsheba, meanwhile, can feel Boldwood watching her all the time now, and she considers this a bit of a triumph, since he was the only man in town who didn't admire her before. | null | 127 | 1 | [
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23,042 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/23042-chapters/8.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/The Tempest/section_7_part_0.txt | The Tempest.act 4.scene 1 | scene 1 | null | {"name": "Scene 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219151049/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/the-tempest/summary-and-analysis/act-iv-scene-1", "summary": "Prospero, acknowledging that he has been harsh, now promises a reward that will rectify the young lovers' momentary suffering. Recognizing Ferdinand and Miranda's love for one another -- they have passed the trials that Prospero has set before them -- he offers Miranda to Ferdinand as his wife. Prospero next calls Ariel to help stage a celebration of the betrothal. The celebration includes a masque, presented by the spirits of the island. Suddenly Prospero remembers the three conspirators who have set out to murder him and calls a halt to the masque. He then summons Ariel, who reports that he led the three men, all of whom are very drunk, through a briar patch and into a filthy pond, where he left them wallowing. Prospero instructs Ariel to leave garish clothing on a tree to tempt the men. Soon Caliban, Stefano, and Trinculo appear, foul smelling and wet. Stefano and Trinculo lament the loss of their bottles but are much cheered when they see the clothing hanging nearby. The two ignore Caliban's pleas to continue on their mission and his warnings that their hesitation will lead Prospero to catch them. At that moment, Prospero and Ariel enter with spirits, disguised as hunters and hounds. The three conspirators flee, with the spirits in pursuit. Prospero, acknowledging the power he now holds over all his enemies, promises Ariel that he shall soon be free. Within a few minutes of the opening of this scene, the betrothal is complete, and Miranda and Ferdinand's future has been determined to Prospero's satisfaction. The virtue and honor of these young people transcends the actions of their fathers and, in this betrothal, lies the redemption of their families. For the first time, Prospero can fully reveal his true nature. Finally, there is no need to be punitive or autocratic, and he can simply enjoy his daughter's happiness. For these few moments, the audience can witness what Prospero is like without the weight of revenge or control motivating his actions. Even in his gentleness and goodwill toward Ferdinand, Prospero does not forget that he is still Miranda's father, and as such, he is responsible for her until she is safely wed. Consequently, a significant amount of time is spent warning Ferdinand that he must control his lust until the wedding takes place. Prospero warns the young man that \"barren hate, / Sour-eyed disdain, and discord,\" will be his reward if he cannot control his lust . All of this is in keeping with the expected parental role. Miranda is even more innocent than most young women, having had none of the socialization that other young women would experience. Because of her isolation, she is more vulnerable, and her father is aware of her purity of heart. However, he is also a father, facing the imminent loss of his only child, and so his excessive warnings to Ferdinand to control his lust are to be expected. The betrothal ceremony is sealed with a masque, and, in keeping with the motif of reality and illusion, this masque draws on mythical goddesses and on Greek and Roman mythology. The goddesses are selected for their symbolism and connections to nature and represent the promise of fertility and fecundity, heavenly harmony, and an eternal springtime of love. As the goddess of the rainbow, Iris is the promise of spring rains leading to a bountiful harvest. As a messenger from Juno, she also represents the gods' blessing on this betrothal. When Juno appears, her presence affirms the blessing of the heavens, and since Juno is the goddess of marriage and childbirth, her presence is the promise of a happy union for the couple and a blessing of many children. Finally, Ceres' appearance also promises nature's blessing on this marriage. Together, the goddesses are the promise of celestial harmony, fruitful harvests, and eternal seasons without winter. Venus, with her emphasis on abandon and sexual love is deliberately excluded, since the focus of the masque is on honorable marriage. The pastoral tradition focuses on a nostalgic image of the peace and simplicity of the life of shepherds and other rural folk in an idealized natural setting. Pastoral poetry is characterized by a state of contentment and a focus on the contemplative life. As is the case with most masques, Prospero's masque focuses on these pastoral motifs, with reapers and nymphs celebrating the fecundity of the land. The land is green, the harvesters sunburned, and the harvest worth celebrating. Love is innocent and romantic and not sexual. The country life, with its abundance of harvests and peaceful existence is an idealized world that ignores the realities of country life with its many hardships. But a wedding masque is not the time to remind the young couple of the possible hardships that they will face. Instead, Prospero focuses on the blessings of a happy marriage and the contentment that Ferdinand and Miranda will bring one another. At the conclusion of the masque, Prospero addresses Ferdinand and tells him that \"We are such stuff / As dreams are made on\" . This is a reminder that the masque, with all its heavenly creatures, is not real. Like the masque, life, too, will come to its inevitable end. Prospero reminds Ferdinand that each man's life is framed by dreams. The evidence of that life, with its earthly possessions, is only temporary. Again, this points to the role of the young couple as redeemers for their father's sins. Alonso, and through him, Antonio and Sebastian, have placed too much emphasis on worldly possessions and titles. Even Prospero, with his focus on books, has forgotten that they are also only temporary vestiges in this life. This reminder that corporeal riches are only temporary also seems to be directed toward Stefano and Trinculo. Many scholars and critics would like to see Shakespeare's autobiographical presence in Prospero's words. Those who think that Shakespeare is allowing Prospero to speak his farewell to the stage find \"Our revels now are ended\" to be a poignant reminder of the temporal plight of all men's lives. Since The Tempest comes near the end of Shakespeare's career and life, it is very tempting to read autobiography into Prospero's words. Still, his words may only be an impassioned reminder for each man to value life and accept its temporal limitations. At the scene's end, Prospero must shrug off the mantle of fatherhood and assume the cloak of ruler and deal with the three conspirators who plot his death: Caliban, Stefano, and Trinculo. The punishment that Ariel reports is more nuisance than painful, another reminder that Prospero's retribution includes no serious injuries. Aside from a few scratches, the trip through the briar patch and the putrid pond only injure the men's pride. Even the spirit hunters and dogs that give Caliban, Stefano, and Trinculo chase are little more than air, not capable of causing their prey any harm. This mild punishment reflects Prospero's inherent good nature and his willingness to forgive his enemies. He will make them suffer for their plotting, but he will do them no real injury. Although it was not always clear earlier in the play, by this act, Prospero's true nature, his goodness and his humanity, have become clear to the audience. Glossary genius either of two spirits, one good and one evil, supposed to influence one's destiny. Phoebus' steeds the mythological horses that drew the chariot of the sun. Here, the suggestion is that they are lame from the long day and overriding. vanity reference to an illusion or trick that Prospero has created. abstemious moderate, especially in eating and drinking; temperate. Prospero is warning Ferdinand once again about resisting lust before the wedding occurs. bring a corollary here, meaning to bring too many spirits rather than not enough. amain at or with great speed; here, Miranda's peacocks fly quickly. sicklemen reference to nymphs disguised as harvesters. unbacked not broken to the saddle: said of a horse. trumpery something showy but worthless; here, the gaudy clothing designated as bait for the three conspirators. frippery here, an old clothing shop. dropsy a disease characterized by the accumulation of fluid in the connective tissues, resulting in swelling. jerkin a short, closefitting jacket, often sleeveless. This scene opens with Ariel revealing to Prospero that Alonso, Sebastian, and Antonio are remorseful, worried, and desperate. Gonzalo is worried and grief-stricken at his king's pain. Prospero reassures Ariel that he will be compassionate in dealing with his enemies and asks that Ariel bring the group to him. While he is waiting for the king and his party to appear, Prospero soliloquizes about what he has accomplished with magic and, at the soliloquy's end, promises that he will now give up his magic, bury his magic staff, and drown his magic book at sea. Almost immediately, Ariel enters with the royal party, who appear to be in a trance, and places them within the magic circle that Prospero had earlier drawn. With a few chanted words, the spell is removed. Prospero, clothed in the garments of the duke of Milan -- his rightful position -- appears before them. In a gesture of reconciliation, Prospero embraces Alonso, who is filled with remorse and immediately gives up Prospero's dukedom. Gonzalo is also embraced in turn, and then Prospero turns to Sebastian and Antonio. Prospero tells them that he will not charge them as traitors, at this time. Antonio is forgiven and required to renounce his claims on Prospero's dukedom. While Alonso continues to mourn the loss of his son, Prospero relates that he too has lost his child, his daughter. But he means that he has lost her in marriage and pulls back a curtain to reveal Ferdinand and Miranda playing chess. Ferdinand explains to his father that he is betrothed to Miranda and that this event occurred while he thought his father dead. Alonso quickly welcomes Miranda and says he will be a second father to his son's affianced. At the sight of the couple, Gonzalo begins to cry and thanks God for having worked such a miracle. Ariel enters with the master of the boat and boatswain. Although the ship lay in harbor and in perfect shape, the puzzled men cannot explain how any of this has occurred. Alonso is also mystified, but Prospero tells him not to trouble his mind with such concerns. Next, Ariel leads in Caliban, Stefano, and Trinculo, who are still drunk. Prospero explains that these men have robbed him and plotted to murder him. Caliban immediately repents and promises to seek grace. The three conspirators, who have sobered somewhat since confronted with Prospero and the king, are sent to decorate Prospero's cell. Prospero invites his guests to spend the night with him, where he will tell them of his adventures and of his life during these past 12 years. Ariel's last duty to Prospero is to provide calm seas when they sail the next morning.", "analysis": "This final scene indicates the extent of Prospero's forgiveness and provides an example of humanity toward one's enemies. Before he confronts his enemies, Prospero tells Ariel that \"The rarer action is / In virtue than in vengeance\" . That is, it is better to forgive than to hate one's enemies. This is the example that Prospero provides in reuniting everyone in this final scene. When he emerges from his trance, Alonso moves quickly to embrace Prospero, and just as quickly, he renounces his claims to Prospero's dukedom. This is the behavior the audience expects of Ferdinand's father, and it is what Prospero requires to resolve this conflict. Ferdinand is an honorable young man, filled with love and charity, and it is reasonable to expect that he learned these values from his father, even if his father has, on occasion, forgotten them. Alonso is honestly delighted in Ferdinand's engagement and welcomes Miranda with authentic grace. It is to be predicted that he is happy at recovering his son, but he is also clearly pleased to have gained a daughter. These spontaneous actions reveal that Alonso is as humane and honest as Prospero. It is equally clear that Antonio and Sebastian each lack the humanity of their respective brothers. No apology is forthcoming from Antonio, and Sebastian thinks that Prospero is very likely the devil. Antonio never directly addresses Prospero, not even to justify his previous actions. And although both Prospero and Miranda might have died when cast out on to the sea some 12 years earlier, Antonio has no words for his niece. In spite of the obvious absence of regret from his brother, Prospero is true to his promise and seeks no revenge against Antonio. There is no reason to assume that shame restrains Antonio from speaking, and in all likelihood, he only regrets having been caught. Although Prospero warns his brother that he might still charge him with treason in the future, this warning is unlikely to restrain such a recalcitrant as Antonio. Prospero's humanity is clearly obvious in his treatment of Antonio, whom he calls traitor but whom he declines to treat as a traitor. Critics and audience might be tempted to label Antonio as an unnatural brother, as would also be true for Sebastian. But their cruelty only indicates that nature provides for both goodness and evil. In the Christian world of the Shakespeare's time, evil is chosen, not destined, and nature provides for all outcomes, those who are virtuous and their counterparts, those who are corrupt. Hence, evil siblings are as natural as good siblings. Although the self-serving behavior of Antonio and Sebastian may be despicable, they are still a part of the natural world. Caliban is also from the natural world, although as the child of a witch and devil. He is certainly different from the other humans on the island, but in this final scene, he displays more humanity than many of Prospero's \"civilized\" enemies. Antonio's only remark in this whole scene is to suggest that Caliban provides an opportunity to make money . Antonio and Sebastian echo Stefano and Trinculo's earlier notion of exhibiting Caliban for profit, and in doing so, they reaffirm the impression that even the upper classes can be as lacking in morals as the two examples of the lower class, a butler and a court jester. Caliban, however, has risen above his companions and willingly admits his errors. In admitting his fault, Caliban proves himself more honorable than those who are socially his superior, Antonio and Sebastian. Caliban is often celebrated as a natural man, one who is unspoiled by civilization. And yet, he easily embraces the worse that civilization has to offer. When exposed to Stefano and Trinculo, Caliban embraces their drunkenness and, in return, entices them to help plan a heinous crime. Many critics justify Caliban's actions by pointing to Prospero's persecution of Caliban. But nowhere in this play does Shakespeare validate this kind of revenge. Prospero may enslave Caliban, but he does not threaten his very existence. Certainly there is no way to justify slavery, and Shakespeare makes no attempt to do so. In the end, Prospero leaves Caliban to his island and to the natural world that he craves. The conclusion is about redemption, the personal redemption that so many of the participants reach. Caliban's regret during this final scene indicates he, too, has found the way to reconciliation. Gonzalo is one of the few participants who has no need to ask forgiveness nor any cause to regret his actions. Upon discovering that Ferdinand is alive and that he is betrothed to Miranda, Gonzalo quite properly thanks God, who has \"chalked forth the way\" . Gonzalo also sees the irony in Miranda's offspring inheriting all that was her father's and all that belongs to his enemy. He also observes that there is much that has been restored: Ferdinand to his father, and with him, a wife. But there is more. Prospero's dukedom has been restored, as has the ship and all its missing crew. Yet more important than people or objects, other essential components of civilized society have been restored: authority, harmony, and order. Even before this reconciliation scene occurs, Prospero has promised to put aside his magic and dispose of his magic book and staff, which are the source of his power. He has used magic to work in concert with nature, not to control or evoke evil. Now that he has his enemies under his control, Prospero permits compassion to replace magic. This putting away of his magic also signifies that Prospero's game is at an end. He has used magic to restore harmony and now needs it no more. The play ends with the promise of Ariel's freedom and the restoration of Prospero to a life filled with all that nature and God intended. Glossary mantle to enclose or envelop. furtherer an accomplice. rapier a slender two-edged sword used chiefly in thrusting. subtleties here, the illusions. requite to make return or repayment to for a benefit, injury, and so on; reward. tight and yare sound and ready. The ship is ready to sail. coragio take courage ."} | ACT IV. SCENE I.
_Before PROSPERO'S cell._
_Enter PROSPERO, FERDINAND, and MIRANDA._
_Pros._ If I have too austerely punish'd you,
Your compensation makes amends; for I
Have given you here a third of mine own life,
Or that for which I live; who once again
I tender to thy hand: all thy vexations 5
Were but my trials of thy love, and thou
Hast strangely stood the test: here, afore Heaven,
I ratify this my rich gift. O Ferdinand,
Do not smile at me that I boast her off,
For thou shalt find she will outstrip all praise, 10
And make it halt behind her.
_Fer._ I do believe it
Against an oracle.
_Pros._ Then, as my gift, and thine own acquisition
Worthily purchased, take my daughter: but
If thou dost break her virgin-knot before 15
All sanctimonious ceremonies may
With full and holy rite be minister'd,
No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall
To make this contract grow; but barren hate,
Sour-eyed disdain and discord shall bestrew 20
The union of your bed with weeds so loathly
That you shall hate it both: therefore take heed,
As Hymen's lamps shall light you.
_Fer._ As I hope
For quiet days, fair issue and long life,
With such love as 'tis now, the murkiest den, 25
The most opportune place, the strong'st suggestion
Our worser Genius can, shall never melt
Mine honour into lust, to take away
The edge of that day's celebration
When I shall think, or Phoebus' steeds are founder'd, 30
Or Night kept chain'd below.
_Pros._ Fairly spoke.
Sit, then, and talk with her; she is thine own.
What, Ariel! my industrious servant, Ariel!
_Enter ARIEL._
_Ari._ What would my potent master? here I am.
_Pros._ Thou and thy meaner fellows your last service 35
Did worthily perform; and I must use you
In such another trick. Go bring the rabble,
O'er whom I give thee power, here to this place:
Incite them to quick motion; for I must
Bestow upon the eyes of this young couple 40
Some vanity of mine art: it is my promise,
And they expect it from me.
_Ari._ Presently?
_Pros._ Ay, with a twink.
_Ari._ Before you can say, 'come,' and 'go,'
And breathe twice, and cry, 'so, so,' 45
Each one, tripping on his toe,
Will be here with mop and mow.
Do you love me, master? no?
_Pros._ Dearly, my delicate Ariel. Do not approach
Till thou dost hear me call.
_Ari._ Well, I conceive. [_Exit._ 50
_Pros._ Look thou be true; do not give dalliance
Too much the rein: the strongest oaths are straw
To the fire i' the blood: be more abstemious,
Or else, good night your vow!
_Fer._ I warrant you, sir;
The white cold virgin snow upon my heart 55
Abates the ardour of my liver.
_Pros._ Well.
Now come, my Ariel! bring a corollary,
Rather than want a spirit: appear, and pertly!
No tongue! all eyes! be silent. [_Soft music._
_Enter IRIS._
_Iris._ Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas 60
Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats, and pease;
Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep,
And flat meads thatch'd with stover, them to keep;
Thy banks with pioned and twilled brims,
Which spongy April at thy best betrims, 65
To make cold nymphs chaste crowns; and thy broom-groves,
Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves,
Being lass-lorn; thy pole-clipt vineyard;
And thy sea-marge, sterile and rocky-hard,
Where thou thyself dost air;--the queen o' the sky, 70
Whose watery arch and messenger am I,
Bids thee leave these; and with her sovereign grace,
Here on this grass-plot, in this very place,
To come and sport:--her peacocks fly amain:
Approach, rich Ceres, her to entertain. 75
_Enter CERES._
_Cer._ Hail, many-colour'd messenger, that ne'er
Dost disobey the wife of Jupiter;
Who, with thy saffron wings, upon my flowers
Diffusest honey-drops, refreshing showers;
And with each end of thy blue bow dost crown 80
My bosky acres and my unshrubb'd down,
Rich scarf to my proud earth;--why hath thy queen
Summon'd me hither, to this short-grass'd green?
_Iris._ A contract of true love to celebrate;
And some donation freely to estate 85
On the blest lovers.
_Cer._ Tell me, heavenly bow,
If Venus or her son, as thou dost know,
Do now attend the queen? Since they did plot
The means that dusky Dis my daughter got,
Her and her blind boy's scandal'd company 90
I have forsworn.
_Iris._ Of her society
Be not afraid: I met her Deity
Cutting the clouds towards Paphos, and her son
Dove-drawn with her. Here thought they to have done
Some wanton charm upon this man and maid, 95
Whose vows are, that no bed-right shall be paid
Till Hymen's torch be lighted: but in vain;
Mars's hot minion is returned again;
Her waspish-headed son has broke his arrows,
Swears he will shoot no more, but play with sparrows, 100
And be a boy right out.
_Cer._ High'st queen of state,
Great Juno, comes; I know her by her gait.
_Enter JUNO._
_Juno._ How does my bounteous sister? Go with me
To bless this twain, that they may prosperous be,
And honour'd in their issue. [_They sing:_ 105
_Juno._ Honour, riches, marriage-blessing,
Long continuance, and increasing,
Hourly joys be still upon you!
Juno sings her blessings on you.
_Cer._ Earth's increase, foison plenty, 110
Barns and garners never empty;
Vines with clustering bunches growing;
Plants with goodly burthen bowing;
Spring come to you at the farthest
In the very end of harvest! 115
Scarcity and want shall shun you;
Ceres' blessing so is on you.
_Fer._ This is a most majestic vision, and
Harmonious charmingly. May I be bold
To think these spirits?
_Pros._ Spirits, which by mine art 120
I have from their confines call'd to enact
My present fancies.
_Fer._ Let me live here ever;
So rare a wonder'd father and a wife
Makes this place Paradise.
[_Juno and Ceres whisper, and send Iris on employment._
_Pros._ Sweet, now, silence!
Juno and Ceres whisper seriously; 125
There's something else to do: hush, and be mute,
Or else our spell is marr'd.
_Iris._ You nymphs, call'd Naiads, of the windring brooks,
With your sedged crowns and ever-harmless looks,
Leave your crisp channels, and on this green land 130
Answer your summons; Juno does command:
Come, temperate nymphs, and help to celebrate
A contract of true love; be not too late.
_Enter certain Nymphs._
You sunburnt sicklemen, of August weary,
Come hither from the furrow, and be merry: 135
Make holiday; your rye-straw hats put on,
And these fresh nymphs encounter every one
In country footing.
_Enter certain Reapers, properly habited: they join with the
Nymphs in a graceful dance; towards the end whereof PROSPERO
starts suddenly, and speaks; after which, to a strange, hollow,
and confused noise, they heavily vanish._
_Pros._ [_Aside_] I had forgot that foul conspiracy
Of the beast Caliban and his confederates 140
Against my life: the minute of their plot
Is almost come. [_To the Spirits._] Well done! avoid; no more!
_Fer._ This is strange: your father's in some passion
That works him strongly.
_Mir._ Never till this day
Saw I him touch'd with anger so distemper'd. 145
_Pros._ You do look, my son, in a moved sort,
As if you were dismay'd: be cheerful, sir.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air: 150
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 155
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vex'd;
Bear with my weakness; my old brain is troubled:
Be not disturb'd with my infirmity: 160
If you be pleased, retire into my cell,
And there repose: a turn or two I'll walk,
To still my beating mind.
_Fer._ _Mir._ We wish your peace. [_Exeunt._
_Pros._ Come with a thought. I thank thee, Ariel: come.
_Enter ARIEL._
_Ari._ Thy thoughts I cleave to. What's thy pleasure? 165
_Pros._ Spirit,
We must prepare to meet with Caliban.
_Ari._ Ay, my commander: when I presented Ceres,
I thought to have told thee of it; but I fear'd
Lest I might anger thee.
_Pros._ Say again, where didst thou leave these varlets? 170
_Ari._ I told you, sir, they were red-hot with drinking;
So full of valour that they smote the air
For breathing in their faces; beat the ground
For kissing of their feet; yet always bending
Towards their project. Then I beat my tabor; 175
At which, like unback'd colts, they prick'd their ears,
Advanced their eyelids, lifted up their noses
As they smelt music: so I charm'd their ears,
That, calf-like, they my lowing follow'd through
Tooth'd briers, sharp furzes, pricking goss, and thorns, 180
Which enter'd their frail shins: at last I left them
I' the filthy-mantled pool beyond your cell,
There dancing up to the chins, that the foul lake
O'erstunk their feet.
_Pros._ This was well done, my bird.
Thy shape invisible retain thou still: 185
The trumpery in my house, go bring it hither,
For stale to catch these thieves.
_Ari._ I go, I go. [_Exit._
_Pros._ A devil, a born devil, on whose nature
Nurture can never stick; on whom my pains,
Humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost; 190
And as with age his body uglier grows,
So his mind cankers. I will plague them all,
Even to roaring.
_Re-enter ARIEL, loaden with glistering apparel, &c._
Come, hang them on this line.
_PROSPERO and ARIEL remain, invisible. Enter CALIBAN, STEPHANO,
and TRINCULO, all wet._
_Cal._ Pray you, tread softly, that the blind mole may not
Hear a foot fall: we now are near his cell. 195
_Ste._ Monster, your fairy, which you say is a harmless
fairy, has done little better than played the Jack with us.
_Trin._ Monster, I do smell all horse-piss; at which my
nose is in great indignation.
_Ste._ So is mine. Do you hear, monster? If I should 200
take a displeasure against you, look you,--
_Trin._ Thou wert but a lost monster.
_Cal._ Good my lord, give me thy favour still.
Be patient, for the prize I'll bring thee to
Shall hoodwink this mischance: therefore speak softly. 205
All's hush'd as midnight yet.
_Trin._ Ay, but to lose our bottles in the pool,--
_Ste._ There is not only disgrace and dishonour in that,
monster, but an infinite loss.
_Trin._ That's more to me than my wetting: yet this is 210
your harmless fairy, monster.
_Ste._ I will fetch off my bottle, though I be o'er ears for
my labour.
_Cal._ Prithee, my king, be quiet. See'st thou here,
This is the mouth o' the cell: no noise, and enter. 215
Do that good mischief which may make this island
Thine own for ever, and I, thy Caliban,
For aye thy foot-licker.
_Ste._ Give me thy hand. I do begin to have bloody
thoughts. 220
_Trin._ O King Stephano! O peer! O worthy Stephano!
look what a wardrobe here is for thee!
_Cal._ Let it alone, thou fool; it is but trash.
_Trin._ O, ho, monster! we know what belongs to a frippery.
O King Stephano! 225
_Ste._ Put off that gown, Trinculo; by this hand, I'll
have that gown.
_Trin._ Thy Grace shall have it.
_Cal._ The dropsy drown this fool! what do you mean
To dote thus on such luggage? Let's alone, 230
And do the murder first: if he awake,
From toe to crown he'll fill our skins with pinches,
Make us strange stuff.
_Ste._ Be you quiet, monster. Mistress line, is not this
my jerkin? Now is the jerkin under the line: now, jerkin, 235
you are like to lose your hair, and prove a bald jerkin.
_Trin._ Do, do: we steal by line and level, an't like your
Grace.
_Ste._ I thank thee for that jest; here's a garment for't:
wit shall not go unrewarded while I am king of this country. 240
'Steal by line and level' is an excellent pass of pate;
there's another garment for't.
_Trin._ Monster, come, put some lime upon your fingers,
and away with the rest.
_Cal._ I will have none on't: we shall lose our time, 245
And all be turn'd to barnacles, or to apes
With foreheads villanous low.
_Ste._ Monster, lay-to your fingers: help to bear this
away where my hogshead of wine is, or I'll turn you out
of my kingdom: go to, carry this. 250
_Trin._ And this.
_Ste._ Ay, and this.
_A noise of hunters heard. Enter divers Spirits, in shape of
dogs and hounds, and hunt them about, PROSPERO and ARIEL setting
them on._
_Pros._ Hey, Mountain, hey!
_Ari._ Silver! there it goes, Silver!
_Pros._ Fury, fury! there, Tyrant, there! hark, hark! 255
[_Cal., Ste., and Trin. are driven out._
Go charge my goblins that they grind their joints
With dry convulsions; shorten up their sinews
With aged cramps; and more pinch-spotted make them
Then pard or cat o' mountain.
_Ari._ Hark, they roar!
_Pros._ Let them be hunted soundly. At this hour 260
Lie at my mercy all mine enemies:
Shortly shall all my labours end, and thou
Shalt have the air at freedom: for a little
Follow, and do me service. [_Exeunt._
Notes: IV, 1.
3: _a third_] _a thread_ Theobald. _the thread_ Williams conj.
4: _who_] _whom_ Pope.
7: _test_] F1. _rest_ F2 F3 F4.
9: _off_] F2 F3 F4. _of_ F1.
11: _do_] om. Pope.
13: _gift_] Rowe. _guest_ Ff.
14: _but_] F1. om. F2 F3 F4.
25: _'tis_] _is_ Capell.
30: _Phoebus'_] _Phoebus_ F1. _Phoedus_ F2 F3. _Phoeduus_ F4.
34: SCENE II. Pope.
41: _vanity_] _rarity_ S. Walker conj.
48: _no_?] _no_. Rowe.
53: _abstemious_] _abstenious_ F1.
60: SCENE III. A MASQUE. Pope.]
_thy_] F1. _the_ F2 F3 F4.
64: _pioned_] _pionied_ Warburton. _peonied_ Steevens.
_twilled_] _tulip'd_ Rowe. _tilled_ Capell (Holt conj.). _lilied_
Steevens.]
66: _broom-groves_] _brown groves_ Hanmer.
68: _pole-clipt_] _pale-clipt_ Hanmer.
72: After this line Ff. have the stage direction, '_Juno descends._'
74: _her_] Rowe. _here_ Ff.
83: _short-grass'd_] F3 F4. _short gras'd_ F1 F2. _short-grass_ Pope.
96: _bed-right_] _bed-rite_ Singer.
101: _High'st_] _High_ Pope.
102: Enter JUNO] om. Ff.
110: Cer.] Theobald. om. Ff.
_foison_] F1 _and foison_ F2 F3 F4.
114: _Spring_] _Rain_ Collier MS.
119: _charmingly_] _charming lay_ Hanmer. _charming lays_ Warburton.
_Harmoniously charming_ Steevens conj.
121: _from their_] F1. _from all their_ F2 F3 F4.
123: _wife_] F1 (var.). Rowe. _wise_ F1 (var.) F2 F3 F4.
124: _Makes_] _make_ Pope.
_sweet, now, silence_] _now, silence, sweet_ Hanmer.
124: In Ff. the stage direction [Juno, &c. follows line 127.
Capell made the change.
128: _windring_] _winding_ Rowe. _wand'ring_ Steevens.
129: _sedged_] _sedge_ Collier MS.
136: _holiday_] _holly day_ F1 F2 F3. _holy-day_ F4.
139: SCENE IV. Pope.
143: _This is_] _This'_ (for This 's) S. Walker conj.]
_strange_] _most strange_ Hanmer.
145: Ff put a comma after _anger_. Warburton omitted it.
146: _do_] om. Pope. See note (XVI).
151: _this_] F1. _their_ F2 F3 F4. _th' air visions_ Warburton.
156: _rack_] F3 F4. _racke_ F1 F2. _track_ Hanmer. _wreck_ Dyce
(Malone conj.).
163: _your_] F1 F2 F3. _you_ F4.
164: _I thank thee, Ariel: come._] _I thank you:--Ariel, come._
Theobald.
169: _Lest_] F4. _Least_ F1 F2 F3.
170: _Say again_] _Well, say again_ Capell.
180: _furzes_] Rowe. _firzes_ Ff.
181: _shins_] _skins_ Warburton conj. (note, V. 1. p. 87).
182: _filthy-mantled_] _filthy mantled_ Ff. _filth-ymantled_
Steevens conj.
184: _feet_] _fear_ Spedding conj.
190: _all, all_] _are all_ Malone conj.
193: _them on_ Rowe. _on them_ Ff.
Prospero ... invisible. Theobald, Capell. om. Ff.
194: SCENE V. Pope.
230: _Let's alone_] _Let's along_ Theobald. _Let it alone_ Hanmer.
_Let 't alone_ Collier. See note (XVII).
246: _to apes_] om. _to_ Pope.
255: Stage direction added by Theobald.
256: _they_] F1 F3 F4. _thou_ F2.
261: _Lie_] Rowe. _lies_ Ff.
| 4,487 | Scene 1 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201219151049/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/the-tempest/summary-and-analysis/act-iv-scene-1 | Prospero, acknowledging that he has been harsh, now promises a reward that will rectify the young lovers' momentary suffering. Recognizing Ferdinand and Miranda's love for one another -- they have passed the trials that Prospero has set before them -- he offers Miranda to Ferdinand as his wife. Prospero next calls Ariel to help stage a celebration of the betrothal. The celebration includes a masque, presented by the spirits of the island. Suddenly Prospero remembers the three conspirators who have set out to murder him and calls a halt to the masque. He then summons Ariel, who reports that he led the three men, all of whom are very drunk, through a briar patch and into a filthy pond, where he left them wallowing. Prospero instructs Ariel to leave garish clothing on a tree to tempt the men. Soon Caliban, Stefano, and Trinculo appear, foul smelling and wet. Stefano and Trinculo lament the loss of their bottles but are much cheered when they see the clothing hanging nearby. The two ignore Caliban's pleas to continue on their mission and his warnings that their hesitation will lead Prospero to catch them. At that moment, Prospero and Ariel enter with spirits, disguised as hunters and hounds. The three conspirators flee, with the spirits in pursuit. Prospero, acknowledging the power he now holds over all his enemies, promises Ariel that he shall soon be free. Within a few minutes of the opening of this scene, the betrothal is complete, and Miranda and Ferdinand's future has been determined to Prospero's satisfaction. The virtue and honor of these young people transcends the actions of their fathers and, in this betrothal, lies the redemption of their families. For the first time, Prospero can fully reveal his true nature. Finally, there is no need to be punitive or autocratic, and he can simply enjoy his daughter's happiness. For these few moments, the audience can witness what Prospero is like without the weight of revenge or control motivating his actions. Even in his gentleness and goodwill toward Ferdinand, Prospero does not forget that he is still Miranda's father, and as such, he is responsible for her until she is safely wed. Consequently, a significant amount of time is spent warning Ferdinand that he must control his lust until the wedding takes place. Prospero warns the young man that "barren hate, / Sour-eyed disdain, and discord," will be his reward if he cannot control his lust . All of this is in keeping with the expected parental role. Miranda is even more innocent than most young women, having had none of the socialization that other young women would experience. Because of her isolation, she is more vulnerable, and her father is aware of her purity of heart. However, he is also a father, facing the imminent loss of his only child, and so his excessive warnings to Ferdinand to control his lust are to be expected. The betrothal ceremony is sealed with a masque, and, in keeping with the motif of reality and illusion, this masque draws on mythical goddesses and on Greek and Roman mythology. The goddesses are selected for their symbolism and connections to nature and represent the promise of fertility and fecundity, heavenly harmony, and an eternal springtime of love. As the goddess of the rainbow, Iris is the promise of spring rains leading to a bountiful harvest. As a messenger from Juno, she also represents the gods' blessing on this betrothal. When Juno appears, her presence affirms the blessing of the heavens, and since Juno is the goddess of marriage and childbirth, her presence is the promise of a happy union for the couple and a blessing of many children. Finally, Ceres' appearance also promises nature's blessing on this marriage. Together, the goddesses are the promise of celestial harmony, fruitful harvests, and eternal seasons without winter. Venus, with her emphasis on abandon and sexual love is deliberately excluded, since the focus of the masque is on honorable marriage. The pastoral tradition focuses on a nostalgic image of the peace and simplicity of the life of shepherds and other rural folk in an idealized natural setting. Pastoral poetry is characterized by a state of contentment and a focus on the contemplative life. As is the case with most masques, Prospero's masque focuses on these pastoral motifs, with reapers and nymphs celebrating the fecundity of the land. The land is green, the harvesters sunburned, and the harvest worth celebrating. Love is innocent and romantic and not sexual. The country life, with its abundance of harvests and peaceful existence is an idealized world that ignores the realities of country life with its many hardships. But a wedding masque is not the time to remind the young couple of the possible hardships that they will face. Instead, Prospero focuses on the blessings of a happy marriage and the contentment that Ferdinand and Miranda will bring one another. At the conclusion of the masque, Prospero addresses Ferdinand and tells him that "We are such stuff / As dreams are made on" . This is a reminder that the masque, with all its heavenly creatures, is not real. Like the masque, life, too, will come to its inevitable end. Prospero reminds Ferdinand that each man's life is framed by dreams. The evidence of that life, with its earthly possessions, is only temporary. Again, this points to the role of the young couple as redeemers for their father's sins. Alonso, and through him, Antonio and Sebastian, have placed too much emphasis on worldly possessions and titles. Even Prospero, with his focus on books, has forgotten that they are also only temporary vestiges in this life. This reminder that corporeal riches are only temporary also seems to be directed toward Stefano and Trinculo. Many scholars and critics would like to see Shakespeare's autobiographical presence in Prospero's words. Those who think that Shakespeare is allowing Prospero to speak his farewell to the stage find "Our revels now are ended" to be a poignant reminder of the temporal plight of all men's lives. Since The Tempest comes near the end of Shakespeare's career and life, it is very tempting to read autobiography into Prospero's words. Still, his words may only be an impassioned reminder for each man to value life and accept its temporal limitations. At the scene's end, Prospero must shrug off the mantle of fatherhood and assume the cloak of ruler and deal with the three conspirators who plot his death: Caliban, Stefano, and Trinculo. The punishment that Ariel reports is more nuisance than painful, another reminder that Prospero's retribution includes no serious injuries. Aside from a few scratches, the trip through the briar patch and the putrid pond only injure the men's pride. Even the spirit hunters and dogs that give Caliban, Stefano, and Trinculo chase are little more than air, not capable of causing their prey any harm. This mild punishment reflects Prospero's inherent good nature and his willingness to forgive his enemies. He will make them suffer for their plotting, but he will do them no real injury. Although it was not always clear earlier in the play, by this act, Prospero's true nature, his goodness and his humanity, have become clear to the audience. Glossary genius either of two spirits, one good and one evil, supposed to influence one's destiny. Phoebus' steeds the mythological horses that drew the chariot of the sun. Here, the suggestion is that they are lame from the long day and overriding. vanity reference to an illusion or trick that Prospero has created. abstemious moderate, especially in eating and drinking; temperate. Prospero is warning Ferdinand once again about resisting lust before the wedding occurs. bring a corollary here, meaning to bring too many spirits rather than not enough. amain at or with great speed; here, Miranda's peacocks fly quickly. sicklemen reference to nymphs disguised as harvesters. unbacked not broken to the saddle: said of a horse. trumpery something showy but worthless; here, the gaudy clothing designated as bait for the three conspirators. frippery here, an old clothing shop. dropsy a disease characterized by the accumulation of fluid in the connective tissues, resulting in swelling. jerkin a short, closefitting jacket, often sleeveless. This scene opens with Ariel revealing to Prospero that Alonso, Sebastian, and Antonio are remorseful, worried, and desperate. Gonzalo is worried and grief-stricken at his king's pain. Prospero reassures Ariel that he will be compassionate in dealing with his enemies and asks that Ariel bring the group to him. While he is waiting for the king and his party to appear, Prospero soliloquizes about what he has accomplished with magic and, at the soliloquy's end, promises that he will now give up his magic, bury his magic staff, and drown his magic book at sea. Almost immediately, Ariel enters with the royal party, who appear to be in a trance, and places them within the magic circle that Prospero had earlier drawn. With a few chanted words, the spell is removed. Prospero, clothed in the garments of the duke of Milan -- his rightful position -- appears before them. In a gesture of reconciliation, Prospero embraces Alonso, who is filled with remorse and immediately gives up Prospero's dukedom. Gonzalo is also embraced in turn, and then Prospero turns to Sebastian and Antonio. Prospero tells them that he will not charge them as traitors, at this time. Antonio is forgiven and required to renounce his claims on Prospero's dukedom. While Alonso continues to mourn the loss of his son, Prospero relates that he too has lost his child, his daughter. But he means that he has lost her in marriage and pulls back a curtain to reveal Ferdinand and Miranda playing chess. Ferdinand explains to his father that he is betrothed to Miranda and that this event occurred while he thought his father dead. Alonso quickly welcomes Miranda and says he will be a second father to his son's affianced. At the sight of the couple, Gonzalo begins to cry and thanks God for having worked such a miracle. Ariel enters with the master of the boat and boatswain. Although the ship lay in harbor and in perfect shape, the puzzled men cannot explain how any of this has occurred. Alonso is also mystified, but Prospero tells him not to trouble his mind with such concerns. Next, Ariel leads in Caliban, Stefano, and Trinculo, who are still drunk. Prospero explains that these men have robbed him and plotted to murder him. Caliban immediately repents and promises to seek grace. The three conspirators, who have sobered somewhat since confronted with Prospero and the king, are sent to decorate Prospero's cell. Prospero invites his guests to spend the night with him, where he will tell them of his adventures and of his life during these past 12 years. Ariel's last duty to Prospero is to provide calm seas when they sail the next morning. | This final scene indicates the extent of Prospero's forgiveness and provides an example of humanity toward one's enemies. Before he confronts his enemies, Prospero tells Ariel that "The rarer action is / In virtue than in vengeance" . That is, it is better to forgive than to hate one's enemies. This is the example that Prospero provides in reuniting everyone in this final scene. When he emerges from his trance, Alonso moves quickly to embrace Prospero, and just as quickly, he renounces his claims to Prospero's dukedom. This is the behavior the audience expects of Ferdinand's father, and it is what Prospero requires to resolve this conflict. Ferdinand is an honorable young man, filled with love and charity, and it is reasonable to expect that he learned these values from his father, even if his father has, on occasion, forgotten them. Alonso is honestly delighted in Ferdinand's engagement and welcomes Miranda with authentic grace. It is to be predicted that he is happy at recovering his son, but he is also clearly pleased to have gained a daughter. These spontaneous actions reveal that Alonso is as humane and honest as Prospero. It is equally clear that Antonio and Sebastian each lack the humanity of their respective brothers. No apology is forthcoming from Antonio, and Sebastian thinks that Prospero is very likely the devil. Antonio never directly addresses Prospero, not even to justify his previous actions. And although both Prospero and Miranda might have died when cast out on to the sea some 12 years earlier, Antonio has no words for his niece. In spite of the obvious absence of regret from his brother, Prospero is true to his promise and seeks no revenge against Antonio. There is no reason to assume that shame restrains Antonio from speaking, and in all likelihood, he only regrets having been caught. Although Prospero warns his brother that he might still charge him with treason in the future, this warning is unlikely to restrain such a recalcitrant as Antonio. Prospero's humanity is clearly obvious in his treatment of Antonio, whom he calls traitor but whom he declines to treat as a traitor. Critics and audience might be tempted to label Antonio as an unnatural brother, as would also be true for Sebastian. But their cruelty only indicates that nature provides for both goodness and evil. In the Christian world of the Shakespeare's time, evil is chosen, not destined, and nature provides for all outcomes, those who are virtuous and their counterparts, those who are corrupt. Hence, evil siblings are as natural as good siblings. Although the self-serving behavior of Antonio and Sebastian may be despicable, they are still a part of the natural world. Caliban is also from the natural world, although as the child of a witch and devil. He is certainly different from the other humans on the island, but in this final scene, he displays more humanity than many of Prospero's "civilized" enemies. Antonio's only remark in this whole scene is to suggest that Caliban provides an opportunity to make money . Antonio and Sebastian echo Stefano and Trinculo's earlier notion of exhibiting Caliban for profit, and in doing so, they reaffirm the impression that even the upper classes can be as lacking in morals as the two examples of the lower class, a butler and a court jester. Caliban, however, has risen above his companions and willingly admits his errors. In admitting his fault, Caliban proves himself more honorable than those who are socially his superior, Antonio and Sebastian. Caliban is often celebrated as a natural man, one who is unspoiled by civilization. And yet, he easily embraces the worse that civilization has to offer. When exposed to Stefano and Trinculo, Caliban embraces their drunkenness and, in return, entices them to help plan a heinous crime. Many critics justify Caliban's actions by pointing to Prospero's persecution of Caliban. But nowhere in this play does Shakespeare validate this kind of revenge. Prospero may enslave Caliban, but he does not threaten his very existence. Certainly there is no way to justify slavery, and Shakespeare makes no attempt to do so. In the end, Prospero leaves Caliban to his island and to the natural world that he craves. The conclusion is about redemption, the personal redemption that so many of the participants reach. Caliban's regret during this final scene indicates he, too, has found the way to reconciliation. Gonzalo is one of the few participants who has no need to ask forgiveness nor any cause to regret his actions. Upon discovering that Ferdinand is alive and that he is betrothed to Miranda, Gonzalo quite properly thanks God, who has "chalked forth the way" . Gonzalo also sees the irony in Miranda's offspring inheriting all that was her father's and all that belongs to his enemy. He also observes that there is much that has been restored: Ferdinand to his father, and with him, a wife. But there is more. Prospero's dukedom has been restored, as has the ship and all its missing crew. Yet more important than people or objects, other essential components of civilized society have been restored: authority, harmony, and order. Even before this reconciliation scene occurs, Prospero has promised to put aside his magic and dispose of his magic book and staff, which are the source of his power. He has used magic to work in concert with nature, not to control or evoke evil. Now that he has his enemies under his control, Prospero permits compassion to replace magic. This putting away of his magic also signifies that Prospero's game is at an end. He has used magic to restore harmony and now needs it no more. The play ends with the promise of Ariel's freedom and the restoration of Prospero to a life filled with all that nature and God intended. Glossary mantle to enclose or envelop. furtherer an accomplice. rapier a slender two-edged sword used chiefly in thrusting. subtleties here, the illusions. requite to make return or repayment to for a benefit, injury, and so on; reward. tight and yare sound and ready. The ship is ready to sail. coragio take courage . | 1,817 | 1,025 | [
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110 | false | pinkmonkey | all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/55.txt | finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_20_part_2.txt | Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 54 | chapter 54 | null | {"name": "CHAPTER 54", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820050202/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmTessD63.asp", "summary": "In his journey to find Tess, Angel first visits Flintcomb-Ash, where he learns she is no longer working. He continues to Marlott and learns where Joan has gone. He also finds out about John's death and sees his fancy tombstone that links him to the D'Urbervilles. He rushes on to Kingsbere, where he locates Joan. She, however, is very reluctant to give him information about Tess. Finally, she tells Angel that Tess is in Sanbourne.", "analysis": "Notes In this chapter, Angel's determination is presented. He rushes from town to town searching for his wife. As he visits Marlott, Angel, like Tess, remembers the May-Day dance and is saddened to think how different things might be if he had danced with her then. He is also saddened to see the family's pathetic attempts to ennoble John by placing a showy tombstone at his grave. Angel learns that the marker is unpaid and takes care of the bill. When Angel meets Joan for the first time, he is not surprised at her reticence with him. After all, he has deserted her daughter and hurt her greatly. But when Angel reveals his feelings for Tess and explains the pain he is going through, Joan finally tells him that Tess is living in Sanbourne. She also warns Angel that her daughter is no longer expecting him to return. Angel still does not give up hope, but pushes on to Sanbourne to find Tess"} |
In a quarter of an hour Clare was leaving the house, whence his
mother watched his thin figure as it disappeared into the street.
He had declined to borrow his father's old mare, well knowing of
its necessity to the household. He went to the inn, where he hired
a trap, and could hardly wait during the harnessing. In a very few
minutes after, he was driving up the hill out of the town which,
three or four months earlier in the year, Tess had descended with
such hopes and ascended with such shattered purposes.
Benvill Lane soon stretched before him, its hedges and trees purple
with buds; but he was looking at other things, and only recalled
himself to the scene sufficiently to enable him to keep the way. In
something less than an hour-and-a-half he had skirted the south of
the King's Hintock estates and ascended to the untoward solitude of
Cross-in-Hand, the unholy stone whereon Tess had been compelled by
Alec d'Urberville, in his whim of reformation, to swear the strange
oath that she would never wilfully tempt him again. The pale and
blasted nettle-stems of the preceding year even now lingered nakedly
in the banks, young green nettles of the present spring growing from
their roots.
Thence he went along the verge of the upland overhanging the other
Hintocks, and, turning to the right, plunged into the bracing
calcareous region of Flintcomb-Ash, the address from which she had
written to him in one of the letters, and which he supposed to be
the place of sojourn referred to by her mother. Here, of course, he
did not find her; and what added to his depression was the discovery
that no "Mrs Clare" had ever been heard of by the cottagers or by
the farmer himself, though Tess was remembered well enough by her
Christian name. His name she had obviously never used during their
separation, and her dignified sense of their total severance was
shown not much less by this abstention than by the hardships she had
chosen to undergo (of which he now learnt for the first time) rather
than apply to his father for more funds.
From this place they told him Tess Durbeyfield had gone, without due
notice, to the home of her parents on the other side of Blackmoor,
and it therefore became necessary to find Mrs Durbeyfield. She had
told him she was not now at Marlott, but had been curiously reticent
as to her actual address, and the only course was to go to Marlott
and inquire for it. The farmer who had been so churlish with Tess
was quite smooth-tongued to Clare, and lent him a horse and man to
drive him towards Marlott, the gig he had arrived in being sent back
to Emminster; for the limit of a day's journey with that horse was
reached.
Clare would not accept the loan of the farmer's vehicle for a further
distance than to the outskirts of the Vale, and, sending it back with
the man who had driven him, he put up at an inn, and next day entered
on foot the region wherein was the spot of his dear Tess's birth.
It was as yet too early in the year for much colour to appear in the
gardens and foliage; the so-called spring was but winter overlaid
with a thin coat of greenness, and it was of a parcel with his
expectations.
The house in which Tess had passed the years of her childhood was
now inhabited by another family who had never known her. The new
residents were in the garden, taking as much interest in their own
doings as if the homestead had never passed its primal time in
conjunction with the histories of others, beside which the histories
of these were but as a tale told by an idiot. They walked about the
garden paths with thoughts of their own concerns entirely uppermost,
bringing their actions at every moment in jarring collision with the
dim ghosts behind them, talking as though the time when Tess lived
there were not one whit intenser in story than now. Even the spring
birds sang over their heads as if they thought there was nobody
missing in particular.
On inquiry of these precious innocents, to whom even the name of
their predecessors was a failing memory, Clare learned that John
Durbeyfield was dead; that his widow and children had left Marlott,
declaring that they were going to live at Kingsbere, but instead of
doing so had gone on to another place they mentioned. By this time
Clare abhorred the house for ceasing to contain Tess, and hastened
away from its hated presence without once looking back.
His way was by the field in which he had first beheld her at the
dance. It was as bad as the house--even worse. He passed on through
the churchyard, where, amongst the new headstones, he saw one of a
somewhat superior design to the rest. The inscription ran thus:
In memory of John Durbeyfield, rightly d'Urberville, of
the once powerful family of that Name, and Direct
Descendant through an illustrious Line from Sir Pagan
d'Urberville, one of the Knights of the Conqueror. Died
March 10th, 18--
HOW ARE THE MIGHTY FALLEN.
Some man, apparently the sexton, had observed Clare standing there,
and drew nigh. "Ah, sir, now that's a man who didn't want to lie
here, but wished to be carried to Kingsbere, where his ancestors be."
"And why didn't they respect his wish?"
"Oh--no money. Bless your soul, sir, why--there, I wouldn't wish to
say it everywhere, but--even this headstone, for all the flourish
wrote upon en, is not paid for."
"Ah, who put it up?"
The man told the name of a mason in the village, and, on leaving the
churchyard, Clare called at the mason's house. He found that the
statement was true, and paid the bill. This done, he turned in the
direction of the migrants.
The distance was too long for a walk, but Clare felt such a strong
desire for isolation that at first he would neither hire a conveyance
nor go to a circuitous line of railway by which he might eventually
reach the place. At Shaston, however, he found he must hire; but
the way was such that he did not enter Joan's place till about seven
o'clock in the evening, having traversed a distance of over twenty
miles since leaving Marlott.
The village being small he had little difficulty in finding Mrs
Durbeyfield's tenement, which was a house in a walled garden,
remote from the main road, where she had stowed away her clumsy old
furniture as best she could. It was plain that for some reason or
other she had not wished him to visit her, and he felt his call to
be somewhat of an intrusion. She came to the door herself, and the
light from the evening sky fell upon her face.
This was the first time that Clare had ever met her, but he was too
preoccupied to observe more than that she was still a handsome woman,
in the garb of a respectable widow. He was obliged to explain that
he was Tess's husband, and his object in coming there, and he did it
awkwardly enough. "I want to see her at once," he added. "You said
you would write to me again, but you have not done so."
"Because she've not come home," said Joan.
"Do you know if she is well?"
"I don't. But you ought to, sir," said she.
"I admit it. Where is she staying?"
From the beginning of the interview Joan had disclosed her
embarrassment by keeping her hand to the side of her cheek.
"I--don't know exactly where she is staying," she answered. "She
was--but--"
"Where was she?"
"Well, she is not there now."
In her evasiveness she paused again, and the younger children had by
this time crept to the door, where, pulling at his mother's skirts,
the youngest murmured--
"Is this the gentleman who is going to marry Tess?"
"He has married her," Joan whispered. "Go inside."
Clare saw her efforts for reticence, and asked--
"Do you think Tess would wish me to try and find her? If not, of
course--"
"I don't think she would."
"Are you sure?"
"I am sure she wouldn't."
He was turning away; and then he thought of Tess's tender letter.
"I am sure she would!" he retorted passionately. "I know her better
than you do."
"That's very likely, sir; for I have never really known her."
"Please tell me her address, Mrs Durbeyfield, in kindness to a lonely
wretched man!" Tess's mother again restlessly swept her cheek with
her vertical hand, and seeing that he suffered, she at last said, is
a low voice--
"She is at Sandbourne."
"Ah--where there? Sandbourne has become a large place, they say."
"I don't know more particularly than I have said--Sandbourne. For
myself, I was never there."
It was apparent that Joan spoke the truth in this, and he pressed her
no further.
"Are you in want of anything?" he said gently.
"No, sir," she replied. "We are fairly well provided for."
Without entering the house Clare turned away. There was a station
three miles ahead, and paying off his coachman, he walked thither.
The last train to Sandbourne left shortly after, and it bore Clare
on its wheels.
| 1,482 | CHAPTER 54 | https://web.archive.org/web/20180820050202/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmTessD63.asp | In his journey to find Tess, Angel first visits Flintcomb-Ash, where he learns she is no longer working. He continues to Marlott and learns where Joan has gone. He also finds out about John's death and sees his fancy tombstone that links him to the D'Urbervilles. He rushes on to Kingsbere, where he locates Joan. She, however, is very reluctant to give him information about Tess. Finally, she tells Angel that Tess is in Sanbourne. | Notes In this chapter, Angel's determination is presented. He rushes from town to town searching for his wife. As he visits Marlott, Angel, like Tess, remembers the May-Day dance and is saddened to think how different things might be if he had danced with her then. He is also saddened to see the family's pathetic attempts to ennoble John by placing a showy tombstone at his grave. Angel learns that the marker is unpaid and takes care of the bill. When Angel meets Joan for the first time, he is not surprised at her reticence with him. After all, he has deserted her daughter and hurt her greatly. But when Angel reveals his feelings for Tess and explains the pain he is going through, Joan finally tells him that Tess is living in Sanbourne. She also warns Angel that her daughter is no longer expecting him to return. Angel still does not give up hope, but pushes on to Sanbourne to find Tess | 75 | 163 | [
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161 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/16.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Sense and Sensibility/section_15_part_0.txt | Sense and Sensibility.chapter 16 | chapter 16 | null | {"name": "Chapter 16", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210421140324/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/sense-and-sensibility/summary/chapter-16", "summary": "Marianne mopes around dramatically for the next few days, yearning tragicomically for Willoughby. Days pass, and no letter from Willoughby arrives. Mrs. Dashwood and Elinor are both surprised; Mom passes it off as necessary secrecy between the two forbidden lovers, but Elinor is worried that there's something else going on. She wants her mother to ask Marianne if they're actually engaged, once and for all. Sir John and Mrs. Jennings tactlessly remind of Marianne for her abandonment by her supposed fiance. The Dashwoods try not to bring Willoughby up in front of Marianne, but one day Mrs. Dashwood lets a reference to him slip, and Marianne basically freaks out. One day, Marianne and her sisters are on a walk through the countryside. They see a horseman in the distance - who could it be? Marianne, of course, is totally convinced that it's Willoughby; Elinor doesn't think so. The mystery man turns out to be Edward Ferrars. Marianne is horribly disappointed, but she's happy for Elinor's sake that Edward has come to visit. Marianne is surprised by Edward and Elinor's rather tepid meeting. She can't understand how the two of them aren't overjoyed. She immediately forgets her pleasure at finding Edward here, and returns to mooning over Willoughby. It turns out that Edward has actually been in the area for two weeks - so why hasn't he come to see them yet, huh? Apparently he's been staying with other friends in Plymouth, and before then, he'd been at Norland, the Dashwoods' old home. Marianne gushes about Norland, then moves on and gushes about their new home, Barton. Edward makes a practical comment about the house that's a little too practical for Marianne's poetic taste, and she puzzles over his unromantic attitude. Edward then asks about the neighbors, and Marianne and Elinor clash - Marianne puts down the Middletons, but Elinor comes to their defense. Elinor is secretly offended by Edward's coldness towards her, and can't understand why he's being so standoffish. She responds likewise to him.", "analysis": ""} |
Marianne would have thought herself very inexcusable had she been able
to sleep at all the first night after parting from Willoughby. She
would have been ashamed to look her family in the face the next
morning, had she not risen from her bed in more need of repose than
when she lay down in it. But the feelings which made such composure a
disgrace, left her in no danger of incurring it. She was awake the
whole night, and she wept the greatest part of it. She got up with a
headache, was unable to talk, and unwilling to take any nourishment;
giving pain every moment to her mother and sisters, and forbidding all
attempt at consolation from either. Her sensibility was potent enough!
When breakfast was over she walked out by herself, and wandered about
the village of Allenham, indulging the recollection of past enjoyment
and crying over the present reverse for the chief of the morning.
The evening passed off in the equal indulgence of feeling. She played
over every favourite song that she had been used to play to Willoughby,
every air in which their voices had been oftenest joined, and sat at
the instrument gazing on every line of music that he had written out
for her, till her heart was so heavy that no farther sadness could be
gained; and this nourishment of grief was every day applied. She spent
whole hours at the pianoforte alternately singing and crying; her voice
often totally suspended by her tears. In books too, as well as in
music, she courted the misery which a contrast between the past and
present was certain of giving. She read nothing but what they had been
used to read together.
Such violence of affliction indeed could not be supported for ever; it
sunk within a few days into a calmer melancholy; but these employments,
to which she daily recurred, her solitary walks and silent meditations,
still produced occasional effusions of sorrow as lively as ever.
No letter from Willoughby came; and none seemed expected by Marianne.
Her mother was surprised, and Elinor again became uneasy. But Mrs.
Dashwood could find explanations whenever she wanted them, which at
least satisfied herself.
"Remember, Elinor," said she, "how very often Sir John fetches our
letters himself from the post, and carries them to it. We have already
agreed that secrecy may be necessary, and we must acknowledge that it
could not be maintained if their correspondence were to pass through
Sir John's hands."
Elinor could not deny the truth of this, and she tried to find in it a
motive sufficient for their silence. But there was one method so
direct, so simple, and in her opinion so eligible of knowing the real
state of the affair, and of instantly removing all mystery, that she
could not help suggesting it to her mother.
"Why do you not ask Marianne at once," said she, "whether she is or she
is not engaged to Willoughby? From you, her mother, and so kind, so
indulgent a mother, the question could not give offence. It would be
the natural result of your affection for her. She used to be all
unreserve, and to you more especially."
"I would not ask such a question for the world. Supposing it possible
that they are not engaged, what distress would not such an enquiry
inflict! At any rate it would be most ungenerous. I should never
deserve her confidence again, after forcing from her a confession of
what is meant at present to be unacknowledged to any one. I know
Marianne's heart: I know that she dearly loves me, and that I shall not
be the last to whom the affair is made known, when circumstances make
the revealment of it eligible. I would not attempt to force the
confidence of any one; of a child much less; because a sense of duty
would prevent the denial which her wishes might direct."
Elinor thought this generosity overstrained, considering her sister's
youth, and urged the matter farther, but in vain; common sense, common
care, common prudence, were all sunk in Mrs. Dashwood's romantic
delicacy.
It was several days before Willoughby's name was mentioned before
Marianne by any of her family; Sir John and Mrs. Jennings, indeed, were
not so nice; their witticisms added pain to many a painful hour;--but
one evening, Mrs. Dashwood, accidentally taking up a volume of
Shakespeare, exclaimed,
"We have never finished Hamlet, Marianne; our dear Willoughby went away
before we could get through it. We will put it by, that when he comes
again...But it may be months, perhaps, before THAT happens."
"Months!" cried Marianne, with strong surprise. "No--nor many weeks."
Mrs. Dashwood was sorry for what she had said; but it gave Elinor
pleasure, as it produced a reply from Marianne so expressive of
confidence in Willoughby and knowledge of his intentions.
One morning, about a week after his leaving the country, Marianne was
prevailed on to join her sisters in their usual walk, instead of
wandering away by herself. Hitherto she had carefully avoided every
companion in her rambles. If her sisters intended to walk on the
downs, she directly stole away towards the lanes; if they talked of the
valley, she was as speedy in climbing the hills, and could never be
found when the others set off. But at length she was secured by the
exertions of Elinor, who greatly disapproved such continual seclusion.
They walked along the road through the valley, and chiefly in silence,
for Marianne's MIND could not be controlled, and Elinor, satisfied with
gaining one point, would not then attempt more. Beyond the entrance of
the valley, where the country, though still rich, was less wild and
more open, a long stretch of the road which they had travelled on first
coming to Barton, lay before them; and on reaching that point, they
stopped to look around them, and examine a prospect which formed the
distance of their view from the cottage, from a spot which they had
never happened to reach in any of their walks before.
Amongst the objects in the scene, they soon discovered an animated one;
it was a man on horseback riding towards them. In a few minutes they
could distinguish him to be a gentleman; and in a moment afterwards
Marianne rapturously exclaimed,
"It is he; it is indeed;--I know it is!"--and was hastening to meet
him, when Elinor cried out,
"Indeed, Marianne, I think you are mistaken. It is not Willoughby.
The person is not tall enough for him, and has not his air."
"He has, he has," cried Marianne, "I am sure he has. His air, his
coat, his horse. I knew how soon he would come."
She walked eagerly on as she spoke; and Elinor, to screen Marianne from
particularity, as she felt almost certain of its not being Willoughby,
quickened her pace and kept up with her. They were soon within thirty
yards of the gentleman. Marianne looked again; her heart sunk within
her; and abruptly turning round, she was hurrying back, when the voices
of both her sisters were raised to detain her; a third, almost as well
known as Willoughby's, joined them in begging her to stop, and she
turned round with surprise to see and welcome Edward Ferrars.
He was the only person in the world who could at that moment be
forgiven for not being Willoughby; the only one who could have gained a
smile from her; but she dispersed her tears to smile on HIM, and in her
sister's happiness forgot for a time her own disappointment.
He dismounted, and giving his horse to his servant, walked back with
them to Barton, whither he was purposely coming to visit them.
He was welcomed by them all with great cordiality, but especially by
Marianne, who showed more warmth of regard in her reception of him than
even Elinor herself. To Marianne, indeed, the meeting between Edward
and her sister was but a continuation of that unaccountable coldness
which she had often observed at Norland in their mutual behaviour. On
Edward's side, more particularly, there was a deficiency of all that a
lover ought to look and say on such an occasion. He was confused,
seemed scarcely sensible of pleasure in seeing them, looked neither
rapturous nor gay, said little but what was forced from him by
questions, and distinguished Elinor by no mark of affection. Marianne
saw and listened with increasing surprise. She began almost to feel a
dislike of Edward; and it ended, as every feeling must end with her, by
carrying back her thoughts to Willoughby, whose manners formed a
contrast sufficiently striking to those of his brother elect.
After a short silence which succeeded the first surprise and enquiries
of meeting, Marianne asked Edward if he came directly from London. No,
he had been in Devonshire a fortnight.
"A fortnight!" she repeated, surprised at his being so long in the same
county with Elinor without seeing her before.
He looked rather distressed as he added, that he had been staying with
some friends near Plymouth.
"Have you been lately in Sussex?" said Elinor.
"I was at Norland about a month ago."
"And how does dear, dear Norland look?" cried Marianne.
"Dear, dear Norland," said Elinor, "probably looks much as it always
does at this time of the year. The woods and walks thickly covered
with dead leaves."
"Oh," cried Marianne, "with what transporting sensation have I formerly
seen them fall! How have I delighted, as I walked, to see them driven
in showers about me by the wind! What feelings have they, the season,
the air altogether inspired! Now there is no one to regard them. They
are seen only as a nuisance, swept hastily off, and driven as much as
possible from the sight."
"It is not every one," said Elinor, "who has your passion for dead
leaves."
"No; my feelings are not often shared, not often understood. But
SOMETIMES they are."--As she said this, she sunk into a reverie for a
few moments;--but rousing herself again, "Now, Edward," said she,
calling his attention to the prospect, "here is Barton valley. Look up
to it, and be tranquil if you can. Look at those hills! Did you ever
see their equals? To the left is Barton park, amongst those woods and
plantations. You may see the end of the house. And there, beneath
that farthest hill, which rises with such grandeur, is our cottage."
"It is a beautiful country," he replied; "but these bottoms must be
dirty in winter."
"How can you think of dirt, with such objects before you?"
"Because," replied he, smiling, "among the rest of the objects before
me, I see a very dirty lane."
"How strange!" said Marianne to herself as she walked on.
"Have you an agreeable neighbourhood here? Are the Middletons pleasant
people?"
"No, not all," answered Marianne; "we could not be more unfortunately
situated."
"Marianne," cried her sister, "how can you say so? How can you be so
unjust? They are a very respectable family, Mr. Ferrars; and towards
us have behaved in the friendliest manner. Have you forgot, Marianne,
how many pleasant days we have owed to them?"
"No," said Marianne, in a low voice, "nor how many painful moments."
Elinor took no notice of this; and directing her attention to their
visitor, endeavoured to support something like discourse with him, by
talking of their present residence, its conveniences, &c. extorting
from him occasional questions and remarks. His coldness and reserve
mortified her severely; she was vexed and half angry; but resolving to
regulate her behaviour to him by the past rather than the present, she
avoided every appearance of resentment or displeasure, and treated him
as she thought he ought to be treated from the family connection.
| 1,849 | Chapter 16 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210421140324/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/sense-and-sensibility/summary/chapter-16 | Marianne mopes around dramatically for the next few days, yearning tragicomically for Willoughby. Days pass, and no letter from Willoughby arrives. Mrs. Dashwood and Elinor are both surprised; Mom passes it off as necessary secrecy between the two forbidden lovers, but Elinor is worried that there's something else going on. She wants her mother to ask Marianne if they're actually engaged, once and for all. Sir John and Mrs. Jennings tactlessly remind of Marianne for her abandonment by her supposed fiance. The Dashwoods try not to bring Willoughby up in front of Marianne, but one day Mrs. Dashwood lets a reference to him slip, and Marianne basically freaks out. One day, Marianne and her sisters are on a walk through the countryside. They see a horseman in the distance - who could it be? Marianne, of course, is totally convinced that it's Willoughby; Elinor doesn't think so. The mystery man turns out to be Edward Ferrars. Marianne is horribly disappointed, but she's happy for Elinor's sake that Edward has come to visit. Marianne is surprised by Edward and Elinor's rather tepid meeting. She can't understand how the two of them aren't overjoyed. She immediately forgets her pleasure at finding Edward here, and returns to mooning over Willoughby. It turns out that Edward has actually been in the area for two weeks - so why hasn't he come to see them yet, huh? Apparently he's been staying with other friends in Plymouth, and before then, he'd been at Norland, the Dashwoods' old home. Marianne gushes about Norland, then moves on and gushes about their new home, Barton. Edward makes a practical comment about the house that's a little too practical for Marianne's poetic taste, and she puzzles over his unromantic attitude. Edward then asks about the neighbors, and Marianne and Elinor clash - Marianne puts down the Middletons, but Elinor comes to their defense. Elinor is secretly offended by Edward's coldness towards her, and can't understand why he's being so standoffish. She responds likewise to him. | null | 335 | 1 | [
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28,054 | true | gradesaver | all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/book_5.txt | finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Brothers Karamazov/section_4_part_0.txt | The Brothers Karamazov.book 5.chapter 1-chapter 7 | book 5 | null | {"name": "Book 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422052201/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-brothers-karamazov/study-guide/summary-book-5", "summary": "When Alyosha returns to see Katerina, he finds that she has fallen ill. Alyosha explains to Lise what happened with the captain because Katerina is asleep. Lise is affected by Alyosha's loving compassion for the man, and she is moved to confess to Alyosha that the letter was not a joke and that she did mean what she said. Alyosha confesses that he has lied; he does have the letter, and he keeps it near to his heart because it is so meaningful to him. They realize that they care for each other, and they decide to get married. Lise's mother has been listening to their conversation, and she tells Alyosha she does not approve of the marriage. She thinks Lise is too young. Alyosha tells her that the marriage is still a long way off, so she does not have to worry about Lise's age. Alyosha goes to find Dmitri. He decides that it is more important to help his brother than to hurry back to Father Zossima's side. Instead, he finds Smerdyakov, and he asks him if he has seen Dmitri. Smerdyakov tells Alyosha that Ivan is going to meet Dmitri at a restaurant, so Alyosha goes to meet his two brothers there. He cannot find Dmitri--only Ivan is there. Ivan says he has grown to like and respect Alyosha. He tells Alyosha that he has a desire for living, but the world seems to be an unfair, ugly place. Alyosha is too preoccupied with the situation between his father and Dmitri, however, to focus on this conversation. He is worried that something dreadful might happen between the two of them if Ivan goes to Moscow. Ivan responds that it is not his responsibility to take care of his brother or his licentious father. He tells Alyosha that he hates even being around his father; this is why he came to the restaurant. Ivan lays out his theological opinions for Alyosha. He says what he \" not accept and cannot accept is the God-created world.\" He believes that the mystery of God does not make sense to him; man should be able to comprehend God if he is God's own creation. Ivan ponders that this means he necessarily has to reject God. Alyosha wonders why Ivan cannot accept the world. Ivan adds that he has \"never been able to understand how it is possible to love one's neighbors.\" He cannot stand the barbarism that seems to be inherent in man. He hates the suffering of children the most. He says that the only rationalization for the suffering of children is that they are \"paying for the sins of their fathers who ate the apple.\" He cannot accept a God that allows this sort of injustice. He feels that loving God is like loving one who tortures you. Alyosha is appalled by all this, and he asks how Ivan can be so pessimistic about the world. Ivan responds that he is not being pessimistic; he simply does not think that anything is worth the suffering of an innocent like a child. He asks Alyosha if he would \"torture just one single creature\" if, by doing so, he could establish peace and tranquility for all mankind. Alyosha says he would not. Ivan begins to recite to Alyosha a poem that he has composed, \"The Grand Inquisitor\": In the sixteenth century, during the Inquisition, Christ returns to the world, healing and preaching in the streets. As he is healing some gatherers, a cardinal realizes who he is and has him arrested. In prison, Christ is visited by the Grand Inquisitor, who admonishes Christ for reappearing; he says that Christ's presence is interfering with the church. When Christ resisted temptations from Satan in the desert, he cursed man with liberty. Ever since, the church has had to work to reverse the damage. For instance, human nature dictates that man will not give up nourishment or safety for the promise of something as ill-defined as a heavenly reward. Thus, given a choice, man will always fail to follow a heavenly path. The Grand Inquisitor argues that \"security\" is preferable to \"freedom.\" Also, if Christ had demonstrated his heavenly ability by performing a miracle instead of humbly resisting temptation, man would \"have something to worship,\" which is \"man's greatest need on Earth.\" The Grand Inquisitor also says that since Christ did not accept the power offered him by the devil, he forced the church to assert power over man. The church has finally gotten man to give up his Christ-given freedom in exchange for \"happiness and security.\" The Grand Inquisitor says he realizes that this puts him on Satan's side of the argument, but he asserts that the precedent that Christ set when he resisted the temptations is very high. It is very difficult for man to achieve this level of strength, and only a few can do so. If only a few strong men can be saved anyway, at least the Grand Inquisitor's plan grants pleasure and satisfaction on Earth. Christ kisses the Inquisitor, never saying a word. Inexplicably, the Grand Inquisitor sets him free and tells him never to return. Ivan concludes his story and looks to Alyosha for his reaction. Alyosha only kisses his brother, and Ivan says, \"That's plagiarism!\" They conclude their meal happily and part ways. Ivan is troubled after he leaves Alyosha. He starts to feel physically ill, but he does not understand why. When he sees Smerdyakov sitting outside, however, he realizes that this \"miserable wretch\" has been weighing on his mind. Instead of lashing out at him, he approaches him very amiably, and the two begin to talk. Smerdyakov says that he is worried by the love triangle consisting of Grushenka, Fyodor, and Dmitri. Both Dmitri and Fyodor are so worked up about the girl that they have both threatened Smerdyakov. He says that he might have an epileptic seizure because of the stress, hinting that he may even fake a seizure for his own safety. He then admits that he is burdened with the knowledge of what Grushenka's \"signals\" to old Karamazov will be when she visits him. He knows that if Grushenka goes to Fyodor, it will throw Dmitri into a rage, and he will come after his father. Smerdyakov fears that Fyodor will be helpless because Grigory and Marfa will not be able to protect him. They are both ill. In addition, Smerdyakov will not be able to help if he is incapacitated by a seizure. This information is alarming to Ivan, and he is skeptical of Smerdyakov's intentions for telling him all of this. He asks Smerdyakov if he has intentionally created a situation where Dmitri will have free reign to murder his father. Ivan realizes that he cannot protect his father since he is going to Moscow. Smerdyakov unsuccessfully pleads with Ivan not to go to Moscow, and they both retire. Ivan lies awake, distressed by his talk with Smerdyakov. When morning comes, he meets with Fyodor, who also pleads with him to stay home with him. Ivan, worn down, decides to stay in town. He informs Smerdyakov that he will indeed stay at home. Later on, Smerdyakov in fact has a seizure and falls down the stairs. As Smerdyakov foresaw, Fyodor is left unprotected, waiting for Grushenka.", "analysis": "Ivan reveals much more of his character in these chapters. For the first time, he talks about what he truly cares about, and though he is still speaking about sweeping issues, he is no longer detached and aloof. He is admitting his deepest concerns and principles. He longs for a world without cruelty, but he feels that most people are cruel. Children are the only ones who are innocent. Even though Ivan says he cannot love his neighbor, it is not because he hates people; he thinks people, on the whole, do not live up to their potential. Ivan is not the cold-hearted intellectual he seemed at first. He is a frustrated idealist. He feels that he is not responsible for his father's safety or his brother's actions. Whereas Father Zossima thinks that every man shares part of the responsibility for the sins of all other men, Ivan feels independent of his fellow men. This is one of many ways that Ivan tries to assert his independence. Since he has been a child, he has felt embarrassed about his father, and he does not like to be associated with him. He did not like living off other people's charity, and he tried to become financially independent. Now, just because he is related to Dmitri and Fyodor, he does not feel compelled to help them as Alyosha does. He feels that he is responsible only for his own actions. His opinion will change after his father is murdered, when his realization of his complicity drives him insane. The lesson Ivan learns about responsibility serves as a sort of parable. Ivan is uneasy about Smerdyakov, but he is not immediately sure why. The servant expresses concern for his own safety and that of his master. He tells Ivan all of the reasons why Fyodor will be vulnerable to an attacker, and the list sounds like too many coincidences to be true. When Smerdyakov explains to Ivan that it is possible to fake an epileptic seizure, his motives become slightly more suspicious. The idea that Smerdyakov can fake a seizure shows Ivan that Smerdyakov is not as helpless as he seems. Perhaps the pathetic servant is capable of manipulating a situation instead of simply commenting on it. He is not the harmless servant he first appeared to be. It also seems that Smerdyakov looks up to Ivan. Smerdyakov's motives are unclear, but his adulation of the Karamazov brother does not seem purely innocent. Smerdyakov's mix of weakness, bitterness, and manipulation is a disturbing combination. The story of the Grand Inquisitor is an allegory for the difference between Ivan's and Alyosha's world views. Like Ivan, the Grand Inquisitor only wants peace and happiness for mankind. He disagrees with Christ, however, about how to achieve this goal. Even though Ivan and Alyosha disagree, they both want the same thing. The most interesting thing about this chapter, however, is that Dostoevsky has included a parable in the middle of the novel. Why would he do this? What could Ivan's poem express that could not be expressed in the story? For one thing, the novel has a deep reverence for storytelling. The whole novel is told as a story recounted by an outside observer. Countless references are made to townspeople and citizens talking about each other, telling stories they have heard about one another. The trial is itself an excuse to tell the story of the Karamazovs in front of an audience. This poem adds another layer of mythology, theology, and philosophy to the novel. The parable deserves an essay in itself, and it will repay a close reading. Ivan brings up an interesting point. He says to Alyosha that if children suffer, it is because they \"are paying for the sins of their fathers who ate the apple.\" This is the first time a character in the novel has directly referred to the concept of the \"sins of the father.\" Ivan does not believe that one should suffer for something someone else has done. He believes that a man should be accountable for his actions and his actions alone. He must acknowledge, however, that the world does not quite work this way. It seems as though people are unfairly punished for their predecessors' or others' mistakes. Sometimes, though, it may not be nature or God enacting an unjust penalty on the innocent. Perhaps the suffering one experiences is internal, self-generated. For instance, Ivan feels embarrassed about his own dependence on others, and he tries to stay independent of those around him. He is not being punished from above for Fyodor's neglect; he has made a decision based on his own feelings. He may have developed these feelings in part because of his father, but his desire for independence is his own. Sometimes, then, one learns to be concerned about poignant issues from the concerns of his ancestors. Perhaps Dmitri does not feel doomed to become an amoral fiend because he is a Karamazov and cannot escape it; or perhaps he feels worried about becoming a bad person because he knows this stigma has plagued his father, and he has developed an irrational fear of this result himself. In any case, Fyodor's actions weigh heavy on each of his sons, and whether Heaven is exacting torture on them for his sins or whether they have individual battles to fight, they are all haunted by Fyodor's ghost."} | Book V. Pro And Contra Chapter I. The Engagement
Madame Hohlakov was again the first to meet Alyosha. She was flustered;
something important had happened. Katerina Ivanovna's hysterics had ended
in a fainting fit, and then "a terrible, awful weakness had followed, she
lay with her eyes turned up and was delirious. Now she was in a fever.
They had sent for Herzenstube; they had sent for the aunts. The aunts were
already here, but Herzenstube had not yet come. They were all sitting in
her room, waiting. She was unconscious now, and what if it turned to brain
fever!"
Madame Hohlakov looked gravely alarmed. "This is serious, serious," she
added at every word, as though nothing that had happened to her before had
been serious. Alyosha listened with distress, and was beginning to
describe his adventures, but she interrupted him at the first words. She
had not time to listen. She begged him to sit with Lise and wait for her
there.
"Lise," she whispered almost in his ear, "Lise has greatly surprised me
just now, dear Alexey Fyodorovitch. She touched me, too, and so my heart
forgives her everything. Only fancy, as soon as you had gone, she began to
be truly remorseful for having laughed at you to-day and yesterday, though
she was not laughing at you, but only joking. But she was seriously sorry
for it, almost ready to cry, so that I was quite surprised. She has never
been really sorry for laughing at me, but has only made a joke of it. And
you know she is laughing at me every minute. But this time she was in
earnest. She thinks a great deal of your opinion, Alexey Fyodorovitch, and
don't take offense or be wounded by her if you can help it. I am never
hard upon her, for she's such a clever little thing. Would you believe it?
She said just now that you were a friend of her childhood, 'the greatest
friend of her childhood'--just think of that--'greatest friend'--and what
about me? She has very strong feelings and memories, and, what's more, she
uses these phrases, most unexpected words, which come out all of a sudden
when you least expect them. She spoke lately about a pine-tree, for
instance: there used to be a pine-tree standing in our garden in her early
childhood. Very likely it's standing there still; so there's no need to
speak in the past tense. Pine-trees are not like people, Alexey
Fyodorovitch, they don't change quickly. 'Mamma,' she said, 'I remember
this pine-tree as in a dream,' only she said something so original about
it that I can't repeat it. Besides, I've forgotten it. Well, good-by! I am
so worried I feel I shall go out of my mind. Ah! Alexey Fyodorovitch, I've
been out of my mind twice in my life. Go to Lise, cheer her up, as you
always can so charmingly. Lise," she cried, going to her door, "here I've
brought you Alexey Fyodorovitch, whom you insulted so. He is not at all
angry, I assure you; on the contrary, he is surprised that you could
suppose so."
"_Merci, maman._ Come in, Alexey Fyodorovitch."
Alyosha went in. Lise looked rather embarrassed, and at once flushed
crimson. She was evidently ashamed of something, and, as people always do
in such cases, she began immediately talking of other things, as though
they were of absorbing interest to her at the moment.
"Mamma has just told me all about the two hundred roubles, Alexey
Fyodorovitch, and your taking them to that poor officer ... and she told
me all the awful story of how he had been insulted ... and you know,
although mamma muddles things ... she always rushes from one thing to
another ... I cried when I heard. Well, did you give him the money and how
is that poor man getting on?"
"The fact is I didn't give it to him, and it's a long story," answered
Alyosha, as though he, too, could think of nothing but his regret at
having failed, yet Lise saw perfectly well that he, too, looked away, and
that he, too, was trying to talk of other things.
Alyosha sat down to the table and began to tell his story, but at the
first words he lost his embarrassment and gained the whole of Lise's
attention as well. He spoke with deep feeling, under the influence of the
strong impression he had just received, and he succeeded in telling his
story well and circumstantially. In old days in Moscow he had been fond of
coming to Lise and describing to her what had just happened to him, what
he had read, or what he remembered of his childhood. Sometimes they had
made day-dreams and woven whole romances together--generally cheerful and
amusing ones. Now they both felt suddenly transported to the old days in
Moscow, two years before. Lise was extremely touched by his story. Alyosha
described Ilusha with warm feeling. When he finished describing how the
luckless man trampled on the money, Lise could not help clasping her hands
and crying out:
"So you didn't give him the money! So you let him run away! Oh, dear, you
ought to have run after him!"
"No, Lise; it's better I didn't run after him," said Alyosha, getting up
from his chair and walking thoughtfully across the room.
"How so? How is it better? Now they are without food and their case is
hopeless?"
"Not hopeless, for the two hundred roubles will still come to them. He'll
take the money to-morrow. To-morrow he will be sure to take it," said
Alyosha, pacing up and down, pondering. "You see, Lise," he went on,
stopping suddenly before her, "I made one blunder, but that, even that, is
all for the best."
"What blunder, and why is it for the best?"
"I'll tell you. He is a man of weak and timorous character; he has
suffered so much and is very good-natured. I keep wondering why he took
offense so suddenly, for I assure you, up to the last minute, he did not
know that he was going to trample on the notes. And I think now that there
was a great deal to offend him ... and it could not have been otherwise in
his position.... To begin with, he was sore at having been so glad of the
money in my presence and not having concealed it from me. If he had been
pleased, but not so much; if he had not shown it; if he had begun
affecting scruples and difficulties, as other people do when they take
money, he might still endure to take it. But he was too genuinely
delighted, and that was mortifying. Ah, Lise, he is a good and truthful
man--that's the worst of the whole business. All the while he talked, his
voice was so weak, so broken, he talked so fast, so fast, he kept laughing
such a laugh, or perhaps he was crying--yes, I am sure he was crying, he
was so delighted--and he talked about his daughters--and about the situation
he could get in another town.... And when he had poured out his heart, he
felt ashamed at having shown me his inmost soul like that. So he began to
hate me at once. He is one of those awfully sensitive poor people. What
had made him feel most ashamed was that he had given in too soon and
accepted me as a friend, you see. At first he almost flew at me and tried
to intimidate me, but as soon as he saw the money he had begun embracing
me; he kept touching me with his hands. This must have been how he came to
feel it all so humiliating, and then I made that blunder, a very important
one. I suddenly said to him that if he had not money enough to move to
another town, we would give it to him, and, indeed, I myself would give
him as much as he wanted out of my own money. That struck him all at once.
Why, he thought, did I put myself forward to help him? You know, Lise,
it's awfully hard for a man who has been injured, when other people look
at him as though they were his benefactors.... I've heard that; Father
Zossima told me so. I don't know how to put it, but I have often seen it
myself. And I feel like that myself, too. And the worst of it was that
though he did not know, up to the very last minute, that he would trample
on the notes, he had a kind of presentiment of it, I am sure of that.
That's just what made him so ecstatic, that he had that presentiment....
And though it's so dreadful, it's all for the best. In fact, I believe
nothing better could have happened."
"Why, why could nothing better have happened?" cried Lise, looking with
great surprise at Alyosha.
"Because if he had taken the money, in an hour after getting home, he
would be crying with mortification, that's just what would have happened.
And most likely he would have come to me early to-morrow, and perhaps have
flung the notes at me and trampled upon them as he did just now. But now
he has gone home awfully proud and triumphant, though he knows he has
'ruined himself.' So now nothing could be easier than to make him accept
the two hundred roubles by to-morrow, for he has already vindicated his
honor, tossed away the money, and trampled it under foot.... He couldn't
know when he did it that I should bring it to him again to-morrow, and yet
he is in terrible need of that money. Though he is proud of himself now,
yet even to-day he'll be thinking what a help he has lost. He will think
of it more than ever at night, will dream of it, and by to-morrow morning
he may be ready to run to me to ask forgiveness. It's just then that I'll
appear. 'Here, you are a proud man,' I shall say: 'you have shown it; but
now take the money and forgive us!' And then he will take it!"
Alyosha was carried away with joy as he uttered his last words, "And then
he will take it!" Lise clapped her hands.
"Ah, that's true! I understand that perfectly now. Ah, Alyosha, how do you
know all this? So young and yet he knows what's in the heart.... I should
never have worked it out."
"The great thing now is to persuade him that he is on an equal footing
with us, in spite of his taking money from us," Alyosha went on in his
excitement, "and not only on an equal, but even on a higher footing."
" 'On a higher footing' is charming, Alexey Fyodorovitch; but go on, go
on!"
"You mean there isn't such an expression as 'on a higher footing'; but
that doesn't matter because--"
"Oh, no, of course it doesn't matter. Forgive me, Alyosha, dear.... You
know, I scarcely respected you till now--that is I respected you but on an
equal footing; but now I shall begin to respect you on a higher footing.
Don't be angry, dear, at my joking," she put in at once, with strong
feeling. "I am absurd and small, but you, you! Listen, Alexey
Fyodorovitch. Isn't there in all our analysis--I mean your analysis ... no,
better call it ours--aren't we showing contempt for him, for that poor
man--in analyzing his soul like this, as it were, from above, eh? In
deciding so certainly that he will take the money?"
"No, Lise, it's not contempt," Alyosha answered, as though he had prepared
himself for the question. "I was thinking of that on the way here. How can
it be contempt when we are all like him, when we are all just the same as
he is? For you know we are just the same, no better. If we are better, we
should have been just the same in his place.... I don't know about you,
Lise, but I consider that I have a sordid soul in many ways, and his soul
is not sordid; on the contrary, full of fine feeling.... No, Lise, I have
no contempt for him. Do you know, Lise, my elder told me once to care for
most people exactly as one would for children, and for some of them as one
would for the sick in hospitals."
"Ah, Alexey Fyodorovitch, dear, let us care for people as we would for the
sick!"
"Let us, Lise; I am ready. Though I am not altogether ready in myself. I
am sometimes very impatient and at other times I don't see things. It's
different with you."
"Ah, I don't believe it! Alexey Fyodorovitch, how happy I am!"
"I am so glad you say so, Lise."
"Alexey Fyodorovitch, you are wonderfully good, but you are sometimes sort
of formal.... And yet you are not a bit formal really. Go to the door,
open it gently, and see whether mamma is listening," said Lise, in a
nervous, hurried whisper.
Alyosha went, opened the door, and reported that no one was listening.
"Come here, Alexey Fyodorovitch," Lise went on, flushing redder and
redder. "Give me your hand--that's right. I have to make a great
confession, I didn't write to you yesterday in joke, but in earnest," and
she hid her eyes with her hand. It was evident that she was greatly
ashamed of the confession.
Suddenly she snatched his hand and impulsively kissed it three times.
"Ah, Lise, what a good thing!" cried Alyosha joyfully. "You know, I was
perfectly sure you were in earnest."
"Sure? Upon my word!" She put aside his hand, but did not leave go of it,
blushing hotly, and laughing a little happy laugh. "I kiss his hand and he
says, 'What a good thing!' "
But her reproach was undeserved. Alyosha, too, was greatly overcome.
"I should like to please you always, Lise, but I don't know how to do it,"
he muttered, blushing too.
"Alyosha, dear, you are cold and rude. Do you see? He has chosen me as his
wife and is quite settled about it. He is sure I was in earnest. What a
thing to say! Why, that's impertinence--that's what it is."
"Why, was it wrong of me to feel sure?" Alyosha asked, laughing suddenly.
"Ah, Alyosha, on the contrary, it was delightfully right," cried Lise,
looking tenderly and happily at him.
Alyosha stood still, holding her hand in his. Suddenly he stooped down and
kissed her on her lips.
"Oh, what are you doing?" cried Lise. Alyosha was terribly abashed.
"Oh, forgive me if I shouldn't.... Perhaps I'm awfully stupid.... You said
I was cold, so I kissed you.... But I see it was stupid."
Lise laughed, and hid her face in her hands. "And in that dress!" she
ejaculated in the midst of her mirth. But she suddenly ceased laughing and
became serious, almost stern.
"Alyosha, we must put off kissing. We are not ready for that yet, and we
shall have a long time to wait," she ended suddenly. "Tell me rather why
you who are so clever, so intellectual, so observant, choose a little
idiot, an invalid like me? Ah, Alyosha, I am awfully happy, for I don't
deserve you a bit."
"You do, Lise. I shall be leaving the monastery altogether in a few days.
If I go into the world, I must marry. I know that. _He_ told me to marry,
too. Whom could I marry better than you--and who would have me except you?
I have been thinking it over. In the first place, you've known me from a
child and you've a great many qualities I haven't. You are more light-
hearted than I am; above all, you are more innocent than I am. I have been
brought into contact with many, many things already.... Ah, you don't
know, but I, too, am a Karamazov. What does it matter if you do laugh and
make jokes, and at me, too? Go on laughing. I am so glad you do. You laugh
like a little child, but you think like a martyr."
"Like a martyr? How?"
"Yes, Lise, your question just now: whether we weren't showing contempt
for that poor man by dissecting his soul--that was the question of a
sufferer.... You see, I don't know how to express it, but any one who
thinks of such questions is capable of suffering. Sitting in your invalid
chair you must have thought over many things already."
"Alyosha, give me your hand. Why are you taking it away?" murmured Lise in
a failing voice, weak with happiness. "Listen, Alyosha. What will you wear
when you come out of the monastery? What sort of suit? Don't laugh, don't
be angry, it's very, very important to me."
"I haven't thought about the suit, Lise; but I'll wear whatever you like."
"I should like you to have a dark blue velvet coat, a white pique
waistcoat, and a soft gray felt hat.... Tell me, did you believe that I
didn't care for you when I said I didn't mean what I wrote?"
"No, I didn't believe it."
"Oh, you insupportable person, you are incorrigible."
"You see, I knew that you--seemed to care for me, but I pretended to
believe that you didn't care for me to make it--easier for you."
"That makes it worse! Worse and better than all! Alyosha, I am awfully
fond of you. Just before you came this morning, I tried my fortune. I
decided I would ask you for my letter, and if you brought it out calmly
and gave it to me (as might have been expected from you) it would mean
that you did not love me at all, that you felt nothing, and were simply a
stupid boy, good for nothing, and that I am ruined. But you left the
letter at home and that cheered me. You left it behind on purpose, so as
not to give it back, because you knew I would ask for it? That was it,
wasn't it?"
"Ah, Lise, it was not so a bit. The letter is with me now, and it was this
morning, in this pocket. Here it is."
Alyosha pulled the letter out laughing, and showed it her at a distance.
"But I am not going to give it to you. Look at it from here."
"Why, then you told a lie? You, a monk, told a lie!"
"I told a lie if you like," Alyosha laughed, too. "I told a lie so as not
to give you back the letter. It's very precious to me," he added suddenly,
with strong feeling, and again he flushed. "It always will be, and I won't
give it up to any one!"
Lise looked at him joyfully. "Alyosha," she murmured again, "look at the
door. Isn't mamma listening?"
"Very well, Lise, I'll look; but wouldn't it be better not to look? Why
suspect your mother of such meanness?"
"What meanness? As for her spying on her daughter, it's her right, it's
not meanness!" cried Lise, firing up. "You may be sure, Alexey
Fyodorovitch, that when I am a mother, if I have a daughter like myself I
shall certainly spy on her!"
"Really, Lise? That's not right."
"Oh, my goodness! What has meanness to do with it? If she were listening
to some ordinary worldly conversation, it would be meanness, but when her
own daughter is shut up with a young man.... Listen, Alyosha, do you know
I shall spy upon you as soon as we are married, and let me tell you I
shall open all your letters and read them, so you may as well be
prepared."
"Yes, of course, if so--" muttered Alyosha, "only it's not right."
"Ah, how contemptuous! Alyosha, dear, we won't quarrel the very first day.
I'd better tell you the whole truth. Of course, it's very wrong to spy on
people, and, of course, I am not right and you are, only I shall spy on
you all the same."
"Do, then; you won't find out anything," laughed Alyosha.
"And, Alyosha, will you give in to me? We must decide that too."
"I shall be delighted to, Lise, and certain to, only not in the most
important things. Even if you don't agree with me, I shall do my duty in
the most important things."
"That's right; but let me tell you I am ready to give in to you not only
in the most important matters, but in everything. And I am ready to vow to
do so now--in everything, and for all my life!" cried Lise fervently, "and
I'll do it gladly, gladly! What's more, I'll swear never to spy on you,
never once, never to read one of your letters. For you are right and I am
not. And though I shall be awfully tempted to spy, I know that I won't do
it since you consider it dishonorable. You are my conscience now....
Listen, Alexey Fyodorovitch, why have you been so sad lately--both
yesterday and to-day? I know you have a lot of anxiety and trouble, but I
see you have some special grief besides, some secret one, perhaps?"
"Yes, Lise, I have a secret one, too," answered Alyosha mournfully. "I see
you love me, since you guessed that."
"What grief? What about? Can you tell me?" asked Lise with timid entreaty.
"I'll tell you later, Lise--afterwards," said Alyosha, confused. "Now you
wouldn't understand it perhaps--and perhaps I couldn't explain it."
"I know your brothers and your father are worrying you, too."
"Yes, my brothers too," murmured Alyosha, pondering.
"I don't like your brother Ivan, Alyosha," said Lise suddenly.
He noticed this remark with some surprise, but did not answer it.
"My brothers are destroying themselves," he went on, "my father, too. And
they are destroying others with them. It's 'the primitive force of the
Karamazovs,' as Father Paissy said the other day, a crude, unbridled,
earthly force. Does the spirit of God move above that force? Even that I
don't know. I only know that I, too, am a Karamazov.... Me a monk, a monk!
Am I a monk, Lise? You said just now that I was."
"Yes, I did."
"And perhaps I don't even believe in God."
"You don't believe? What is the matter?" said Lise quietly and gently. But
Alyosha did not answer. There was something too mysterious, too subjective
in these last words of his, perhaps obscure to himself, but yet torturing
him.
"And now on the top of it all, my friend, the best man in the world, is
going, is leaving the earth! If you knew, Lise, how bound up in soul I am
with him! And then I shall be left alone.... I shall come to you, Lise....
For the future we will be together."
"Yes, together, together! Henceforward we shall be always together, all
our lives! Listen, kiss me, I allow you."
Alyosha kissed her.
"Come, now go. Christ be with you!" and she made the sign of the cross
over him. "Make haste back to _him_ while he is alive. I see I've kept you
cruelly. I'll pray to-day for him and you. Alyosha, we shall be happy!
Shall we be happy, shall we?"
"I believe we shall, Lise."
Alyosha thought it better not to go in to Madame Hohlakov and was going
out of the house without saying good-by to her. But no sooner had he
opened the door than he found Madame Hohlakov standing before him. From
the first word Alyosha guessed that she had been waiting on purpose to
meet him.
"Alexey Fyodorovitch, this is awful. This is all childish nonsense and
ridiculous. I trust you won't dream--It's foolishness, nothing but
foolishness!" she said, attacking him at once.
"Only don't tell her that," said Alyosha, "or she will be upset, and
that's bad for her now."
"Sensible advice from a sensible young man. Am I to understand that you
only agreed with her from compassion for her invalid state, because you
didn't want to irritate her by contradiction?"
"Oh, no, not at all. I was quite serious in what I said," Alyosha declared
stoutly.
"To be serious about it is impossible, unthinkable, and in the first place
I shall never be at home to you again, and I shall take her away, you may
be sure of that."
"But why?" asked Alyosha. "It's all so far off. We may have to wait
another year and a half."
"Ah, Alexey Fyodorovitch, that's true, of course, and you'll have time to
quarrel and separate a thousand times in a year and a half. But I am so
unhappy! Though it's such nonsense, it's a great blow to me. I feel like
Famusov in the last scene of _Sorrow from Wit_. You are Tchatsky and she
is Sofya, and, only fancy, I've run down to meet you on the stairs, and in
the play the fatal scene takes place on the staircase. I heard it all; I
almost dropped. So this is the explanation of her dreadful night and her
hysterics of late! It means love to the daughter but death to the mother.
I might as well be in my grave at once. And a more serious matter still,
what is this letter she has written? Show it me at once, at once!"
"No, there's no need. Tell me, how is Katerina Ivanovna now? I must know."
"She still lies in delirium; she has not regained consciousness. Her aunts
are here; but they do nothing but sigh and give themselves airs.
Herzenstube came, and he was so alarmed that I didn't know what to do for
him. I nearly sent for a doctor to look after him. He was driven home in
my carriage. And on the top of it all, you and this letter! It's true
nothing can happen for a year and a half. In the name of all that's holy,
in the name of your dying elder, show me that letter, Alexey Fyodorovitch.
I'm her mother. Hold it in your hand, if you like, and I will read it so."
"No, I won't show it to you. Even if she sanctioned it, I wouldn't. I am
coming to-morrow, and if you like, we can talk over many things, but now
good-by!"
And Alyosha ran downstairs and into the street.
Chapter II. Smerdyakov With A Guitar
He had no time to lose indeed. Even while he was saying good-by to Lise,
the thought had struck him that he must attempt some stratagem to find his
brother Dmitri, who was evidently keeping out of his way. It was getting
late, nearly three o'clock. Alyosha's whole soul turned to the monastery,
to his dying saint, but the necessity of seeing Dmitri outweighed
everything. The conviction that a great inevitable catastrophe was about
to happen grew stronger in Alyosha's mind with every hour. What that
catastrophe was, and what he would say at that moment to his brother, he
could perhaps not have said definitely. "Even if my benefactor must die
without me, anyway I won't have to reproach myself all my life with the
thought that I might have saved something and did not, but passed by and
hastened home. If I do as I intend, I shall be following his great
precept."
His plan was to catch his brother Dmitri unawares, to climb over the
fence, as he had the day before, get into the garden and sit in the
summer-house. If Dmitri were not there, thought Alyosha, he would not
announce himself to Foma or the women of the house, but would remain
hidden in the summer-house, even if he had to wait there till evening. If,
as before, Dmitri were lying in wait for Grushenka to come, he would be
very likely to come to the summer-house. Alyosha did not, however, give
much thought to the details of his plan, but resolved to act upon it, even
if it meant not getting back to the monastery that day.
Everything happened without hindrance, he climbed over the hurdle almost
in the same spot as the day before, and stole into the summer-house
unseen. He did not want to be noticed. The woman of the house and Foma
too, if he were here, might be loyal to his brother and obey his
instructions, and so refuse to let Alyosha come into the garden, or might
warn Dmitri that he was being sought and inquired for.
There was no one in the summer-house. Alyosha sat down and began to wait.
He looked round the summer-house, which somehow struck him as a great deal
more ancient than before. Though the day was just as fine as yesterday, it
seemed a wretched little place this time. There was a circle on the table,
left no doubt from the glass of brandy having been spilt the day before.
Foolish and irrelevant ideas strayed about his mind, as they always do in
a time of tedious waiting. He wondered, for instance, why he had sat down
precisely in the same place as before, why not in the other seat. At last
he felt very depressed--depressed by suspense and uncertainty. But he had
not sat there more than a quarter of an hour, when he suddenly heard the
thrum of a guitar somewhere quite close. People were sitting, or had only
just sat down, somewhere in the bushes not more than twenty paces away.
Alyosha suddenly recollected that on coming out of the summer-house the
day before, he had caught a glimpse of an old green low garden-seat among
the bushes on the left, by the fence. The people must be sitting on it
now. Who were they?
A man's voice suddenly began singing in a sugary falsetto, accompanying
himself on the guitar:
With invincible force
I am bound to my dear.
O Lord, have mercy
On her and on me!
On her and on me!
On her and on me!
The voice ceased. It was a lackey's tenor and a lackey's song. Another
voice, a woman's, suddenly asked insinuatingly and bashfully, though with
mincing affectation:
"Why haven't you been to see us for so long, Pavel Fyodorovitch? Why do
you always look down upon us?"
"Not at all," answered a man's voice politely, but with emphatic dignity.
It was clear that the man had the best of the position, and that the woman
was making advances. "I believe the man must be Smerdyakov," thought
Alyosha, "from his voice. And the lady must be the daughter of the house
here, who has come from Moscow, the one who wears the dress with a tail
and goes to Marfa for soup."
"I am awfully fond of verses of all kinds, if they rhyme," the woman's
voice continued. "Why don't you go on?"
The man sang again:
What do I care for royal wealth
If but my dear one be in health?
Lord have mercy
On her and on me!
On her and on me!
On her and on me!
"It was even better last time," observed the woman's voice. "You sang 'If
my darling be in health'; it sounded more tender. I suppose you've
forgotten to-day."
"Poetry is rubbish!" said Smerdyakov curtly.
"Oh, no! I am very fond of poetry."
"So far as it's poetry, it's essential rubbish. Consider yourself, who
ever talks in rhyme? And if we were all to talk in rhyme, even though it
were decreed by government, we shouldn't say much, should we? Poetry is no
good, Marya Kondratyevna."
"How clever you are! How is it you've gone so deep into everything?" The
woman's voice was more and more insinuating.
"I could have done better than that. I could have known more than that, if
it had not been for my destiny from my childhood up. I would have shot a
man in a duel if he called me names because I am descended from a filthy
beggar and have no father. And they used to throw it in my teeth in
Moscow. It had reached them from here, thanks to Grigory Vassilyevitch.
Grigory Vassilyevitch blames me for rebelling against my birth, but I
would have sanctioned their killing me before I was born that I might not
have come into the world at all. They used to say in the market, and your
mamma too, with great lack of delicacy, set off telling me that her hair
was like a mat on her head, and that she was short of five foot by a wee
bit. Why talk of a wee bit while she might have said 'a little bit,' like
every one else? She wanted to make it touching, a regular peasant's
feeling. Can a Russian peasant be said to feel, in comparison with an
educated man? He can't be said to have feeling at all, in his ignorance.
From my childhood up when I hear 'a wee bit,' I am ready to burst with
rage. I hate all Russia, Marya Kondratyevna."
"If you'd been a cadet in the army, or a young hussar, you wouldn't have
talked like that, but would have drawn your saber to defend all Russia."
"I don't want to be a hussar, Marya Kondratyevna, and, what's more, I
should like to abolish all soldiers."
"And when an enemy comes, who is going to defend us?"
"There's no need of defense. In 1812 there was a great invasion of Russia
by Napoleon, first Emperor of the French, father of the present one, and
it would have been a good thing if they had conquered us. A clever nation
would have conquered a very stupid one and annexed it. We should have had
quite different institutions."
"Are they so much better in their own country than we are? I wouldn't
change a dandy I know of for three young Englishmen," observed Marya
Kondratyevna tenderly, doubtless accompanying her words with a most
languishing glance.
"That's as one prefers."
"But you are just like a foreigner--just like a most gentlemanly foreigner.
I tell you that, though it makes me bashful."
"If you care to know, the folks there and ours here are just alike in
their vice. They are swindlers, only there the scoundrel wears polished
boots and here he grovels in filth and sees no harm in it. The Russian
people want thrashing, as Fyodor Pavlovitch said very truly yesterday,
though he is mad, and all his children."
"You said yourself you had such a respect for Ivan Fyodorovitch."
"But he said I was a stinking lackey. He thinks that I might be unruly. He
is mistaken there. If I had a certain sum in my pocket, I would have left
here long ago. Dmitri Fyodorovitch is lower than any lackey in his
behavior, in his mind, and in his poverty. He doesn't know how to do
anything, and yet he is respected by every one. I may be only a soup-
maker, but with luck I could open a cafe restaurant in Petrovka, in
Moscow, for my cookery is something special, and there's no one in Moscow,
except the foreigners, whose cookery is anything special. Dmitri
Fyodorovitch is a beggar, but if he were to challenge the son of the first
count in the country, he'd fight him. Though in what way is he better than
I am? For he is ever so much stupider than I am. Look at the money he has
wasted without any need!"
"It must be lovely, a duel," Marya Kondratyevna observed suddenly.
"How so?"
"It must be so dreadful and so brave, especially when young officers with
pistols in their hands pop at one another for the sake of some lady. A
perfect picture! Ah, if only girls were allowed to look on, I'd give
anything to see one!"
"It's all very well when you are firing at some one, but when he is firing
straight in your mug, you must feel pretty silly. You'd be glad to run
away, Marya Kondratyevna."
"You don't mean you would run away?" But Smerdyakov did not deign to
reply. After a moment's silence the guitar tinkled again, and he sang
again in the same falsetto:
Whatever you may say,
I shall go far away.
Life will be bright and gay
In the city far away.
I shall not grieve,
I shall not grieve at all,
I don't intend to grieve at all.
Then something unexpected happened. Alyosha suddenly sneezed. They were
silent. Alyosha got up and walked towards them. He found Smerdyakov
dressed up and wearing polished boots, his hair pomaded, and perhaps
curled. The guitar lay on the garden-seat. His companion was the daughter
of the house, wearing a light-blue dress with a train two yards long. She
was young and would not have been bad-looking, but that her face was so
round and terribly freckled.
"Will my brother Dmitri soon be back?" asked Alyosha with as much
composure as he could.
Smerdyakov got up slowly; Marya Kondratyevna rose too.
"How am I to know about Dmitri Fyodorovitch? It's not as if I were his
keeper," answered Smerdyakov quietly, distinctly, and superciliously.
"But I simply asked whether you do know?" Alyosha explained.
"I know nothing of his whereabouts and don't want to."
"But my brother told me that you let him know all that goes on in the
house, and promised to let him know when Agrafena Alexandrovna comes."
Smerdyakov turned a deliberate, unmoved glance upon him.
"And how did you get in this time, since the gate was bolted an hour ago?"
he asked, looking at Alyosha.
"I came in from the back-alley, over the fence, and went straight to the
summer-house. I hope you'll forgive me," he added, addressing Marya
Kondratyevna. "I was in a hurry to find my brother."
"Ach, as though we could take it amiss in you!" drawled Marya
Kondratyevna, flattered by Alyosha's apology. "For Dmitri Fyodorovitch
often goes to the summer-house in that way. We don't know he is here and
he is sitting in the summer-house."
"I am very anxious to find him, or to learn from you where he is now.
Believe me, it's on business of great importance to him."
"He never tells us," lisped Marya Kondratyevna.
"Though I used to come here as a friend," Smerdyakov began again, "Dmitri
Fyodorovitch has pestered me in a merciless way even here by his incessant
questions about the master. 'What news?' he'll ask. 'What's going on in
there now? Who's coming and going?' and can't I tell him something more.
Twice already he's threatened me with death."
"With death?" Alyosha exclaimed in surprise.
"Do you suppose he'd think much of that, with his temper, which you had a
chance of observing yourself yesterday? He says if I let Agrafena
Alexandrovna in and she passes the night there, I'll be the first to
suffer for it. I am terribly afraid of him, and if I were not even more
afraid of doing so, I ought to let the police know. God only knows what he
might not do!"
"His honor said to him the other day, 'I'll pound you in a mortar!' "
added Marya Kondratyevna.
"Oh, if it's pounding in a mortar, it may be only talk," observed Alyosha.
"If I could meet him, I might speak to him about that too."
"Well, the only thing I can tell you is this," said Smerdyakov, as though
thinking better of it; "I am here as an old friend and neighbor, and it
would be odd if I didn't come. On the other hand, Ivan Fyodorovitch sent
me first thing this morning to your brother's lodging in Lake Street,
without a letter, but with a message to Dmitri Fyodorovitch to go to dine
with him at the restaurant here, in the market-place. I went, but didn't
find Dmitri Fyodorovitch at home, though it was eight o'clock. 'He's been
here, but he is quite gone,' those were the very words of his landlady.
It's as though there was an understanding between them. Perhaps at this
moment he is in the restaurant with Ivan Fyodorovitch, for Ivan
Fyodorovitch has not been home to dinner and Fyodor Pavlovitch dined alone
an hour ago, and is gone to lie down. But I beg you most particularly not
to speak of me and of what I have told you, for he'd kill me for nothing
at all."
"Brother Ivan invited Dmitri to the restaurant to-day?" repeated Alyosha
quickly.
"That's so."
"The Metropolis tavern in the market-place?"
"The very same."
"That's quite likely," cried Alyosha, much excited. "Thank you,
Smerdyakov; that's important. I'll go there at once."
"Don't betray me," Smerdyakov called after him.
"Oh, no, I'll go to the tavern as though by chance. Don't be anxious."
"But wait a minute, I'll open the gate to you," cried Marya Kondratyevna.
"No; it's a short cut, I'll get over the fence again."
What he had heard threw Alyosha into great agitation. He ran to the
tavern. It was impossible for him to go into the tavern in his monastic
dress, but he could inquire at the entrance for his brothers and call them
down. But just as he reached the tavern, a window was flung open, and his
brother Ivan called down to him from it.
"Alyosha, can't you come up here to me? I shall be awfully grateful."
"To be sure I can, only I don't quite know whether in this dress--"
"But I am in a room apart. Come up the steps; I'll run down to meet you."
A minute later Alyosha was sitting beside his brother. Ivan was alone
dining.
Chapter III. The Brothers Make Friends
Ivan was not, however, in a separate room, but only in a place shut off by
a screen, so that it was unseen by other people in the room. It was the
first room from the entrance with a buffet along the wall. Waiters were
continually darting to and fro in it. The only customer in the room was an
old retired military man drinking tea in a corner. But there was the usual
bustle going on in the other rooms of the tavern; there were shouts for
the waiters, the sound of popping corks, the click of billiard balls, the
drone of the organ. Alyosha knew that Ivan did not usually visit this
tavern and disliked taverns in general. So he must have come here, he
reflected, simply to meet Dmitri by arrangement. Yet Dmitri was not there.
"Shall I order you fish, soup or anything. You don't live on tea alone, I
suppose," cried Ivan, apparently delighted at having got hold of Alyosha.
He had finished dinner and was drinking tea.
"Let me have soup, and tea afterwards, I am hungry," said Alyosha gayly.
"And cherry jam? They have it here. You remember how you used to love
cherry jam when you were little?"
"You remember that? Let me have jam too, I like it still."
Ivan rang for the waiter and ordered soup, jam and tea.
"I remember everything, Alyosha, I remember you till you were eleven, I
was nearly fifteen. There's such a difference between fifteen and eleven
that brothers are never companions at those ages. I don't know whether I
was fond of you even. When I went away to Moscow for the first few years I
never thought of you at all. Then, when you came to Moscow yourself, we
only met once somewhere, I believe. And now I've been here more than three
months, and so far we have scarcely said a word to each other. To-morrow I
am going away, and I was just thinking as I sat here how I could see you
to say good-by and just then you passed."
"Were you very anxious to see me, then?"
"Very. I want to get to know you once for all, and I want you to know me.
And then to say good-by. I believe it's always best to get to know people
just before leaving them. I've noticed how you've been looking at me these
three months. There has been a continual look of expectation in your eyes,
and I can't endure that. That's how it is I've kept away from you. But in
the end I have learned to respect you. The little man stands firm, I
thought. Though I am laughing, I am serious. You do stand firm, don't you?
I like people who are firm like that whatever it is they stand by, even if
they are such little fellows as you. Your expectant eyes ceased to annoy
me, I grew fond of them in the end, those expectant eyes. You seem to love
me for some reason, Alyosha?"
"I do love you, Ivan. Dmitri says of you--Ivan is a tomb! I say of you,
Ivan is a riddle. You are a riddle to me even now. But I understand
something in you, and I did not understand it till this morning."
"What's that?" laughed Ivan.
"You won't be angry?" Alyosha laughed too.
"Well?"
"That you are just as young as other young men of three and twenty, that
you are just a young and fresh and nice boy, green in fact! Now, have I
insulted you dreadfully?"
"On the contrary, I am struck by a coincidence," cried Ivan, warmly and
good-humoredly. "Would you believe it that ever since that scene with her,
I have thought of nothing else but my youthful greenness, and just as
though you guessed that, you begin about it. Do you know I've been sitting
here thinking to myself: that if I didn't believe in life, if I lost faith
in the woman I love, lost faith in the order of things, were convinced in
fact that everything is a disorderly, damnable, and perhaps devil-ridden
chaos, if I were struck by every horror of man's disillusionment--still I
should want to live and, having once tasted of the cup, I would not turn
away from it till I had drained it! At thirty, though, I shall be sure to
leave the cup, even if I've not emptied it, and turn away--where I don't
know. But till I am thirty, I know that my youth will triumph over
everything--every disillusionment, every disgust with life. I've asked
myself many times whether there is in the world any despair that would
overcome this frantic and perhaps unseemly thirst for life in me, and I've
come to the conclusion that there isn't, that is till I am thirty, and
then I shall lose it of myself, I fancy. Some driveling consumptive
moralists--and poets especially--often call that thirst for life base. It's
a feature of the Karamazovs, it's true, that thirst for life regardless of
everything; you have it no doubt too, but why is it base? The centripetal
force on our planet is still fearfully strong, Alyosha. I have a longing
for life, and I go on living in spite of logic. Though I may not believe
in the order of the universe, yet I love the sticky little leaves as they
open in spring. I love the blue sky, I love some people, whom one loves
you know sometimes without knowing why. I love some great deeds done by
men, though I've long ceased perhaps to have faith in them, yet from old
habit one's heart prizes them. Here they have brought the soup for you,
eat it, it will do you good. It's first-rate soup, they know how to make
it here. I want to travel in Europe, Alyosha, I shall set off from here.
And yet I know that I am only going to a graveyard, but it's a most
precious graveyard, that's what it is! Precious are the dead that lie
there, every stone over them speaks of such burning life in the past, of
such passionate faith in their work, their truth, their struggle and their
science, that I know I shall fall on the ground and kiss those stones and
weep over them; though I'm convinced in my heart that it's long been
nothing but a graveyard. And I shall not weep from despair, but simply
because I shall be happy in my tears, I shall steep my soul in my emotion.
I love the sticky leaves in spring, the blue sky--that's all it is. It's
not a matter of intellect or logic, it's loving with one's inside, with
one's stomach. One loves the first strength of one's youth. Do you
understand anything of my tirade, Alyosha?" Ivan laughed suddenly.
"I understand too well, Ivan. One longs to love with one's inside, with
one's stomach. You said that so well and I am awfully glad that you have
such a longing for life," cried Alyosha. "I think every one should love
life above everything in the world."
"Love life more than the meaning of it?"
"Certainly, love it, regardless of logic as you say, it must be regardless
of logic, and it's only then one will understand the meaning of it. I have
thought so a long time. Half your work is done, Ivan, you love life, now
you've only to try to do the second half and you are saved."
"You are trying to save me, but perhaps I am not lost! And what does your
second half mean?"
"Why, one has to raise up your dead, who perhaps have not died after all.
Come, let me have tea. I am so glad of our talk, Ivan."
"I see you are feeling inspired. I am awfully fond of such _professions de
foi_ from such--novices. You are a steadfast person, Alexey. Is it true
that you mean to leave the monastery?"
"Yes, my elder sends me out into the world."
"We shall see each other then in the world. We shall meet before I am
thirty, when I shall begin to turn aside from the cup. Father doesn't want
to turn aside from his cup till he is seventy, he dreams of hanging on to
eighty in fact, so he says. He means it only too seriously, though he is a
buffoon. He stands on a firm rock, too, he stands on his sensuality--though
after we are thirty, indeed, there may be nothing else to stand on.... But
to hang on to seventy is nasty, better only to thirty; one might retain 'a
shadow of nobility' by deceiving oneself. Have you seen Dmitri to-day?"
"No, but I saw Smerdyakov," and Alyosha rapidly, though minutely,
described his meeting with Smerdyakov. Ivan began listening anxiously and
questioned him.
"But he begged me not to tell Dmitri that he had told me about him," added
Alyosha. Ivan frowned and pondered.
"Are you frowning on Smerdyakov's account?" asked Alyosha.
"Yes, on his account. Damn him, I certainly did want to see Dmitri, but
now there's no need," said Ivan reluctantly.
"But are you really going so soon, brother?"
"Yes."
"What of Dmitri and father? how will it end?" asked Alyosha anxiously.
"You are always harping upon it! What have I to do with it? Am I my
brother Dmitri's keeper?" Ivan snapped irritably, but then he suddenly
smiled bitterly. "Cain's answer about his murdered brother, wasn't it?
Perhaps that's what you're thinking at this moment? Well, damn it all, I
can't stay here to be their keeper, can I? I've finished what I had to do,
and I am going. Do you imagine I am jealous of Dmitri, that I've been
trying to steal his beautiful Katerina Ivanovna for the last three months?
Nonsense, I had business of my own. I finished it. I am going. I finished
it just now, you were witness."
"At Katerina Ivanovna's?"
"Yes, and I've released myself once for all. And after all, what have I to
do with Dmitri? Dmitri doesn't come in. I had my own business to settle
with Katerina Ivanovna. You know, on the contrary, that Dmitri behaved as
though there was an understanding between us. I didn't ask him to do it,
but he solemnly handed her over to me and gave us his blessing. It's all
too funny. Ah, Alyosha, if you only knew how light my heart is now! Would
you believe, it, I sat here eating my dinner and was nearly ordering
champagne to celebrate my first hour of freedom. Tfoo! It's been going on
nearly six months, and all at once I've thrown it off. I could never have
guessed even yesterday, how easy it would be to put an end to it if I
wanted."
"You are speaking of your love, Ivan?"
"Of my love, if you like. I fell in love with the young lady, I worried
myself over her and she worried me. I sat watching over her ... and all at
once it's collapsed! I spoke this morning with inspiration, but I went
away and roared with laughter. Would you believe it? Yes, it's the literal
truth."
"You seem very merry about it now," observed Alyosha, looking into his
face, which had suddenly grown brighter.
"But how could I tell that I didn't care for her a bit! Ha ha! It appears
after all I didn't. And yet how she attracted me! How attractive she was
just now when I made my speech! And do you know she attracts me awfully
even now, yet how easy it is to leave her. Do you think I am boasting?"
"No, only perhaps it wasn't love."
"Alyosha," laughed Ivan, "don't make reflections about love, it's unseemly
for you. How you rushed into the discussion this morning! I've forgotten
to kiss you for it.... But how she tormented me! It certainly was sitting
by a 'laceration.' Ah, she knew how I loved her! She loved me and not
Dmitri," Ivan insisted gayly. "Her feeling for Dmitri was simply a self-
laceration. All I told her just now was perfectly true, but the worst of
it is, it may take her fifteen or twenty years to find out that she
doesn't care for Dmitri, and loves me whom she torments, and perhaps she
may never find it out at all, in spite of her lesson to-day. Well, it's
better so; I can simply go away for good. By the way, how is she now? What
happened after I departed?"
Alyosha told him she had been hysterical, and that she was now, he heard,
unconscious and delirious.
"Isn't Madame Hohlakov laying it on?"
"I think not."
"I must find out. Nobody dies of hysterics, though. They don't matter. God
gave woman hysterics as a relief. I won't go to her at all. Why push
myself forward again?"
"But you told her that she had never cared for you."
"I did that on purpose. Alyosha, shall I call for some champagne? Let us
drink to my freedom. Ah, if only you knew how glad I am!"
"No, brother, we had better not drink," said Alyosha suddenly. "Besides I
feel somehow depressed."
"Yes, you've been depressed a long time, I've noticed it."
"Have you settled to go to-morrow morning, then?"
"Morning? I didn't say I should go in the morning.... But perhaps it may
be the morning. Would you believe it, I dined here to-day only to avoid
dining with the old man, I loathe him so. I should have left long ago, so
far as he is concerned. But why are you so worried about my going away?
We've plenty of time before I go, an eternity!"
"If you are going away to-morrow, what do you mean by an eternity?"
"But what does it matter to us?" laughed Ivan. "We've time enough for our
talk, for what brought us here. Why do you look so surprised? Answer: why
have we met here? To talk of my love for Katerina Ivanovna, of the old man
and Dmitri? of foreign travel? of the fatal position of Russia? Of the
Emperor Napoleon? Is that it?"
"No."
"Then you know what for. It's different for other people; but we in our
green youth have to settle the eternal questions first of all. That's what
we care about. Young Russia is talking about nothing but the eternal
questions now. Just when the old folks are all taken up with practical
questions. Why have you been looking at me in expectation for the last
three months? To ask me, 'What do you believe, or don't you believe at
all?' That's what your eyes have been meaning for these three months,
haven't they?"
"Perhaps so," smiled Alyosha. "You are not laughing at me, now, Ivan?"
"Me laughing! I don't want to wound my little brother who has been
watching me with such expectation for three months. Alyosha, look straight
at me! Of course I am just such a little boy as you are, only not a
novice. And what have Russian boys been doing up till now, some of them, I
mean? In this stinking tavern, for instance, here, they meet and sit down
in a corner. They've never met in their lives before and, when they go out
of the tavern, they won't meet again for forty years. And what do they
talk about in that momentary halt in the tavern? Of the eternal questions,
of the existence of God and immortality. And those who do not believe in
God talk of socialism or anarchism, of the transformation of all humanity
on a new pattern, so that it all comes to the same, they're the same
questions turned inside out. And masses, masses of the most original
Russian boys do nothing but talk of the eternal questions! Isn't it so?"
"Yes, for real Russians the questions of God's existence and of
immortality, or, as you say, the same questions turned inside out, come
first and foremost, of course, and so they should," said Alyosha, still
watching his brother with the same gentle and inquiring smile.
"Well, Alyosha, it's sometimes very unwise to be a Russian at all, but
anything stupider than the way Russian boys spend their time one can
hardly imagine. But there's one Russian boy called Alyosha I am awfully
fond of."
"How nicely you put that in!" Alyosha laughed suddenly.
"Well, tell me where to begin, give your orders. The existence of God,
eh?"
"Begin where you like. You declared yesterday at father's that there was
no God." Alyosha looked searchingly at his brother.
"I said that yesterday at dinner on purpose to tease you and I saw your
eyes glow. But now I've no objection to discussing with you, and I say so
very seriously. I want to be friends with you, Alyosha, for I have no
friends and want to try it. Well, only fancy, perhaps I too accept God,"
laughed Ivan; "that's a surprise for you, isn't it?"
"Yes, of course, if you are not joking now."
"Joking? I was told at the elder's yesterday that I was joking. You know,
dear boy, there was an old sinner in the eighteenth century who declared
that, if there were no God, he would have to be invented. _S'il n'existait
pas Dieu, il faudrait l'inventer._ And man has actually invented God. And
what's strange, what would be marvelous, is not that God should really
exist; the marvel is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God,
could enter the head of such a savage, vicious beast as man. So holy it
is, so touching, so wise and so great a credit it does to man. As for me,
I've long resolved not to think whether man created God or God man. And I
won't go through all the axioms laid down by Russian boys on that subject,
all derived from European hypotheses; for what's a hypothesis there, is an
axiom with the Russian boy, and not only with the boys but with their
teachers too, for our Russian professors are often just the same boys
themselves. And so I omit all the hypotheses. For what are we aiming at
now? I am trying to explain as quickly as possible my essential nature,
that is what manner of man I am, what I believe in, and for what I hope,
that's it, isn't it? And therefore I tell you that I accept God simply.
But you must note this: if God exists and if He really did create the
world, then, as we all know, He created it according to the geometry of
Euclid and the human mind with the conception of only three dimensions in
space. Yet there have been and still are geometricians and philosophers,
and even some of the most distinguished, who doubt whether the whole
universe, or to speak more widely the whole of being, was only created in
Euclid's geometry; they even dare to dream that two parallel lines, which
according to Euclid can never meet on earth, may meet somewhere in
infinity. I have come to the conclusion that, since I can't understand
even that, I can't expect to understand about God. I acknowledge humbly
that I have no faculty for settling such questions, I have a Euclidian
earthly mind, and how could I solve problems that are not of this world?
And I advise you never to think about it either, my dear Alyosha,
especially about God, whether He exists or not. All such questions are
utterly inappropriate for a mind created with an idea of only three
dimensions. And so I accept God and am glad to, and what's more, I accept
His wisdom, His purpose--which are utterly beyond our ken; I believe in the
underlying order and the meaning of life; I believe in the eternal harmony
in which they say we shall one day be blended. I believe in the Word to
Which the universe is striving, and Which Itself was 'with God,' and Which
Itself is God and so on, and so on, to infinity. There are all sorts of
phrases for it. I seem to be on the right path, don't I? Yet would you
believe it, in the final result I don't accept this world of God's, and,
although I know it exists, I don't accept it at all. It's not that I don't
accept God, you must understand, it's the world created by Him I don't and
cannot accept. Let me make it plain. I believe like a child that suffering
will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of
human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the
despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidian mind
of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony,
something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all
hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all
the crimes of humanity, of all the blood they've shed; that it will make
it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened with
men--but though all that may come to pass, I don't accept it. I won't
accept it. Even if parallel lines do meet and I see it myself, I shall see
it and say that they've met, but still I won't accept it. That's what's at
the root of me, Alyosha; that's my creed. I am in earnest in what I say. I
began our talk as stupidly as I could on purpose, but I've led up to my
confession, for that's all you want. You didn't want to hear about God,
but only to know what the brother you love lives by. And so I've told
you."
Ivan concluded his long tirade with marked and unexpected feeling.
"And why did you begin 'as stupidly as you could'?" asked Alyosha, looking
dreamily at him.
"To begin with, for the sake of being Russian. Russian conversations on
such subjects are always carried on inconceivably stupidly. And secondly,
the stupider one is, the closer one is to reality. The stupider one is,
the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence
wriggles and hides itself. Intelligence is a knave, but stupidity is
honest and straightforward. I've led the conversation to my despair, and
the more stupidly I have presented it, the better for me."
"You will explain why you don't accept the world?" said Alyosha.
"To be sure I will, it's not a secret, that's what I've been leading up
to. Dear little brother, I don't want to corrupt you or to turn you from
your stronghold, perhaps I want to be healed by you." Ivan smiled suddenly
quite like a little gentle child. Alyosha had never seen such a smile on
his face before.
Chapter IV. Rebellion
"I must make you one confession," Ivan began. "I could never understand
how one can love one's neighbors. It's just one's neighbors, to my mind,
that one can't love, though one might love those at a distance. I once
read somewhere of John the Merciful, a saint, that when a hungry, frozen
beggar came to him, he took him into his bed, held him in his arms, and
began breathing into his mouth, which was putrid and loathsome from some
awful disease. I am convinced that he did that from 'self-laceration,'
from the self-laceration of falsity, for the sake of the charity imposed
by duty, as a penance laid on him. For any one to love a man, he must be
hidden, for as soon as he shows his face, love is gone."
"Father Zossima has talked of that more than once," observed Alyosha; "he,
too, said that the face of a man often hinders many people not practiced
in love, from loving him. But yet there's a great deal of love in mankind,
and almost Christ-like love. I know that myself, Ivan."
"Well, I know nothing of it so far, and can't understand it, and the
innumerable mass of mankind are with me there. The question is, whether
that's due to men's bad qualities or whether it's inherent in their
nature. To my thinking, Christ-like love for men is a miracle impossible
on earth. He was God. But we are not gods. Suppose I, for instance, suffer
intensely. Another can never know how much I suffer, because he is another
and not I. And what's more, a man is rarely ready to admit another's
suffering (as though it were a distinction). Why won't he admit it, do you
think? Because I smell unpleasant, because I have a stupid face, because I
once trod on his foot. Besides, there is suffering and suffering;
degrading, humiliating suffering such as humbles me--hunger, for
instance--my benefactor will perhaps allow me; but when you come to higher
suffering--for an idea, for instance--he will very rarely admit that,
perhaps because my face strikes him as not at all what he fancies a man
should have who suffers for an idea. And so he deprives me instantly of
his favor, and not at all from badness of heart. Beggars, especially
genteel beggars, ought never to show themselves, but to ask for charity
through the newspapers. One can love one's neighbors in the abstract, or
even at a distance, but at close quarters it's almost impossible. If it
were as on the stage, in the ballet, where if beggars come in, they wear
silken rags and tattered lace and beg for alms dancing gracefully, then
one might like looking at them. But even then we should not love them. But
enough of that. I simply wanted to show you my point of view. I meant to
speak of the suffering of mankind generally, but we had better confine
ourselves to the sufferings of the children. That reduces the scope of my
argument to a tenth of what it would be. Still we'd better keep to the
children, though it does weaken my case. But, in the first place, children
can be loved even at close quarters, even when they are dirty, even when
they are ugly (I fancy, though, children never are ugly). The second
reason why I won't speak of grown-up people is that, besides being
disgusting and unworthy of love, they have a compensation--they've eaten
the apple and know good and evil, and they have become 'like gods.' They
go on eating it still. But the children haven't eaten anything, and are so
far innocent. Are you fond of children, Alyosha? I know you are, and you
will understand why I prefer to speak of them. If they, too, suffer
horribly on earth, they must suffer for their fathers' sins, they must be
punished for their fathers, who have eaten the apple; but that reasoning
is of the other world and is incomprehensible for the heart of man here on
earth. The innocent must not suffer for another's sins, and especially
such innocents! You may be surprised at me, Alyosha, but I am awfully fond
of children, too. And observe, cruel people, the violent, the rapacious,
the Karamazovs are sometimes very fond of children. Children while they
are quite little--up to seven, for instance--are so remote from grown-up
people; they are different creatures, as it were, of a different species.
I knew a criminal in prison who had, in the course of his career as a
burglar, murdered whole families, including several children. But when he
was in prison, he had a strange affection for them. He spent all his time
at his window, watching the children playing in the prison yard. He
trained one little boy to come up to his window and made great friends
with him.... You don't know why I am telling you all this, Alyosha? My
head aches and I am sad."
"You speak with a strange air," observed Alyosha uneasily, "as though you
were not quite yourself."
"By the way, a Bulgarian I met lately in Moscow," Ivan went on, seeming
not to hear his brother's words, "told me about the crimes committed by
Turks and Circassians in all parts of Bulgaria through fear of a general
rising of the Slavs. They burn villages, murder, outrage women and
children, they nail their prisoners by the ears to the fences, leave them
so till morning, and in the morning they hang them--all sorts of things you
can't imagine. People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that's a
great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as
a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all
he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he
were able to do it. These Turks took a pleasure in torturing children,
too; cutting the unborn child from the mother's womb, and tossing babies
up in the air and catching them on the points of their bayonets before
their mothers' eyes. Doing it before the mothers' eyes was what gave zest
to the amusement. Here is another scene that I thought very interesting.
Imagine a trembling mother with her baby in her arms, a circle of invading
Turks around her. They've planned a diversion: they pet the baby, laugh to
make it laugh. They succeed, the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk points
a pistol four inches from the baby's face. The baby laughs with glee,
holds out its little hands to the pistol, and he pulls the trigger in the
baby's face and blows out its brains. Artistic, wasn't it? By the way,
Turks are particularly fond of sweet things, they say."
"Brother, what are you driving at?" asked Alyosha.
"I think if the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has
created him in his own image and likeness."
"Just as he did God, then?" observed Alyosha.
" 'It's wonderful how you can turn words,' as Polonius says in _Hamlet_,"
laughed Ivan. "You turn my words against me. Well, I am glad. Yours must
be a fine God, if man created Him in his image and likeness. You asked
just now what I was driving at. You see, I am fond of collecting certain
facts, and, would you believe, I even copy anecdotes of a certain sort
from newspapers and books, and I've already got a fine collection. The
Turks, of course, have gone into it, but they are foreigners. I have
specimens from home that are even better than the Turks. You know we
prefer beating--rods and scourges--that's our national institution. Nailing
ears is unthinkable for us, for we are, after all, Europeans. But the rod
and the scourge we have always with us and they cannot be taken from us.
Abroad now they scarcely do any beating. Manners are more humane, or laws
have been passed, so that they don't dare to flog men now. But they make
up for it in another way just as national as ours. And so national that it
would be practically impossible among us, though I believe we are being
inoculated with it, since the religious movement began in our aristocracy.
I have a charming pamphlet, translated from the French, describing how,
quite recently, five years ago, a murderer, Richard, was executed--a young
man, I believe, of three and twenty, who repented and was converted to the
Christian faith at the very scaffold. This Richard was an illegitimate
child who was given as a child of six by his parents to some shepherds on
the Swiss mountains. They brought him up to work for them. He grew up like
a little wild beast among them. The shepherds taught him nothing, and
scarcely fed or clothed him, but sent him out at seven to herd the flock
in cold and wet, and no one hesitated or scrupled to treat him so. Quite
the contrary, they thought they had every right, for Richard had been
given to them as a chattel, and they did not even see the necessity of
feeding him. Richard himself describes how in those years, like the
Prodigal Son in the Gospel, he longed to eat of the mash given to the
pigs, which were fattened for sale. But they wouldn't even give him that,
and beat him when he stole from the pigs. And that was how he spent all
his childhood and his youth, till he grew up and was strong enough to go
away and be a thief. The savage began to earn his living as a day laborer
in Geneva. He drank what he earned, he lived like a brute, and finished by
killing and robbing an old man. He was caught, tried, and condemned to
death. They are not sentimentalists there. And in prison he was
immediately surrounded by pastors, members of Christian brotherhoods,
philanthropic ladies, and the like. They taught him to read and write in
prison, and expounded the Gospel to him. They exhorted him, worked upon
him, drummed at him incessantly, till at last he solemnly confessed his
crime. He was converted. He wrote to the court himself that he was a
monster, but that in the end God had vouchsafed him light and shown grace.
All Geneva was in excitement about him--all philanthropic and religious
Geneva. All the aristocratic and well-bred society of the town rushed to
the prison, kissed Richard and embraced him; 'You are our brother, you
have found grace.' And Richard does nothing but weep with emotion, 'Yes,
I've found grace! All my youth and childhood I was glad of pigs' food, but
now even I have found grace. I am dying in the Lord.' 'Yes, Richard, die
in the Lord; you have shed blood and must die. Though it's not your fault
that you knew not the Lord, when you coveted the pigs' food and were
beaten for stealing it (which was very wrong of you, for stealing is
forbidden); but you've shed blood and you must die.' And on the last day,
Richard, perfectly limp, did nothing but cry and repeat every minute:
'This is my happiest day. I am going to the Lord.' 'Yes,' cry the pastors
and the judges and philanthropic ladies. 'This is the happiest day of your
life, for you are going to the Lord!' They all walk or drive to the
scaffold in procession behind the prison van. At the scaffold they call to
Richard: 'Die, brother, die in the Lord, for even thou hast found grace!'
And so, covered with his brothers' kisses, Richard is dragged on to the
scaffold, and led to the guillotine. And they chopped off his head in
brotherly fashion, because he had found grace. Yes, that's characteristic.
That pamphlet is translated into Russian by some Russian philanthropists
of aristocratic rank and evangelical aspirations, and has been distributed
gratis for the enlightenment of the people. The case of Richard is
interesting because it's national. Though to us it's absurd to cut off a
man's head, because he has become our brother and has found grace, yet we
have our own speciality, which is all but worse. Our historical pastime is
the direct satisfaction of inflicting pain. There are lines in Nekrassov
describing how a peasant lashes a horse on the eyes, 'on its meek eyes,'
every one must have seen it. It's peculiarly Russian. He describes how a
feeble little nag has foundered under too heavy a load and cannot move.
The peasant beats it, beats it savagely, beats it at last not knowing what
he is doing in the intoxication of cruelty, thrashes it mercilessly over
and over again. 'However weak you are, you must pull, if you die for it.'
The nag strains, and then he begins lashing the poor defenseless creature
on its weeping, on its 'meek eyes.' The frantic beast tugs and draws the
load, trembling all over, gasping for breath, moving sideways, with a sort
of unnatural spasmodic action--it's awful in Nekrassov. But that's only a
horse, and God has given horses to be beaten. So the Tatars have taught
us, and they left us the knout as a remembrance of it. But men, too, can
be beaten. A well-educated, cultured gentleman and his wife beat their own
child with a birch-rod, a girl of seven. I have an exact account of it.
The papa was glad that the birch was covered with twigs. 'It stings more,'
said he, and so he began stinging his daughter. I know for a fact there
are people who at every blow are worked up to sensuality, to literal
sensuality, which increases progressively at every blow they inflict. They
beat for a minute, for five minutes, for ten minutes, more often and more
savagely. The child screams. At last the child cannot scream, it gasps,
'Daddy! daddy!' By some diabolical unseemly chance the case was brought
into court. A counsel is engaged. The Russian people have long called a
barrister 'a conscience for hire.' The counsel protests in his client's
defense. 'It's such a simple thing,' he says, 'an everyday domestic event.
A father corrects his child. To our shame be it said, it is brought into
court.' The jury, convinced by him, give a favorable verdict. The public
roars with delight that the torturer is acquitted. Ah, pity I wasn't
there! I would have proposed to raise a subscription in his honor!
Charming pictures.
"But I've still better things about children. I've collected a great,
great deal about Russian children, Alyosha. There was a little girl of
five who was hated by her father and mother, 'most worthy and respectable
people, of good education and breeding.' You see, I must repeat again, it
is a peculiar characteristic of many people, this love of torturing
children, and children only. To all other types of humanity these
torturers behave mildly and benevolently, like cultivated and humane
Europeans; but they are very fond of tormenting children, even fond of
children themselves in that sense. It's just their defenselessness that
tempts the tormentor, just the angelic confidence of the child who has no
refuge and no appeal, that sets his vile blood on fire. In every man, of
course, a demon lies hidden--the demon of rage, the demon of lustful heat
at the screams of the tortured victim, the demon of lawlessness let off
the chain, the demon of diseases that follow on vice, gout, kidney
disease, and so on.
"This poor child of five was subjected to every possible torture by those
cultivated parents. They beat her, thrashed her, kicked her for no reason
till her body was one bruise. Then, they went to greater refinements of
cruelty--shut her up all night in the cold and frost in a privy, and
because she didn't ask to be taken up at night (as though a child of five
sleeping its angelic, sound sleep could be trained to wake and ask), they
smeared her face and filled her mouth with excrement, and it was her
mother, her mother did this. And that mother could sleep, hearing the poor
child's groans! Can you understand why a little creature, who can't even
understand what's done to her, should beat her little aching heart with
her tiny fist in the dark and the cold, and weep her meek unresentful
tears to dear, kind God to protect her? Do you understand that, friend and
brother, you pious and humble novice? Do you understand why this infamy
must be and is permitted? Without it, I am told, man could not have
existed on earth, for he could not have known good and evil. Why should he
know that diabolical good and evil when it costs so much? Why, the whole
world of knowledge is not worth that child's prayer to 'dear, kind God'! I
say nothing of the sufferings of grown-up people, they have eaten the
apple, damn them, and the devil take them all! But these little ones! I am
making you suffer, Alyosha, you are not yourself. I'll leave off if you
like."
"Never mind. I want to suffer too," muttered Alyosha.
"One picture, only one more, because it's so curious, so characteristic,
and I have only just read it in some collection of Russian antiquities.
I've forgotten the name. I must look it up. It was in the darkest days of
serfdom at the beginning of the century, and long live the Liberator of
the People! There was in those days a general of aristocratic connections,
the owner of great estates, one of those men--somewhat exceptional, I
believe, even then--who, retiring from the service into a life of leisure,
are convinced that they've earned absolute power over the lives of their
subjects. There were such men then. So our general, settled on his
property of two thousand souls, lives in pomp, and domineers over his poor
neighbors as though they were dependents and buffoons. He has kennels of
hundreds of hounds and nearly a hundred dog-boys--all mounted, and in
uniform. One day a serf-boy, a little child of eight, threw a stone in
play and hurt the paw of the general's favorite hound. 'Why is my favorite
dog lame?' He is told that the boy threw a stone that hurt the dog's paw.
'So you did it.' The general looked the child up and down. 'Take him.' He
was taken--taken from his mother and kept shut up all night. Early that
morning the general comes out on horseback, with the hounds, his
dependents, dog-boys, and huntsmen, all mounted around him in full hunting
parade. The servants are summoned for their edification, and in front of
them all stands the mother of the child. The child is brought from the
lock-up. It's a gloomy, cold, foggy autumn day, a capital day for hunting.
The general orders the child to be undressed; the child is stripped naked.
He shivers, numb with terror, not daring to cry.... 'Make him run,'
commands the general. 'Run! run!' shout the dog-boys. The boy runs.... 'At
him!' yells the general, and he sets the whole pack of hounds on the
child. The hounds catch him, and tear him to pieces before his mother's
eyes!... I believe the general was afterwards declared incapable of
administering his estates. Well--what did he deserve? To be shot? To be
shot for the satisfaction of our moral feelings? Speak, Alyosha!"
"To be shot," murmured Alyosha, lifting his eyes to Ivan with a pale,
twisted smile.
"Bravo!" cried Ivan, delighted. "If even you say so.... You're a pretty
monk! So there is a little devil sitting in your heart, Alyosha
Karamazov!"
"What I said was absurd, but--"
"That's just the point, that 'but'!" cried Ivan. "Let me tell you, novice,
that the absurd is only too necessary on earth. The world stands on
absurdities, and perhaps nothing would have come to pass in it without
them. We know what we know!"
"What do you know?"
"I understand nothing," Ivan went on, as though in delirium. "I don't want
to understand anything now. I want to stick to the fact. I made up my mind
long ago not to understand. If I try to understand anything, I shall be
false to the fact, and I have determined to stick to the fact."
"Why are you trying me?" Alyosha cried, with sudden distress. "Will you
say what you mean at last?"
"Of course, I will; that's what I've been leading up to. You are dear to
me, I don't want to let you go, and I won't give you up to your Zossima."
Ivan for a minute was silent, his face became all at once very sad.
"Listen! I took the case of children only to make my case clearer. Of the
other tears of humanity with which the earth is soaked from its crust to
its center, I will say nothing. I have narrowed my subject on purpose. I
am a bug, and I recognize in all humility that I cannot understand why the
world is arranged as it is. Men are themselves to blame, I suppose; they
were given paradise, they wanted freedom, and stole fire from heaven,
though they knew they would become unhappy, so there is no need to pity
them. With my pitiful, earthly, Euclidian understanding, all I know is
that there is suffering and that there are none guilty; that cause follows
effect, simply and directly; that everything flows and finds its level--but
that's only Euclidian nonsense, I know that, and I can't consent to live
by it! What comfort is it to me that there are none guilty and that cause
follows effect simply and directly, and that I know it?--I must have
justice, or I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote infinite
time and space, but here on earth, and that I could see myself. I have
believed in it. I want to see it, and if I am dead by then, let me rise
again, for if it all happens without me, it will be too unfair. Surely I
haven't suffered, simply that I, my crimes and my sufferings, may manure
the soil of the future harmony for somebody else. I want to see with my
own eyes the hind lie down with the lion and the victim rise up and
embrace his murderer. I want to be there when every one suddenly
understands what it has all been for. All the religions of the world are
built on this longing, and I am a believer. But then there are the
children, and what am I to do about them? That's a question I can't
answer. For the hundredth time I repeat, there are numbers of questions,
but I've only taken the children, because in their case what I mean is so
unanswerably clear. Listen! If all must suffer to pay for the eternal
harmony, what have children to do with it, tell me, please? It's beyond
all comprehension why they should suffer, and why they should pay for the
harmony. Why should they, too, furnish material to enrich the soil for the
harmony of the future? I understand solidarity in sin among men. I
understand solidarity in retribution, too; but there can be no such
solidarity with children. And if it is really true that they must share
responsibility for all their fathers' crimes, such a truth is not of this
world and is beyond my comprehension. Some jester will say, perhaps, that
the child would have grown up and have sinned, but you see he didn't grow
up, he was torn to pieces by the dogs, at eight years old. Oh, Alyosha, I
am not blaspheming! I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the
universe it will be, when everything in heaven and earth blends in one
hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: 'Thou
art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.' When the mother embraces the
fiend who threw her child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears,
'Thou art just, O Lord!' then, of course, the crown of knowledge will be
reached and all will be made clear. But what pulls me up here is that I
can't accept that harmony. And while I am on earth, I make haste to take
my own measures. You see, Alyosha, perhaps it really may happen that if I
live to that moment, or rise again to see it, I, too, perhaps, may cry
aloud with the rest, looking at the mother embracing the child's torturer,
'Thou art just, O Lord!' but I don't want to cry aloud then. While there
is still time, I hasten to protect myself, and so I renounce the higher
harmony altogether. It's not worth the tears of that one tortured child
who beat itself on the breast with its little fist and prayed in its
stinking outhouse, with its unexpiated tears to 'dear, kind God'! It's not
worth it, because those tears are unatoned for. They must be atoned for,
or there can be no harmony. But how? How are you going to atone for them?
Is it possible? By their being avenged? But what do I care for avenging
them? What do I care for a hell for oppressors? What good can hell do,
since those children have already been tortured? And what becomes of
harmony, if there is hell? I want to forgive. I want to embrace. I don't
want more suffering. And if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum
of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that
the truth is not worth such a price. I don't want the mother to embrace
the oppressor who threw her son to the dogs! She dare not forgive him! Let
her forgive him for herself, if she will, let her forgive the torturer for
the immeasurable suffering of her mother's heart. But the sufferings of
her tortured child she has no right to forgive; she dare not forgive the
torturer, even if the child were to forgive him! And if that is so, if
they dare not forgive, what becomes of harmony? Is there in the whole
world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive? I
don't want harmony. From love for humanity I don't want it. I would rather
be left with the unavenged suffering. I would rather remain with my
unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, _even if I were wrong_.
Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it's beyond our means to
pay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance
ticket, and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as
possible. And that I am doing. It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha,
only I most respectfully return Him the ticket."
"That's rebellion," murmured Alyosha, looking down.
"Rebellion? I am sorry you call it that," said Ivan earnestly. "One can
hardly live in rebellion, and I want to live. Tell me yourself, I
challenge you--answer. Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human
destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace
and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to
death only one tiny creature--that baby beating its breast with its fist,
for instance--and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you
consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the
truth."
"No, I wouldn't consent," said Alyosha softly.
"And can you admit the idea that men for whom you are building it would
agree to accept their happiness on the foundation of the unexpiated blood
of a little victim? And accepting it would remain happy for ever?"
"No, I can't admit it. Brother," said Alyosha suddenly, with flashing
eyes, "you said just now, is there a being in the whole world who would
have the right to forgive and could forgive? But there is a Being and He
can forgive everything, all and for all, because He gave His innocent
blood for all and everything. You have forgotten Him, and on Him is built
the edifice, and it is to Him they cry aloud, 'Thou art just, O Lord, for
Thy ways are revealed!' "
"Ah! the One without sin and His blood! No, I have not forgotten Him; on
the contrary I've been wondering all the time how it was you did not bring
Him in before, for usually all arguments on your side put Him in the
foreground. Do you know, Alyosha--don't laugh! I made a poem about a year
ago. If you can waste another ten minutes on me, I'll tell it to you."
"You wrote a poem?"
"Oh, no, I didn't write it," laughed Ivan, "and I've never written two
lines of poetry in my life. But I made up this poem in prose and I
remembered it. I was carried away when I made it up. You will be my first
reader--that is listener. Why should an author forego even one listener?"
smiled Ivan. "Shall I tell it to you?"
"I am all attention," said Alyosha.
"My poem is called 'The Grand Inquisitor'; it's a ridiculous thing, but I
want to tell it to you."
Chapter V. The Grand Inquisitor
"Even this must have a preface--that is, a literary preface," laughed Ivan,
"and I am a poor hand at making one. You see, my action takes place in the
sixteenth century, and at that time, as you probably learnt at school, it
was customary in poetry to bring down heavenly powers on earth. Not to
speak of Dante, in France, clerks, as well as the monks in the
monasteries, used to give regular performances in which the Madonna, the
saints, the angels, Christ, and God himself were brought on the stage. In
those days it was done in all simplicity. In Victor Hugo's _Notre Dame de
Paris_ an edifying and gratuitous spectacle was provided for the people in
the Hotel de Ville of Paris in the reign of Louis XI. in honor of the
birth of the dauphin. It was called _Le bon jugement de la tres sainte et
gracieuse Vierge Marie_, and she appears herself on the stage and
pronounces her _bon jugement_. Similar plays, chiefly from the Old
Testament, were occasionally performed in Moscow too, up to the times of
Peter the Great. But besides plays there were all sorts of legends and
ballads scattered about the world, in which the saints and angels and all
the powers of Heaven took part when required. In our monasteries the monks
busied themselves in translating, copying, and even composing such
poems--and even under the Tatars. There is, for instance, one such poem (of
course, from the Greek), _The Wanderings of Our Lady through Hell_, with
descriptions as bold as Dante's. Our Lady visits hell, and the Archangel
Michael leads her through the torments. She sees the sinners and their
punishment. There she sees among others one noteworthy set of sinners in a
burning lake; some of them sink to the bottom of the lake so that they
can't swim out, and 'these God forgets'--an expression of extraordinary
depth and force. And so Our Lady, shocked and weeping, falls before the
throne of God and begs for mercy for all in hell--for all she has seen
there, indiscriminately. Her conversation with God is immensely
interesting. She beseeches Him, she will not desist, and when God points
to the hands and feet of her Son, nailed to the Cross, and asks, 'How can
I forgive His tormentors?' she bids all the saints, all the martyrs, all
the angels and archangels to fall down with her and pray for mercy on all
without distinction. It ends by her winning from God a respite of
suffering every year from Good Friday till Trinity Day, and the sinners at
once raise a cry of thankfulness from hell, chanting, 'Thou art just, O
Lord, in this judgment.' Well, my poem would have been of that kind if it
had appeared at that time. He comes on the scene in my poem, but He says
nothing, only appears and passes on. Fifteen centuries have passed since
He promised to come in His glory, fifteen centuries since His prophet
wrote, 'Behold, I come quickly'; 'Of that day and that hour knoweth no
man, neither the Son, but the Father,' as He Himself predicted on earth.
But humanity awaits him with the same faith and with the same love. Oh,
with greater faith, for it is fifteen centuries since man has ceased to
see signs from heaven.
No signs from heaven come to-day
To add to what the heart doth say.
There was nothing left but faith in what the heart doth say. It is true
there were many miracles in those days. There were saints who performed
miraculous cures; some holy people, according to their biographies, were
visited by the Queen of Heaven herself. But the devil did not slumber, and
doubts were already arising among men of the truth of these miracles. And
just then there appeared in the north of Germany a terrible new heresy. "A
huge star like to a torch" (that is, to a church) "fell on the sources of
the waters and they became bitter." These heretics began blasphemously
denying miracles. But those who remained faithful were all the more ardent
in their faith. The tears of humanity rose up to Him as before, awaited
His coming, loved Him, hoped for Him, yearned to suffer and die for Him as
before. And so many ages mankind had prayed with faith and fervor, "O Lord
our God, hasten Thy coming," so many ages called upon Him, that in His
infinite mercy He deigned to come down to His servants. Before that day He
had come down, He had visited some holy men, martyrs and hermits, as is
written in their lives. Among us, Tyutchev, with absolute faith in the
truth of his words, bore witness that
Bearing the Cross, in slavish dress,
Weary and worn, the Heavenly King
Our mother, Russia, came to bless,
And through our land went wandering.
And that certainly was so, I assure you.
"And behold, He deigned to appear for a moment to the people, to the
tortured, suffering people, sunk in iniquity, but loving Him like
children. My story is laid in Spain, in Seville, in the most terrible time
of the Inquisition, when fires were lighted every day to the glory of God,
and 'in the splendid _auto da fe_ the wicked heretics were burnt.' Oh, of
course, this was not the coming in which He will appear according to His
promise at the end of time in all His heavenly glory, and which will be
sudden 'as lightning flashing from east to west.' No, He visited His
children only for a moment, and there where the flames were crackling
round the heretics. In His infinite mercy He came once more among men in
that human shape in which He walked among men for three years fifteen
centuries ago. He came down to the 'hot pavements' of the southern town in
which on the day before almost a hundred heretics had, _ad majorem gloriam
Dei_, been burnt by the cardinal, the Grand Inquisitor, in a magnificent
_auto da fe_, in the presence of the king, the court, the knights, the
cardinals, the most charming ladies of the court, and the whole population
of Seville.
"He came softly, unobserved, and yet, strange to say, every one recognized
Him. That might be one of the best passages in the poem. I mean, why they
recognized Him. The people are irresistibly drawn to Him, they surround
Him, they flock about Him, follow Him. He moves silently in their midst
with a gentle smile of infinite compassion. The sun of love burns in His
heart, light and power shine from His eyes, and their radiance, shed on
the people, stirs their hearts with responsive love. He holds out His
hands to them, blesses them, and a healing virtue comes from contact with
Him, even with His garments. An old man in the crowd, blind from
childhood, cries out, 'O Lord, heal me and I shall see Thee!' and, as it
were, scales fall from his eyes and the blind man sees Him. The crowd
weeps and kisses the earth under His feet. Children throw flowers before
Him, sing, and cry hosannah. 'It is He--it is He!' all repeat. 'It must be
He, it can be no one but Him!' He stops at the steps of the Seville
cathedral at the moment when the weeping mourners are bringing in a little
open white coffin. In it lies a child of seven, the only daughter of a
prominent citizen. The dead child lies hidden in flowers. 'He will raise
your child,' the crowd shouts to the weeping mother. The priest, coming to
meet the coffin, looks perplexed, and frowns, but the mother of the dead
child throws herself at His feet with a wail. 'If it is Thou, raise my
child!' she cries, holding out her hands to Him. The procession halts, the
coffin is laid on the steps at His feet. He looks with compassion, and His
lips once more softly pronounce, 'Maiden, arise!' and the maiden arises.
The little girl sits up in the coffin and looks round, smiling with wide-
open wondering eyes, holding a bunch of white roses they had put in her
hand.
"There are cries, sobs, confusion among the people, and at that moment the
cardinal himself, the Grand Inquisitor, passes by the cathedral. He is an
old man, almost ninety, tall and erect, with a withered face and sunken
eyes, in which there is still a gleam of light. He is not dressed in his
gorgeous cardinal's robes, as he was the day before, when he was burning
the enemies of the Roman Church--at this moment he is wearing his coarse,
old, monk's cassock. At a distance behind him come his gloomy assistants
and slaves and the 'holy guard.' He stops at the sight of the crowd and
watches it from a distance. He sees everything; he sees them set the
coffin down at His feet, sees the child rise up, and his face darkens. He
knits his thick gray brows and his eyes gleam with a sinister fire. He
holds out his finger and bids the guards take Him. And such is his power,
so completely are the people cowed into submission and trembling obedience
to him, that the crowd immediately makes way for the guards, and in the
midst of deathlike silence they lay hands on Him and lead Him away. The
crowd instantly bows down to the earth, like one man, before the old
Inquisitor. He blesses the people in silence and passes on. The guards
lead their prisoner to the close, gloomy vaulted prison in the ancient
palace of the Holy Inquisition and shut Him in it. The day passes and is
followed by the dark, burning, 'breathless' night of Seville. The air is
'fragrant with laurel and lemon.' In the pitch darkness the iron door of
the prison is suddenly opened and the Grand Inquisitor himself comes in
with a light in his hand. He is alone; the door is closed at once behind
him. He stands in the doorway and for a minute or two gazes into His face.
At last he goes up slowly, sets the light on the table and speaks.
" 'Is it Thou? Thou?' but receiving no answer, he adds at once, 'Don't
answer, be silent. What canst Thou say, indeed? I know too well what Thou
wouldst say. And Thou hast no right to add anything to what Thou hadst
said of old. Why, then, art Thou come to hinder us? For Thou hast come to
hinder us, and Thou knowest that. But dost Thou know what will be to-
morrow? I know not who Thou art and care not to know whether it is Thou or
only a semblance of Him, but to-morrow I shall condemn Thee and burn Thee
at the stake as the worst of heretics. And the very people who have to-day
kissed Thy feet, to-morrow at the faintest sign from me will rush to heap
up the embers of Thy fire. Knowest Thou that? Yes, maybe Thou knowest it,'
he added with thoughtful penetration, never for a moment taking his eyes
off the Prisoner."
"I don't quite understand, Ivan. What does it mean?" Alyosha, who had been
listening in silence, said with a smile. "Is it simply a wild fantasy, or
a mistake on the part of the old man--some impossible _quiproquo_?"
"Take it as the last," said Ivan, laughing, "if you are so corrupted by
modern realism and can't stand anything fantastic. If you like it to be a
case of mistaken identity, let it be so. It is true," he went on,
laughing, "the old man was ninety, and he might well be crazy over his set
idea. He might have been struck by the appearance of the Prisoner. It
might, in fact, be simply his ravings, the delusion of an old man of
ninety, over-excited by the _auto da fe_ of a hundred heretics the day
before. But does it matter to us after all whether it was a mistake of
identity or a wild fantasy? All that matters is that the old man should
speak out, should speak openly of what he has thought in silence for
ninety years."
"And the Prisoner too is silent? Does He look at him and not say a word?"
"That's inevitable in any case," Ivan laughed again. "The old man has told
Him He hasn't the right to add anything to what He has said of old. One
may say it is the most fundamental feature of Roman Catholicism, in my
opinion at least. 'All has been given by Thee to the Pope,' they say, 'and
all, therefore, is still in the Pope's hands, and there is no need for
Thee to come now at all. Thou must not meddle for the time, at least.'
That's how they speak and write too--the Jesuits, at any rate. I have read
it myself in the works of their theologians. 'Hast Thou the right to
reveal to us one of the mysteries of that world from which Thou hast
come?' my old man asks Him, and answers the question for Him. 'No, Thou
hast not; that Thou mayest not add to what has been said of old, and
mayest not take from men the freedom which Thou didst exalt when Thou wast
on earth. Whatsoever Thou revealest anew will encroach on men's freedom of
faith; for it will be manifest as a miracle, and the freedom of their
faith was dearer to Thee than anything in those days fifteen hundred years
ago. Didst Thou not often say then, "I will make you free"? But now Thou
hast seen these "free" men,' the old man adds suddenly, with a pensive
smile. 'Yes, we've paid dearly for it,' he goes on, looking sternly at
Him, 'but at last we have completed that work in Thy name. For fifteen
centuries we have been wrestling with Thy freedom, but now it is ended and
over for good. Dost Thou not believe that it's over for good? Thou lookest
meekly at me and deignest not even to be wroth with me. But let me tell
Thee that now, to-day, people are more persuaded than ever that they have
perfect freedom, yet they have brought their freedom to us and laid it
humbly at our feet. But that has been our doing. Was this what Thou didst?
Was this Thy freedom?' "
"I don't understand again," Alyosha broke in. "Is he ironical, is he
jesting?"
"Not a bit of it! He claims it as a merit for himself and his Church that
at last they have vanquished freedom and have done so to make men happy.
'For now' (he is speaking of the Inquisition, of course) 'for the first
time it has become possible to think of the happiness of men. Man was
created a rebel; and how can rebels be happy? Thou wast warned,' he says
to Him. 'Thou hast had no lack of admonitions and warnings, but Thou didst
not listen to those warnings; Thou didst reject the only way by which men
might be made happy. But, fortunately, departing Thou didst hand on the
work to us. Thou hast promised, Thou hast established by Thy word, Thou
hast given to us the right to bind and to unbind, and now, of course, Thou
canst not think of taking it away. Why, then, hast Thou come to hinder
us?' "
"And what's the meaning of 'no lack of admonitions and warnings'?" asked
Alyosha.
"Why, that's the chief part of what the old man must say.
" 'The wise and dread spirit, the spirit of self-destruction and non-
existence,' the old man goes on, 'the great spirit talked with Thee in the
wilderness, and we are told in the books that he "tempted" Thee. Is that
so? And could anything truer be said than what he revealed to Thee in
three questions and what Thou didst reject, and what in the books is
called "the temptation"? And yet if there has ever been on earth a real
stupendous miracle, it took place on that day, on the day of the three
temptations. The statement of those three questions was itself the
miracle. If it were possible to imagine simply for the sake of argument
that those three questions of the dread spirit had perished utterly from
the books, and that we had to restore them and to invent them anew, and to
do so had gathered together all the wise men of the earth--rulers, chief
priests, learned men, philosophers, poets--and had set them the task to
invent three questions, such as would not only fit the occasion, but
express in three words, three human phrases, the whole future history of
the world and of humanity--dost Thou believe that all the wisdom of the
earth united could have invented anything in depth and force equal to the
three questions which were actually put to Thee then by the wise and
mighty spirit in the wilderness? From those questions alone, from the
miracle of their statement, we can see that we have here to do not with
the fleeting human intelligence, but with the absolute and eternal. For in
those three questions the whole subsequent history of mankind is, as it
were, brought together into one whole, and foretold, and in them are
united all the unsolved historical contradictions of human nature. At the
time it could not be so clear, since the future was unknown; but now that
fifteen hundred years have passed, we see that everything in those three
questions was so justly divined and foretold, and has been so truly
fulfilled, that nothing can be added to them or taken from them.
" 'Judge Thyself who was right--Thou or he who questioned Thee then?
Remember the first question; its meaning, in other words, was this: "Thou
wouldst go into the world, and art going with empty hands, with some
promise of freedom which men in their simplicity and their natural
unruliness cannot even understand, which they fear and dread--for nothing
has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than
freedom. But seest Thou these stones in this parched and barren
wilderness? Turn them into bread, and mankind will run after Thee like a
flock of sheep, grateful and obedient, though for ever trembling, lest
Thou withdraw Thy hand and deny them Thy bread." But Thou wouldst not
deprive man of freedom and didst reject the offer, thinking, what is that
freedom worth, if obedience is bought with bread? Thou didst reply that
man lives not by bread alone. But dost Thou know that for the sake of that
earthly bread the spirit of the earth will rise up against Thee and will
strive with Thee and overcome Thee, and all will follow him, crying, "Who
can compare with this beast? He has given us fire from heaven!" Dost Thou
know that the ages will pass, and humanity will proclaim by the lips of
their sages that there is no crime, and therefore no sin; there is only
hunger? "Feed men, and then ask of them virtue!" that's what they'll write
on the banner, which they will raise against Thee, and with which they
will destroy Thy temple. Where Thy temple stood will rise a new building;
the terrible tower of Babel will be built again, and though, like the one
of old, it will not be finished, yet Thou mightest have prevented that new
tower and have cut short the sufferings of men for a thousand years; for
they will come back to us after a thousand years of agony with their
tower. They will seek us again, hidden underground in the catacombs, for
we shall be again persecuted and tortured. They will find us and cry to
us, "Feed us, for those who have promised us fire from heaven haven't
given it!" And then we shall finish building their tower, for he finishes
the building who feeds them. And we alone shall feed them in Thy name,
declaring falsely that it is in Thy name. Oh, never, never can they feed
themselves without us! No science will give them bread so long as they
remain free. In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say
to us, "Make us your slaves, but feed us." They will understand
themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are
inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share
between them! They will be convinced, too, that they can never be free,
for they are weak, vicious, worthless and rebellious. Thou didst promise
them the bread of Heaven, but, I repeat again, can it compare with earthly
bread in the eyes of the weak, ever sinful and ignoble race of man? And if
for the sake of the bread of Heaven thousands shall follow Thee, what is
to become of the millions and tens of thousands of millions of creatures
who will not have the strength to forego the earthly bread for the sake of
the heavenly? Or dost Thou care only for the tens of thousands of the
great and strong, while the millions, numerous as the sands of the sea,
who are weak but love Thee, must exist only for the sake of the great and
strong? No, we care for the weak too. They are sinful and rebellious, but
in the end they too will become obedient. They will marvel at us and look
on us as gods, because we are ready to endure the freedom which they have
found so dreadful and to rule over them--so awful it will seem to them to
be free. But we shall tell them that we are Thy servants and rule them in
Thy name. We shall deceive them again, for we will not let Thee come to us
again. That deception will be our suffering, for we shall be forced to
lie.
" 'This is the significance of the first question in the wilderness, and
this is what Thou hast rejected for the sake of that freedom which Thou
hast exalted above everything. Yet in this question lies hid the great
secret of this world. Choosing "bread," Thou wouldst have satisfied the
universal and everlasting craving of humanity--to find some one to worship.
So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so
painfully as to find some one to worship. But man seeks to worship what is
established beyond dispute, so that all men would agree at once to worship
it. For these pitiful creatures are concerned not only to find what one or
the other can worship, but to find something that all would believe in and
worship; what is essential is that all may be _together_ in it. This
craving for _community_ of worship is the chief misery of every man
individually and of all humanity from the beginning of time. For the sake
of common worship they've slain each other with the sword. They have set
up gods and challenged one another, "Put away your gods and come and
worship ours, or we will kill you and your gods!" And so it will be to the
end of the world, even when gods disappear from the earth; they will fall
down before idols just the same. Thou didst know, Thou couldst not but
have known, this fundamental secret of human nature, but Thou didst reject
the one infallible banner which was offered Thee to make all men bow down
to Thee alone--the banner of earthly bread; and Thou hast rejected it for
the sake of freedom and the bread of Heaven. Behold what Thou didst
further. And all again in the name of freedom! I tell Thee that man is
tormented by no greater anxiety than to find some one quickly to whom he
can hand over that gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is
born. But only one who can appease their conscience can take over their
freedom. In bread there was offered Thee an invincible banner; give bread,
and man will worship thee, for nothing is more certain than bread. But if
some one else gains possession of his conscience--oh! then he will cast
away Thy bread and follow after him who has ensnared his conscience. In
that Thou wast right. For the secret of man's being is not only to live
but to have something to live for. Without a stable conception of the
object of life, man would not consent to go on living, and would rather
destroy himself than remain on earth, though he had bread in abundance.
That is true. But what happened? Instead of taking men's freedom from
them, Thou didst make it greater than ever! Didst Thou forget that man
prefers peace, and even death, to freedom of choice in the knowledge of
good and evil? Nothing is more seductive for man than his freedom of
conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering. And behold,
instead of giving a firm foundation for setting the conscience of man at
rest for ever, Thou didst choose all that is exceptional, vague and
enigmatic; Thou didst choose what was utterly beyond the strength of men,
acting as though Thou didst not love them at all--Thou who didst come to
give Thy life for them! Instead of taking possession of men's freedom,
Thou didst increase it, and burdened the spiritual kingdom of mankind with
its sufferings for ever. Thou didst desire man's free love, that he should
follow Thee freely, enticed and taken captive by Thee. In place of the
rigid ancient law, man must hereafter with free heart decide for himself
what is good and what is evil, having only Thy image before him as his
guide. But didst Thou not know that he would at last reject even Thy image
and Thy truth, if he is weighed down with the fearful burden of free
choice? They will cry aloud at last that the truth is not in Thee, for
they could not have been left in greater confusion and suffering than Thou
hast caused, laying upon them so many cares and unanswerable problems.
" 'So that, in truth, Thou didst Thyself lay the foundation for the
destruction of Thy kingdom, and no one is more to blame for it. Yet what
was offered Thee? There are three powers, three powers alone, able to
conquer and to hold captive for ever the conscience of these impotent
rebels for their happiness--those forces are miracle, mystery and
authority. Thou hast rejected all three and hast set the example for doing
so. When the wise and dread spirit set Thee on the pinnacle of the temple
and said to Thee, "If Thou wouldst know whether Thou art the Son of God
then cast Thyself down, for it is written: the angels shall hold him up
lest he fall and bruise himself, and Thou shalt know then whether Thou art
the Son of God and shalt prove then how great is Thy faith in Thy Father."
But Thou didst refuse and wouldst not cast Thyself down. Oh, of course,
Thou didst proudly and well, like God; but the weak, unruly race of men,
are they gods? Oh, Thou didst know then that in taking one step, in making
one movement to cast Thyself down, Thou wouldst be tempting God and have
lost all Thy faith in Him, and wouldst have been dashed to pieces against
that earth which Thou didst come to save. And the wise spirit that tempted
Thee would have rejoiced. But I ask again, are there many like Thee? And
couldst Thou believe for one moment that men, too, could face such a
temptation? Is the nature of men such, that they can reject miracle, and
at the great moments of their life, the moments of their deepest, most
agonizing spiritual difficulties, cling only to the free verdict of the
heart? Oh, Thou didst know that Thy deed would be recorded in books, would
be handed down to remote times and the utmost ends of the earth, and Thou
didst hope that man, following Thee, would cling to God and not ask for a
miracle. But Thou didst not know that when man rejects miracle he rejects
God too; for man seeks not so much God as the miraculous. And as man
cannot bear to be without the miraculous, he will create new miracles of
his own for himself, and will worship deeds of sorcery and witchcraft,
though he might be a hundred times over a rebel, heretic and infidel. Thou
didst not come down from the Cross when they shouted to Thee, mocking and
reviling Thee, "Come down from the cross and we will believe that Thou art
He." Thou didst not come down, for again Thou wouldst not enslave man by a
miracle, and didst crave faith given freely, not based on miracle. Thou
didst crave for free love and not the base raptures of the slave before
the might that has overawed him for ever. But Thou didst think too highly
of men therein, for they are slaves, of course, though rebellious by
nature. Look round and judge; fifteen centuries have passed, look upon
them. Whom hast Thou raised up to Thyself? I swear, man is weaker and
baser by nature than Thou hast believed him! Can he, can he do what Thou
didst? By showing him so much respect, Thou didst, as it were, cease to
feel for him, for Thou didst ask far too much from him--Thou who hast loved
him more than Thyself! Respecting him less, Thou wouldst have asked less
of him. That would have been more like love, for his burden would have
been lighter. He is weak and vile. What though he is everywhere now
rebelling against our power, and proud of his rebellion? It is the pride
of a child and a schoolboy. They are little children rioting and barring
out the teacher at school. But their childish delight will end; it will
cost them dear. They will cast down temples and drench the earth with
blood. But they will see at last, the foolish children, that, though they
are rebels, they are impotent rebels, unable to keep up their own
rebellion. Bathed in their foolish tears, they will recognize at last that
He who created them rebels must have meant to mock at them. They will say
this in despair, and their utterance will be a blasphemy which will make
them more unhappy still, for man's nature cannot bear blasphemy, and in
the end always avenges it on itself. And so unrest, confusion and
unhappiness--that is the present lot of man after Thou didst bear so much
for their freedom! The great prophet tells in vision and in image, that he
saw all those who took part in the first resurrection and that there were
of each tribe twelve thousand. But if there were so many of them, they
must have been not men but gods. They had borne Thy cross, they had
endured scores of years in the barren, hungry wilderness, living upon
locusts and roots--and Thou mayest indeed point with pride at those
children of freedom, of free love, of free and splendid sacrifice for Thy
name. But remember that they were only some thousands; and what of the
rest? And how are the other weak ones to blame, because they could not
endure what the strong have endured? How is the weak soul to blame that it
is unable to receive such terrible gifts? Canst Thou have simply come to
the elect and for the elect? But if so, it is a mystery and we cannot
understand it. And if it is a mystery, we too have a right to preach a
mystery, and to teach them that it's not the free judgment of their
hearts, not love that matters, but a mystery which they must follow
blindly, even against their conscience. So we have done. We have corrected
Thy work and have founded it upon _miracle_, _mystery_ and _authority_.
And men rejoiced that they were again led like sheep, and that the
terrible gift that had brought them such suffering was, at last, lifted
from their hearts. Were we right teaching them this? Speak! Did we not
love mankind, so meekly acknowledging their feebleness, lovingly
lightening their burden, and permitting their weak nature even sin with
our sanction? Why hast Thou come now to hinder us? And why dost Thou look
silently and searchingly at me with Thy mild eyes? Be angry. I don't want
Thy love, for I love Thee not. And what use is it for me to hide anything
from Thee? Don't I know to Whom I am speaking? All that I can say is known
to Thee already. And is it for me to conceal from Thee our mystery?
Perhaps it is Thy will to hear it from my lips. Listen, then. We are not
working with Thee, but with _him_--that is our mystery. It's long--eight
centuries--since we have been on _his_ side and not on Thine. Just eight
centuries ago, we took from him what Thou didst reject with scorn, that
last gift he offered Thee, showing Thee all the kingdoms of the earth. We
took from him Rome and the sword of Caesar, and proclaimed ourselves sole
rulers of the earth, though hitherto we have not been able to complete our
work. But whose fault is that? Oh, the work is only beginning, but it has
begun. It has long to await completion and the earth has yet much to
suffer, but we shall triumph and shall be Caesars, and then we shall plan
the universal happiness of man. But Thou mightest have taken even then the
sword of Caesar. Why didst Thou reject that last gift? Hadst Thou accepted
that last counsel of the mighty spirit, Thou wouldst have accomplished all
that man seeks on earth--that is, some one to worship, some one to keep his
conscience, and some means of uniting all in one unanimous and harmonious
ant-heap, for the craving for universal unity is the third and last
anguish of men. Mankind as a whole has always striven to organize a
universal state. There have been many great nations with great histories,
but the more highly they were developed the more unhappy they were, for
they felt more acutely than other people the craving for world-wide union.
The great conquerors, Timours and Ghenghis-Khans, whirled like hurricanes
over the face of the earth striving to subdue its people, and they too
were but the unconscious expression of the same craving for universal
unity. Hadst Thou taken the world and Caesar's purple, Thou wouldst have
founded the universal state and have given universal peace. For who can
rule men if not he who holds their conscience and their bread in his
hands? We have taken the sword of Caesar, and in taking it, of course, have
rejected Thee and followed _him_. Oh, ages are yet to come of the
confusion of free thought, of their science and cannibalism. For having
begun to build their tower of Babel without us, they will end, of course,
with cannibalism. But then the beast will crawl to us and lick our feet
and spatter them with tears of blood. And we shall sit upon the beast and
raise the cup, and on it will be written, "Mystery." But then, and only
then, the reign of peace and happiness will come for men. Thou art proud
of Thine elect, but Thou hast only the elect, while we give rest to all.
And besides, how many of those elect, those mighty ones who could become
elect, have grown weary waiting for Thee, and have transferred and will
transfer the powers of their spirit and the warmth of their heart to the
other camp, and end by raising their _free_ banner against Thee. Thou
didst Thyself lift up that banner. But with us all will be happy and will
no more rebel nor destroy one another as under Thy freedom. Oh, we shall
persuade them that they will only become free when they renounce their
freedom to us and submit to us. And shall we be right or shall we be
lying? They will be convinced that we are right, for they will remember
the horrors of slavery and confusion to which Thy freedom brought them.
Freedom, free thought and science, will lead them into such straits and
will bring them face to face with such marvels and insoluble mysteries,
that some of them, the fierce and rebellious, will destroy themselves,
others, rebellious but weak, will destroy one another, while the rest,
weak and unhappy, will crawl fawning to our feet and whine to us: "Yes,
you were right, you alone possess His mystery, and we come back to you,
save us from ourselves!"
" 'Receiving bread from us, they will see clearly that we take the bread
made by their hands from them, to give it to them, without any miracle.
They will see that we do not change the stones to bread, but in truth they
will be more thankful for taking it from our hands than for the bread
itself! For they will remember only too well that in old days, without our
help, even the bread they made turned to stones in their hands, while
since they have come back to us, the very stones have turned to bread in
their hands. Too, too well will they know the value of complete
submission! And until men know that, they will be unhappy. Who is most to
blame for their not knowing it?--speak! Who scattered the flock and sent it
astray on unknown paths? But the flock will come together again and will
submit once more, and then it will be once for all. Then we shall give
them the quiet humble happiness of weak creatures such as they are by
nature. Oh, we shall persuade them at last not to be proud, for Thou didst
lift them up and thereby taught them to be proud. We shall show them that
they are weak, that they are only pitiful children, but that childlike
happiness is the sweetest of all. They will become timid and will look to
us and huddle close to us in fear, as chicks to the hen. They will marvel
at us and will be awe-stricken before us, and will be proud at our being
so powerful and clever, that we have been able to subdue such a turbulent
flock of thousands of millions. They will tremble impotently before our
wrath, their minds will grow fearful, they will be quick to shed tears
like women and children, but they will be just as ready at a sign from us
to pass to laughter and rejoicing, to happy mirth and childish song. Yes,
we shall set them to work, but in their leisure hours we shall make their
life like a child's game, with children's songs and innocent dance. Oh, we
shall allow them even sin, they are weak and helpless, and they will love
us like children because we allow them to sin. We shall tell them that
every sin will be expiated, if it is done with our permission, that we
allow them to sin because we love them, and the punishment for these sins
we take upon ourselves. And we shall take it upon ourselves, and they will
adore us as their saviors who have taken on themselves their sins before
God. And they will have no secrets from us. We shall allow or forbid them
to live with their wives and mistresses, to have or not to have
children--according to whether they have been obedient or disobedient--and
they will submit to us gladly and cheerfully. The most painful secrets of
their conscience, all, all they will bring to us, and we shall have an
answer for all. And they will be glad to believe our answer, for it will
save them from the great anxiety and terrible agony they endure at present
in making a free decision for themselves. And all will be happy, all the
millions of creatures except the hundred thousand who rule over them. For
only we, we who guard the mystery, shall be unhappy. There will be
thousands of millions of happy babes, and a hundred thousand sufferers who
have taken upon themselves the curse of the knowledge of good and evil.
Peacefully they will die, peacefully they will expire in Thy name, and
beyond the grave they will find nothing but death. But we shall keep the
secret, and for their happiness we shall allure them with the reward of
heaven and eternity. Though if there were anything in the other world, it
certainly would not be for such as they. It is prophesied that Thou wilt
come again in victory, Thou wilt come with Thy chosen, the proud and
strong, but we will say that they have only saved themselves, but we have
saved all. We are told that the harlot who sits upon the beast, and holds
in her hands the _mystery_, shall be put to shame, that the weak will rise
up again, and will rend her royal purple and will strip naked her
loathsome body. But then I will stand up and point out to Thee the
thousand millions of happy children who have known no sin. And we who have
taken their sins upon us for their happiness will stand up before Thee and
say: "Judge us if Thou canst and darest." Know that I fear Thee not. Know
that I too have been in the wilderness, I too have lived on roots and
locusts, I too prized the freedom with which Thou hast blessed men, and I
too was striving to stand among Thy elect, among the strong and powerful,
thirsting "to make up the number." But I awakened and would not serve
madness. I turned back and joined the ranks of those _who have corrected
Thy work_. I left the proud and went back to the humble, for the happiness
of the humble. What I say to Thee will come to pass, and our dominion will
be built up. I repeat, to-morrow Thou shalt see that obedient flock who at
a sign from me will hasten to heap up the hot cinders about the pile on
which I shall burn Thee for coming to hinder us. For if any one has ever
deserved our fires, it is Thou. To-morrow I shall burn Thee. _Dixi._' "
Ivan stopped. He was carried away as he talked, and spoke with excitement;
when he had finished, he suddenly smiled.
Alyosha had listened in silence; towards the end he was greatly moved and
seemed several times on the point of interrupting, but restrained himself.
Now his words came with a rush.
"But ... that's absurd!" he cried, flushing. "Your poem is in praise of
Jesus, not in blame of Him--as you meant it to be. And who will believe you
about freedom? Is that the way to understand it? That's not the idea of it
in the Orthodox Church.... That's Rome, and not even the whole of Rome,
it's false--those are the worst of the Catholics, the Inquisitors, the
Jesuits!... And there could not be such a fantastic creature as your
Inquisitor. What are these sins of mankind they take on themselves? Who
are these keepers of the mystery who have taken some curse upon themselves
for the happiness of mankind? When have they been seen? We know the
Jesuits, they are spoken ill of, but surely they are not what you
describe? They are not that at all, not at all.... They are simply the
Romish army for the earthly sovereignty of the world in the future, with
the Pontiff of Rome for Emperor ... that's their ideal, but there's no
sort of mystery or lofty melancholy about it.... It's simple lust of
power, of filthy earthly gain, of domination--something like a universal
serfdom with them as masters--that's all they stand for. They don't even
believe in God perhaps. Your suffering Inquisitor is a mere fantasy."
"Stay, stay," laughed Ivan, "how hot you are! A fantasy you say, let it be
so! Of course it's a fantasy. But allow me to say: do you really think
that the Roman Catholic movement of the last centuries is actually nothing
but the lust of power, of filthy earthly gain? Is that Father Paissy's
teaching?"
"No, no, on the contrary, Father Paissy did once say something rather the
same as you ... but of course it's not the same, not a bit the same,"
Alyosha hastily corrected himself.
"A precious admission, in spite of your 'not a bit the same.' I ask you
why your Jesuits and Inquisitors have united simply for vile material
gain? Why can there not be among them one martyr oppressed by great sorrow
and loving humanity? You see, only suppose that there was one such man
among all those who desire nothing but filthy material gain--if there's
only one like my old Inquisitor, who had himself eaten roots in the desert
and made frenzied efforts to subdue his flesh to make himself free and
perfect. But yet all his life he loved humanity, and suddenly his eyes
were opened, and he saw that it is no great moral blessedness to attain
perfection and freedom, if at the same time one gains the conviction that
millions of God's creatures have been created as a mockery, that they will
never be capable of using their freedom, that these poor rebels can never
turn into giants to complete the tower, that it was not for such geese
that the great idealist dreamt his dream of harmony. Seeing all that he
turned back and joined--the clever people. Surely that could have
happened?"
"Joined whom, what clever people?" cried Alyosha, completely carried away.
"They have no such great cleverness and no mysteries and secrets....
Perhaps nothing but Atheism, that's all their secret. Your Inquisitor does
not believe in God, that's his secret!"
"What if it is so! At last you have guessed it. It's perfectly true, it's
true that that's the whole secret, but isn't that suffering, at least for
a man like that, who has wasted his whole life in the desert and yet could
not shake off his incurable love of humanity? In his old age he reached
the clear conviction that nothing but the advice of the great dread spirit
could build up any tolerable sort of life for the feeble, unruly,
'incomplete, empirical creatures created in jest.' And so, convinced of
this, he sees that he must follow the counsel of the wise spirit, the
dread spirit of death and destruction, and therefore accept lying and
deception, and lead men consciously to death and destruction, and yet
deceive them all the way so that they may not notice where they are being
led, that the poor blind creatures may at least on the way think
themselves happy. And note, the deception is in the name of Him in Whose
ideal the old man had so fervently believed all his life long. Is not that
tragic? And if only one such stood at the head of the whole army 'filled
with the lust of power only for the sake of filthy gain'--would not one
such be enough to make a tragedy? More than that, one such standing at the
head is enough to create the actual leading idea of the Roman Church with
all its armies and Jesuits, its highest idea. I tell you frankly that I
firmly believe that there has always been such a man among those who stood
at the head of the movement. Who knows, there may have been some such even
among the Roman Popes. Who knows, perhaps the spirit of that accursed old
man who loves mankind so obstinately in his own way, is to be found even
now in a whole multitude of such old men, existing not by chance but by
agreement, as a secret league formed long ago for the guarding of the
mystery, to guard it from the weak and the unhappy, so as to make them
happy. No doubt it is so, and so it must be indeed. I fancy that even
among the Masons there's something of the same mystery at the bottom, and
that that's why the Catholics so detest the Masons as their rivals
breaking up the unity of the idea, while it is so essential that there
should be one flock and one shepherd.... But from the way I defend my idea
I might be an author impatient of your criticism. Enough of it."
"You are perhaps a Mason yourself!" broke suddenly from Alyosha. "You
don't believe in God," he added, speaking this time very sorrowfully. He
fancied besides that his brother was looking at him ironically. "How does
your poem end?" he asked, suddenly looking down. "Or was it the end?"
"I meant to end it like this. When the Inquisitor ceased speaking he
waited some time for his Prisoner to answer him. His silence weighed down
upon him. He saw that the Prisoner had listened intently all the time,
looking gently in his face and evidently not wishing to reply. The old man
longed for Him to say something, however bitter and terrible. But He
suddenly approached the old man in silence and softly kissed him on his
bloodless aged lips. That was all His answer. The old man shuddered. His
lips moved. He went to the door, opened it, and said to Him: 'Go, and come
no more ... come not at all, never, never!' And he let Him out into the
dark alleys of the town. The Prisoner went away."
"And the old man?"
"The kiss glows in his heart, but the old man adheres to his idea."
"And you with him, you too?" cried Alyosha, mournfully.
Ivan laughed.
"Why, it's all nonsense, Alyosha. It's only a senseless poem of a
senseless student, who could never write two lines of verse. Why do you
take it so seriously? Surely you don't suppose I am going straight off to
the Jesuits, to join the men who are correcting His work? Good Lord, it's
no business of mine. I told you, all I want is to live on to thirty, and
then ... dash the cup to the ground!"
"But the little sticky leaves, and the precious tombs, and the blue sky,
and the woman you love! How will you live, how will you love them?"
Alyosha cried sorrowfully. "With such a hell in your heart and your head,
how can you? No, that's just what you are going away for, to join them ...
if not, you will kill yourself, you can't endure it!"
"There is a strength to endure everything," Ivan said with a cold smile.
"What strength?"
"The strength of the Karamazovs--the strength of the Karamazov baseness."
"To sink into debauchery, to stifle your soul with corruption, yes?"
"Possibly even that ... only perhaps till I am thirty I shall escape it,
and then--"
"How will you escape it? By what will you escape it? That's impossible
with your ideas."
"In the Karamazov way, again."
" 'Everything is lawful,' you mean? Everything is lawful, is that it?"
Ivan scowled, and all at once turned strangely pale.
"Ah, you've caught up yesterday's phrase, which so offended Miuesov--and
which Dmitri pounced upon so naively, and paraphrased!" he smiled queerly.
"Yes, if you like, 'everything is lawful' since the word has been said. I
won't deny it. And Mitya's version isn't bad."
Alyosha looked at him in silence.
"I thought that going away from here I have you at least," Ivan said
suddenly, with unexpected feeling; "but now I see that there is no place
for me even in your heart, my dear hermit. The formula, 'all is lawful,' I
won't renounce--will you renounce me for that, yes?"
Alyosha got up, went to him and softly kissed him on the lips.
"That's plagiarism," cried Ivan, highly delighted. "You stole that from my
poem. Thank you though. Get up, Alyosha, it's time we were going, both of
us."
They went out, but stopped when they reached the entrance of the
restaurant.
"Listen, Alyosha," Ivan began in a resolute voice, "if I am really able to
care for the sticky little leaves I shall only love them, remembering you.
It's enough for me that you are somewhere here, and I shan't lose my
desire for life yet. Is that enough for you? Take it as a declaration of
love if you like. And now you go to the right and I to the left. And it's
enough, do you hear, enough. I mean even if I don't go away to-morrow (I
think I certainly shall go) and we meet again, don't say a word more on
these subjects. I beg that particularly. And about Dmitri too, I ask you
specially, never speak to me again," he added, with sudden irritation;
"it's all exhausted, it has all been said over and over again, hasn't it?
And I'll make you one promise in return for it. When at thirty, I want to
'dash the cup to the ground,' wherever I may be I'll come to have one more
talk with you, even though it were from America, you may be sure of that.
I'll come on purpose. It will be very interesting to have a look at you,
to see what you'll be by that time. It's rather a solemn promise, you see.
And we really may be parting for seven years or ten. Come, go now to your
Pater Seraphicus, he is dying. If he dies without you, you will be angry
with me for having kept you. Good-by, kiss me once more; that's right, now
go."
Ivan turned suddenly and went his way without looking back. It was just as
Dmitri had left Alyosha the day before, though the parting had been very
different. The strange resemblance flashed like an arrow through Alyosha's
mind in the distress and dejection of that moment. He waited a little,
looking after his brother. He suddenly noticed that Ivan swayed as he
walked and that his right shoulder looked lower than his left. He had
never noticed it before. But all at once he turned too, and almost ran to
the monastery. It was nearly dark, and he felt almost frightened;
something new was growing up in him for which he could not account. The
wind had risen again as on the previous evening, and the ancient pines
murmured gloomily about him when he entered the hermitage copse. He almost
ran. "Pater Seraphicus--he got that name from somewhere--where from?"
Alyosha wondered. "Ivan, poor Ivan, and when shall I see you again?...
Here is the hermitage. Yes, yes, that he is, Pater Seraphicus, he will
save me--from him and for ever!"
Several times afterwards he wondered how he could on leaving Ivan so
completely forget his brother Dmitri, though he had that morning, only a
few hours before, so firmly resolved to find him and not to give up doing
so, even should he be unable to return to the monastery that night.
Chapter VI. For Awhile A Very Obscure One
And Ivan, on parting from Alyosha, went home to Fyodor Pavlovitch's house.
But, strange to say, he was overcome by insufferable depression, which
grew greater at every step he took towards the house. There was nothing
strange in his being depressed; what was strange was that Ivan could not
have said what was the cause of it. He had often been depressed before,
and there was nothing surprising at his feeling so at such a moment, when
he had broken off with everything that had brought him here, and was
preparing that day to make a new start and enter upon a new, unknown
future. He would again be as solitary as ever, and though he had great
hopes, and great--too great--expectations from life, he could not have given
any definite account of his hopes, his expectations, or even his desires.
Yet at that moment, though the apprehension of the new and unknown
certainly found place in his heart, what was worrying him was something
quite different. "Is it loathing for my father's house?" he wondered.
"Quite likely; I am so sick of it; and though it's the last time I shall
cross its hateful threshold, still I loathe it.... No, it's not that
either. Is it the parting with Alyosha and the conversation I had with
him? For so many years I've been silent with the whole world and not
deigned to speak, and all of a sudden I reel off a rigmarole like that."
It certainly might have been the youthful vexation of youthful
inexperience and vanity--vexation at having failed to express himself,
especially with such a being as Alyosha, on whom his heart had certainly
been reckoning. No doubt that came in, that vexation, it must have done
indeed; but yet that was not it, that was not it either. "I feel sick with
depression and yet I can't tell what I want. Better not think, perhaps."
Ivan tried "not to think," but that, too, was no use. What made his
depression so vexatious and irritating was that it had a kind of casual,
external character--he felt that. Some person or thing seemed to be
standing out somewhere, just as something will sometimes obtrude itself
upon the eye, and though one may be so busy with work or conversation that
for a long time one does not notice it, yet it irritates and almost
torments one till at last one realizes, and removes the offending object,
often quite a trifling and ridiculous one--some article left about in the
wrong place, a handkerchief on the floor, a book not replaced on the
shelf, and so on.
At last, feeling very cross and ill-humored, Ivan arrived home, and
suddenly, about fifteen paces from the garden gate, he guessed what was
fretting and worrying him.
On a bench in the gateway the valet Smerdyakov was sitting enjoying the
coolness of the evening, and at the first glance at him Ivan knew that the
valet Smerdyakov was on his mind, and that it was this man that his soul
loathed. It all dawned upon him suddenly and became clear. Just before,
when Alyosha had been telling him of his meeting with Smerdyakov, he had
felt a sudden twinge of gloom and loathing, which had immediately stirred
responsive anger in his heart. Afterwards, as he talked, Smerdyakov had
been forgotten for the time; but still he had been in his mind, and as
soon as Ivan parted with Alyosha and was walking home, the forgotten
sensation began to obtrude itself again. "Is it possible that a miserable,
contemptible creature like that can worry me so much?" he wondered, with
insufferable irritation.
It was true that Ivan had come of late to feel an intense dislike for the
man, especially during the last few days. He had even begun to notice in
himself a growing feeling that was almost of hatred for the creature.
Perhaps this hatred was accentuated by the fact that when Ivan first came
to the neighborhood he had felt quite differently. Then he had taken a
marked interest in Smerdyakov, and had even thought him very original. He
had encouraged him to talk to him, although he had always wondered at a
certain incoherence, or rather restlessness, in his mind, and could not
understand what it was that so continually and insistently worked upon the
brain of "the contemplative." They discussed philosophical questions and
even how there could have been light on the first day when the sun, moon,
and stars were only created on the fourth day, and how that was to be
understood. But Ivan soon saw that, though the sun, moon, and stars might
be an interesting subject, yet that it was quite secondary to Smerdyakov,
and that he was looking for something altogether different. In one way and
another, he began to betray a boundless vanity, and a wounded vanity, too,
and that Ivan disliked. It had first given rise to his aversion. Later on,
there had been trouble in the house. Grushenka had come on the scene, and
there had been the scandals with his brother Dmitri--they discussed that,
too. But though Smerdyakov always talked of that with great excitement, it
was impossible to discover what he desired to come of it. There was, in
fact, something surprising in the illogicality and incoherence of some of
his desires, accidentally betrayed and always vaguely expressed.
Smerdyakov was always inquiring, putting certain indirect but obviously
premeditated questions, but what his object was he did not explain, and
usually at the most important moment he would break off and relapse into
silence or pass to another subject. But what finally irritated Ivan most
and confirmed his dislike for him was the peculiar, revolting familiarity
which Smerdyakov began to show more and more markedly. Not that he forgot
himself and was rude; on the contrary, he always spoke very respectfully,
yet he had obviously begun to consider--goodness knows why!--that there was
some sort of understanding between him and Ivan Fyodorovitch. He always
spoke in a tone that suggested that those two had some kind of compact,
some secret between them, that had at some time been expressed on both
sides, only known to them and beyond the comprehension of those around
them. But for a long while Ivan did not recognize the real cause of his
growing dislike and he had only lately realized what was at the root of
it.
With a feeling of disgust and irritation he tried to pass in at the gate
without speaking or looking at Smerdyakov. But Smerdyakov rose from the
bench, and from that action alone, Ivan knew instantly that he wanted
particularly to talk to him. Ivan looked at him and stopped, and the fact
that he did stop, instead of passing by, as he meant to the minute before,
drove him to fury. With anger and repulsion he looked at Smerdyakov's
emasculate, sickly face, with the little curls combed forward on his
forehead. His left eye winked and he grinned as if to say, "Where are you
going? You won't pass by; you see that we two clever people have something
to say to each other."
Ivan shook. "Get away, miserable idiot. What have I to do with you?" was
on the tip of his tongue, but to his profound astonishment he heard
himself say, "Is my father still asleep, or has he waked?"
He asked the question softly and meekly, to his own surprise, and at once,
again to his own surprise, sat down on the bench. For an instant he felt
almost frightened; he remembered it afterwards. Smerdyakov stood facing
him, his hands behind his back, looking at him with assurance and almost
severity.
"His honor is still asleep," he articulated deliberately ("You were the
first to speak, not I," he seemed to say). "I am surprised at you, sir,"
he added, after a pause, dropping his eyes affectedly, setting his right
foot forward, and playing with the tip of his polished boot.
"Why are you surprised at me?" Ivan asked abruptly and sullenly, doing his
utmost to restrain himself, and suddenly realizing, with disgust, that he
was feeling intense curiosity and would not, on any account, have gone
away without satisfying it.
"Why don't you go to Tchermashnya, sir?" Smerdyakov suddenly raised his
eyes and smiled familiarly. "Why I smile you must understand of yourself,
if you are a clever man," his screwed-up left eye seemed to say.
"Why should I go to Tchermashnya?" Ivan asked in surprise.
Smerdyakov was silent again.
"Fyodor Pavlovitch himself has so begged you to," he said at last, slowly
and apparently attaching no significance to his answer. "I put you off
with a secondary reason," he seemed to suggest, "simply to say something."
"Damn you! Speak out what you want!" Ivan cried angrily at last, passing
from meekness to violence.
Smerdyakov drew his right foot up to his left, pulled himself up, but
still looked at him with the same serenity and the same little smile.
"Substantially nothing--but just by way of conversation."
Another silence followed. They did not speak for nearly a minute. Ivan
knew that he ought to get up and show anger, and Smerdyakov stood before
him and seemed to be waiting as though to see whether he would be angry or
not. So at least it seemed to Ivan. At last he moved to get up. Smerdyakov
seemed to seize the moment.
"I'm in an awful position, Ivan Fyodorovitch. I don't know how to help
myself," he said resolutely and distinctly, and at his last word he
sighed. Ivan Fyodorovitch sat down again.
"They are both utterly crazy, they are no better than little children,"
Smerdyakov went on. "I am speaking of your parent and your brother Dmitri
Fyodorovitch. Here Fyodor Pavlovitch will get up directly and begin
worrying me every minute, 'Has she come? Why hasn't she come?' and so on
up till midnight and even after midnight. And if Agrafena Alexandrovna
doesn't come (for very likely she does not mean to come at all) then he
will be at me again to-morrow morning, 'Why hasn't she come? When will she
come?'--as though I were to blame for it. On the other side it's no better.
As soon as it gets dark, or even before, your brother will appear with his
gun in his hands: 'Look out, you rogue, you soup-maker. If you miss her
and don't let me know she's been--I'll kill you before any one.' When the
night's over, in the morning, he, too, like Fyodor Pavlovitch, begins
worrying me to death. 'Why hasn't she come? Will she come soon?' And he,
too, thinks me to blame because his lady hasn't come. And every day and
every hour they get angrier and angrier, so that I sometimes think I shall
kill myself in a fright. I can't depend upon them, sir."
"And why have you meddled? Why did you begin to spy for Dmitri
Fyodorovitch?" said Ivan irritably.
"How could I help meddling? Though, indeed, I haven't meddled at all, if
you want to know the truth of the matter. I kept quiet from the very
beginning, not daring to answer; but he pitched on me to be his servant.
He has had only one thing to say since: 'I'll kill you, you scoundrel, if
you miss her,' I feel certain, sir, that I shall have a long fit to-
morrow."
"What do you mean by 'a long fit'?"
"A long fit, lasting a long time--several hours, or perhaps a day or two.
Once it went on for three days. I fell from the garret that time. The
struggling ceased and then began again, and for three days I couldn't come
back to my senses. Fyodor Pavlovitch sent for Herzenstube, the doctor
here, and he put ice on my head and tried another remedy, too.... I might
have died."
"But they say one can't tell with epilepsy when a fit is coming. What
makes you say you will have one to-morrow?" Ivan inquired, with a
peculiar, irritable curiosity.
"That's just so. You can't tell beforehand."
"Besides, you fell from the garret then."
"I climb up to the garret every day. I might fall from the garret again
to-morrow. And, if not, I might fall down the cellar steps. I have to go
into the cellar every day, too."
Ivan took a long look at him.
"You are talking nonsense, I see, and I don't quite understand you," he
said softly, but with a sort of menace. "Do you mean to pretend to be ill
to-morrow for three days, eh?"
Smerdyakov, who was looking at the ground again, and playing with the toe
of his right foot, set the foot down, moved the left one forward, and,
grinning, articulated:
"If I were able to play such a trick, that is, pretend to have a fit--and
it would not be difficult for a man accustomed to them--I should have a
perfect right to use such a means to save myself from death. For even if
Agrafena Alexandrovna comes to see his father while I am ill, his honor
can't blame a sick man for not telling him. He'd be ashamed to."
"Hang it all!" Ivan cried, his face working with anger, "why are you
always in such a funk for your life? All my brother Dmitri's threats are
only hasty words and mean nothing. He won't kill you; it's not you he'll
kill!"
"He'd kill me first of all, like a fly. But even more than that, I am
afraid I shall be taken for an accomplice of his when he does something
crazy to his father."
"Why should you be taken for an accomplice?"
"They'll think I am an accomplice, because I let him know the signals as a
great secret."
"What signals? Whom did you tell? Confound you, speak more plainly."
"I'm bound to admit the fact," Smerdyakov drawled with pedantic composure,
"that I have a secret with Fyodor Pavlovitch in this business. As you know
yourself (if only you do know it) he has for several days past locked
himself in as soon as night or even evening comes on. Of late you've been
going upstairs to your room early every evening, and yesterday you did not
come down at all, and so perhaps you don't know how carefully he has begun
to lock himself in at night, and even if Grigory Vassilyevitch comes to
the door he won't open to him till he hears his voice. But Grigory
Vassilyevitch does not come, because I wait upon him alone in his room
now. That's the arrangement he made himself ever since this to-do with
Agrafena Alexandrovna began. But at night, by his orders, I go away to the
lodge so that I don't get to sleep till midnight, but am on the watch,
getting up and walking about the yard, waiting for Agrafena Alexandrovna
to come. For the last few days he's been perfectly frantic expecting her.
What he argues is, she is afraid of him, Dmitri Fyodorovitch (Mitya, as he
calls him), 'and so,' says he, 'she'll come the back-way, late at night,
to me. You look out for her,' says he, 'till midnight and later; and if
she does come, you run up and knock at my door or at the window from the
garden. Knock at first twice, rather gently, and then three times more
quickly, then,' says he, 'I shall understand at once that she has come,
and will open the door to you quietly.' Another signal he gave me in case
anything unexpected happens. At first, two knocks, and then, after an
interval, another much louder. Then he will understand that something has
happened suddenly and that I must see him, and he will open to me so that
I can go and speak to him. That's all in case Agrafena Alexandrovna can't
come herself, but sends a message. Besides, Dmitri Fyodorovitch might
come, too, so I must let him know he is near. His honor is awfully afraid
of Dmitri Fyodorovitch, so that even if Agrafena Alexandrovna had come and
were locked in with him, and Dmitri Fyodorovitch were to turn up anywhere
near at the time, I should be bound to let him know at once, knocking
three times. So that the first signal of five knocks means Agrafena
Alexandrovna has come, while the second signal of three knocks means
'something important to tell you.' His honor has shown me them several
times and explained them. And as in the whole universe no one knows of
these signals but myself and his honor, so he'd open the door without the
slightest hesitation and without calling out (he is awfully afraid of
calling out aloud). Well, those signals are known to Dmitri Fyodorovitch
too, now."
"How are they known? Did you tell him? How dared you tell him?"
"It was through fright I did it. How could I dare to keep it back from
him? Dmitri Fyodorovitch kept persisting every day, 'You are deceiving me,
you are hiding something from me! I'll break both your legs for you.' So I
told him those secret signals that he might see my slavish devotion, and
might be satisfied that I was not deceiving him, but was telling him all I
could."
"If you think that he'll make use of those signals and try to get in,
don't let him in."
"But if I should be laid up with a fit, how can I prevent him coming in
then, even if I dared prevent him, knowing how desperate he is?"
"Hang it! How can you be so sure you are going to have a fit, confound
you? Are you laughing at me?"
"How could I dare laugh at you? I am in no laughing humor with this fear
on me. I feel I am going to have a fit. I have a presentiment. Fright
alone will bring it on."
"Confound it! If you are laid up, Grigory will be on the watch. Let
Grigory know beforehand; he will be sure not to let him in."
"I should never dare to tell Grigory Vassilyevitch about the signals
without orders from my master. And as for Grigory Vassilyevitch hearing
him and not admitting him, he has been ill ever since yesterday, and Marfa
Ignatyevna intends to give him medicine to-morrow. They've just arranged
it. It's a very strange remedy of hers. Marfa Ignatyevna knows of a
preparation and always keeps it. It's a strong thing made from some herb.
She has the secret of it, and she always gives it to Grigory Vassilyevitch
three times a year when his lumbago's so bad he is almost paralyzed by it.
Then she takes a towel, wets it with the stuff, and rubs his whole back
for half an hour till it's quite red and swollen, and what's left in the
bottle she gives him to drink with a special prayer; but not quite all,
for on such occasions she leaves some for herself, and drinks it herself.
And as they never take strong drink, I assure you they both drop asleep at
once and sleep sound a very long time. And when Grigory Vassilyevitch
wakes up he is perfectly well after it, but Marfa Ignatyevna always has a
headache from it. So, if Marfa Ignatyevna carries out her intention to-
morrow, they won't hear anything and hinder Dmitri Fyodorovitch. They'll
be asleep."
"What a rigmarole! And it all seems to happen at once, as though it were
planned. You'll have a fit and they'll both be unconscious," cried Ivan.
"But aren't you trying to arrange it so?" broke from him suddenly, and he
frowned threateningly.
"How could I?... And why should I, when it all depends on Dmitri
Fyodorovitch and his plans?... If he means to do anything, he'll do it;
but if not, I shan't be thrusting him upon his father."
"And why should he go to father, especially on the sly, if, as you say
yourself, Agrafena Alexandrovna won't come at all?" Ivan went on, turning
white with anger. "You say that yourself, and all the while I've been
here, I've felt sure it was all the old man's fancy, and the creature
won't come to him. Why should Dmitri break in on him if she doesn't come?
Speak, I want to know what you are thinking!"
"You know yourself why he'll come. What's the use of what I think? His
honor will come simply because he is in a rage or suspicious on account of
my illness perhaps, and he'll dash in, as he did yesterday through
impatience to search the rooms, to see whether she hasn't escaped him on
the sly. He is perfectly well aware, too, that Fyodor Pavlovitch has a big
envelope with three thousand roubles in it, tied up with ribbon and sealed
with three seals. On it is written in his own hand, 'To my angel
Grushenka, if she will come,' to which he added three days later, 'for my
little chicken.' There's no knowing what that might do."
"Nonsense!" cried Ivan, almost beside himself. "Dmitri won't come to steal
money and kill my father to do it. He might have killed him yesterday on
account of Grushenka, like the frantic, savage fool he is, but he won't
steal."
"He is in very great need of money now--the greatest need, Ivan
Fyodorovitch. You don't know in what need he is," Smerdyakov explained,
with perfect composure and remarkable distinctness. "He looks on that
three thousand as his own, too. He said so to me himself. 'My father still
owes me just three thousand,' he said. And besides that, consider, Ivan
Fyodorovitch, there is something else perfectly true. It's as good as
certain, so to say, that Agrafena Alexandrovna will force him, if only she
cares to, to marry her--the master himself, I mean, Fyodor Pavlovitch--if
only she cares to, and of course she may care to. All I've said is that
she won't come, but maybe she's looking for more than that--I mean to be
mistress here. I know myself that Samsonov, her merchant, was laughing
with her about it, telling her quite openly that it would not be at all a
stupid thing to do. And she's got plenty of sense. She wouldn't marry a
beggar like Dmitri Fyodorovitch. So, taking that into consideration, Ivan
Fyodorovitch, reflect that then neither Dmitri Fyodorovitch nor yourself
and your brother, Alexey Fyodorovitch, would have anything after the
master's death, not a rouble, for Agrafena Alexandrovna would marry him
simply to get hold of the whole, all the money there is. But if your
father were to die now, there'd be some forty thousand for sure, even for
Dmitri Fyodorovitch whom he hates so, for he's made no will.... Dmitri
Fyodorovitch knows all that very well."
A sort of shudder passed over Ivan's face. He suddenly flushed.
"Then why on earth," he suddenly interrupted Smerdyakov, "do you advise me
to go to Tchermashnya? What did you mean by that? If I go away, you see
what will happen here." Ivan drew his breath with difficulty.
"Precisely so," said Smerdyakov, softly and reasonably, watching Ivan
intently, however.
"What do you mean by 'precisely so'?" Ivan questioned him, with a menacing
light in his eyes, restraining himself with difficulty.
"I spoke because I felt sorry for you. If I were in your place I should
simply throw it all up ... rather than stay on in such a position,"
answered Smerdyakov, with the most candid air looking at Ivan's flashing
eyes. They were both silent.
"You seem to be a perfect idiot, and what's more ... an awful scoundrel,
too." Ivan rose suddenly from the bench. He was about to pass straight
through the gate, but he stopped short and turned to Smerdyakov. Something
strange followed. Ivan, in a sudden paroxysm, bit his lip, clenched his
fists, and, in another minute, would have flung himself on Smerdyakov. The
latter, anyway, noticed it at the same moment, started, and shrank back.
But the moment passed without mischief to Smerdyakov, and Ivan turned in
silence, as it seemed in perplexity, to the gate.
"I am going away to Moscow to-morrow, if you care to know--early to-morrow
morning. That's all!" he suddenly said aloud angrily, and wondered himself
afterwards what need there was to say this then to Smerdyakov.
"That's the best thing you can do," he responded, as though he had
expected to hear it; "except that you can always be telegraphed for from
Moscow, if anything should happen here."
Ivan stopped again, and again turned quickly to Smerdyakov. But a change
had passed over him, too. All his familiarity and carelessness had
completely disappeared. His face expressed attention and expectation,
intent but timid and cringing.
"Haven't you something more to say--something to add?" could be read in the
intent gaze he fixed on Ivan.
"And couldn't I be sent for from Tchermashnya, too--in case anything
happened?" Ivan shouted suddenly, for some unknown reason raising his
voice.
"From Tchermashnya, too ... you could be sent for," Smerdyakov muttered,
almost in a whisper, looking disconcerted, but gazing intently into Ivan's
eyes.
"Only Moscow is farther and Tchermashnya is nearer. Is it to save my
spending money on the fare, or to save my going so far out of my way, that
you insist on Tchermashnya?"
"Precisely so ..." muttered Smerdyakov, with a breaking voice. He looked
at Ivan with a revolting smile, and again made ready to draw back. But to
his astonishment Ivan broke into a laugh, and went through the gate still
laughing. Any one who had seen his face at that moment would have known
that he was not laughing from lightness of heart, and he could not have
explained himself what he was feeling at that instant. He moved and walked
as though in a nervous frenzy.
Chapter VII. "It's Always Worth While Speaking To A Clever Man"
And in the same nervous frenzy, too, he spoke. Meeting Fyodor Pavlovitch
in the drawing-room directly he went in, he shouted to him, waving his
hands, "I am going upstairs to my room, not in to you. Good-by!" and
passed by, trying not even to look at his father. Very possibly the old
man was too hateful to him at that moment; but such an unceremonious
display of hostility was a surprise even to Fyodor Pavlovitch. And the old
man evidently wanted to tell him something at once and had come to meet
him in the drawing-room on purpose. Receiving this amiable greeting, he
stood still in silence and with an ironical air watched his son going
upstairs, till he passed out of sight.
"What's the matter with him?" he promptly asked Smerdyakov, who had
followed Ivan.
"Angry about something. Who can tell?" the valet muttered evasively.
"Confound him! Let him be angry then. Bring in the samovar, and get along
with you. Look sharp! No news?"
Then followed a series of questions such as Smerdyakov had just complained
of to Ivan, all relating to his expected visitor, and these questions we
will omit. Half an hour later the house was locked, and the crazy old man
was wandering along through the rooms in excited expectation of hearing
every minute the five knocks agreed upon. Now and then he peered out into
the darkness, seeing nothing.
It was very late, but Ivan was still awake and reflecting. He sat up late
that night, till two o'clock. But we will not give an account of his
thoughts, and this is not the place to look into that soul--its turn will
come. And even if one tried, it would be very hard to give an account of
them, for there were no thoughts in his brain, but something very vague,
and, above all, intense excitement. He felt himself that he had lost his
bearings. He was fretted, too, by all sorts of strange and almost
surprising desires; for instance, after midnight he suddenly had an
intense irresistible inclination to go down, open the door, go to the
lodge and beat Smerdyakov. But if he had been asked why, he could not have
given any exact reason, except perhaps that he loathed the valet as one
who had insulted him more gravely than any one in the world. On the other
hand, he was more than once that night overcome by a sort of inexplicable
humiliating terror, which he felt positively paralyzed his physical
powers. His head ached and he was giddy. A feeling of hatred was rankling
in his heart, as though he meant to avenge himself on some one. He even
hated Alyosha, recalling the conversation he had just had with him. At
moments he hated himself intensely. Of Katerina Ivanovna he almost forgot
to think, and wondered greatly at this afterwards, especially as he
remembered perfectly that when he had protested so valiantly to Katerina
Ivanovna that he would go away next day to Moscow, something had whispered
in his heart, "That's nonsense, you are not going, and it won't be so easy
to tear yourself away as you are boasting now."
Remembering that night long afterwards, Ivan recalled with peculiar
repulsion how he had suddenly got up from the sofa and had stealthily, as
though he were afraid of being watched, opened the door, gone out on the
staircase and listened to Fyodor Pavlovitch stirring down below, had
listened a long while--some five minutes--with a sort of strange curiosity,
holding his breath while his heart throbbed. And why he had done all this,
why he was listening, he could not have said. That "action" all his life
afterwards he called "infamous," and at the bottom of his heart, he
thought of it as the basest action of his life. For Fyodor Pavlovitch
himself he felt no hatred at that moment, but was simply intensely curious
to know how he was walking down there below and what he must be doing now.
He wondered and imagined how he must be peeping out of the dark windows
and stopping in the middle of the room, listening, listening--for some one
to knock. Ivan went out on to the stairs twice to listen like this.
About two o'clock when everything was quiet, and even Fyodor Pavlovitch
had gone to bed, Ivan had got into bed, firmly resolved to fall asleep at
once, as he felt fearfully exhausted. And he did fall asleep at once, and
slept soundly without dreams, but waked early, at seven o'clock, when it
was broad daylight. Opening his eyes, he was surprised to feel himself
extraordinarily vigorous. He jumped up at once and dressed quickly; then
dragged out his trunk and began packing immediately. His linen had come
back from the laundress the previous morning. Ivan positively smiled at
the thought that everything was helping his sudden departure. And his
departure certainly was sudden. Though Ivan had said the day before (to
Katerina Ivanovna, Alyosha, and Smerdyakov) that he was leaving next day,
yet he remembered that he had no thought of departure when he went to bed,
or, at least, had not dreamed that his first act in the morning would be
to pack his trunk. At last his trunk and bag were ready. It was about nine
o'clock when Marfa Ignatyevna came in with her usual inquiry, "Where will
your honor take your tea, in your own room or downstairs?" He looked
almost cheerful, but there was about him, about his words and gestures,
something hurried and scattered. Greeting his father affably, and even
inquiring specially after his health, though he did not wait to hear his
answer to the end, he announced that he was starting off in an hour to
return to Moscow for good, and begged him to send for the horses. His
father heard this announcement with no sign of surprise, and forgot in an
unmannerly way to show regret at losing him. Instead of doing so, he flew
into a great flutter at the recollection of some important business of his
own.
"What a fellow you are! Not to tell me yesterday! Never mind; we'll manage
it all the same. Do me a great service, my dear boy. Go to Tchermashnya on
the way. It's only to turn to the left from the station at Volovya, only
another twelve versts and you come to Tchermashnya."
"I'm sorry, I can't. It's eighty versts to the railway and the train
starts for Moscow at seven o'clock to-night. I can only just catch it."
"You'll catch it to-morrow or the day after, but to-day turn off to
Tchermashnya. It won't put you out much to humor your father! If I hadn't
had something to keep me here, I would have run over myself long ago, for
I've some business there in a hurry. But here I ... it's not the time for
me to go now.... You see, I've two pieces of copse land there. The
Maslovs, an old merchant and his son, will give eight thousand for the
timber. But last year I just missed a purchaser who would have given
twelve. There's no getting any one about here to buy it. The Maslovs have
it all their own way. One has to take what they'll give, for no one here
dare bid against them. The priest at Ilyinskoe wrote to me last Thursday
that a merchant called Gorstkin, a man I know, had turned up. What makes
him valuable is that he is not from these parts, so he is not afraid of
the Maslovs. He says he will give me eleven thousand for the copse. Do you
hear? But he'll only be here, the priest writes, for a week altogether, so
you must go at once and make a bargain with him."
"Well, you write to the priest; he'll make the bargain."
"He can't do it. He has no eye for business. He is a perfect treasure, I'd
give him twenty thousand to take care of for me without a receipt; but he
has no eye for business, he is a perfect child, a crow could deceive him.
And yet he is a learned man, would you believe it? This Gorstkin looks
like a peasant, he wears a blue kaftan, but he is a regular rogue. That's
the common complaint. He is a liar. Sometimes he tells such lies that you
wonder why he is doing it. He told me the year before last that his wife
was dead and that he had married another, and would you believe it, there
was not a word of truth in it? His wife has never died at all, she is
alive to this day and gives him a beating twice a week. So what you have
to find out is whether he is lying or speaking the truth, when he says he
wants to buy it and would give eleven thousand."
"I shall be no use in such a business. I have no eye either."
"Stay, wait a bit! You will be of use, for I will tell you the signs by
which you can judge about Gorstkin. I've done business with him a long
time. You see, you must watch his beard; he has a nasty, thin, red beard.
If his beard shakes when he talks and he gets cross, it's all right, he is
saying what he means, he wants to do business. But if he strokes his beard
with his left hand and grins--he is trying to cheat you. Don't watch his
eyes, you won't find out anything from his eyes, he is a deep one, a
rogue--but watch his beard! I'll give you a note and you show it to him.
He's called Gorstkin, though his real name is Lyagavy(4); but don't call
him so, he will be offended. If you come to an understanding with him, and
see it's all right, write here at once. You need only write: 'He's not
lying.' Stand out for eleven thousand; one thousand you can knock off, but
not more. Just think! there's a difference between eight thousand and
eleven thousand. It's as good as picking up three thousand; it's not so
easy to find a purchaser, and I'm in desperate need of money. Only let me
know it's serious, and I'll run over and fix it up. I'll snatch the time
somehow. But what's the good of my galloping over, if it's all a notion of
the priest's? Come, will you go?"
"Oh, I can't spare the time. You must excuse me."
"Come, you might oblige your father. I shan't forget it. You've no heart,
any of you--that's what it is? What's a day or two to you? Where are you
going now--to Venice? Your Venice will keep another two days. I would have
sent Alyosha, but what use is Alyosha in a thing like that? I send you
just because you are a clever fellow. Do you suppose I don't see that? You
know nothing about timber, but you've got an eye. All that is wanted is to
see whether the man is in earnest. I tell you, watch his beard--if his
beard shakes you know he is in earnest."
"You force me to go to that damned Tchermashnya yourself, then?" cried
Ivan, with a malignant smile.
Fyodor Pavlovitch did not catch, or would not catch, the malignancy, but
he caught the smile.
"Then you'll go, you'll go? I'll scribble the note for you at once."
"I don't know whether I shall go. I don't know. I'll decide on the way."
"Nonsense! Decide at once. My dear fellow, decide! If you settle the
matter, write me a line; give it to the priest and he'll send it on to me
at once. And I won't delay you more than that. You can go to Venice. The
priest will give you horses back to Volovya station."
The old man was quite delighted. He wrote the note, and sent for the
horses. A light lunch was brought in, with brandy. When Fyodor Pavlovitch
was pleased, he usually became expansive, but to-day he seemed to restrain
himself. Of Dmitri, for instance, he did not say a word. He was quite
unmoved by the parting, and seemed, in fact, at a loss for something to
say. Ivan noticed this particularly. "He must be bored with me," he
thought. Only when accompanying his son out on to the steps, the old man
began to fuss about. He would have kissed him, but Ivan made haste to hold
out his hand, obviously avoiding the kiss. His father saw it at once, and
instantly pulled himself up.
"Well, good luck to you, good luck to you!" he repeated from the steps.
"You'll come again some time or other? Mind you do come. I shall always be
glad to see you. Well, Christ be with you!"
Ivan got into the carriage.
"Good-by, Ivan! Don't be too hard on me!" the father called for the last
time.
The whole household came out to take leave--Smerdyakov, Marfa and Grigory.
Ivan gave them ten roubles each. When he had seated himself in the
carriage, Smerdyakov jumped up to arrange the rug.
"You see ... I am going to Tchermashnya," broke suddenly from Ivan. Again,
as the day before, the words seemed to drop of themselves, and he laughed,
too, a peculiar, nervous laugh. He remembered it long after.
"It's a true saying then, that 'it's always worth while speaking to a
clever man,' " answered Smerdyakov firmly, looking significantly at Ivan.
The carriage rolled away. Nothing was clear in Ivan's soul, but he looked
eagerly around him at the fields, at the hills, at the trees, at a flock
of geese flying high overhead in the bright sky. And all of a sudden he
felt very happy. He tried to talk to the driver, and he felt intensely
interested in an answer the peasant made him; but a minute later he
realized that he was not catching anything, and that he had not really
even taken in the peasant's answer. He was silent, and it was pleasant
even so. The air was fresh, pure and cool, the sky bright. The images of
Alyosha and Katerina Ivanovna floated into his mind. But he softly smiled,
blew softly on the friendly phantoms, and they flew away. "There's plenty
of time for them," he thought. They reached the station quickly, changed
horses, and galloped to Volovya. "Why is it worth while speaking to a
clever man? What did he mean by that?" The thought seemed suddenly to
clutch at his breathing. "And why did I tell him I was going to
Tchermashnya?" They reached Volovya station. Ivan got out of the carriage,
and the drivers stood round him bargaining over the journey of twelve
versts to Tchermashnya. He told them to harness the horses. He went into
the station house, looked round, glanced at the overseer's wife, and
suddenly went back to the entrance.
"I won't go to Tchermashnya. Am I too late to reach the railway by seven,
brothers?"
"We shall just do it. Shall we get the carriage out?"
"At once. Will any one of you be going to the town to-morrow?"
"To be sure. Mitri here will."
"Can you do me a service, Mitri? Go to my father's, to Fyodor Pavlovitch
Karamazov, and tell him I haven't gone to Tchermashnya. Can you?"
"Of course I can. I've known Fyodor Pavlovitch a long time."
"And here's something for you, for I dare say he won't give you anything,"
said Ivan, laughing gayly.
"You may depend on it he won't." Mitya laughed too. "Thank you, sir. I'll
be sure to do it."
At seven o'clock Ivan got into the train and set off to Moscow "Away with
the past. I've done with the old world for ever, and may I have no news,
no echo, from it. To a new life, new places and no looking back!" But
instead of delight his soul was filled with such gloom, and his heart
ached with such anguish, as he had never known in his life before. He was
thinking all the night. The train flew on, and only at daybreak, when he
was approaching Moscow, he suddenly roused himself from his meditation.
"I am a scoundrel," he whispered to himself.
Fyodor Pavlovitch remained well satisfied at having seen his son off. For
two hours afterwards he felt almost happy, and sat drinking brandy. But
suddenly something happened which was very annoying and unpleasant for
every one in the house, and completely upset Fyodor Pavlovitch's
equanimity at once. Smerdyakov went to the cellar for something and fell
down from the top of the steps. Fortunately, Marfa Ignatyevna was in the
yard and heard him in time. She did not see the fall, but heard his
scream--the strange, peculiar scream, long familiar to her--the scream of
the epileptic falling in a fit. They could not tell whether the fit had
come on him at the moment he was descending the steps, so that he must
have fallen unconscious, or whether it was the fall and the shock that had
caused the fit in Smerdyakov, who was known to be liable to them. They
found him at the bottom of the cellar steps, writhing in convulsions and
foaming at the mouth. It was thought at first that he must have broken
something--an arm or a leg--and hurt himself, but "God had preserved him,"
as Marfa Ignatyevna expressed it--nothing of the kind had happened. But it
was difficult to get him out of the cellar. They asked the neighbors to
help and managed it somehow. Fyodor Pavlovitch himself was present at the
whole ceremony. He helped, evidently alarmed and upset. The sick man did
not regain consciousness; the convulsions ceased for a time, but then
began again, and every one concluded that the same thing would happen, as
had happened a year before, when he accidentally fell from the garret.
They remembered that ice had been put on his head then. There was still
ice in the cellar, and Marfa Ignatyevna had some brought up. In the
evening, Fyodor Pavlovitch sent for Doctor Herzenstube, who arrived at
once. He was a most estimable old man, and the most careful and
conscientious doctor in the province. After careful examination, he
concluded that the fit was a very violent one and might have serious
consequences; that meanwhile he, Herzenstube, did not fully understand it,
but that by to-morrow morning, if the present remedies were unavailing, he
would venture to try something else. The invalid was taken to the lodge,
to a room next to Grigory's and Marfa Ignatyevna's.
Then Fyodor Pavlovitch had one misfortune after another to put up with
that day. Marfa Ignatyevna cooked the dinner, and the soup, compared with
Smerdyakov's, was "no better than dish-water," and the fowl was so dried
up that it was impossible to masticate it. To her master's bitter, though
deserved, reproaches, Marfa Ignatyevna replied that the fowl was a very
old one to begin with, and that she had never been trained as a cook. In
the evening there was another trouble in store for Fyodor Pavlovitch; he
was informed that Grigory, who had not been well for the last three days,
was completely laid up by his lumbago. Fyodor Pavlovitch finished his tea
as early as possible and locked himself up alone in the house. He was in
terrible excitement and suspense. That evening he reckoned on Grushenka's
coming almost as a certainty. He had received from Smerdyakov that morning
an assurance "that she had promised to come without fail." The
incorrigible old man's heart throbbed with excitement; he paced up and
down his empty rooms listening. He had to be on the alert. Dmitri might be
on the watch for her somewhere, and when she knocked on the window
(Smerdyakov had informed him two days before that he had told her where
and how to knock) the door must be opened at once. She must not be a
second in the passage, for fear--which God forbid!--that she should be
frightened and run away. Fyodor Pavlovitch had much to think of, but never
had his heart been steeped in such voluptuous hopes. This time he could
say almost certainly that she would come!
| 30,192 | Book 5 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422052201/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-brothers-karamazov/study-guide/summary-book-5 | When Alyosha returns to see Katerina, he finds that she has fallen ill. Alyosha explains to Lise what happened with the captain because Katerina is asleep. Lise is affected by Alyosha's loving compassion for the man, and she is moved to confess to Alyosha that the letter was not a joke and that she did mean what she said. Alyosha confesses that he has lied; he does have the letter, and he keeps it near to his heart because it is so meaningful to him. They realize that they care for each other, and they decide to get married. Lise's mother has been listening to their conversation, and she tells Alyosha she does not approve of the marriage. She thinks Lise is too young. Alyosha tells her that the marriage is still a long way off, so she does not have to worry about Lise's age. Alyosha goes to find Dmitri. He decides that it is more important to help his brother than to hurry back to Father Zossima's side. Instead, he finds Smerdyakov, and he asks him if he has seen Dmitri. Smerdyakov tells Alyosha that Ivan is going to meet Dmitri at a restaurant, so Alyosha goes to meet his two brothers there. He cannot find Dmitri--only Ivan is there. Ivan says he has grown to like and respect Alyosha. He tells Alyosha that he has a desire for living, but the world seems to be an unfair, ugly place. Alyosha is too preoccupied with the situation between his father and Dmitri, however, to focus on this conversation. He is worried that something dreadful might happen between the two of them if Ivan goes to Moscow. Ivan responds that it is not his responsibility to take care of his brother or his licentious father. He tells Alyosha that he hates even being around his father; this is why he came to the restaurant. Ivan lays out his theological opinions for Alyosha. He says what he " not accept and cannot accept is the God-created world." He believes that the mystery of God does not make sense to him; man should be able to comprehend God if he is God's own creation. Ivan ponders that this means he necessarily has to reject God. Alyosha wonders why Ivan cannot accept the world. Ivan adds that he has "never been able to understand how it is possible to love one's neighbors." He cannot stand the barbarism that seems to be inherent in man. He hates the suffering of children the most. He says that the only rationalization for the suffering of children is that they are "paying for the sins of their fathers who ate the apple." He cannot accept a God that allows this sort of injustice. He feels that loving God is like loving one who tortures you. Alyosha is appalled by all this, and he asks how Ivan can be so pessimistic about the world. Ivan responds that he is not being pessimistic; he simply does not think that anything is worth the suffering of an innocent like a child. He asks Alyosha if he would "torture just one single creature" if, by doing so, he could establish peace and tranquility for all mankind. Alyosha says he would not. Ivan begins to recite to Alyosha a poem that he has composed, "The Grand Inquisitor": In the sixteenth century, during the Inquisition, Christ returns to the world, healing and preaching in the streets. As he is healing some gatherers, a cardinal realizes who he is and has him arrested. In prison, Christ is visited by the Grand Inquisitor, who admonishes Christ for reappearing; he says that Christ's presence is interfering with the church. When Christ resisted temptations from Satan in the desert, he cursed man with liberty. Ever since, the church has had to work to reverse the damage. For instance, human nature dictates that man will not give up nourishment or safety for the promise of something as ill-defined as a heavenly reward. Thus, given a choice, man will always fail to follow a heavenly path. The Grand Inquisitor argues that "security" is preferable to "freedom." Also, if Christ had demonstrated his heavenly ability by performing a miracle instead of humbly resisting temptation, man would "have something to worship," which is "man's greatest need on Earth." The Grand Inquisitor also says that since Christ did not accept the power offered him by the devil, he forced the church to assert power over man. The church has finally gotten man to give up his Christ-given freedom in exchange for "happiness and security." The Grand Inquisitor says he realizes that this puts him on Satan's side of the argument, but he asserts that the precedent that Christ set when he resisted the temptations is very high. It is very difficult for man to achieve this level of strength, and only a few can do so. If only a few strong men can be saved anyway, at least the Grand Inquisitor's plan grants pleasure and satisfaction on Earth. Christ kisses the Inquisitor, never saying a word. Inexplicably, the Grand Inquisitor sets him free and tells him never to return. Ivan concludes his story and looks to Alyosha for his reaction. Alyosha only kisses his brother, and Ivan says, "That's plagiarism!" They conclude their meal happily and part ways. Ivan is troubled after he leaves Alyosha. He starts to feel physically ill, but he does not understand why. When he sees Smerdyakov sitting outside, however, he realizes that this "miserable wretch" has been weighing on his mind. Instead of lashing out at him, he approaches him very amiably, and the two begin to talk. Smerdyakov says that he is worried by the love triangle consisting of Grushenka, Fyodor, and Dmitri. Both Dmitri and Fyodor are so worked up about the girl that they have both threatened Smerdyakov. He says that he might have an epileptic seizure because of the stress, hinting that he may even fake a seizure for his own safety. He then admits that he is burdened with the knowledge of what Grushenka's "signals" to old Karamazov will be when she visits him. He knows that if Grushenka goes to Fyodor, it will throw Dmitri into a rage, and he will come after his father. Smerdyakov fears that Fyodor will be helpless because Grigory and Marfa will not be able to protect him. They are both ill. In addition, Smerdyakov will not be able to help if he is incapacitated by a seizure. This information is alarming to Ivan, and he is skeptical of Smerdyakov's intentions for telling him all of this. He asks Smerdyakov if he has intentionally created a situation where Dmitri will have free reign to murder his father. Ivan realizes that he cannot protect his father since he is going to Moscow. Smerdyakov unsuccessfully pleads with Ivan not to go to Moscow, and they both retire. Ivan lies awake, distressed by his talk with Smerdyakov. When morning comes, he meets with Fyodor, who also pleads with him to stay home with him. Ivan, worn down, decides to stay in town. He informs Smerdyakov that he will indeed stay at home. Later on, Smerdyakov in fact has a seizure and falls down the stairs. As Smerdyakov foresaw, Fyodor is left unprotected, waiting for Grushenka. | Ivan reveals much more of his character in these chapters. For the first time, he talks about what he truly cares about, and though he is still speaking about sweeping issues, he is no longer detached and aloof. He is admitting his deepest concerns and principles. He longs for a world without cruelty, but he feels that most people are cruel. Children are the only ones who are innocent. Even though Ivan says he cannot love his neighbor, it is not because he hates people; he thinks people, on the whole, do not live up to their potential. Ivan is not the cold-hearted intellectual he seemed at first. He is a frustrated idealist. He feels that he is not responsible for his father's safety or his brother's actions. Whereas Father Zossima thinks that every man shares part of the responsibility for the sins of all other men, Ivan feels independent of his fellow men. This is one of many ways that Ivan tries to assert his independence. Since he has been a child, he has felt embarrassed about his father, and he does not like to be associated with him. He did not like living off other people's charity, and he tried to become financially independent. Now, just because he is related to Dmitri and Fyodor, he does not feel compelled to help them as Alyosha does. He feels that he is responsible only for his own actions. His opinion will change after his father is murdered, when his realization of his complicity drives him insane. The lesson Ivan learns about responsibility serves as a sort of parable. Ivan is uneasy about Smerdyakov, but he is not immediately sure why. The servant expresses concern for his own safety and that of his master. He tells Ivan all of the reasons why Fyodor will be vulnerable to an attacker, and the list sounds like too many coincidences to be true. When Smerdyakov explains to Ivan that it is possible to fake an epileptic seizure, his motives become slightly more suspicious. The idea that Smerdyakov can fake a seizure shows Ivan that Smerdyakov is not as helpless as he seems. Perhaps the pathetic servant is capable of manipulating a situation instead of simply commenting on it. He is not the harmless servant he first appeared to be. It also seems that Smerdyakov looks up to Ivan. Smerdyakov's motives are unclear, but his adulation of the Karamazov brother does not seem purely innocent. Smerdyakov's mix of weakness, bitterness, and manipulation is a disturbing combination. The story of the Grand Inquisitor is an allegory for the difference between Ivan's and Alyosha's world views. Like Ivan, the Grand Inquisitor only wants peace and happiness for mankind. He disagrees with Christ, however, about how to achieve this goal. Even though Ivan and Alyosha disagree, they both want the same thing. The most interesting thing about this chapter, however, is that Dostoevsky has included a parable in the middle of the novel. Why would he do this? What could Ivan's poem express that could not be expressed in the story? For one thing, the novel has a deep reverence for storytelling. The whole novel is told as a story recounted by an outside observer. Countless references are made to townspeople and citizens talking about each other, telling stories they have heard about one another. The trial is itself an excuse to tell the story of the Karamazovs in front of an audience. This poem adds another layer of mythology, theology, and philosophy to the novel. The parable deserves an essay in itself, and it will repay a close reading. Ivan brings up an interesting point. He says to Alyosha that if children suffer, it is because they "are paying for the sins of their fathers who ate the apple." This is the first time a character in the novel has directly referred to the concept of the "sins of the father." Ivan does not believe that one should suffer for something someone else has done. He believes that a man should be accountable for his actions and his actions alone. He must acknowledge, however, that the world does not quite work this way. It seems as though people are unfairly punished for their predecessors' or others' mistakes. Sometimes, though, it may not be nature or God enacting an unjust penalty on the innocent. Perhaps the suffering one experiences is internal, self-generated. For instance, Ivan feels embarrassed about his own dependence on others, and he tries to stay independent of those around him. He is not being punished from above for Fyodor's neglect; he has made a decision based on his own feelings. He may have developed these feelings in part because of his father, but his desire for independence is his own. Sometimes, then, one learns to be concerned about poignant issues from the concerns of his ancestors. Perhaps Dmitri does not feel doomed to become an amoral fiend because he is a Karamazov and cannot escape it; or perhaps he feels worried about becoming a bad person because he knows this stigma has plagued his father, and he has developed an irrational fear of this result himself. In any case, Fyodor's actions weigh heavy on each of his sons, and whether Heaven is exacting torture on them for his sins or whether they have individual battles to fight, they are all haunted by Fyodor's ghost. | 1,217 | 903 | [
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5,658 | true | pinkmonkey | all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/chapters_36_to_37.txt | finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Lord Jim/section_35_part_0.txt | Lord Jim.chapters 36-37 | chapters 36-37 | null | {"name": "Chapters 36-37", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim45.asp", "summary": "Up until the last chapter, Marlow has been telling the story of Jim to his friends, who had assembled after dinner on the verandah of the hotel. All of the men leave when Marlow completes his narrative with his departure from Patusan; only one of the listeners is ever to know the final story of Jim -- to learn what happened to the man who had accepted great responsibility on a foreign and mysterious island. Two years later the man received a packet from Marlow with four enclosures. One was a sheet of grayish \"foolscap\" in Jim's handwriting; it was apparently his attempt to write back to England. The second was a letter that Jim had received from his father. The third and fourth are documents written by Marlow. The first was a letter to the recipient and the other was Marlow's account of Jim's last days and his death. Marlow's letter to the recipient reminds him of the doubts he had about Jim. He then tells of Jim's building a system of defense for the natives in Patusan shortly after Marlow's departure. He dug a trench around an area of land and then fenced it. He next placed cannons at the corners. Jim called the enclosed area \"The Fort, Patusan,\" and it was known as a place where the natives could come for safety in times of danger. In the letter from Jim's father, which he received just before he boarded the Patna, there is a description about what each person in the family is doing. Since Jim's father was a pastor, the letter also gives advice about faith and goodness and cautions Jim not to be tempted. He warns his son not \"to do anything which you believe to be wrong.\" There is also an unfinished letter from Jim which said \"The Fort, Patusan\" and \"I must now at once.\" The letter is so abrupt that Marlow cannot make out what it means. Marlow's document that describes Jim's last days is based upon several stories that Marlow has heard about his friend. As Marlow describes what happened on Patusan, there is a sadness to his tone. He cannot believe that he will never again see Jim's face or hear his voice. Jim's tragic demise is largely due to Gentleman Brown, an immoral and dangerous Australian. Marlow called on him in Bangkok, as he lay dying from asthma. He bragged to Marlow about putting an end to Lord Jim. Ironically, Brown dies the same night he tells the story of Jim's death. Over a year after parting from Jim in Patusan and before visiting Brown, Marlow visited Batavia and called on Stein, who was still depressed over the news of Jim's death under very tragic circumstances. At the time Jim's wife, Jewel and servant Tamb'Itam were living in Stein's house, so Marlow learned more about Jim from them. Tamb'Itam keeps emphasizing the fact that Jim refused to fight, but supplies no details. Marlow first sees Jewel in the reception room. As always, she is dressed in white, but the clothing cannot cover her obvious despair over the loss of her husband. She feels betrayed by him, for he did \"leave\" her even though he had promised not to go from Patusan. She also feels angry with Jim for not saving himself. Stein wants Marlow to convince her to forgive Jim.", "analysis": ""} |
With these words Marlow had ended his narrative, and his audience had
broken up forthwith, under his abstract, pensive gaze. Men drifted off
the verandah in pairs or alone without loss of time, without offering
a remark, as if the last image of that incomplete story, its
incompleteness itself, and the very tone of the speaker, had made
discussion in vain and comment impossible. Each of them seemed to carry
away his own impression, to carry it away with him like a secret; but
there was only one man of all these listeners who was ever to hear the
last word of the story. It came to him at home, more than two years
later, and it came contained in a thick packet addressed in Marlow's
upright and angular handwriting.
The privileged man opened the packet, looked in, then, laying it down,
went to the window. His rooms were in the highest flat of a lofty
building, and his glance could travel afar beyond the clear panes of
glass, as though he were looking out of the lantern of a lighthouse.
The slopes of the roofs glistened, the dark broken ridges succeeded each
other without end like sombre, uncrested waves, and from the depths of
the town under his feet ascended a confused and unceasing mutter. The
spires of churches, numerous, scattered haphazard, uprose like beacons
on a maze of shoals without a channel; the driving rain mingled with the
falling dusk of a winter's evening; and the booming of a big clock on a
tower, striking the hour, rolled past in voluminous, austere bursts
of sound, with a shrill vibrating cry at the core. He drew the heavy
curtains.
The light of his shaded reading-lamp slept like a sheltered pool, his
footfalls made no sound on the carpet, his wandering days were over. No
more horizons as boundless as hope, no more twilights within the forests
as solemn as temples, in the hot quest for the Ever-undiscovered
Country over the hill, across the stream, beyond the wave. The hour
was striking! No more! No more!--but the opened packet under the lamp
brought back the sounds, the visions, the very savour of the past--a
multitude of fading faces, a tumult of low voices, dying away upon the
shores of distant seas under a passionate and unconsoling sunshine. He
sighed and sat down to read.
At first he saw three distinct enclosures. A good many pages closely
blackened and pinned together; a loose square sheet of greyish paper
with a few words traced in a handwriting he had never seen before, and
an explanatory letter from Marlow. From this last fell another letter,
yellowed by time and frayed on the folds. He picked it up and, laying it
aside, turned to Marlow's message, ran swiftly over the opening lines,
and, checking himself, thereafter read on deliberately, like one
approaching with slow feet and alert eyes the glimpse of an undiscovered
country.
'. . . I don't suppose you've forgotten,' went on the letter. 'You alone
have showed an interest in him that survived the telling of his story,
though I remember well you would not admit he had mastered his fate.
You prophesied for him the disaster of weariness and of disgust with
acquired honour, with the self-appointed task, with the love sprung from
pity and youth. You had said you knew so well "that kind of thing," its
illusory satisfaction, its unavoidable deception. You said also--I call
to mind--that "giving your life up to them" (them meaning all of mankind
with skins brown, yellow, or black in colour) "was like selling your
soul to a brute." You contended that "that kind of thing" was only
endurable and enduring when based on a firm conviction in the truth of
ideas racially our own, in whose name are established the order, the
morality of an ethical progress. "We want its strength at our backs,"
you had said. "We want a belief in its necessity and its justice, to
make a worthy and conscious sacrifice of our lives. Without it the
sacrifice is only forgetfulness, the way of offering is no better than
the way to perdition." In other words, you maintained that we must fight
in the ranks or our lives don't count. Possibly! You ought to know--be
it said without malice--you who have rushed into one or two places
single-handed and came out cleverly, without singeing your wings. The
point, however, is that of all mankind Jim had no dealings but with
himself, and the question is whether at the last he had not confessed to
a faith mightier than the laws of order and progress.
'I affirm nothing. Perhaps you may pronounce--after you've read. There
is much truth--after all--in the common expression "under a cloud." It
is impossible to see him clearly--especially as it is through the eyes
of others that we take our last look at him. I have no hesitation in
imparting to you all I know of the last episode that, as he used to say,
had "come to him." One wonders whether this was perhaps that supreme
opportunity, that last and satisfying test for which I had always
suspected him to be waiting, before he could frame a message to the
impeccable world. You remember that when I was leaving him for the last
time he had asked whether I would be going home soon, and suddenly cried
after me, "Tell them . . ." I had waited--curious I'll own, and hopeful
too--only to hear him shout, "No--nothing." That was all then--and there
will be nothing more; there will be no message, unless such as each of
us can interpret for himself from the language of facts, that are so
often more enigmatic than the craftiest arrangement of words. He made,
it is true, one more attempt to deliver himself; but that too failed, as
you may perceive if you look at the sheet of greyish foolscap enclosed
here. He had tried to write; do you notice the commonplace hand? It is
headed "The Fort, Patusan." I suppose he had carried out his intention
of making out of his house a place of defence. It was an excellent plan:
a deep ditch, an earth wall topped by a palisade, and at the angles
guns mounted on platforms to sweep each side of the square. Doramin had
agreed to furnish him the guns; and so each man of his party would know
there was a place of safety, upon which every faithful partisan could
rally in case of some sudden danger. All this showed his judicious
foresight, his faith in the future. What he called "my own people"--the
liberated captives of the Sherif--were to make a distinct quarter of
Patusan, with their huts and little plots of ground under the walls of
the stronghold. Within he would be an invincible host in himself "The
Fort, Patusan." No date, as you observe. What is a number and a name to
a day of days? It is also impossible to say whom he had in his mind when
he seized the pen: Stein--myself--the world at large--or was this only
the aimless startled cry of a solitary man confronted by his fate? "An
awful thing has happened," he wrote before he flung the pen down for the
first time; look at the ink blot resembling the head of an arrow under
these words. After a while he had tried again, scrawling heavily, as if
with a hand of lead, another line. "I must now at once . . ." The pen
had spluttered, and that time he gave it up. There's nothing more;
he had seen a broad gulf that neither eye nor voice could span. I
can understand this. He was overwhelmed by the inexplicable; he was
overwhelmed by his own personality--the gift of that destiny which he
had done his best to master.
'I send you also an old letter--a very old letter. It was found
carefully preserved in his writing-case. It is from his father, and
by the date you can see he must have received it a few days before he
joined the Patna. Thus it must be the last letter he ever had from home.
He had treasured it all these years. The good old parson fancied his
sailor son. I've looked in at a sentence here and there. There is
nothing in it except just affection. He tells his "dear James" that the
last long letter from him was very "honest and entertaining." He would
not have him "judge men harshly or hastily." There are four pages of it,
easy morality and family news. Tom had "taken orders." Carrie's husband
had "money losses." The old chap goes on equably trusting Providence and
the established order of the universe, but alive to its small dangers
and its small mercies. One can almost see him, grey-haired and serene in
the inviolable shelter of his book-lined, faded, and comfortable study,
where for forty years he had conscientiously gone over and over again
the round of his little thoughts about faith and virtue, about the
conduct of life and the only proper manner of dying; where he had
written so many sermons, where he sits talking to his boy, over there,
on the other side of the earth. But what of the distance? Virtue is one
all over the world, and there is only one faith, one conceivable conduct
of life, one manner of dying. He hopes his "dear James" will never
forget that "who once gives way to temptation, in the very instant
hazards his total depravity and everlasting ruin. Therefore resolve
fixedly never, through any possible motives, to do anything which you
believe to be wrong." There is also some news of a favourite dog; and a
pony, "which all you boys used to ride," had gone blind from old age and
had to be shot. The old chap invokes Heaven's blessing; the mother and
all the girls then at home send their love. . . . No, there is nothing
much in that yellow frayed letter fluttering out of his cherishing
grasp after so many years. It was never answered, but who can say what
converse he may have held with all these placid, colourless forms of men
and women peopling that quiet corner of the world as free of danger
or strife as a tomb, and breathing equably the air of undisturbed
rectitude. It seems amazing that he should belong to it, he to whom so
many things "had come." Nothing ever came to them; they would never be
taken unawares, and never be called upon to grapple with fate. Here they
all are, evoked by the mild gossip of the father, all these brothers
and sisters, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, gazing with clear
unconscious eyes, while I seem to see him, returned at last, no longer
a mere white speck at the heart of an immense mystery, but of full
stature, standing disregarded amongst their untroubled shapes, with a
stern and romantic aspect, but always mute, dark--under a cloud.
'The story of the last events you will find in the few pages enclosed
here. You must admit that it is romantic beyond the wildest dreams
of his boyhood, and yet there is to my mind a sort of profound and
terrifying logic in it, as if it were our imagination alone that could
set loose upon us the might of an overwhelming destiny. The imprudence
of our thoughts recoils upon our heads; who toys with the sword shall
perish by the sword. This astounding adventure, of which the most
astounding part is that it is true, comes on as an unavoidable
consequence. Something of the sort had to happen. You repeat this to
yourself while you marvel that such a thing could happen in the year of
grace before last. But it has happened--and there is no disputing its
logic.
'I put it down here for you as though I had been an eyewitness. My
information was fragmentary, but I've fitted the pieces together, and
there is enough of them to make an intelligible picture. I wonder how
he would have related it himself. He has confided so much in me that at
times it seems as though he must come in presently and tell the story
in his own words, in his careless yet feeling voice, with his offhand
manner, a little puzzled, a little bothered, a little hurt, but now and
then by a word or a phrase giving one of these glimpses of his very
own self that were never any good for purposes of orientation. It's
difficult to believe he will never come. I shall never hear his voice
again, nor shall I see his smooth tan-and-pink face with a white line
on the forehead, and the youthful eyes darkened by excitement to a
profound, unfathomable blue.'
'It all begins with a remarkable exploit of a man called Brown, who
stole with complete success a Spanish schooner out of a small bay near
Zamboanga. Till I discovered the fellow my information was incomplete,
but most unexpectedly I did come upon him a few hours before he gave up
his arrogant ghost. Fortunately he was willing and able to talk between
the choking fits of asthma, and his racked body writhed with malicious
exultation at the bare thought of Jim. He exulted thus at the idea that
he had "paid out the stuck-up beggar after all." He gloated over his
action. I had to bear the sunken glare of his fierce crow-footed eyes if
I wanted to know; and so I bore it, reflecting how much certain forms
of evil are akin to madness, derived from intense egoism, inflamed by
resistance, tearing the soul to pieces, and giving factitious vigour to
the body. The story also reveals unsuspected depths of cunning in the
wretched Cornelius, whose abject and intense hate acts like a subtle
inspiration, pointing out an unerring way towards revenge.
'"I could see directly I set my eyes on him what sort of a fool he was,"
gasped the dying Brown. "He a man! Hell! He was a hollow sham. As if he
couldn't have said straight out, 'Hands off my plunder!' blast him! That
would have been like a man! Rot his superior soul! He had me there--but
he hadn't devil enough in him to make an end of me. Not he! A thing like
that letting me off as if I wasn't worth a kick! . . ." Brown struggled
desperately for breath. . . . "Fraud. . . . Letting me off. . . . And
so I did make an end of him after all. . . ." He choked again. . . . "I
expect this thing'll kill me, but I shall die easy now. You . . . you
here . . . I don't know your name--I would give you a five-pound note
if--if I had it--for the news--or my name's not Brown. . . ." He grinned
horribly. . . . "Gentleman Brown."
'He said all these things in profound gasps, staring at me with his
yellow eyes out of a long, ravaged, brown face; he jerked his left arm;
a pepper-and-salt matted beard hung almost into his lap; a dirty ragged
blanket covered his legs. I had found him out in Bankok through that
busybody Schomberg, the hotel-keeper, who had, confidentially, directed
me where to look. It appears that a sort of loafing, fuddled vagabond--a
white man living amongst the natives with a Siamese woman--had
considered it a great privilege to give a shelter to the last days of
the famous Gentleman Brown. While he was talking to me in the wretched
hovel, and, as it were, fighting for every minute of his life, the
Siamese woman, with big bare legs and a stupid coarse face, sat in a
dark corner chewing betel stolidly. Now and then she would get up for
the purpose of shooing a chicken away from the door. The whole hut shook
when she walked. An ugly yellow child, naked and pot-bellied like a
little heathen god, stood at the foot of the couch, finger in mouth,
lost in a profound and calm contemplation of the dying man.
'He talked feverishly; but in the middle of a word, perhaps, an
invisible hand would take him by the throat, and he would look at me
dumbly with an expression of doubt and anguish. He seemed to fear that
I would get tired of waiting and go away, leaving him with his tale
untold, with his exultation unexpressed. He died during the night, I
believe, but by that time I had nothing more to learn.
'So much as to Brown, for the present.
'Eight months before this, coming into Samarang, I went as usual to see
Stein. On the garden side of the house a Malay on the verandah greeted
me shyly, and I remembered that I had seen him in Patusan, in Jim's
house, amongst other Bugis men who used to come in the evening to talk
interminably over their war reminiscences and to discuss State affairs.
Jim had pointed him out to me once as a respectable petty trader owning
a small seagoing native craft, who had showed himself "one of the best
at the taking of the stockade." I was not very surprised to see him,
since any Patusan trader venturing as far as Samarang would naturally
find his way to Stein's house. I returned his greeting and passed on. At
the door of Stein's room I came upon another Malay in whom I recognised
Tamb' Itam.
'I asked him at once what he was doing there; it occurred to me that
Jim might have come on a visit. I own I was pleased and excited at the
thought. Tamb' Itam looked as if he did not know what to say. "Is Tuan
Jim inside?" I asked impatiently. "No," he mumbled, hanging his head
for a moment, and then with sudden earnestness, "He would not fight. He
would not fight," he repeated twice. As he seemed unable to say anything
else, I pushed him aside and went in.
'Stein, tall and stooping, stood alone in the middle of the room between
the rows of butterfly cases. "Ach! is it you, my friend?" he said
sadly, peering through his glasses. A drab sack-coat of alpaca hung,
unbuttoned, down to his knees. He had a Panama hat on his head, and
there were deep furrows on his pale cheeks. "What's the matter now?"
I asked nervously. "There's Tamb' Itam there. . . ." "Come and see the
girl. Come and see the girl. She is here," he said, with a half-hearted
show of activity. I tried to detain him, but with gentle obstinacy he
would take no notice of my eager questions. "She is here, she is here,"
he repeated, in great perturbation. "They came here two days ago. An old
man like me, a stranger--sehen Sie--cannot do much. . . . Come this way.
. . . Young hearts are unforgiving. . . ." I could see he was in utmost
distress. . . . "The strength of life in them, the cruel strength of
life. . . ." He mumbled, leading me round the house; I followed him,
lost in dismal and angry conjectures. At the door of the drawing-room he
barred my way. "He loved her very much," he said interrogatively, and
I only nodded, feeling so bitterly disappointed that I would not trust
myself to speak. "Very frightful," he murmured. "She can't understand
me. I am only a strange old man. Perhaps you . . . she knows you. Talk
to her. We can't leave it like this. Tell her to forgive him. It was
very frightful." "No doubt," I said, exasperated at being in the dark;
"but have you forgiven him?" He looked at me queerly. "You shall hear,"
he said, and opening the door, absolutely pushed me in.
'You know Stein's big house and the two immense reception-rooms,
uninhabited and uninhabitable, clean, full of solitude and of shining
things that look as if never beheld by the eye of man? They are cool
on the hottest days, and you enter them as you would a scrubbed cave
underground. I passed through one, and in the other I saw the girl
sitting at the end of a big mahogany table, on which she rested her
head, the face hidden in her arms. The waxed floor reflected her dimly
as though it had been a sheet of frozen water. The rattan screens were
down, and through the strange greenish gloom made by the foliage of the
trees outside a strong wind blew in gusts, swaying the long draperies
of windows and doorways. Her white figure seemed shaped in snow; the
pendent crystals of a great chandelier clicked above her head like
glittering icicles. She looked up and watched my approach. I was chilled
as if these vast apartments had been the cold abode of despair.
'She recognised me at once, and as soon as I had stopped, looking down
at her: "He has left me," she said quietly; "you always leave us--for
your own ends." Her face was set. All the heat of life seemed withdrawn
within some inaccessible spot in her breast. "It would have been easy to
die with him," she went on, and made a slight weary gesture as if giving
up the incomprehensible. "He would not! It was like a blindness--and yet
it was I who was speaking to him; it was I who stood before his eyes;
it was at me that he looked all the time! Ah! you are hard, treacherous,
without truth, without compassion. What makes you so wicked? Or is it
that you are all mad?"
'I took her hand; it did not respond, and when I dropped it, it hung
down to the floor. That indifference, more awful than tears, cries, and
reproaches, seemed to defy time and consolation. You felt that nothing
you could say would reach the seat of the still and benumbing pain.
'Stein had said, "You shall hear." I did hear. I heard it all, listening
with amazement, with awe, to the tones of her inflexible weariness.
She could not grasp the real sense of what she was telling me, and her
resentment filled me with pity for her--for him too. I stood rooted to
the spot after she had finished. Leaning on her arm, she stared with
hard eyes, and the wind passed in gusts, the crystals kept on clicking
in the greenish gloom. She went on whispering to herself: "And yet he
was looking at me! He could see my face, hear my voice, hear my grief!
When I used to sit at his feet, with my cheek against his knee and his
hand on my head, the curse of cruelty and madness was already within
him, waiting for the day. The day came! . . . and before the sun had
set he could not see me any more--he was made blind and deaf and without
pity, as you all are. He shall have no tears from me. Never, never. Not
one tear. I will not! He went away from me as if I had been worse than
death. He fled as if driven by some accursed thing he had heard or seen
in his sleep. . . ."
'Her steady eyes seemed to strain after the shape of a man torn out of
her arms by the strength of a dream. She made no sign to my silent bow.
I was glad to escape.
'I saw her once again, the same afternoon. On leaving her I had gone
in search of Stein, whom I could not find indoors; and I wandered out,
pursued by distressful thoughts, into the gardens, those famous gardens
of Stein, in which you can find every plant and tree of tropical
lowlands. I followed the course of the canalised stream, and sat for
a long time on a shaded bench near the ornamental pond, where some
waterfowl with clipped wings were diving and splashing noisily. The
branches of casuarina trees behind me swayed lightly, incessantly,
reminding me of the soughing of fir trees at home.
'This mournful and restless sound was a fit accompaniment to my
meditations. She had said he had been driven away from her by a
dream,--and there was no answer one could make her--there seemed to be
no forgiveness for such a transgression. And yet is not mankind itself,
pushing on its blind way, driven by a dream of its greatness and
its power upon the dark paths of excessive cruelty and of excessive
devotion? And what is the pursuit of truth, after all?
'When I rose to get back to the house I caught sight of Stein's drab
coat through a gap in the foliage, and very soon at a turn of the path
I came upon him walking with the girl. Her little hand rested on his
forearm, and under the broad, flat rim of his Panama hat he bent over
her, grey-haired, paternal, with compassionate and chivalrous deference.
I stood aside, but they stopped, facing me. His gaze was bent on the
ground at his feet; the girl, erect and slight on his arm, stared
sombrely beyond my shoulder with black, clear, motionless eyes.
"Schrecklich," he murmured. "Terrible! Terrible! What can one do?" He
seemed to be appealing to me, but her youth, the length of the days
suspended over her head, appealed to me more; and suddenly, even as I
realised that nothing could be said, I found myself pleading his cause
for her sake. "You must forgive him," I concluded, and my own voice
seemed to me muffled, lost in un irresponsive deaf immensity. "We all
want to be forgiven," I added after a while.
'"What have I done?" she asked with her lips only.
'"You always mistrusted him," I said.
'"He was like the others," she pronounced slowly.
'"Not like the others," I protested, but she continued evenly, without
any feeling--
'"He was false." And suddenly Stein broke in. "No! no! no! My poor
child! . . ." He patted her hand lying passively on his sleeve. "No! no!
Not false! True! True! True!" He tried to look into her stony face. "You
don't understand. Ach! Why you do not understand? . . . Terrible," he
said to me. "Some day she _shall_ understand."
'"Will you explain?" I asked, looking hard at him. They moved on.
'I watched them. Her gown trailed on the path, her black hair fell
loose. She walked upright and light by the side of the tall man, whose
long shapeless coat hung in perpendicular folds from the stooping
shoulders, whose feet moved slowly. They disappeared beyond that
spinney (you may remember) where sixteen different kinds of bamboo grow
together, all distinguishable to the learned eye. For my part, I was
fascinated by the exquisite grace and beauty of that fluted grove,
crowned with pointed leaves and feathery heads, the lightness, the
vigour, the charm as distinct as a voice of that unperplexed luxuriating
life. I remember staying to look at it for a long time, as one would
linger within reach of a consoling whisper. The sky was pearly grey. It
was one of those overcast days so rare in the tropics, in which memories
crowd upon one, memories of other shores, of other faces.
'I drove back to town the same afternoon, taking with me Tamb' Itam
and the other Malay, in whose seagoing craft they had escaped in the
bewilderment, fear, and gloom of the disaster. The shock of it seemed to
have changed their natures. It had turned her passion into stone, and
it made the surly taciturn Tamb' Itam almost loquacious. His surliness,
too, was subdued into puzzled humility, as though he had seen the
failure of a potent charm in a supreme moment. The Bugis trader, a shy
hesitating man, was very clear in the little he had to say. Both were
evidently over-awed by a sense of deep inexpressible wonder, by the
touch of an inscrutable mystery.'
There with Marlow's signature the letter proper ended. The privileged
reader screwed up his lamp, and solitary above the billowy roofs of the
town, like a lighthouse-keeper above the sea, he turned to the pages of
the story.
| 4,368 | Chapters 36-37 | https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim45.asp | Up until the last chapter, Marlow has been telling the story of Jim to his friends, who had assembled after dinner on the verandah of the hotel. All of the men leave when Marlow completes his narrative with his departure from Patusan; only one of the listeners is ever to know the final story of Jim -- to learn what happened to the man who had accepted great responsibility on a foreign and mysterious island. Two years later the man received a packet from Marlow with four enclosures. One was a sheet of grayish "foolscap" in Jim's handwriting; it was apparently his attempt to write back to England. The second was a letter that Jim had received from his father. The third and fourth are documents written by Marlow. The first was a letter to the recipient and the other was Marlow's account of Jim's last days and his death. Marlow's letter to the recipient reminds him of the doubts he had about Jim. He then tells of Jim's building a system of defense for the natives in Patusan shortly after Marlow's departure. He dug a trench around an area of land and then fenced it. He next placed cannons at the corners. Jim called the enclosed area "The Fort, Patusan," and it was known as a place where the natives could come for safety in times of danger. In the letter from Jim's father, which he received just before he boarded the Patna, there is a description about what each person in the family is doing. Since Jim's father was a pastor, the letter also gives advice about faith and goodness and cautions Jim not to be tempted. He warns his son not "to do anything which you believe to be wrong." There is also an unfinished letter from Jim which said "The Fort, Patusan" and "I must now at once." The letter is so abrupt that Marlow cannot make out what it means. Marlow's document that describes Jim's last days is based upon several stories that Marlow has heard about his friend. As Marlow describes what happened on Patusan, there is a sadness to his tone. He cannot believe that he will never again see Jim's face or hear his voice. Jim's tragic demise is largely due to Gentleman Brown, an immoral and dangerous Australian. Marlow called on him in Bangkok, as he lay dying from asthma. He bragged to Marlow about putting an end to Lord Jim. Ironically, Brown dies the same night he tells the story of Jim's death. Over a year after parting from Jim in Patusan and before visiting Brown, Marlow visited Batavia and called on Stein, who was still depressed over the news of Jim's death under very tragic circumstances. At the time Jim's wife, Jewel and servant Tamb'Itam were living in Stein's house, so Marlow learned more about Jim from them. Tamb'Itam keeps emphasizing the fact that Jim refused to fight, but supplies no details. Marlow first sees Jewel in the reception room. As always, she is dressed in white, but the clothing cannot cover her obvious despair over the loss of her husband. She feels betrayed by him, for he did "leave" her even though he had promised not to go from Patusan. She also feels angry with Jim for not saving himself. Stein wants Marlow to convince her to forgive Jim. | null | 561 | 1 | [
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5,658 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/38.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Lord Jim/section_37_part_0.txt | Lord Jim.chapter 38 | chapter 38 | null | {"name": "Chapter 38", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-38", "summary": "Here's Gentleman Brown's story. A pirate, with some serious bad luck, Brown heads to Patusan, which he has heard is easy pickings. Some island locals raise the alarm about his arrival, and the Patusan natives are lying in wait to attack him. They sure know how to welcome visitors over in Patusan, don't they? To avoid a fight, Brown and his crew retreat to a hilltop.", "analysis": ""} |
'It all begins, as I've told you, with the man called Brown,' ran the
opening sentence of Marlow's narrative. 'You who have knocked about the
Western Pacific must have heard of him. He was the show ruffian on the
Australian coast--not that he was often to be seen there, but because
he was always trotted out in the stories of lawless life a visitor from
home is treated to; and the mildest of these stories which were told
about him from Cape York to Eden Bay was more than enough to hang a man
if told in the right place. They never failed to let you know, too,
that he was supposed to be the son of a baronet. Be it as it may, it is
certain he had deserted from a home ship in the early gold-digging days,
and in a few years became talked about as the terror of this or that
group of islands in Polynesia. He would kidnap natives, he would strip
some lonely white trader to the very pyjamas he stood in, and after he
had robbed the poor devil, he would as likely as not invite him to fight
a duel with shot-guns on the beach--which would have been fair enough
as these things go, if the other man hadn't been by that time already
half-dead with fright. Brown was a latter-day buccaneer, sorry enough,
like his more celebrated prototypes; but what distinguished him from
his contemporary brother ruffians, like Bully Hayes or the mellifluous
Pease, or that perfumed, Dundreary-whiskered, dandified scoundrel known
as Dirty Dick, was the arrogant temper of his misdeeds and a vehement
scorn for mankind at large and for his victims in particular. The
others were merely vulgar and greedy brutes, but he seemed moved by some
complex intention. He would rob a man as if only to demonstrate his poor
opinion of the creature, and he would bring to the shooting or maiming
of some quiet, unoffending stranger a savage and vengeful earnestness
fit to terrify the most reckless of desperadoes. In the days of his
greatest glory he owned an armed barque, manned by a mixed crew of
Kanakas and runaway whalers, and boasted, I don't know with what truth,
of being financed on the quiet by a most respectable firm of copra
merchants. Later on he ran off--it was reported--with the wife of a
missionary, a very young girl from Clapham way, who had married the
mild, flat-footed fellow in a moment of enthusiasm, and, suddenly
transplanted to Melanesia, lost her bearings somehow. It was a dark
story. She was ill at the time he carried her off, and died on board his
ship. It is said--as the most wonderful put of the tale--that over her
body he gave way to an outburst of sombre and violent grief. His luck
left him, too, very soon after. He lost his ship on some rocks off
Malaita, and disappeared for a time as though he had gone down with her.
He is heard of next at Nuka-Hiva, where he bought an old French schooner
out of Government service. What creditable enterprise he might have had
in view when he made that purchase I can't say, but it is evident that
what with High Commissioners, consuls, men-of-war, and international
control, the South Seas were getting too hot to hold gentlemen of his
kidney. Clearly he must have shifted the scene of his operations farther
west, because a year later he plays an incredibly audacious, but not a
very profitable part, in a serio-comic business in Manila Bay, in which
a peculating governor and an absconding treasurer are the principal
figures; thereafter he seems to have hung around the Philippines in his
rotten schooner battling with un adverse fortune, till at last, running
his appointed course, he sails into Jim's history, a blind accomplice of
the Dark Powers.
'His tale goes that when a Spanish patrol cutter captured him he was
simply trying to run a few guns for the insurgents. If so, then I can't
understand what he was doing off the south coast of Mindanao. My belief,
however, is that he was blackmailing the native villages along the
coast. The principal thing is that the cutter, throwing a guard on
board, made him sail in company towards Zamboanga. On the way, for some
reason or other, both vessels had to call at one of these new Spanish
settlements--which never came to anything in the end--where there was
not only a civil official in charge on shore, but a good stout coasting
schooner lying at anchor in the little bay; and this craft, in every way
much better than his own, Brown made up his mind to steal.
'He was down on his luck--as he told me himself. The world he had
bullied for twenty years with fierce, aggressive disdain, had yielded
him nothing in the way of material advantage except a small bag of
silver dollars, which was concealed in his cabin so that "the devil
himself couldn't smell it out." And that was all--absolutely all. He
was tired of his life, and not afraid of death. But this man, who would
stake his existence on a whim with a bitter and jeering recklessness,
stood in mortal fear of imprisonment. He had an unreasoning cold-sweat,
nerve-shaking, blood-to-water-turning sort of horror at the bare
possibility of being locked up--the sort of terror a superstitious man
would feel at the thought of being embraced by a spectre. Therefore the
civil official who came on board to make a preliminary investigation
into the capture, investigated arduously all day long, and only went
ashore after dark, muffled up in a cloak, and taking great care not to
let Brown's little all clink in its bag. Afterwards, being a man of his
word, he contrived (the very next evening, I believe) to send off
the Government cutter on some urgent bit of special service. As her
commander could not spare a prize crew, he contented himself by taking
away before he left all the sails of Brown's schooner to the very last
rag, and took good care to tow his two boats on to the beach a couple of
miles off.
'But in Brown's crew there was a Solomon Islander, kidnapped in his
youth and devoted to Brown, who was the best man of the whole gang. That
fellow swam off to the coaster--five hundred yards or so--with the end
of a warp made up of all the running gear unrove for the purpose. The
water was smooth, and the bay dark, "like the inside of a cow," as Brown
described it. The Solomon Islander clambered over the bulwarks with the
end of the rope in his teeth. The crew of the coaster--all Tagals--were
ashore having a jollification in the native village. The two shipkeepers
left on board woke up suddenly and saw the devil. It had glittering eyes
and leaped quick as lightning about the deck. They fell on their knees,
paralysed with fear, crossing themselves and mumbling prayers. With
a long knife he found in the caboose the Solomon Islander, without
interrupting their orisons, stabbed first one, then the other; with the
same knife he set to sawing patiently at the coir cable till suddenly it
parted under the blade with a splash. Then in the silence of the bay
he let out a cautious shout, and Brown's gang, who meantime had been
peering and straining their hopeful ears in the darkness, began to
pull gently at their end of the warp. In less than five minutes the two
schooners came together with a slight shock and a creak of spars.
'Brown's crowd transferred themselves without losing an instant, taking
with them their firearms and a large supply of ammunition. They were
sixteen in all: two runaway blue-jackets, a lanky deserter from a Yankee
man-of-war, a couple of simple, blond Scandinavians, a mulatto of sorts,
one bland Chinaman who cooked--and the rest of the nondescript spawn
of the South Seas. None of them cared; Brown bent them to his will, and
Brown, indifferent to gallows, was running away from the spectre of
a Spanish prison. He didn't give them the time to trans-ship enough
provisions; the weather was calm, the air was charged with dew, and when
they cast off the ropes and set sail to a faint off-shore draught there
was no flutter in the damp canvas; their old schooner seemed to detach
itself gently from the stolen craft and slip away silently, together
with the black mass of the coast, into the night.
'They got clear away. Brown related to me in detail their passage down
the Straits of Macassar. It is a harrowing and desperate story. They
were short of food and water; they boarded several native craft and got
a little from each. With a stolen ship Brown did not dare to put into
any port, of course. He had no money to buy anything, no papers to show,
and no lie plausible enough to get him out again. An Arab barque, under
the Dutch flag, surprised one night at anchor off Poulo Laut, yielded a
little dirty rice, a bunch of bananas, and a cask of water; three days
of squally, misty weather from the north-east shot the schooner across
the Java Sea. The yellow muddy waves drenched that collection of hungry
ruffians. They sighted mail-boats moving on their appointed routes;
passed well-found home ships with rusty iron sides anchored in the
shallow sea waiting for a change of weather or the turn of the tide; an
English gunboat, white and trim, with two slim masts, crossed their bows
one day in the distance; and on another occasion a Dutch corvette, black
and heavily sparred, loomed up on their quarter, steaming dead slow
in the mist. They slipped through unseen or disregarded, a wan,
sallow-faced band of utter outcasts, enraged with hunger and hunted by
fear. Brown's idea was to make for Madagascar, where he expected, on
grounds not altogether illusory, to sell the schooner in Tamatave, and
no questions asked, or perhaps obtain some more or less forged papers
for her. Yet before he could face the long passage across the Indian
Ocean food was wanted--water too.
'Perhaps he had heard of Patusan--or perhaps he just only happened to
see the name written in small letters on the chart--probably that of a
largish village up a river in a native state, perfectly defenceless, far
from the beaten tracks of the sea and from the ends of submarine cables.
He had done that kind of thing before--in the way of business;
and this now was an absolute necessity, a question of life and
death--or rather of liberty. Of liberty! He was sure to get
provisions--bullocks--rice--sweet-potatoes. The sorry gang licked
their chops. A cargo of produce for the schooner perhaps could be
extorted--and, who knows?--some real ringing coined money! Some of these
chiefs and village headmen can be made to part freely. He told me he
would have roasted their toes rather than be baulked. I believe him. His
men believed him too. They didn't cheer aloud, being a dumb pack, but
made ready wolfishly.
'Luck served him as to weather. A few days of calm would have brought
unmentionable horrors on board that schooner, but with the help of land
and sea breezes, in less than a week after clearing the Sunda Straits,
he anchored off the Batu Kring mouth within a pistol-shot of the fishing
village.
'Fourteen of them packed into the schooner's long-boat (which was big,
having been used for cargo-work) and started up the river, while two
remained in charge of the schooner with food enough to keep starvation
off for ten days. The tide and wind helped, and early one afternoon the
big white boat under a ragged sail shouldered its way before the sea
breeze into Patusan Reach, manned by fourteen assorted scarecrows
glaring hungrily ahead, and fingering the breech-blocks of cheap rifles.
Brown calculated upon the terrifying surprise of his appearance. They
sailed in with the last of the flood; the Rajah's stockade gave no sign;
the first houses on both sides of the stream seemed deserted. A few
canoes were seen up the reach in full flight. Brown was astonished at
the size of the place. A profound silence reigned. The wind dropped
between the houses; two oars were got out and the boat held on
up-stream, the idea being to effect a lodgment in the centre of the town
before the inhabitants could think of resistance.
'It seems, however, that the headman of the fishing village at Batu
Kring had managed to send off a timely warning. When the long-boat came
abreast of the mosque (which Doramin had built: a structure with gables
and roof finials of carved coral) the open space before it was full of
people. A shout went up, and was followed by a clash of gongs all up the
river. From a point above two little brass 6-pounders were discharged,
and the round-shot came skipping down the empty reach, spurting
glittering jets of water in the sunshine. In front of the mosque a
shouting lot of men began firing in volleys that whipped athwart the
current of the river; an irregular, rolling fusillade was opened on the
boat from both banks, and Brown's men replied with a wild, rapid fire.
The oars had been got in.
'The turn of the tide at high water comes on very quickly in that river,
and the boat in mid-stream, nearly hidden in smoke, began to drift back
stern foremost. Along both shores the smoke thickened also, lying below
the roofs in a level streak as you may see a long cloud cutting the
slope of a mountain. A tumult of war-cries, the vibrating clang
of gongs, the deep snoring of drums, yells of rage, crashes of
volley-firing, made an awful din, in which Brown sat confounded but
steady at the tiller, working himself into a fury of hate and rage
against those people who dared to defend themselves. Two of his men
had been wounded, and he saw his retreat cut off below the town by some
boats that had put off from Tunku Allang's stockade. There were six of
them, full of men. While he was thus beset he perceived the entrance of
the narrow creek (the same which Jim had jumped at low water). It was
then brim full. Steering the long-boat in, they landed, and, to make a
long story short, they established themselves on a little knoll about
900 yards from the stockade, which, in fact, they commanded from that
position. The slopes of the knoll were bare, but there were a few trees
on the summit. They went to work cutting these down for a breastwork,
and were fairly intrenched before dark; meantime the Rajah's boats
remained in the river with curious neutrality. When the sun set the glue
of many brushwood blazes lighted on the river-front, and between the
double line of houses on the land side threw into black relief the
roofs, the groups of slender palms, the heavy clumps of fruit trees.
Brown ordered the grass round his position to be fired; a low ring of
thin flames under the slow ascending smoke wriggled rapidly down the
slopes of the knoll; here and there a dry bush caught with a tall,
vicious roar. The conflagration made a clear zone of fire for the rifles
of the small party, and expired smouldering on the edge of the forests
and along the muddy bank of the creek. A strip of jungle luxuriating in
a damp hollow between the knoll and the Rajah's stockade stopped it
on that side with a great crackling and detonations of bursting bamboo
stems. The sky was sombre, velvety, and swarming with stars. The
blackened ground smoked quietly with low creeping wisps, till a little
breeze came on and blew everything away. Brown expected an attack to
be delivered as soon as the tide had flowed enough again to enable the
war-boats which had cut off his retreat to enter the creek. At any rate
he was sure there would be an attempt to carry off his long-boat,
which lay below the hill, a dark high lump on the feeble sheen of a wet
mud-flat. But no move of any sort was made by the boats in the river.
Over the stockade and the Rajah's buildings Brown saw their lights on
the water. They seemed to be anchored across the stream. Other lights
afloat were moving in the reach, crossing and recrossing from side to
side. There were also lights twinkling motionless upon the long walls of
houses up the reach, as far as the bend, and more still beyond, others
isolated inland. The loom of the big fires disclosed buildings, roofs,
black piles as far as he could see. It was an immense place. The
fourteen desperate invaders lying flat behind the felled trees raised
their chins to look over at the stir of that town that seemed to extend
up-river for miles and swarm with thousands of angry men. They did not
speak to each other. Now and then they would hear a loud yell, or a
single shot rang out, fired very far somewhere. But round their position
everything was still, dark, silent. They seemed to be forgotten, as if
the excitement keeping awake all the population had nothing to do with
them, as if they had been dead already.'
| 2,687 | Chapter 38 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-38 | Here's Gentleman Brown's story. A pirate, with some serious bad luck, Brown heads to Patusan, which he has heard is easy pickings. Some island locals raise the alarm about his arrival, and the Patusan natives are lying in wait to attack him. They sure know how to welcome visitors over in Patusan, don't they? To avoid a fight, Brown and his crew retreat to a hilltop. | null | 66 | 1 | [
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5,658 | true | gradesaver | all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/chapters_8_to_10.txt | finished_summaries/gradesaver/Lord Jim/section_3_part_0.txt | Lord Jim.chapters 8-10 | chapters 8-10 | null | {"name": "Chapters 8-10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422054542/https://www.gradesaver.com/lord-jim/study-guide/summary-chapters-8-10", "summary": "Jim now tells his story to Marlow, who, in turn, is telling his audience. The boats, according to Jim, were tied all along the bridge of the Patna. He knew his duty, and he was considering it when a passenger, one of the Muslims, said something about \"water,\" again and again. Jim feared that the worst was becoming known, but he soon realized that the man was asking for water for his young, ill son. Jim gave him the water and immediately regretted his own lack, wanting a drink then himself. The skipper said to \"Clear out,\" and Jim stood frozen, indecisive. He did not know what to do, but he insists that to do anything, \"you must believe there is a chance.\" He held little faith in the iron of the ship. On the second day of the proceedings, one of the men with Jim began rattling off all the names of the dead skippers and ships he had known that had been lost--lost from life, but not quite from the memories of those gathered. That was a moment that struck Marlow. The story now returns to the dining hall, where Jim begins to laugh openly and with bitterness, drawing the attention of those around them. A silence falls, and Marlow chastises Jim, who responds that they will believe he is only drunk. Marlow continues: according to Jim, he intended to cut the lifeboats so they wouldn't sink with the steamer. The others managed to push a single boat into the water, ignoring Jim's \"passive heroism\" . He was frozen by visions of the bodies, laid out for death--he asks Marlow, \"What would you have done?\" . The other men jumped into the boat, and they were calling for George to jump also. Jim jumped instead, almost beyond his volition. After he tells Marlow that he jumped, he adds the perfunctory, \"It seems\"; he was aware that there would be no going back. He jumped into a well, \"an everlasting deep hole\" . From the sea in the little boat, the yellow gleam of the steamer's masthead looked like the last star, and then it went out. On the little boat, the men were thinking of the ship sinking with all of its passengers, without a sound--sparing them the voices of human struggle in the waters. The man named George, they realized, never made it. He apparently had turned back for something and had gone down with the ship. As the sun rose, Jim admits, he was deliberating with himself about whether or not he would die. The captain insisted that he would die; Jim countered that he would not.", "analysis": "As Jim explains what happened on the night of the incident, he finds in Marlow an attentive listener. He explains, first, how the fear began to rise within him. Marlow notes that Jim does not want a judge or an \"official Inquiry\" but rather \"an ally, a helper, an accomplice\" . He is looking for sympathy, a sense that his reaction to the situation was a human reaction. In this way, his \"testimony\" to Marlow in their conversation contrasts with the testimony he gave earlier on the witness stand. This begins the more significant inquiry, the inquiry into Jim's soul, and this kind of inquiry, the novel implies, requires a kind of sympathy and understanding from the likes of \"an ally\" or \"accomplice.\" The steamship becomes a symbol, its iron metal something that Marlow refers to as being as \"tough sometimes as the spirit of some men we meet now and then, worn to a shadow and breasting the weight of life\" . In other words, the ship becomes representative of the human condition, struggling to survive, featuring both age and experience. The crew, including Jim, misjudges the steamship's ability to stay afloat, and the trick of the eye in the perception that the light of the ship was going out, together with the conclusion that the ship has sunk, stands for a series of misjudgments about human nature in the novel. When Jim leaps from the ship into the lifeboat, Marlow comments: \"your ship fails you, your whole world seems to fail you; the world that made you, restrained you, taken care of you\" . In other words, the steamer, figuring \"iron\" as the metal of man's endurance, as well as the world that has \"taken care of you,\" becomes a lesson regarding the strength latent in human beings. The key point is that the ship did not actually fail Jim. To the contrary, Jim failed his ship. For the remainder of the novel, Jim will attempt to rectify this misjudgment by maintaining a faith within himself that he is, in spite of it all, capable of doing something great with his life--capable of achieving his dreams. The situation on the Patna is unique, however, and Marlow recognizes that no man knows how he would respond in that situation. Jim asks him pointedly, \"What would you have done?\" but what can one really expect of oneself in the hypothetical place of another? Brierly, the narrative implies, had imagined the situation himself and had arrived at an answer that had deeply disappointed him. In being absolutely honest with himself, he possibly had perceived a deep hypocrisy. Marlow, in contrast, simply does not answer Jim's question. Another detail to keep in mind is that Jim's \"jump\" into the lifeboat is an action that is described as a kind of reflex. The instinct to survive may be strong enough to counter a possible display of courage. Does such an action then truly reflect a person's character? The ambiguity here seems to be that to stay behind and risk sinking with the ship would be counter to the human impulse to struggle and survive."} |
'How long he stood stock-still by the hatch expecting every moment to
feel the ship dip under his feet and the rush of water take him at the
back and toss him like a chip, I cannot say. Not very long--two minutes
perhaps. A couple of men he could not make out began to converse
drowsily, and also, he could not tell where, he detected a curious
noise of shuffling feet. Above these faint sounds there was that awful
stillness preceding a catastrophe, that trying silence of the moment
before the crash; then it came into his head that perhaps he would have
time to rush along and cut all the lanyards of the gripes, so that the
boats would float as the ship went down.
'The Patna had a long bridge, and all the boats were up there, four on
one side and three on the other--the smallest of them on the port-side
and nearly abreast of the steering gear. He assured me, with evident
anxiety to be believed, that he had been most careful to keep them ready
for instant service. He knew his duty. I dare say he was a good enough
mate as far as that went. "I always believed in being prepared for the
worst," he commented, staring anxiously in my face. I nodded my approval
of the sound principle, averting my eyes before the subtle unsoundness
of the man.
'He started unsteadily to run. He had to step over legs, avoid stumbling
against the heads. Suddenly some one caught hold of his coat from below,
and a distressed voice spoke under his elbow. The light of the lamp he
carried in his right hand fell upon an upturned dark face whose eyes
entreated him together with the voice. He had picked up enough of the
language to understand the word water, repeated several times in a tone
of insistence, of prayer, almost of despair. He gave a jerk to get away,
and felt an arm embrace his leg.
'"The beggar clung to me like a drowning man," he said impressively.
"Water, water! What water did he mean? What did he know? As calmly as
I could I ordered him to let go. He was stopping me, time was pressing,
other men began to stir; I wanted time--time to cut the boats adrift.
He got hold of my hand now, and I felt that he would begin to shout. It
flashed upon me it was enough to start a panic, and I hauled off with
my free arm and slung the lamp in his face. The glass jingled, the light
went out, but the blow made him let go, and I ran off--I wanted to get
at the boats; I wanted to get at the boats. He leaped after me from
behind. I turned on him. He would not keep quiet; he tried to shout; I
had half throttled him before I made out what he wanted. He wanted some
water--water to drink; they were on strict allowance, you know, and
he had with him a young boy I had noticed several times. His child was
sick--and thirsty. He had caught sight of me as I passed by, and was
begging for a little water. That's all. We were under the bridge, in
the dark. He kept on snatching at my wrists; there was no getting rid of
him. I dashed into my berth, grabbed my water-bottle, and thrust it into
his hands. He vanished. I didn't find out till then how much I was in
want of a drink myself." He leaned on one elbow with a hand over his
eyes.
'I felt a creepy sensation all down my backbone; there was something
peculiar in all this. The fingers of the hand that shaded his brow
trembled slightly. He broke the short silence.
'"These things happen only once to a man and . . . Ah! well! When I got
on the bridge at last the beggars were getting one of the boats off the
chocks. A boat! I was running up the ladder when a heavy blow fell on
my shoulder, just missing my head. It didn't stop me, and the chief
engineer--they had got him out of his bunk by then--raised the
boat-stretcher again. Somehow I had no mind to be surprised at anything.
All this seemed natural--and awful--and awful. I dodged that miserable
maniac, lifted him off the deck as though he had been a little child,
and he started whispering in my arms: 'Don't! don't! I thought you were
one of them niggers.' I flung him away, he skidded along the bridge and
knocked the legs from under the little chap--the second. The skipper,
busy about the boat, looked round and came at me head down, growling
like a wild beast. I flinched no more than a stone. I was as solid
standing there as this," he tapped lightly with his knuckles the wall
beside his chair. "It was as though I had heard it all, seen it all,
gone through it all twenty times already. I wasn't afraid of them. I
drew back my fist and he stopped short, muttering--
'"'Ah! it's you. Lend a hand quick.'
'"That's what he said. Quick! As if anybody could be quick enough.
'Aren't you going to do something?' I asked. 'Yes. Clear out,' he
snarled over his shoulder.
'"I don't think I understood then what he meant. The other two had
picked themselves up by that time, and they rushed together to the boat.
They tramped, they wheezed, they shoved, they cursed the boat, the ship,
each other--cursed me. All in mutters. I didn't move, I didn't speak.
I watched the slant of the ship. She was as still as if landed on the
blocks in a dry dock--only she was like this," He held up his hand,
palm under, the tips of the fingers inclined downwards. "Like this," he
repeated. "I could see the line of the horizon before me, as clear as a
bell, above her stem-head; I could see the water far off there black
and sparkling, and still--still as a-pond, deadly still, more still than
ever sea was before--more still than I could bear to look at. Have you
watched a ship floating head down, checked in sinking by a sheet of old
iron too rotten to stand being shored up? Have you? Oh yes, shored up? I
thought of that--I thought of every mortal thing; but can you shore up a
bulkhead in five minutes--or in fifty for that matter? Where was I going
to get men that would go down below? And the timber--the timber! Would
you have had the courage to swing the maul for the first blow if you
had seen that bulkhead? Don't say you would: you had not seen it; nobody
would. Hang it--to do a thing like that you must believe there is a
chance, one in a thousand, at least, some ghost of a chance; and you
would not have believed. Nobody would have believed. You think me a
cur for standing there, but what would you have done? What! You can't
tell--nobody can tell. One must have time to turn round. What would you
have me do? Where was the kindness in making crazy with fright all those
people I could not save single-handed--that nothing could save? Look
here! As true as I sit on this chair before you . . ."
'He drew quick breaths at every few words and shot quick glances at my
face, as though in his anguish he were watchful of the effect. He was
not speaking to me, he was only speaking before me, in a dispute with
an invisible personality, an antagonistic and inseparable partner of his
existence--another possessor of his soul. These were issues beyond the
competency of a court of inquiry: it was a subtle and momentous quarrel
as to the true essence of life, and did not want a judge. He wanted
an ally, a helper, an accomplice. I felt the risk I ran of being
circumvented, blinded, decoyed, bullied, perhaps, into taking a definite
part in a dispute impossible of decision if one had to be fair to all
the phantoms in possession--to the reputable that had its claims and
to the disreputable that had its exigencies. I can't explain to you who
haven't seen him and who hear his words only at second hand the mixed
nature of my feelings. It seemed to me I was being made to comprehend
the Inconceivable--and I know of nothing to compare with the discomfort
of such a sensation. I was made to look at the convention that lurks in
all truth and on the essential sincerity of falsehood. He appealed to
all sides at once--to the side turned perpetually to the light of day,
and to that side of us which, like the other hemisphere of the moon,
exists stealthily in perpetual darkness, with only a fearful ashy light
falling at times on the edge. He swayed me. I own to it, I own up. The
occasion was obscure, insignificant--what you will: a lost youngster,
one in a million--but then he was one of us; an incident as completely
devoid of importance as the flooding of an ant-heap, and yet the mystery
of his attitude got hold of me as though he had been an individual
in the forefront of his kind, as if the obscure truth involved were
momentous enough to affect mankind's conception of itself. . . .'
Marlow paused to put new life into his expiring cheroot, seemed to
forget all about the story, and abruptly began again.
'My fault of course. One has no business really to get interested. It's
a weakness of mine. His was of another kind. My weakness consists in not
having a discriminating eye for the incidental--for the externals--no
eye for the hod of the rag-picker or the fine linen of the next man.
Next man--that's it. I have met so many men,' he pursued, with momentary
sadness--'met them too with a certain--certain--impact, let us say; like
this fellow, for instance--and in each case all I could see was merely
the human being. A confounded democratic quality of vision which may be
better than total blindness, but has been of no advantage to me, I can
assure you. Men expect one to take into account their fine linen. But
I never could get up any enthusiasm about these things. Oh! it's a
failing; it's a failing; and then comes a soft evening; a lot of men too
indolent for whist--and a story. . . .'
He paused again to wait for an encouraging remark, perhaps, but nobody
spoke; only the host, as if reluctantly performing a duty, murmured--
'You are so subtle, Marlow.'
'Who? I?' said Marlow in a low voice. 'Oh no! But _he_ was; and try as I
may for the success of this yarn, I am missing innumerable shades--they
were so fine, so difficult to render in colourless words. Because he
complicated matters by being so simple, too--the simplest poor
devil! . . . By Jove! he was amazing. There he sat telling me that just
as I saw him before my eyes he wouldn't be afraid to face anything--and
believing in it too. I tell you it was fabulously innocent and it was
enormous, enormous! I watched him covertly, just as though I had
suspected him of an intention to take a jolly good rise out of me. He
was confident that, on the square, "on the square, mind!" there was
nothing he couldn't meet. Ever since he had been "so high"--"quite a
little chap," he had been preparing himself for all the difficulties
that can beset one on land and water. He confessed proudly to this kind
of foresight. He had been elaborating dangers and defences, expecting
the worst, rehearsing his best. He must have led a most exalted
existence. Can you fancy it? A succession of adventures, so much glory,
such a victorious progress! and the deep sense of his sagacity crowning
every day of his inner life. He forgot himself; his eyes shone; and with
every word my heart, searched by the light of his absurdity, was growing
heavier in my breast. I had no mind to laugh, and lest I should smile I
made for myself a stolid face. He gave signs of irritation.
'"It is always the unexpected that happens," I said in a propitiatory
tone. My obtuseness provoked him into a contemptuous "Pshaw!" I suppose
he meant that the unexpected couldn't touch him; nothing less than the
unconceivable itself could get over his perfect state of preparation. He
had been taken unawares--and he whispered to himself a malediction upon
the waters and the firmament, upon the ship, upon the men. Everything
had betrayed him! He had been tricked into that sort of high-minded
resignation which prevented him lifting as much as his little finger,
while these others who had a very clear perception of the actual
necessity were tumbling against each other and sweating desperately over
that boat business. Something had gone wrong there at the last moment.
It appears that in their flurry they had contrived in some mysterious
way to get the sliding bolt of the foremost boat-chock jammed tight, and
forthwith had gone out of the remnants of their minds over the deadly
nature of that accident. It must have been a pretty sight, the fierce
industry of these beggars toiling on a motionless ship that floated
quietly in the silence of a world asleep, fighting against time for the
freeing of that boat, grovelling on all-fours, standing up in despair,
tugging, pushing, snarling at each other venomously, ready to kill,
ready to weep, and only kept from flying at each other's throats by
the fear of death that stood silent behind them like an inflexible and
cold-eyed taskmaster. Oh yes! It must have been a pretty sight. He
saw it all, he could talk about it with scorn and bitterness; he had a
minute knowledge of it by means of some sixth sense, I conclude, because
he swore to me he had remained apart without a glance at them and at the
boat--without one single glance. And I believe him. I should think he
was too busy watching the threatening slant of the ship, the suspended
menace discovered in the midst of the most perfect security--fascinated
by the sword hanging by a hair over his imaginative head.
'Nothing in the world moved before his eyes, and he could depict to
himself without hindrance the sudden swing upwards of the dark sky-line,
the sudden tilt up of the vast plain of the sea, the swift still rise,
the brutal fling, the grasp of the abyss, the struggle without hope, the
starlight closing over his head for ever like the vault of a tomb--the
revolt of his young life--the black end. He could! By Jove! who
couldn't? And you must remember he was a finished artist in that
peculiar way, he was a gifted poor devil with the faculty of swift and
forestalling vision. The sights it showed him had turned him into cold
stone from the soles of his feet to the nape of his neck; but there
was a hot dance of thoughts in his head, a dance of lame, blind, mute
thoughts--a whirl of awful cripples. Didn't I tell you he confessed
himself before me as though I had the power to bind and to loose? He
burrowed deep, deep, in the hope of my absolution, which would have been
of no good to him. This was one of those cases which no solemn deception
can palliate, where no man can help; where his very Maker seems to
abandon a sinner to his own devices.
'He stood on the starboard side of the bridge, as far as he could get
from the struggle for the boat, which went on with the agitation
of madness and the stealthiness of a conspiracy. The two Malays had
meantime remained holding to the wheel. Just picture to yourselves
the actors in that, thank God! unique, episode of the sea, four beside
themselves with fierce and secret exertions, and three looking on in
complete immobility, above the awnings covering the profound ignorance
of hundreds of human beings, with their weariness, with their dreams,
with their hopes, arrested, held by an invisible hand on the brink of
annihilation. For that they were so, makes no doubt to me: given the
state of the ship, this was the deadliest possible description of
accident that could happen. These beggars by the boat had every reason
to go distracted with funk. Frankly, had I been there, I would not have
given as much as a counterfeit farthing for the ship's chance to keep
above water to the end of each successive second. And still she
floated! These sleeping pilgrims were destined to accomplish their
whole pilgrimage to the bitterness of some other end. It was as if the
Omnipotence whose mercy they confessed had needed their humble testimony
on earth for a while longer, and had looked down to make a sign,
"Thou shalt not!" to the ocean. Their escape would trouble me as a
prodigiously inexplicable event, did I not know how tough old iron can
be--as tough sometimes as the spirit of some men we meet now and then,
worn to a shadow and breasting the weight of life. Not the least
wonder of these twenty minutes, to my mind, is the behaviour of the two
helmsmen. They were amongst the native batch of all sorts brought over
from Aden to give evidence at the inquiry. One of them, labouring under
intense bashfulness, was very young, and with his smooth, yellow,
cheery countenance looked even younger than he was. I remember perfectly
Brierly asking him, through the interpreter, what he thought of it at
the time, and the interpreter, after a short colloquy, turning to the
court with an important air--
'"He says he thought nothing."
'The other, with patient blinking eyes, a blue cotton handkerchief,
faded with much washing, bound with a smart twist over a lot of grey
wisps, his face shrunk into grim hollows, his brown skin made darker by
a mesh of wrinkles, explained that he had a knowledge of some evil thing
befalling the ship, but there had been no order; he could not remember
an order; why should he leave the helm? To some further questions he
jerked back his spare shoulders, and declared it never came into his
mind then that the white men were about to leave the ship through
fear of death. He did not believe it now. There might have been secret
reasons. He wagged his old chin knowingly. Aha! secret reasons. He was
a man of great experience, and he wanted _that_ white Tuan to know--he
turned towards Brierly, who didn't raise his head--that he had acquired
a knowledge of many things by serving white men on the sea for a great
number of years--and, suddenly, with shaky excitement he poured upon
our spellbound attention a lot of queer-sounding names, names of
dead-and-gone skippers, names of forgotten country ships, names of
familiar and distorted sound, as if the hand of dumb time had been at
work on them for ages. They stopped him at last. A silence fell upon
the court,--a silence that remained unbroken for at least a minute, and
passed gently into a deep murmur. This episode was the sensation of
the second day's proceedings--affecting all the audience, affecting
everybody except Jim, who was sitting moodily at the end of the first
bench, and never looked up at this extraordinary and damning witness
that seemed possessed of some mysterious theory of defence.
'So these two lascars stuck to the helm of that ship without
steerage-way, where death would have found them if such had been their
destiny. The whites did not give them half a glance, had probably
forgotten their existence. Assuredly Jim did not remember it. He
remembered he could do nothing; he could do nothing, now he was alone.
There was nothing to do but to sink with the ship. No use making a
disturbance about it. Was there? He waited upstanding, without a sound,
stiffened in the idea of some sort of heroic discretion. The first
engineer ran cautiously across the bridge to tug at his sleeve.
'"Come and help! For God's sake, come and help!"
'He ran back to the boat on the points of his toes, and returned
directly to worry at his sleeve, begging and cursing at the same time.
'"I believe he would have kissed my hands," said Jim savagely, "and,
next moment, he starts foaming and whispering in my face, 'If I had
the time I would like to crack your skull for you.' I pushed him away.
Suddenly he caught hold of me round the neck. Damn him! I hit him. I
hit out without looking. 'Won't you save your own life--you infernal
coward?' he sobs. Coward! He called me an infernal coward! Ha! ha! ha!
ha! He called me--ha! ha! ha! . . ."
'He had thrown himself back and was shaking with laughter. I had never
in my life heard anything so bitter as that noise. It fell like a blight
on all the merriment about donkeys, pyramids, bazaars, or what not.
Along the whole dim length of the gallery the voices dropped, the pale
blotches of faces turned our way with one accord, and the silence
became so profound that the clear tinkle of a teaspoon falling on
the tesselated floor of the verandah rang out like a tiny and silvery
scream.
'"You mustn't laugh like this, with all these people about," I
remonstrated. "It isn't nice for them, you know."
'He gave no sign of having heard at first, but after a while, with a
stare that, missing me altogether, seemed to probe the heart of some
awful vision, he muttered carelessly--"Oh! they'll think I am drunk."
'And after that you would have thought from his appearance he would
never make a sound again. But--no fear! He could no more stop telling
now than he could have stopped living by the mere exertion of his will.'
'"I was saying to myself, 'Sink--curse you! Sink!'" These were the
words with which he began again. He wanted it over. He was severely left
alone, and he formulated in his head this address to the ship in a
tone of imprecation, while at the same time he enjoyed the privilege of
witnessing scenes--as far as I can judge--of low comedy. They were still
at that bolt. The skipper was ordering, "Get under and try to lift"; and
the others naturally shirked. You understand that to be squeezed flat
under the keel of a boat wasn't a desirable position to be caught in if
the ship went down suddenly. "Why don't you--you the strongest?" whined
the little engineer. "Gott-for-dam! I am too thick," spluttered the
skipper in despair. It was funny enough to make angels weep. They stood
idle for a moment, and suddenly the chief engineer rushed again at Jim.
'"Come and help, man! Are you mad to throw your only chance away? Come
and help, man! Man! Look there--look!"
'And at last Jim looked astern where the other pointed with maniacal
insistence. He saw a silent black squall which had eaten up already
one-third of the sky. You know how these squalls come up there about
that time of the year. First you see a darkening of the horizon--no
more; then a cloud rises opaque like a wall. A straight edge of vapour
lined with sickly whitish gleams flies up from the southwest, swallowing
the stars in whole constellations; its shadow flies over the waters, and
confounds sea and sky into one abyss of obscurity. And all is still.
No thunder, no wind, no sound; not a flicker of lightning. Then in
the tenebrous immensity a livid arch appears; a swell or two like
undulations of the very darkness run past, and suddenly, wind and rain
strike together with a peculiar impetuosity as if they had burst through
something solid. Such a cloud had come up while they weren't looking.
They had just noticed it, and were perfectly justified in surmising
that if in absolute stillness there was some chance for the ship to keep
afloat a few minutes longer, the least disturbance of the sea would make
an end of her instantly. Her first nod to the swell that precedes the
burst of such a squall would be also her last, would become a plunge,
would, so to speak, be prolonged into a long dive, down, down to the
bottom. Hence these new capers of their fright, these new antics in
which they displayed their extreme aversion to die.
'"It was black, black," pursued Jim with moody steadiness. "It had
sneaked upon us from behind. The infernal thing! I suppose there had
been at the back of my head some hope yet. I don't know. But that was
all over anyhow. It maddened me to see myself caught like this. I was
angry, as though I had been trapped. I _was_ trapped! The night was hot,
too, I remember. Not a breath of air."
'He remembered so well that, gasping in the chair, he seemed to sweat
and choke before my eyes. No doubt it maddened him; it knocked him over
afresh--in a manner of speaking--but it made him also remember that
important purpose which had sent him rushing on that bridge only to slip
clean out of his mind. He had intended to cut the lifeboats clear of the
ship. He whipped out his knife and went to work slashing as though he
had seen nothing, had heard nothing, had known of no one on board. They
thought him hopelessly wrong-headed and crazy, but dared not protest
noisily against this useless loss of time. When he had done he returned
to the very same spot from which he had started. The chief was there,
ready with a clutch at him to whisper close to his head, scathingly, as
though he wanted to bite his ear--
'"You silly fool! do you think you'll get the ghost of a show when all
that lot of brutes is in the water? Why, they will batter your head for
you from these boats."
'He wrung his hands, ignored, at Jim's elbow. The skipper kept up a
nervous shuffle in one place and mumbled, "Hammer! hammer! Mein Gott!
Get a hammer."
'The little engineer whimpered like a child, but, broken arm and all,
he turned out the least craven of the lot as it seems, and, actually,
mustered enough pluck to run an errand to the engine-room. No trifle, it
must be owned in fairness to him. Jim told me he darted desperate looks
like a cornered man, gave one low wail, and dashed off. He was back
instantly clambering, hammer in hand, and without a pause flung himself
at the bolt. The others gave up Jim at once and ran off to assist.
He heard the tap, tap of the hammer, the sound of the released chock
falling over. The boat was clear. Only then he turned to look--only
then. But he kept his distance--he kept his distance. He wanted me to
know he had kept his distance; that there was nothing in common between
him and these men--who had the hammer. Nothing whatever. It is more than
probable he thought himself cut off from them by a space that could
not be traversed, by an obstacle that could not be overcome, by a chasm
without bottom. He was as far as he could get from them--the whole
breadth of the ship.
'His feet were glued to that remote spot and his eyes to their
indistinct group bowed together and swaying strangely in the common
torment of fear. A hand-lamp lashed to a stanchion above a little table
rigged up on the bridge--the Patna had no chart-room amidships--threw a
light on their labouring shoulders, on their arched and bobbing backs.
They pushed at the bow of the boat; they pushed out into the night; they
pushed, and would no more look back at him. They had given him up as if
indeed he had been too far, too hopelessly separated from themselves, to
be worth an appealing word, a glance, or a sign. They had no leisure to
look back upon his passive heroism, to feel the sting of his abstention.
The boat was heavy; they pushed at the bow with no breath to spare for
an encouraging word: but the turmoil of terror that had scattered their
self-command like chaff before the wind, converted their desperate
exertions into a bit of fooling, upon my word, fit for knockabout clowns
in a farce. They pushed with their hands, with their heads, they pushed
for dear life with all the weight of their bodies, they pushed with all
the might of their souls--only no sooner had they succeeded in canting
the stem clear of the davit than they would leave off like one man and
start a wild scramble into her. As a natural consequence the boat would
swing in abruptly, driving them back, helpless and jostling against each
other. They would stand nonplussed for a while, exchanging in fierce
whispers all the infamous names they could call to mind, and go at it
again. Three times this occurred. He described it to me with morose
thoughtfulness. He hadn't lost a single movement of that comic business.
"I loathed them. I hated them. I had to look at all that," he said
without emphasis, turning upon me a sombrely watchful glance. "Was ever
there any one so shamefully tried?"
'He took his head in his hands for a moment, like a man driven to
distraction by some unspeakable outrage. These were things he could not
explain to the court--and not even to me; but I would have been little
fitted for the reception of his confidences had I not been able at times
to understand the pauses between the words. In this assault upon
his fortitude there was the jeering intention of a spiteful and
vile vengeance; there was an element of burlesque in his ordeal--a
degradation of funny grimaces in the approach of death or dishonour.
'He related facts which I have not forgotten, but at this distance of
time I couldn't recall his very words: I only remember that he managed
wonderfully to convey the brooding rancour of his mind into the bare
recital of events. Twice, he told me, he shut his eyes in the certitude
that the end was upon him already, and twice he had to open them again.
Each time he noted the darkening of the great stillness. The shadow of
the silent cloud had fallen upon the ship from the zenith, and seemed
to have extinguished every sound of her teeming life. He could no longer
hear the voices under the awnings. He told me that each time he closed
his eyes a flash of thought showed him that crowd of bodies, laid out
for death, as plain as daylight. When he opened them, it was to see the
dim struggle of four men fighting like mad with a stubborn boat. "They
would fall back before it time after time, stand swearing at each other,
and suddenly make another rush in a bunch. . . . Enough to make you
die laughing," he commented with downcast eyes; then raising them for a
moment to my face with a dismal smile, "I ought to have a merry life
of it, by God! for I shall see that funny sight a good many times yet
before I die." His eyes fell again. "See and hear. . . . See and hear,"
he repeated twice, at long intervals, filled by vacant staring.
'He roused himself.
'"I made up my mind to keep my eyes shut," he said, "and I couldn't. I
couldn't, and I don't care who knows it. Let them go through that kind
of thing before they talk. Just let them--and do better--that's all. The
second time my eyelids flew open and my mouth too. I had felt the
ship move. She just dipped her bows--and lifted them gently--and slow!
everlastingly slow; and ever so little. She hadn't done that much for
days. The cloud had raced ahead, and this first swell seemed to travel
upon a sea of lead. There was no life in that stir. It managed, though,
to knock over something in my head. What would you have done? You are
sure of yourself--aren't you? What would you do if you felt now--this
minute--the house here move, just move a little under your chair. Leap!
By heavens! you would take one spring from where you sit and land in
that clump of bushes yonder."
'He flung his arm out at the night beyond the stone balustrade. I held
my peace. He looked at me very steadily, very severe. There could be no
mistake: I was being bullied now, and it behoved me to make no sign lest
by a gesture or a word I should be drawn into a fatal admission about
myself which would have had some bearing on the case. I was not disposed
to take any risk of that sort. Don't forget I had him before me, and
really he was too much like one of us not to be dangerous. But if you
want to know I don't mind telling you that I did, with a rapid glance,
estimate the distance to the mass of denser blackness in the middle of
the grass-plot before the verandah. He exaggerated. I would have landed
short by several feet--and that's the only thing of which I am fairly
certain.
'The last moment had come, as he thought, and he did not move. His feet
remained glued to the planks if his thoughts were knocking about loose
in his head. It was at this moment too that he saw one of the men around
the boat step backwards suddenly, clutch at the air with raised arms,
totter and collapse. He didn't exactly fall, he only slid gently into a
sitting posture, all hunched up, and with his shoulders propped against
the side of the engine-room skylight. "That was the donkey-man.
A haggard, white-faced chap with a ragged moustache. Acted third
engineer," he explained.
'"Dead," I said. We had heard something of that in court.
'"So they say," he pronounced with sombre indifference. "Of course I
never knew. Weak heart. The man had been complaining of being out of
sorts for some time before. Excitement. Over-exertion. Devil only knows.
Ha! ha! ha! It was easy to see he did not want to die either. Droll,
isn't it? May I be shot if he hadn't been fooled into killing himself!
Fooled--neither more nor less. Fooled into it, by heavens! just as
I . . . Ah! If he had only kept still; if he had only told them to go to
the devil when they came to rush him out of his bunk because the ship
was sinking! If he had only stood by with his hands in his pockets and
called them names!"
'He got up, shook his fist, glared at me, and sat down.
'"A chance missed, eh?" I murmured.
'"Why don't you laugh?" he said. "A joke hatched in hell. Weak
heart! . . . I wish sometimes mine had been."
'This irritated me. "Do you?" I exclaimed with deep-rooted irony. "Yes!
Can't _you_ understand?" he cried. "I don't know what more you could
wish for," I said angrily. He gave me an utterly uncomprehending glance.
This shaft had also gone wide of the mark, and he was not the man to
bother about stray arrows. Upon my word, he was too unsuspecting; he was
not fair game. I was glad that my missile had been thrown away,--that he
had not even heard the twang of the bow.
'Of course he could not know at the time the man was dead. The next
minute--his last on board--was crowded with a tumult of events and
sensations which beat about him like the sea upon a rock. I use the
simile advisedly, because from his relation I am forced to believe
he had preserved through it all a strange illusion of passiveness, as
though he had not acted but had suffered himself to be handled by the
infernal powers who had selected him for the victim of their practical
joke. The first thing that came to him was the grinding surge of the
heavy davits swinging out at last--a jar which seemed to enter his body
from the deck through the soles of his feet, and travel up his spine to
the crown of his head. Then, the squall being very near now, another
and a heavier swell lifted the passive hull in a threatening heave that
checked his breath, while his brain and his heart together were pierced
as with daggers by panic-stricken screams. "Let go! For God's sake,
let go! Let go! She's going." Following upon that the boat-falls ripped
through the blocks, and a lot of men began to talk in startled tones
under the awnings. "When these beggars did break out, their yelps were
enough to wake the dead," he said. Next, after the splashing shock
of the boat literally dropped in the water, came the hollow noises of
stamping and tumbling in her, mingled with confused shouts: "Unhook!
Unhook! Shove! Unhook! Shove for your life! Here's the squall down on
us. . . ." He heard, high above his head, the faint muttering of the
wind; he heard below his feet a cry of pain. A lost voice alongside
started cursing a swivel hook. The ship began to buzz fore and aft
like a disturbed hive, and, as quietly as he was telling me of all
this--because just then he was very quiet in attitude, in face, in
voice--he went on to say without the slightest warning as it were, "I
stumbled over his legs."
'This was the first I heard of his having moved at all. I could not
restrain a grunt of surprise. Something had started him off at last, but
of the exact moment, of the cause that tore him out of his immobility,
he knew no more than the uprooted tree knows of the wind that laid it
low. All this had come to him: the sounds, the sights, the legs of the
dead man--by Jove! The infernal joke was being crammed devilishly down
his throat, but--look you--he was not going to admit of any sort of
swallowing motion in his gullet. It's extraordinary how he could cast
upon you the spirit of his illusion. I listened as if to a tale of black
magic at work upon a corpse.
'"He went over sideways, very gently, and this is the last thing I
remember seeing on board," he continued. "I did not care what he did.
It looked as though he were picking himself up: I thought he was picking
himself up, of course: I expected him to bolt past me over the rail and
drop into the boat after the others. I could hear them knocking about
down there, and a voice as if crying up a shaft called out 'George!'
Then three voices together raised a yell. They came to me separately:
one bleated, another screamed, one howled. Ough!"
'He shivered a little, and I beheld him rise slowly as if a steady
hand from above had been pulling him out of the chair by his hair. Up,
slowly--to his full height, and when his knees had locked stiff the hand
let him go, and he swayed a little on his feet. There was a suggestion
of awful stillness in his face, in his movements, in his very voice when
he said "They shouted"--and involuntarily I pricked up my ears for
the ghost of that shout that would be heard directly through the false
effect of silence. "There were eight hundred people in that ship," he
said, impaling me to the back of my seat with an awful blank stare.
"Eight hundred living people, and they were yelling after the one dead
man to come down and be saved. 'Jump, George! Jump! Oh, jump!' I stood
by with my hand on the davit. I was very quiet. It had come over pitch
dark. You could see neither sky nor sea. I heard the boat alongside go
bump, bump, and not another sound down there for a while, but the ship
under me was full of talking noises. Suddenly the skipper howled 'Mein
Gott! The squall! The squall! Shove off!' With the first hiss of rain,
and the first gust of wind, they screamed, 'Jump, George! We'll catch
you! Jump!' The ship began a slow plunge; the rain swept over her like
a broken sea; my cap flew off my head; my breath was driven back into
my throat. I heard as if I had been on the top of a tower another wild
screech, 'Geo-o-o-orge! Oh, jump!' She was going down, down, head first
under me. . . ."
'He raised his hand deliberately to his face, and made picking motions
with his fingers as though he had been bothered with cobwebs, and
afterwards he looked into the open palm for quite half a second before
he blurted out--
'"I had jumped . . ." He checked himself, averted his gaze. . . . "It
seems," he added.
'His clear blue eyes turned to me with a piteous stare, and looking at
him standing before me, dumfounded and hurt, I was oppressed by a sad
sense of resigned wisdom, mingled with the amused and profound pity of
an old man helpless before a childish disaster.
'"Looks like it," I muttered.
'"I knew nothing about it till I looked up," he explained hastily. And
that's possible, too. You had to listen to him as you would to a small
boy in trouble. He didn't know. It had happened somehow. It would never
happen again. He had landed partly on somebody and fallen across a
thwart. He felt as though all his ribs on his left side must be broken;
then he rolled over, and saw vaguely the ship he had deserted uprising
above him, with the red side-light glowing large in the rain like a fire
on the brow of a hill seen through a mist. "She seemed higher than a
wall; she loomed like a cliff over the boat . . . I wished I could die,"
he cried. "There was no going back. It was as if I had jumped into a
well--into an everlasting deep hole. . . ."'
'He locked his fingers together and tore them apart. Nothing could be
more true: he had indeed jumped into an everlasting deep hole. He had
tumbled from a height he could never scale again. By that time the boat
had gone driving forward past the bows. It was too dark just then
for them to see each other, and, moreover, they were blinded and half
drowned with rain. He told me it was like being swept by a flood through
a cavern. They turned their backs to the squall; the skipper, it seems,
got an oar over the stern to keep the boat before it, and for two or
three minutes the end of the world had come through a deluge in a pitchy
blackness. The sea hissed "like twenty thousand kettles." That's his
simile, not mine. I fancy there was not much wind after the first gust;
and he himself had admitted at the inquiry that the sea never got up
that night to any extent. He crouched down in the bows and stole a
furtive glance back. He saw just one yellow gleam of the mast-head light
high up and blurred like a last star ready to dissolve. "It terrified me
to see it still there," he said. That's what he said. What terrified him
was the thought that the drowning was not over yet. No doubt he wanted
to be done with that abomination as quickly as possible. Nobody in the
boat made a sound. In the dark she seemed to fly, but of course she
could not have had much way. Then the shower swept ahead, and the great,
distracting, hissing noise followed the rain into distance and died out.
There was nothing to be heard then but the slight wash about the boat's
sides. Somebody's teeth were chattering violently. A hand touched his
back. A faint voice said, "You there?" Another cried out shakily,
"She's gone!" and they all stood up together to look astern. They saw no
lights. All was black. A thin cold drizzle was driving into their faces.
The boat lurched slightly. The teeth chattered faster, stopped, and
began again twice before the man could master his shiver sufficiently to
say, "Ju-ju-st in ti-ti-me. . . . Brrrr." He recognised the voice of the
chief engineer saying surlily, "I saw her go down. I happened to turn my
head." The wind had dropped almost completely.
'They watched in the dark with their heads half turned to windward as if
expecting to hear cries. At first he was thankful the night had covered
up the scene before his eyes, and then to know of it and yet to have
seen and heard nothing appeared somehow the culminating point of an
awful misfortune. "Strange, isn't it?" he murmured, interrupting himself
in his disjointed narrative.
'It did not seem so strange to me. He must have had an unconscious
conviction that the reality could not be half as bad, not half as
anguishing, appalling, and vengeful as the created terror of his
imagination. I believe that, in this first moment, his heart was wrung
with all the suffering, that his soul knew the accumulated savour of all
the fear, all the horror, all the despair of eight hundred human beings
pounced upon in the night by a sudden and violent death, else why should
he have said, "It seemed to me that I must jump out of that accursed
boat and swim back to see--half a mile--more--any distance--to the very
spot . . ."? Why this impulse? Do you see the significance? Why back to
the very spot? Why not drown alongside--if he meant drowning? Why back
to the very spot, to see--as if his imagination had to be soothed by the
assurance that all was over before death could bring relief? I defy any
one of you to offer another explanation. It was one of those bizarre and
exciting glimpses through the fog. It was an extraordinary disclosure.
He let it out as the most natural thing one could say. He fought down
that impulse and then he became conscious of the silence. He mentioned
this to me. A silence of the sea, of the sky, merged into one indefinite
immensity still as death around these saved, palpitating lives.
"You might have heard a pin drop in the boat," he said with a queer
contraction of his lips, like a man trying to master his sensibilities
while relating some extremely moving fact. A silence! God alone, who had
willed him as he was, knows what he made of it in his heart. "I didn't
think any spot on earth could be so still," he said. "You couldn't
distinguish the sea from the sky; there was nothing to see and nothing
to hear. Not a glimmer, not a shape, not a sound. You could have
believed that every bit of dry land had gone to the bottom; that every
man on earth but I and these beggars in the boat had got drowned." He
leaned over the table with his knuckles propped amongst coffee-cups,
liqueur-glasses, cigar-ends. "I seemed to believe it. Everything was
gone and--all was over . . ." he fetched a deep sigh . . . "with me."'
Marlow sat up abruptly and flung away his cheroot with force. It made
a darting red trail like a toy rocket fired through the drapery of
creepers. Nobody stirred.
'Hey, what do you think of it?' he cried with sudden animation. 'Wasn't
he true to himself, wasn't he? His saved life was over for want of
ground under his feet, for want of sights for his eyes, for want of
voices in his ears. Annihilation--hey! And all the time it was only a
clouded sky, a sea that did not break, the air that did not stir. Only a
night; only a silence.
'It lasted for a while, and then they were suddenly and unanimously
moved to make a noise over their escape. "I knew from the first she
would go." "Not a minute too soon." "A narrow squeak, b'gosh!" He said
nothing, but the breeze that had dropped came back, a gentle draught
freshened steadily, and the sea joined its murmuring voice to this
talkative reaction succeeding the dumb moments of awe. She was gone! She
was gone! Not a doubt of it. Nobody could have helped. They repeated the
same words over and over again as though they couldn't stop themselves.
Never doubted she would go. The lights were gone. No mistake. The
lights were gone. Couldn't expect anything else. She had to go. . . . He
noticed that they talked as though they had left behind them nothing but
an empty ship. They concluded she would not have been long when she once
started. It seemed to cause them some sort of satisfaction. They assured
each other that she couldn't have been long about it--"Just shot down
like a flat-iron." The chief engineer declared that the mast-head light
at the moment of sinking seemed to drop "like a lighted match you throw
down." At this the second laughed hysterically. "I am g-g-glad, I am
gla-a-a-d." His teeth went on "like an electric rattle," said Jim,
"and all at once he began to cry. He wept and blubbered like a child,
catching his breath and sobbing 'Oh dear! oh dear! oh dear!' He would
be quiet for a while and start suddenly, 'Oh, my poor arm! oh, my poor
a-a-a-arm!' I felt I could knock him down. Some of them sat in the
stern-sheets. I could just make out their shapes. Voices came to me,
mumble, mumble, grunt, grunt. All this seemed very hard to bear. I was
cold too. And I could do nothing. I thought that if I moved I would have
to go over the side and . . ."
'His hand groped stealthily, came in contact with a liqueur-glass, and
was withdrawn suddenly as if it had touched a red-hot coal. I pushed the
bottle slightly. "Won't you have some more?" I asked. He looked at me
angrily. "Don't you think I can tell you what there is to tell without
screwing myself up?" he asked. The squad of globe-trotters had gone to
bed. We were alone but for a vague white form erect in the shadow, that,
being looked at, cringed forward, hesitated, backed away silently. It
was getting late, but I did not hurry my guest.
'In the midst of his forlorn state he heard his companions begin to
abuse some one. "What kept you from jumping, you lunatic?" said a
scolding voice. The chief engineer left the stern-sheets, and could
be heard clambering forward as if with hostile intentions against "the
greatest idiot that ever was." The skipper shouted with rasping effort
offensive epithets from where he sat at the oar. He lifted his head
at that uproar, and heard the name "George," while a hand in the dark
struck him on the breast. "What have you got to say for yourself, you
fool?" queried somebody, with a sort of virtuous fury. "They were after
me," he said. "They were abusing me--abusing me . . . by the name of
George."
'He paused to stare, tried to smile, turned his eyes away and went on.
"That little second puts his head right under my nose, 'Why, it's that
blasted mate!' 'What!' howls the skipper from the other end of the boat.
'No!' shrieks the chief. And he too stooped to look at my face."
'The wind had left the boat suddenly. The rain began to fall again, and
the soft, uninterrupted, a little mysterious sound with which the sea
receives a shower arose on all sides in the night. "They were too taken
aback to say anything more at first," he narrated steadily, "and what
could I have to say to them?" He faltered for a moment, and made an
effort to go on. "They called me horrible names." His voice, sinking to
a whisper, now and then would leap up suddenly, hardened by the passion
of scorn, as though he had been talking of secret abominations. "Never
mind what they called me," he said grimly. "I could hear hate in their
voices. A good thing too. They could not forgive me for being in that
boat. They hated it. It made them mad. . . ." He laughed short. . . .
"But it kept me from--Look! I was sitting with my arms crossed, on the
gunwale! . . ." He perched himself smartly on the edge of the table and
crossed his arms. . . . "Like this--see? One little tilt backwards and
I would have been gone--after the others. One little tilt--the least
bit--the least bit." He frowned, and tapping his forehead with the tip
of his middle finger, "It was there all the time," he said impressively.
"All the time--that notion. And the rain--cold, thick, cold as melted
snow--colder--on my thin cotton clothes--I'll never be so cold again in
my life, I know. And the sky was black too--all black. Not a star, not
a light anywhere. Nothing outside that confounded boat and those two
yapping before me like a couple of mean mongrels at a tree'd thief. Yap!
yap! 'What you doing here? You're a fine sort! Too much of a bloomin'
gentleman to put your hand to it. Come out of your trance, did you? To
sneak in? Did you?' Yap! yap! 'You ain't fit to live!' Yap! yap! Two of
them together trying to out-bark each other. The other would bay from
the stern through the rain--couldn't see him--couldn't make it out--some
of his filthy jargon. Yap! yap! Bow-ow-ow-ow-ow! Yap! yap! It was sweet
to hear them; it kept me alive, I tell you. It saved my life. At it they
went, as if trying to drive me overboard with the noise! . . . 'I wonder
you had pluck enough to jump. You ain't wanted here. If I had known who
it was, I would have tipped you over--you skunk! What have you done with
the other? Where did you get the pluck to jump--you coward? What's to
prevent us three from firing you overboard?' . . . They were out of
breath; the shower passed away upon the sea. Then nothing. There was
nothing round the boat, not even a sound. Wanted to see me overboard,
did they? Upon my soul! I think they would have had their wish if they
had only kept quiet. Fire me overboard! Would they? 'Try,' I said. 'I
would for twopence.' 'Too good for you,' they screeched together. It was
so dark that it was only when one or the other of them moved that I was
quite sure of seeing him. By heavens! I only wish they had tried."
'I couldn't help exclaiming, "What an extraordinary affair!"
'"Not bad--eh?" he said, as if in some sort astounded. "They pretended
to think I had done away with that donkey-man for some reason or other.
Why should I? And how the devil was I to know? Didn't I get somehow
into that boat? into that boat--I . . ." The muscles round his lips
contracted into an unconscious grimace that tore through the mask of his
usual expression--something violent, short-lived and illuminating like
a twist of lightning that admits the eye for an instant into the secret
convolutions of a cloud. "I did. I was plainly there with them--wasn't
I? Isn't it awful a man should be driven to do a thing like that--and be
responsible? What did I know about their George they were howling after?
I remembered I had seen him curled up on the deck. 'Murdering coward!'
the chief kept on calling me. He didn't seem able to remember any other
two words. I didn't care, only his noise began to worry me. 'Shut up,' I
said. At that he collected himself for a confounded screech. 'You killed
him! You killed him!' 'No,' I shouted, 'but I will kill you directly.' I
jumped up, and he fell backwards over a thwart with an awful loud thump.
I don't know why. Too dark. Tried to step back I suppose. I stood still
facing aft, and the wretched little second began to whine, 'You
ain't going to hit a chap with a broken arm--and you call yourself a
gentleman, too.' I heard a heavy tramp--one--two--and wheezy grunting.
The other beast was coming at me, clattering his oar over the stern. I
saw him moving, big, big--as you see a man in a mist, in a dream. 'Come
on,' I cried. I would have tumbled him over like a bale of shakings. He
stopped, muttered to himself, and went back. Perhaps he had heard the
wind. I didn't. It was the last heavy gust we had. He went back to his
oar. I was sorry. I would have tried to--to . . ."
'He opened and closed his curved fingers, and his hands had an eager and
cruel flutter. "Steady, steady," I murmured.
'"Eh? What? I am not excited," he remonstrated, awfully hurt, and with
a convulsive jerk of his elbow knocked over the cognac bottle. I started
forward, scraping my chair. He bounced off the table as if a mine had
been exploded behind his back, and half turned before he alighted,
crouching on his feet to show me a startled pair of eyes and a face
white about the nostrils. A look of intense annoyance succeeded.
"Awfully sorry. How clumsy of me!" he mumbled, very vexed, while the
pungent odour of spilt alcohol enveloped us suddenly with an atmosphere
of a low drinking-bout in the cool, pure darkness of the night. The
lights had been put out in the dining-hall; our candle glimmered
solitary in the long gallery, and the columns had turned black from
pediment to capital. On the vivid stars the high corner of the Harbour
Office stood out distinct across the Esplanade, as though the sombre
pile had glided nearer to see and hear.
'He assumed an air of indifference.
'"I dare say I am less calm now than I was then. I was ready for
anything. These were trifles. . . ."
'"You had a lively time of it in that boat," I remarked
'"I was ready," he repeated. "After the ship's lights had gone, anything
might have happened in that boat--anything in the world--and the world
no wiser. I felt this, and I was pleased. It was just dark enough too.
We were like men walled up quick in a roomy grave. No concern with
anything on earth. Nobody to pass an opinion. Nothing mattered." For the
third time during this conversation he laughed harshly, but there was
no one about to suspect him of being only drunk. "No fear, no law, no
sounds, no eyes--not even our own, till--till sunrise at least."
'I was struck by the suggestive truth of his words. There is something
peculiar in a small boat upon the wide sea. Over the lives borne from
under the shadow of death there seems to fall the shadow of madness.
When your ship fails you, your whole world seems to fail you; the world
that made you, restrained you, took care of you. It is as if the souls
of men floating on an abyss and in touch with immensity had been set
free for any excess of heroism, absurdity, or abomination. Of course, as
with belief, thought, love, hate, conviction, or even the visual aspect
of material things, there are as many shipwrecks as there are men, and
in this one there was something abject which made the isolation more
complete--there was a villainy of circumstances that cut these men off
more completely from the rest of mankind, whose ideal of conduct had
never undergone the trial of a fiendish and appalling joke. They were
exasperated with him for being a half-hearted shirker: he focussed on
them his hatred of the whole thing; he would have liked to take a signal
revenge for the abhorrent opportunity they had put in his way. Trust
a boat on the high seas to bring out the Irrational that lurks at the
bottom of every thought, sentiment, sensation, emotion. It was part of
the burlesque meanness pervading that particular disaster at sea that
they did not come to blows. It was all threats, all a terribly effective
feint, a sham from beginning to end, planned by the tremendous disdain
of the Dark Powers whose real terrors, always on the verge of triumph,
are perpetually foiled by the steadfastness of men. I asked, after
waiting for a while, "Well, what happened?" A futile question. I knew
too much already to hope for the grace of a single uplifting touch, for
the favour of hinted madness, of shadowed horror. "Nothing," he said. "I
meant business, but they meant noise only. Nothing happened."
'And the rising sun found him just as he had jumped up first in the bows
of the boat. What a persistence of readiness! He had been holding the
tiller in his hand, too, all the night. They had dropped the rudder
overboard while attempting to ship it, and I suppose the tiller got
kicked forward somehow while they were rushing up and down that boat
trying to do all sorts of things at once so as to get clear of the
side. It was a long heavy piece of hard wood, and apparently he had been
clutching it for six hours or so. If you don't call that being ready!
Can you imagine him, silent and on his feet half the night, his face to
the gusts of rain, staring at sombre forms watchful of vague movements,
straining his ears to catch rare low murmurs in the stern-sheets!
Firmness of courage or effort of fear? What do you think? And the
endurance is undeniable too. Six hours more or less on the defensive;
six hours of alert immobility while the boat drove slowly or floated
arrested, according to the caprice of the wind; while the sea, calmed,
slept at last; while the clouds passed above his head; while the sky
from an immensity lustreless and black, diminished to a sombre and
lustrous vault, scintillated with a greater brilliance, faded to the
east, paled at the zenith; while the dark shapes blotting the low
stars astern got outlines, relief became shoulders, heads, faces,
features,--confronted him with dreary stares, had dishevelled hair, torn
clothes, blinked red eyelids at the white dawn. "They looked as though
they had been knocking about drunk in gutters for a week," he described
graphically; and then he muttered something about the sunrise being of a
kind that foretells a calm day. You know that sailor habit of referring
to the weather in every connection. And on my side his few mumbled words
were enough to make me see the lower limb of the sun clearing the
line of the horizon, the tremble of a vast ripple running over all the
visible expanse of the sea, as if the waters had shuddered, giving birth
to the globe of light, while the last puff of the breeze would stir the
air in a sigh of relief.
'"They sat in the stern shoulder to shoulder, with the skipper in the
middle, like three dirty owls, and stared at me," I heard him say
with an intention of hate that distilled a corrosive virtue into the
commonplace words like a drop of powerful poison falling into a glass
of water; but my thoughts dwelt upon that sunrise. I could imagine
under the pellucid emptiness of the sky these four men imprisoned in the
solitude of the sea, the lonely sun, regardless of the speck of life,
ascending the clear curve of the heaven as if to gaze ardently from a
greater height at his own splendour reflected in the still ocean. "They
called out to me from aft," said Jim, "as though we had been chums
together. I heard them. They were begging me to be sensible and drop
that 'blooming piece of wood.' Why _would_ I carry on so? They hadn't
done me any harm--had they? There had been no harm. . . . No harm!"
'His face crimsoned as though he could not get rid of the air in his
lungs.
'"No harm!" he burst out. "I leave it to you. You can understand. Can't
you? You see it--don't you? No harm! Good God! What more could they have
done? Oh yes, I know very well--I jumped. Certainly. I jumped! I told
you I jumped; but I tell you they were too much for any man. It was
their doing as plainly as if they had reached up with a boat-hook and
pulled me over. Can't you see it? You must see it. Come. Speak--straight
out."
'His uneasy eyes fastened upon mine, questioned, begged, challenged,
entreated. For the life of me I couldn't help murmuring, "You've been
tried." "More than is fair," he caught up swiftly. "I wasn't given half
a chance--with a gang like that. And now they were friendly--oh, so
damnably friendly! Chums, shipmates. All in the same boat. Make the best
of it. They hadn't meant anything. They didn't care a hang for George.
George had gone back to his berth for something at the last moment and
got caught. The man was a manifest fool. Very sad, of course. . . .
Their eyes looked at me; their lips moved; they wagged their heads at
the other end of the boat--three of them; they beckoned--to me. Why
not? Hadn't I jumped? I said nothing. There are no words for the sort of
things I wanted to say. If I had opened my lips just then I would have
simply howled like an animal. I was asking myself when I would wake up.
They urged me aloud to come aft and hear quietly what the skipper had to
say. We were sure to be picked up before the evening--right in the track
of all the Canal traffic; there was smoke to the north-west now.
'"It gave me an awful shock to see this faint, faint blur, this low
trail of brown mist through which you could see the boundary of sea and
sky. I called out to them that I could hear very well where I was. The
skipper started swearing, as hoarse as a crow. He wasn't going to talk
at the top of his voice for _my_ accommodation. 'Are you afraid they
will hear you on shore?' I asked. He glared as if he would have liked to
claw me to pieces. The chief engineer advised him to humour me. He
said I wasn't right in my head yet. The other rose astern, like a thick
pillar of flesh--and talked--talked. . . ."
'Jim remained thoughtful. "Well?" I said. "What did I care what story
they agreed to make up?" he cried recklessly. "They could tell what they
jolly well liked. It was their business. I knew the story. Nothing
they could make people believe could alter it for me. I let him talk,
argue--talk, argue. He went on and on and on. Suddenly I felt my legs
give way under me. I was sick, tired--tired to death. I let fall the
tiller, turned my back on them, and sat down on the foremost thwart. I
had enough. They called to me to know if I understood--wasn't it true,
every word of it? It was true, by God! after their fashion. I did not
turn my head. I heard them palavering together. 'The silly ass won't say
anything.' 'Oh, he understands well enough.' 'Let him be; he will be all
right.' 'What can he do?' What could I do? Weren't we all in the same
boat? I tried to be deaf. The smoke had disappeared to the northward.
It was a dead calm. They had a drink from the water-breaker, and I drank
too. Afterwards they made a great business of spreading the boat-sail
over the gunwales. Would I keep a look-out? They crept under, out of my
sight, thank God! I felt weary, weary, done up, as if I hadn't had one
hour's sleep since the day I was born. I couldn't see the water for the
glitter of the sunshine. From time to time one of them would creep out,
stand up to take a look all round, and get under again. I could hear
spells of snoring below the sail. Some of them could sleep. One of them
at least. I couldn't! All was light, light, and the boat seemed to be
falling through it. Now and then I would feel quite surprised to find
myself sitting on a thwart. . . ."
'He began to walk with measured steps to and fro before my chair, one
hand in his trousers-pocket, his head bent thoughtfully, and his right
arm at long intervals raised for a gesture that seemed to put out of his
way an invisible intruder.
'"I suppose you think I was going mad," he began in a changed tone. "And
well you may, if you remember I had lost my cap. The sun crept all the
way from east to west over my bare head, but that day I could not come
to any harm, I suppose. The sun could not make me mad. . . ." His right
arm put aside the idea of madness. . . . "Neither could it kill
me. . . ." Again his arm repulsed a shadow. . . . "_That_ rested with
me."
'"Did it?" I said, inexpressibly amazed at this new turn, and I looked
at him with the same sort of feeling I might be fairly conceived to
experience had he, after spinning round on his heel, presented an
altogether new face.
'"I didn't get brain fever, I did not drop dead either," he went on. "I
didn't bother myself at all about the sun over my head. I was thinking
as coolly as any man that ever sat thinking in the shade. That greasy
beast of a skipper poked his big cropped head from under the canvas
and screwed his fishy eyes up at me. 'Donnerwetter! you will die,' he
growled, and drew in like a turtle. I had seen him. I had heard him. He
didn't interrupt me. I was thinking just then that I wouldn't."
'He tried to sound my thought with an attentive glance dropped on me
in passing. "Do you mean to say you had been deliberating with yourself
whether you would die?" I asked in as impenetrable a tone as I could
command. He nodded without stopping. "Yes, it had come to that as I sat
there alone," he said. He passed on a few steps to the imaginary end
of his beat, and when he flung round to come back both his hands were
thrust deep into his pockets. He stopped short in front of my chair and
looked down. "Don't you believe it?" he inquired with tense curiosity.
I was moved to make a solemn declaration of my readiness to believe
implicitly anything he thought fit to tell me.'
| 11,073 | Chapters 8-10 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422054542/https://www.gradesaver.com/lord-jim/study-guide/summary-chapters-8-10 | Jim now tells his story to Marlow, who, in turn, is telling his audience. The boats, according to Jim, were tied all along the bridge of the Patna. He knew his duty, and he was considering it when a passenger, one of the Muslims, said something about "water," again and again. Jim feared that the worst was becoming known, but he soon realized that the man was asking for water for his young, ill son. Jim gave him the water and immediately regretted his own lack, wanting a drink then himself. The skipper said to "Clear out," and Jim stood frozen, indecisive. He did not know what to do, but he insists that to do anything, "you must believe there is a chance." He held little faith in the iron of the ship. On the second day of the proceedings, one of the men with Jim began rattling off all the names of the dead skippers and ships he had known that had been lost--lost from life, but not quite from the memories of those gathered. That was a moment that struck Marlow. The story now returns to the dining hall, where Jim begins to laugh openly and with bitterness, drawing the attention of those around them. A silence falls, and Marlow chastises Jim, who responds that they will believe he is only drunk. Marlow continues: according to Jim, he intended to cut the lifeboats so they wouldn't sink with the steamer. The others managed to push a single boat into the water, ignoring Jim's "passive heroism" . He was frozen by visions of the bodies, laid out for death--he asks Marlow, "What would you have done?" . The other men jumped into the boat, and they were calling for George to jump also. Jim jumped instead, almost beyond his volition. After he tells Marlow that he jumped, he adds the perfunctory, "It seems"; he was aware that there would be no going back. He jumped into a well, "an everlasting deep hole" . From the sea in the little boat, the yellow gleam of the steamer's masthead looked like the last star, and then it went out. On the little boat, the men were thinking of the ship sinking with all of its passengers, without a sound--sparing them the voices of human struggle in the waters. The man named George, they realized, never made it. He apparently had turned back for something and had gone down with the ship. As the sun rose, Jim admits, he was deliberating with himself about whether or not he would die. The captain insisted that he would die; Jim countered that he would not. | As Jim explains what happened on the night of the incident, he finds in Marlow an attentive listener. He explains, first, how the fear began to rise within him. Marlow notes that Jim does not want a judge or an "official Inquiry" but rather "an ally, a helper, an accomplice" . He is looking for sympathy, a sense that his reaction to the situation was a human reaction. In this way, his "testimony" to Marlow in their conversation contrasts with the testimony he gave earlier on the witness stand. This begins the more significant inquiry, the inquiry into Jim's soul, and this kind of inquiry, the novel implies, requires a kind of sympathy and understanding from the likes of "an ally" or "accomplice." The steamship becomes a symbol, its iron metal something that Marlow refers to as being as "tough sometimes as the spirit of some men we meet now and then, worn to a shadow and breasting the weight of life" . In other words, the ship becomes representative of the human condition, struggling to survive, featuring both age and experience. The crew, including Jim, misjudges the steamship's ability to stay afloat, and the trick of the eye in the perception that the light of the ship was going out, together with the conclusion that the ship has sunk, stands for a series of misjudgments about human nature in the novel. When Jim leaps from the ship into the lifeboat, Marlow comments: "your ship fails you, your whole world seems to fail you; the world that made you, restrained you, taken care of you" . In other words, the steamer, figuring "iron" as the metal of man's endurance, as well as the world that has "taken care of you," becomes a lesson regarding the strength latent in human beings. The key point is that the ship did not actually fail Jim. To the contrary, Jim failed his ship. For the remainder of the novel, Jim will attempt to rectify this misjudgment by maintaining a faith within himself that he is, in spite of it all, capable of doing something great with his life--capable of achieving his dreams. The situation on the Patna is unique, however, and Marlow recognizes that no man knows how he would respond in that situation. Jim asks him pointedly, "What would you have done?" but what can one really expect of oneself in the hypothetical place of another? Brierly, the narrative implies, had imagined the situation himself and had arrived at an answer that had deeply disappointed him. In being absolutely honest with himself, he possibly had perceived a deep hypocrisy. Marlow, in contrast, simply does not answer Jim's question. Another detail to keep in mind is that Jim's "jump" into the lifeboat is an action that is described as a kind of reflex. The instinct to survive may be strong enough to counter a possible display of courage. Does such an action then truly reflect a person's character? The ambiguity here seems to be that to stay behind and risk sinking with the ship would be counter to the human impulse to struggle and survive. | 441 | 539 | [
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28,054 | false | sparknotes | all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/19.txt | finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_3_part_6.txt | The Brothers Karamazov.book 3.chapter 6 | book 3, chapter 6 | null | {"name": "book 3, Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section4/", "summary": "Smerdyakov Alyosha goes to his father's house, where he finds his father drinking. Ivan sits by Fyodor Pavlovich disapprovingly. Smerdyakov and Grigory are arguing, and Ivan and Fyodor Pavlovich are listening in on their argument. Smerdyakov is a sullen and gloomy young man who despises everyone in the house, including his adoptive parents. He works as a cook for Fyodor Pavlovich. Most of the household considers him a responsible person despite his churlish attitude, because once, when Fyodor Pavlovich lost 300 rubles in a drunken stupor, Smerdyakov found and returned the money to him", "analysis": ""} | Chapter VI. Smerdyakov
He did in fact find his father still at table. Though there was a dining-
room in the house, the table was laid as usual in the drawing-room, which
was the largest room, and furnished with old-fashioned ostentation. The
furniture was white and very old, upholstered in old, red, silky material.
In the spaces between the windows there were mirrors in elaborate white
and gilt frames, of old-fashioned carving. On the walls, covered with
white paper, which was torn in many places, there hung two large
portraits--one of some prince who had been governor of the district thirty
years before, and the other of some bishop, also long since dead. In the
corner opposite the door there were several ikons, before which a lamp was
lighted at nightfall ... not so much for devotional purposes as to light
the room. Fyodor Pavlovitch used to go to bed very late, at three or four
o'clock in the morning, and would wander about the room at night or sit in
an arm-chair, thinking. This had become a habit with him. He often slept
quite alone in the house, sending his servants to the lodge; but usually
Smerdyakov remained, sleeping on a bench in the hall.
When Alyosha came in, dinner was over, but coffee and preserves had been
served. Fyodor Pavlovitch liked sweet things with brandy after dinner.
Ivan was also at table, sipping coffee. The servants, Grigory and
Smerdyakov, were standing by. Both the gentlemen and the servants seemed
in singularly good spirits. Fyodor Pavlovitch was roaring with laughter.
Before he entered the room, Alyosha heard the shrill laugh he knew so
well, and could tell from the sound of it that his father had only reached
the good-humored stage, and was far from being completely drunk.
"Here he is! Here he is!" yelled Fyodor Pavlovitch, highly delighted at
seeing Alyosha. "Join us. Sit down. Coffee is a lenten dish, but it's hot
and good. I don't offer you brandy, you're keeping the fast. But would you
like some? No; I'd better give you some of our famous liqueur. Smerdyakov,
go to the cupboard, the second shelf on the right. Here are the keys. Look
sharp!"
Alyosha began refusing the liqueur.
"Never mind. If you won't have it, we will," said Fyodor Pavlovitch,
beaming. "But stay--have you dined?"
"Yes," answered Alyosha, who had in truth only eaten a piece of bread and
drunk a glass of kvas in the Father Superior's kitchen. "Though I should
be pleased to have some hot coffee."
"Bravo, my darling! He'll have some coffee. Does it want warming? No, it's
boiling. It's capital coffee: Smerdyakov's making. My Smerdyakov's an
artist at coffee and at fish patties, and at fish soup, too. You must come
one day and have some fish soup. Let me know beforehand.... But, stay;
didn't I tell you this morning to come home with your mattress and pillow
and all? Have you brought your mattress? He he he!"
"No, I haven't," said Alyosha, smiling, too.
"Ah, but you were frightened, you were frightened this morning, weren't
you? There, my darling, I couldn't do anything to vex you. Do you know,
Ivan, I can't resist the way he looks one straight in the face and laughs?
It makes me laugh all over. I'm so fond of him. Alyosha, let me give you
my blessing--a father's blessing."
Alyosha rose, but Fyodor Pavlovitch had already changed his mind.
"No, no," he said. "I'll just make the sign of the cross over you, for
now. Sit still. Now we've a treat for you, in your own line, too. It'll
make you laugh. Balaam's ass has begun talking to us here--and how he
talks! How he talks!"
Balaam's ass, it appeared, was the valet, Smerdyakov. He was a young man
of about four and twenty, remarkably unsociable and taciturn. Not that he
was shy or bashful. On the contrary, he was conceited and seemed to
despise everybody.
But we must pause to say a few words about him now. He was brought up by
Grigory and Marfa, but the boy grew up "with no sense of gratitude," as
Grigory expressed it; he was an unfriendly boy, and seemed to look at the
world mistrustfully. In his childhood he was very fond of hanging cats,
and burying them with great ceremony. He used to dress up in a sheet as
though it were a surplice, and sang, and waved some object over the dead
cat as though it were a censer. All this he did on the sly, with the
greatest secrecy. Grigory caught him once at this diversion and gave him a
sound beating. He shrank into a corner and sulked there for a week. "He
doesn't care for you or me, the monster," Grigory used to say to Marfa,
"and he doesn't care for any one. Are you a human being?" he said,
addressing the boy directly. "You're not a human being. You grew from the
mildew in the bath-house.(2) That's what you are." Smerdyakov, it appeared
afterwards, could never forgive him those words. Grigory taught him to
read and write, and when he was twelve years old, began teaching him the
Scriptures. But this teaching came to nothing. At the second or third
lesson the boy suddenly grinned.
"What's that for?" asked Grigory, looking at him threateningly from under
his spectacles.
"Oh, nothing. God created light on the first day, and the sun, moon, and
stars on the fourth day. Where did the light come from on the first day?"
Grigory was thunderstruck. The boy looked sarcastically at his teacher.
There was something positively condescending in his expression. Grigory
could not restrain himself. "I'll show you where!" he cried, and gave the
boy a violent slap on the cheek. The boy took the slap without a word, but
withdrew into his corner again for some days. A week later he had his
first attack of the disease to which he was subject all the rest of his
life--epilepsy. When Fyodor Pavlovitch heard of it, his attitude to the boy
seemed changed at once. Till then he had taken no notice of him, though he
never scolded him, and always gave him a copeck when he met him.
Sometimes, when he was in good humor, he would send the boy something
sweet from his table. But as soon as he heard of his illness, he showed an
active interest in him, sent for a doctor, and tried remedies, but the
disease turned out to be incurable. The fits occurred, on an average, once
a month, but at various intervals. The fits varied too, in violence: some
were light and some were very severe. Fyodor Pavlovitch strictly forbade
Grigory to use corporal punishment to the boy, and began allowing him to
come upstairs to him. He forbade him to be taught anything whatever for a
time, too. One day when the boy was about fifteen, Fyodor Pavlovitch
noticed him lingering by the bookcase, and reading the titles through the
glass. Fyodor Pavlovitch had a fair number of books--over a hundred--but no
one ever saw him reading. He at once gave Smerdyakov the key of the
bookcase. "Come, read. You shall be my librarian. You'll be better sitting
reading than hanging about the courtyard. Come, read this," and Fyodor
Pavlovitch gave him _Evenings in a Cottage near Dikanka_.
He read a little but didn't like it. He did not once smile, and ended by
frowning.
"Why? Isn't it funny?" asked Fyodor Pavlovitch.
Smerdyakov did not speak.
"Answer, stupid!"
"It's all untrue," mumbled the boy, with a grin.
"Then go to the devil! You have the soul of a lackey. Stay, here's
Smaragdov's _Universal History_. That's all true. Read that."
But Smerdyakov did not get through ten pages of Smaragdov. He thought it
dull. So the bookcase was closed again.
Shortly afterwards Marfa and Grigory reported to Fyodor Pavlovitch that
Smerdyakov was gradually beginning to show an extraordinary
fastidiousness. He would sit before his soup, take up his spoon and look
into the soup, bend over it, examine it, take a spoonful and hold it to
the light.
"What is it? A beetle?" Grigory would ask.
"A fly, perhaps," observed Marfa.
The squeamish youth never answered, but he did the same with his bread,
his meat, and everything he ate. He would hold a piece on his fork to the
light, scrutinize it microscopically, and only after long deliberation
decide to put it in his mouth.
"Ach! What fine gentlemen's airs!" Grigory muttered, looking at him.
When Fyodor Pavlovitch heard of this development in Smerdyakov he
determined to make him his cook, and sent him to Moscow to be trained. He
spent some years there and came back remarkably changed in appearance. He
looked extraordinarily old for his age. His face had grown wrinkled,
yellow, and strangely emasculate. In character he seemed almost exactly
the same as before he went away. He was just as unsociable, and showed not
the slightest inclination for any companionship. In Moscow, too, as we
heard afterwards, he had always been silent. Moscow itself had little
interest for him; he saw very little there, and took scarcely any notice
of anything. He went once to the theater, but returned silent and
displeased with it. On the other hand, he came back to us from Moscow well
dressed, in a clean coat and clean linen. He brushed his clothes most
scrupulously twice a day invariably, and was very fond of cleaning his
smart calf boots with a special English polish, so that they shone like
mirrors. He turned out a first-rate cook. Fyodor Pavlovitch paid him a
salary, almost the whole of which Smerdyakov spent on clothes, pomade,
perfumes, and such things. But he seemed to have as much contempt for the
female sex as for men; he was discreet, almost unapproachable, with them.
Fyodor Pavlovitch began to regard him rather differently. His fits were
becoming more frequent, and on the days he was ill Marfa cooked, which did
not suit Fyodor Pavlovitch at all.
"Why are your fits getting worse?" asked Fyodor Pavlovitch, looking
askance at his new cook. "Would you like to get married? Shall I find you
a wife?"
But Smerdyakov turned pale with anger, and made no reply. Fyodor
Pavlovitch left him with an impatient gesture. The great thing was that he
had absolute confidence in his honesty. It happened once, when Fyodor
Pavlovitch was drunk, that he dropped in the muddy courtyard three
hundred-rouble notes which he had only just received. He only missed them
next day, and was just hastening to search his pockets when he saw the
notes lying on the table. Where had they come from? Smerdyakov had picked
them up and brought them in the day before.
"Well, my lad, I've never met any one like you," Fyodor Pavlovitch said
shortly, and gave him ten roubles. We may add that he not only believed in
his honesty, but had, for some reason, a liking for him, although the
young man looked as morosely at him as at every one and was always silent.
He rarely spoke. If it had occurred to any one to wonder at the time what
the young man was interested in, and what was in his mind, it would have
been impossible to tell by looking at him. Yet he used sometimes to stop
suddenly in the house, or even in the yard or street, and would stand
still for ten minutes, lost in thought. A physiognomist studying his face
would have said that there was no thought in it, no reflection, but only a
sort of contemplation. There is a remarkable picture by the painter
Kramskoy, called "Contemplation." There is a forest in winter, and on a
roadway through the forest, in absolute solitude, stands a peasant in a
torn kaftan and bark shoes. He stands, as it were, lost in thought. Yet he
is not thinking; he is "contemplating." If any one touched him he would
start and look at one as though awakening and bewildered. It's true he
would come to himself immediately; but if he were asked what he had been
thinking about, he would remember nothing. Yet probably he has, hidden
within himself, the impression which had dominated him during the period
of contemplation. Those impressions are dear to him and no doubt he hoards
them imperceptibly, and even unconsciously. How and why, of course, he
does not know either. He may suddenly, after hoarding impressions for many
years, abandon everything and go off to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage for his
soul's salvation, or perhaps he will suddenly set fire to his native
village, and perhaps do both. There are a good many "contemplatives" among
the peasantry. Well, Smerdyakov was probably one of them, and he probably
was greedily hoarding up his impressions, hardly knowing why.
| 1,968 | book 3, Chapter 6 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section4/ | Smerdyakov Alyosha goes to his father's house, where he finds his father drinking. Ivan sits by Fyodor Pavlovich disapprovingly. Smerdyakov and Grigory are arguing, and Ivan and Fyodor Pavlovich are listening in on their argument. Smerdyakov is a sullen and gloomy young man who despises everyone in the house, including his adoptive parents. He works as a cook for Fyodor Pavlovich. Most of the household considers him a responsible person despite his churlish attitude, because once, when Fyodor Pavlovich lost 300 rubles in a drunken stupor, Smerdyakov found and returned the money to him | null | 94 | 1 | [
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110 | false | gradesaver | all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/53.txt | finished_summaries/gradesaver/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_5_part_8.txt | Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 52 | chapter 52 | null | {"name": "Chapter 52", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-6-chapters-45-52", "summary": "Tess and her family leave Marlott, and on their journey she sees Marian and Izz, who have left the hard life at Flintcomb-Ash. When the family reach their destination, the innkeeper tells them that they have no lodgings there, for he received their request too late. The family instead stays in the d'Urberville Aisle church where the family vault is located. Alec d'Urberville finds Tess there. Marian and Izz discuss Angel; Marian thinks that they will never have Angel no matter what, and they should try to mend his situation with Tess. They write to Angel that he should look to his wife if he loves her as she loves him.", "analysis": "The Durbeyfield family, driven from their home and having no lodgings, find themselves in the crypt of the family from which they are descended. This symbolizes the final descent of the d'Urbervilles, as the last remaining members of the family take residence with the remains of the dead nobility. Nevertheless, the actions of Izz Huett and Marian to repair the marriage between Angel Clare and Tess may signal a turning point in the novel. This action reinforces the love that Tess has for Angel, for if she cared for him less, both girls would attempt to pursue Angel for themselves. By behaving selflessly, Marian and Izz demonstrate an equal selflessness within Tess"} |
During the small hours of the next morning, while it was still dark,
dwellers near the highways were conscious of a disturbance of their
night's rest by rumbling noises, intermittently continuing till
daylight--noises as certain to recur in this particular first week of
the month as the voice of the cuckoo in the third week of the same.
They were the preliminaries of the general removal, the passing of
the empty waggons and teams to fetch the goods of the migrating
families; for it was always by the vehicle of the farmer who required
his services that the hired man was conveyed to his destination.
That this might be accomplished within the day was the explanation
of the reverberation occurring so soon after midnight, the aim of
the carters being to reach the door of the outgoing households by
six o'clock, when the loading of their movables at once began.
But to Tess and her mother's household no such anxious farmer sent
his team. They were only women; they were not regular labourers;
they were not particularly required anywhere; hence they had to hire
a waggon at their own expense, and got nothing sent gratuitously.
It was a relief to Tess, when she looked out of the window that
morning, to find that though the weather was windy and louring, it
did not rain, and that the waggon had come. A wet Lady-Day was a
spectre which removing families never forgot; damp furniture, damp
bedding, damp clothing accompanied it, and left a train of ills.
Her mother, 'Liza-Lu, and Abraham were also awake, but the younger
children were let sleep on. The four breakfasted by the thin light,
and the "house-ridding" was taken in hand.
It proceeded with some cheerfulness, a friendly neighbour or two
assisting. When the large articles of furniture had been packed in
position, a circular nest was made of the beds and bedding, in which
Joan Durbeyfield and the young children were to sit through the
journey. After loading there was a long delay before the horses were
brought, these having been unharnessed during the ridding; but at
length, about two o'clock, the whole was under way, the cooking-pot
swinging from the axle of the waggon, Mrs Durbeyfield and family
at the top, the matron having in her lap, to prevent injury to its
works, the head of the clock, which, at any exceptional lurch of the
waggon, struck one, or one-and-a-half, in hurt tones. Tess and the
next eldest girl walked alongside till they were out of the village.
They had called on a few neighbours that morning and the previous
evening, and some came to see them off, all wishing them well,
though, in their secret hearts, hardly expecting welfare possible
to such a family, harmless as the Durbeyfields were to all except
themselves. Soon the equipage began to ascend to higher ground,
and the wind grew keener with the change of level and soil.
The day being the sixth of April, the Durbeyfield waggon met many
other waggons with families on the summit of the load, which was
built on a wellnigh unvarying principle, as peculiar, probably, to
the rural labourer as the hexagon to the bee. The groundwork of the
arrangement was the family dresser, which, with its shining handles,
and finger-marks, and domestic evidences thick upon it, stood
importantly in front, over the tails of the shaft-horses, in its
erect and natural position, like some Ark of the Covenant that they
were bound to carry reverently.
Some of the households were lively, some mournful; some were stopping
at the doors of wayside inns; where, in due time, the Durbeyfield
menagerie also drew up to bait horses and refresh the travellers.
During the halt Tess's eyes fell upon a three-pint blue mug, which
was ascending and descending through the air to and from the feminine
section of a household, sitting on the summit of a load that had also
drawn up at a little distance from the same inn. She followed one of
the mug's journeys upward, and perceived it to be clasped by hands
whose owner she well knew. Tess went towards the waggon.
"Marian and Izz!" she cried to the girls, for it was they, sitting
with the moving family at whose house they had lodged. "Are you
house-ridding to-day, like everybody else?"
They were, they said. It had been too rough a life for them at
Flintcomb-Ash, and they had come away, almost without notice,
leaving Groby to prosecute them if he chose. They told Tess their
destination, and Tess told them hers.
Marian leant over the load, and lowered her voice. "Do you know that
the gentleman who follows 'ee--you'll guess who I mean--came to ask
for 'ee at Flintcomb after you had gone? We didn't tell'n where you
was, knowing you wouldn't wish to see him."
"Ah--but I did see him!" Tess murmured. "He found me."
"And do he know where you be going?"
"I think so."
"Husband come back?"
"No."
She bade her acquaintance goodbye--for the respective carters had now
come out from the inn--and the two waggons resumed their journey in
opposite directions; the vehicle whereon sat Marian, Izz, and the
ploughman's family with whom they had thrown in their lot, being
brightly painted, and drawn by three powerful horses with shining
brass ornaments on their harness; while the waggon on which Mrs
Durbeyfield and her family rode was a creaking erection that would
scarcely bear the weight of the superincumbent load; one which had
known no paint since it was made, and drawn by two horses only.
The contrast well marked the difference between being fetched by a
thriving farmer and conveying oneself whither no hirer waited one's
coming.
The distance was great--too great for a day's journey--and it was
with the utmost difficulty that the horses performed it. Though they
had started so early, it was quite late in the afternoon when they
turned the flank of an eminence which formed part of the upland
called Greenhill. While the horses stood to stale and breathe
themselves Tess looked around. Under the hill, and just ahead of
them, was the half-dead townlet of their pilgrimage, Kingsbere,
where lay those ancestors of whom her father had spoken and sung to
painfulness: Kingsbere, the spot of all spots in the world which
could be considered the d'Urbervilles' home, since they had resided
there for full five hundred years.
A man could be seen advancing from the outskirts towards them, and
when he beheld the nature of their waggon-load he quickened his
steps.
"You be the woman they call Mrs Durbeyfield, I reckon?" he said to
Tess's mother, who had descended to walk the remainder of the way.
She nodded. "Though widow of the late Sir John d'Urberville, poor
nobleman, if I cared for my rights; and returning to the domain of
his forefathers."
"Oh? Well, I know nothing about that; but if you be Mrs Durbeyfield,
I am sent to tell 'ee that the rooms you wanted be let. We didn't
know that you was coming till we got your letter this morning--when
'twas too late. But no doubt you can get other lodgings somewhere."
The man had noticed the face of Tess, which had become ash-pale at
his intelligence. Her mother looked hopelessly at fault. "What
shall we do now, Tess?" she said bitterly. "Here's a welcome to
your ancestors' lands! However, let's try further."
They moved on into the town, and tried with all their might, Tess
remaining with the waggon to take care of the children whilst her
mother and 'Liza-Lu made inquiries. At the last return of Joan to
the vehicle, an hour later, when her search for accommodation had
still been fruitless, the driver of the waggon said the goods must be
unloaded, as the horses were half-dead, and he was bound to return
part of the way at least that night.
"Very well--unload it here," said Joan recklessly. "I'll get shelter
somewhere."
The waggon had drawn up under the churchyard wall, in a spot screened
from view, and the driver, nothing loth, soon hauled down the poor
heap of household goods. This done, she paid him, reducing herself
to almost her last shilling thereby, and he moved off and left them,
only too glad to get out of further dealings with such a family. It
was a dry night, and he guessed that they would come to no harm.
Tess gazed desperately at the pile of furniture. The cold sunlight
of this spring evening peered invidiously upon the crocks and
kettles, upon the bunches of dried herbs shivering in the breeze,
upon the brass handles of the dresser, upon the wicker-cradle they
had all been rocked in, and upon the well-rubbed clock-case, all of
which gave out the reproachful gleam of indoor articles abandoned to
the vicissitudes of a roofless exposure for which they were never
made. Round about were deparked hills and slopes--now cut up
into little paddocks--and the green foundations that showed where
the d'Urberville mansion once had stood; also an outlying stretch
of Egdon Heath that had always belonged to the estate. Hard by,
the aisle of the church called the d'Urberville Aisle looked on
imperturbably.
"Isn't your family vault your own freehold?" said Tess's mother, as
she returned from a reconnoitre of the church and graveyard. "Why,
of course 'tis, and that's where we will camp, girls, till the place
of your ancestors finds us a roof! Now, Tess and 'Liza and Abraham,
you help me. We'll make a nest for these children, and then we'll
have another look round."
Tess listlessly lent a hand, and in a quarter of an hour the old
four-post bedstead was dissociated from the heap of goods, and
erected under the south wall of the church, the part of the building
known as the d'Urberville Aisle, beneath which the huge vaults lay.
Over the tester of the bedstead was a beautiful traceried window, of
many lights, its date being the fifteenth century. It was called
the d'Urberville Window, and in the upper part could be discerned
heraldic emblems like those on Durbeyfield's old seal and spoon.
Joan drew the curtains round the bed so as to make an excellent tent
of it, and put the smaller children inside. "If it comes to the
worst we can sleep there too, for one night," she said. "But let us
try further on, and get something for the dears to eat! O, Tess,
what's the use of your playing at marrying gentlemen, if it leaves
us like this!"
Accompanied by 'Liza-Lu and the boy, she again ascended the little
lane which secluded the church from the townlet. As soon as they got
into the street they beheld a man on horseback gazing up and down.
"Ah--I'm looking for you!" he said, riding up to them. "This is
indeed a family gathering on the historic spot!"
It was Alec d'Urberville. "Where is Tess?" he asked.
Personally Joan had no liking for Alec. She cursorily signified the
direction of the church, and went on, d'Urberville saying that he
would see them again, in case they should be still unsuccessful in
their search for shelter, of which he had just heard. When they had
gone, d'Urberville rode to the inn, and shortly after came out on
foot.
In the interim Tess, left with the children inside the bedstead,
remained talking with them awhile, till, seeing that no more could
be done to make them comfortable just then, she walked about the
churchyard, now beginning to be embrowned by the shades of nightfall.
The door of the church was unfastened, and she entered it for the
first time in her life.
Within the window under which the bedstead stood were the tombs of
the family, covering in their dates several centuries. They were
canopied, altar-shaped, and plain; their carvings being defaced
and broken; their brasses torn from the matrices, the rivet-holes
remaining like martin-holes in a sandcliff. Of all the reminders
that she had ever received that her people were socially extinct,
there was none so forcible as this spoliation.
She drew near to a dark stone on which was inscribed:
OSTIUM SEPULCHRI ANTIQUAE FAMILIAE D'URBERVILLE
Tess did not read Church-Latin like a Cardinal, but she knew that
this was the door of her ancestral sepulchre, and that the tall
knights of whom her father had chanted in his cups lay inside.
She musingly turned to withdraw, passing near an altar-tomb, the
oldest of them all, on which was a recumbent figure. In the dusk she
had not noticed it before, and would hardly have noticed it now but
for an odd fancy that the effigy moved. As soon as she drew close
to it she discovered all in a moment that the figure was a living
person; and the shock to her sense of not having been alone was so
violent that she was quite overcome, and sank down nigh to fainting,
not, however, till she had recognized Alec d'Urberville in the form.
He leapt off the slab and supported her.
"I saw you come in," he said smiling, "and got up there not to
interrupt your meditations. A family gathering, is it not, with
these old fellows under us here? Listen."
He stamped with his heel heavily on the floor; whereupon there arose
a hollow echo from below.
"That shook them a bit, I'll warrant!" he continued. "And you
thought I was the mere stone reproduction of one of them. But no.
The old order changeth. The little finger of the sham d'Urberville
can do more for you than the whole dynasty of the real underneath...
Now command me. What shall I do?"
"Go away!" she murmured.
"I will--I'll look for your mother," said he blandly. But in passing
her he whispered: "Mind this; you'll be civil yet!"
When he was gone she bent down upon the entrance to the vaults, and
said--
"Why am I on the wrong side of this door!"
In the meantime Marian and Izz Huett had journeyed onward with the
chattels of the ploughman in the direction of their land of Canaan--
the Egypt of some other family who had left it only that morning.
But the girls did not for a long time think of where they were going.
Their talk was of Angel Clare and Tess, and Tess's persistent lover,
whose connection with her previous history they had partly heard and
partly guessed ere this.
"'Tisn't as though she had never known him afore," said Marian. "His
having won her once makes all the difference in the world. 'Twould
be a thousand pities if he were to tole her away again. Mr Clare can
never be anything to us, Izz; and why should we grudge him to her,
and not try to mend this quarrel? If he could on'y know what straits
she's put to, and what's hovering round, he might come to take care
of his own."
"Could we let him know?"
They thought of this all the way to their destination; but the bustle
of re-establishment in their new place took up all their attention
then. But when they were settled, a month later, they heard of
Clare's approaching return, though they had learnt nothing more of
Tess. Upon that, agitated anew by their attachment to him, yet
honourably disposed to her, Marian uncorked the penny ink-bottle they
shared, and a few lines were concocted between the two girls.
HONOUR'D SIR--
Look to your Wife if you do love her as much as she do
love you. For she is sore put to by an Enemy in the shape
of a Friend. Sir, there is one near her who ought to be
Away. A woman should not be try'd beyond her Strength,
and continual dropping will wear away a Stone--ay,
more--a Diamond.
FROM TWO WELL-WISHERS
This was addressed to Angel Clare at the only place they had ever
heard him to be connected with, Emminster Vicarage; after which they
continued in a mood of emotional exaltation at their own generosity,
which made them sing in hysterical snatches and weep at the same
time.
END OF PHASE THE SIXTH
Phase the Seventh: Fulfilment
| 2,544 | Chapter 52 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-6-chapters-45-52 | Tess and her family leave Marlott, and on their journey she sees Marian and Izz, who have left the hard life at Flintcomb-Ash. When the family reach their destination, the innkeeper tells them that they have no lodgings there, for he received their request too late. The family instead stays in the d'Urberville Aisle church where the family vault is located. Alec d'Urberville finds Tess there. Marian and Izz discuss Angel; Marian thinks that they will never have Angel no matter what, and they should try to mend his situation with Tess. They write to Angel that he should look to his wife if he loves her as she loves him. | The Durbeyfield family, driven from their home and having no lodgings, find themselves in the crypt of the family from which they are descended. This symbolizes the final descent of the d'Urbervilles, as the last remaining members of the family take residence with the remains of the dead nobility. Nevertheless, the actions of Izz Huett and Marian to repair the marriage between Angel Clare and Tess may signal a turning point in the novel. This action reinforces the love that Tess has for Angel, for if she cared for him less, both girls would attempt to pursue Angel for themselves. By behaving selflessly, Marian and Izz demonstrate an equal selflessness within Tess | 111 | 112 | [
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44,747 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/13.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_12_part_0.txt | The Red and the Black.part 1.chapter 13 | part 1, chapter 13 | null | {"name": "Part 1, Chapter 13", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-13", "summary": "While he's at Fouqe's, Julien hears all kinds of stories about how Fouqe's past sweethearts cheated on him. He learns a lot about the world of relationships. Back at the de Renal house, Madame de Renal has literally gotten sick with grief during Julien's absence. Her cousin, Madame Derville, realizes what's up and laments that fact that her cousin has fallen in love with a poor servant. When Julien gets back, he goes to hold Madame de Renal's hand in the garden and realizes that he wants to become her lover. It's not because he loves her, really. It's because this is what he's supposed to do if he's going to be a heroic character. Julien whispers to Madame de Renal that he must leave forever because he's madly in love with her. This almost makes her heart explode.", "analysis": ""} | CHAPTER XIII
THE OPEN WORK STOCKINGS
A novel: a mirror which one takes out on one's walk
along the high road.--_Saint-Real_.
When Julien perceived the picturesque ruins of the old church at Vergy,
he noticed that he had not given a single thought to Madame de Renal
since the day before yesterday. The other day, when I took my leave,
that woman made me realise the infinite distance which separated us;
she treated me like a labourer's son. No doubt she wished to signify
her repentance for having allowed me to hold her hand the evening
before.
... It is, however very pretty, is that hand. What a charm, what a
nobility is there in that woman's expression!
The possibility of making a fortune with Fouque gave a certain facility
to Julien's logic. It was not spoilt quite so frequently by the
irritation and the keen consciousness of his poverty and low estate in
the eyes of the world. Placed as it were on a high promontory, he was
able to exercise his judgment, and had a commanding view, so to speak,
of both extreme poverty and that competence which he still called
wealth. He was far from judging his position really philosophically,
but he had enough penetration to feel different after this little
journey into the mountain.
He was struck with the extreme uneasiness with which Madame de Renal
listened to the brief account which she had asked for of his journey.
Fouque had had plans of marriage, and unhappy love affairs, and long
confidences on this subject had formed the staple of the two friends'
conversation. Having found happiness too soon, Fouque had realised
that he was not the only one who was loved. All these accounts had
astonished Julien. He had learnt many new things. His solitary life of
imagination and suspicion had kept him remote from anything which could
enlighten him.
During his absence, life had been nothing for Madame de Renal but a
series of tortures, which, though different, were all unbearable. She
was really ill.
"Now mind," said Madame Derville to her when she saw Julien arrive,
"you don't go into the garden this evening in your weak state; the damp
air will make your complaint twice as bad."
Madame Derville was surprised to see that her friend, who was always
scolded by M. de Renal by reason of the excessive simplicity of her
dress, had just got some open-work stockings and some charming little
shoes which had come from Paris. For three days Madame de Renal's only
distraction had been to cut out a summer dress of a pretty little
material which was very fashionable, and get it made with express speed
by Elisa. This dress could scarcely have been finished a few moments
before Julien's arrival, but Madame de Renal put it on immediately. Her
friend had no longer any doubt. "She loves," unhappy woman, said Madame
Derville to herself. She understood all the strange symptoms of the
malady.
She saw her speak to Julien. The most violent blush was succeeded by
pallor. Anxiety was depicted in her eyes, which were riveted on those
of the young tutor. Madame de Renal expected every minute that he would
give an explanation of his conduct, and announce that he was either
going to leave the house or stay there. Julien carefully avoided that
subject, and did not even think of it. After terrible struggles, Madame
de Renal eventually dared to say to him in a trembling voice that
mirrored all her passion:
"Are you going to leave your pupils to take another place?"
Julien was struck by Madame de Renal's hesitating voice and look.
"That woman loves me," he said to himself! "But after this temporary
moment of weakness, for which her pride is no doubt reproaching her,
and as soon as she has ceased fearing that I shall leave, she will be
as haughty as ever." This view of their mutual position passed through
Julien's mind as rapidly as a flash of lightning. He answered with some
hesitation,
"I shall be extremely distressed to leave children who are so nice
and so well-born, but perhaps it will be necessary. One has duties to
oneself as well."
As he pronounced the expression, "well-born" (it was one of those
aristocratic phrases which Julien had recently learnt), he became
animated by a profound feeling of antipathy.
"I am not well-born," he said to himself, "in that woman's eyes."
As Madame de Renal listened to him, she admired his genius and his
beauty, and the hinted possibility of his departure pierced her
heart. All her friends at Verrieres who had come to dine at Vergy
during Julien's absence had complimented her almost jealously on the
astonishing man whom her husband had had the good fortune to unearth.
It was not that they understood anything about the progress of
children. The feat of knowing his Bible by heart, and what is more, of
knowing it in Latin, had struck the inhabitants of Verrieres with an
admiration which will last perhaps a century.
Julien, who never spoke to anyone, was ignorant of all this. If Madame
de Renal had possessed the slightest presence of mind, she would have
complimented him on the reputation which he had won, and Julien's
pride, once satisfied, he would have been sweet and amiable towards
her, especially as he thought her new dress charming. Madame de Renal
was also pleased with her pretty dress, and with what Julien had
said to her about it, and wanted to walk round the garden. But she
soon confessed that she was incapable of walking. She had taken the
traveller's arm, and the contact of that arm, far from increasing her
strength, deprived her of it completely.
It was night. They had scarcely sat down before Julien, availing
himself of his old privilege, dared to bring his lips near his pretty
neighbour's arm, and to take her hand. He kept thinking of the boldness
which Fouque had exhibited with his mistresses and not of Madame de
Renal; the word "well-born" was still heavy on his heart. He felt his
hand pressed, but experienced no pleasure. So far from his being proud,
or even grateful for the sentiment that Madame de Renal was betraying
that evening by only too evident signs, he was almost insensible to
her beauty, her elegance, and her freshness. Purity of soul, and the
absence of all hateful emotion, doubtless prolong the duration of
youth. It is the face which ages first with the majority of women.
Julien sulked all the evening. Up to the present he had only been angry
with the social order, but from that time that Fouque had offered him
an ignoble means of obtaining a competency, he was irritated with
himself. Julien was so engrossed in his thoughts, that, although from
time to time he said a few words to the ladies, he eventually let go
Madame de Renal's hand without noticing it. This action overwhelmed the
soul of the poor woman. She saw in it her whole fate.
If she had been certain of Julien's affection, her virtue would
possibly have found strength to resist him. But trembling lest she
should lose him for ever, she was distracted by her passion to
the point of taking again Julien's hand, which he had left in his
absent-mindedness leaning on the back of the chair. This action woke up
this ambitious youth; he would have liked to have had for witnesses all
those proud nobles who had regarded him at meals, when he was at the
bottom of the table with the children, with so condescending a smile.
"That woman cannot despise me; in that case," he said to himself. "I
ought to shew my appreciation of her beauty. I owe it to myself to be
her lover." That idea would not have occurred to him before the naive
confidences which his friend had made.
The sudden resolution which he had just made formed an agreeable
distraction. He kept saying to himself, "I must have one of those two
women;" he realised that he would have very much preferred to have
paid court to Madame Derville. It was not that she was more agreeable,
but that she had always seen him as the tutor distinguished by his
knowledge, and not as the journeyman carpenter with his cloth jacket
folded under his arm as he had first appeared to Madame de Renal.
It was precisely as a young workman, blushing up to the whites of his
eyes, standing by the door of the house and not daring to ring, that he
made the most alluring appeal to Madame de Renal's imagination.
As he went on reviewing his position, Julien saw that the conquest of
Madame Derville, who had probably noticed the taste which Madame de
Renal was manifesting for him, was out of the question. He was thus
brought back to the latter lady. "What do I know of the character of
that woman?" said Julien to himself. "Only this: before my journey, I
used to take her hand, and she used to take it away. To-day, I take my
hand away, and she seizes and presses it. A fine opportunity to pay her
back all the contempt she had had for me. God knows how many lovers she
has had, probably she is only deciding in my favour by reason of the
easiness of assignations."
Such, alas, is the misfortune of an excessive civilisation. The soul
of a young man of twenty, possessed of any education, is a thousand
leagues away from that _abandon_ without which love is frequently but
the most tedious of duties.
"I owe it all the more to myself," went on the petty vanity of Julien,
"to succeed with that woman, by reason of the fact that if I ever make
a fortune, and I am reproached by anyone with my menial position as a
tutor, I shall then be able to give out that it was love which got me
the post."
Julien again took his hand away from Madame de Renal, and then took her
hand again and pressed it. As they went back to the drawing-room about
midnight, Madame de Renal said to him in a whisper.
"You are leaving us, you are going?"
Julien answered with a sigh.
"I absolutely must leave, for I love you passionately. It is wrong
... how wrong indeed for a young priest?" Madame de Renal leant upon
his arm, and with so much abandon that her cheek felt the warmth of
Julien's.
The nights of these two persons were quite different. Madame de
Renal was exalted by the ecstacies of the highest moral pleasure. A
coquettish young girl, who loves early in life, gets habituated to
the trouble of love, and when she reaches the age of real passion,
finds the charm of novelty lacking. As Madame de Renal had never read
any novels, all the refinements of her happiness were new to her. No
mournful truth came to chill her, not even the spectre of the future.
She imagined herself as happy in ten years' time as she was at the
present moment. Even the idea of virtue and of her sworn fidelity to M.
de Renal, which had agitated her some days past, now presented itself
in vain, and was sent about its business like an importunate visitor.
"I will never grant anything to Julien," said Madame de Renal; "we will
live in the future like we have been living for the last month. He
shall be a friend."
| 1,779 | Part 1, Chapter 13 | https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-13 | While he's at Fouqe's, Julien hears all kinds of stories about how Fouqe's past sweethearts cheated on him. He learns a lot about the world of relationships. Back at the de Renal house, Madame de Renal has literally gotten sick with grief during Julien's absence. Her cousin, Madame Derville, realizes what's up and laments that fact that her cousin has fallen in love with a poor servant. When Julien gets back, he goes to hold Madame de Renal's hand in the garden and realizes that he wants to become her lover. It's not because he loves her, really. It's because this is what he's supposed to do if he's going to be a heroic character. Julien whispers to Madame de Renal that he must leave forever because he's madly in love with her. This almost makes her heart explode. | null | 139 | 1 | [
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110 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/55.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_53_part_0.txt | Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 54 | chapter 54 | null | {"name": "Phase VII: \"Fulfillment,\" Chapter Fifty-Four", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-54", "summary": "Only fifteen minutes after reading the two letters, Angel is setting out to find Tess. He traces her to the farm where she had worked all winter, and he learns there that she wasn't using her married name at all. From there he traces her to her parents' house in Marlott. He asks around, and finds that the Jack Durbeyfield was dead, and that the rest of the family had intended to go live at Kingsbere, but had instead moved someplace else. Angel gets the address, and leaves Marlott. He arrives at Mrs. Durbeyfield's house that evening, and Tess isn't there. He asks where she is, and Mrs. Durbeyfield says that she's not sure whether Tess would want to see him. Angel begs to know where she is, and Mrs. Durbeyfield finally says that Tess is in the town of Sandbourne, but doesn't know the exact address. Angel then offers to help them if they need anything, but Mrs. Durbeyfield declines the offer, saying that they have enough.", "analysis": ""} |
In a quarter of an hour Clare was leaving the house, whence his
mother watched his thin figure as it disappeared into the street.
He had declined to borrow his father's old mare, well knowing of
its necessity to the household. He went to the inn, where he hired
a trap, and could hardly wait during the harnessing. In a very few
minutes after, he was driving up the hill out of the town which,
three or four months earlier in the year, Tess had descended with
such hopes and ascended with such shattered purposes.
Benvill Lane soon stretched before him, its hedges and trees purple
with buds; but he was looking at other things, and only recalled
himself to the scene sufficiently to enable him to keep the way. In
something less than an hour-and-a-half he had skirted the south of
the King's Hintock estates and ascended to the untoward solitude of
Cross-in-Hand, the unholy stone whereon Tess had been compelled by
Alec d'Urberville, in his whim of reformation, to swear the strange
oath that she would never wilfully tempt him again. The pale and
blasted nettle-stems of the preceding year even now lingered nakedly
in the banks, young green nettles of the present spring growing from
their roots.
Thence he went along the verge of the upland overhanging the other
Hintocks, and, turning to the right, plunged into the bracing
calcareous region of Flintcomb-Ash, the address from which she had
written to him in one of the letters, and which he supposed to be
the place of sojourn referred to by her mother. Here, of course, he
did not find her; and what added to his depression was the discovery
that no "Mrs Clare" had ever been heard of by the cottagers or by
the farmer himself, though Tess was remembered well enough by her
Christian name. His name she had obviously never used during their
separation, and her dignified sense of their total severance was
shown not much less by this abstention than by the hardships she had
chosen to undergo (of which he now learnt for the first time) rather
than apply to his father for more funds.
From this place they told him Tess Durbeyfield had gone, without due
notice, to the home of her parents on the other side of Blackmoor,
and it therefore became necessary to find Mrs Durbeyfield. She had
told him she was not now at Marlott, but had been curiously reticent
as to her actual address, and the only course was to go to Marlott
and inquire for it. The farmer who had been so churlish with Tess
was quite smooth-tongued to Clare, and lent him a horse and man to
drive him towards Marlott, the gig he had arrived in being sent back
to Emminster; for the limit of a day's journey with that horse was
reached.
Clare would not accept the loan of the farmer's vehicle for a further
distance than to the outskirts of the Vale, and, sending it back with
the man who had driven him, he put up at an inn, and next day entered
on foot the region wherein was the spot of his dear Tess's birth.
It was as yet too early in the year for much colour to appear in the
gardens and foliage; the so-called spring was but winter overlaid
with a thin coat of greenness, and it was of a parcel with his
expectations.
The house in which Tess had passed the years of her childhood was
now inhabited by another family who had never known her. The new
residents were in the garden, taking as much interest in their own
doings as if the homestead had never passed its primal time in
conjunction with the histories of others, beside which the histories
of these were but as a tale told by an idiot. They walked about the
garden paths with thoughts of their own concerns entirely uppermost,
bringing their actions at every moment in jarring collision with the
dim ghosts behind them, talking as though the time when Tess lived
there were not one whit intenser in story than now. Even the spring
birds sang over their heads as if they thought there was nobody
missing in particular.
On inquiry of these precious innocents, to whom even the name of
their predecessors was a failing memory, Clare learned that John
Durbeyfield was dead; that his widow and children had left Marlott,
declaring that they were going to live at Kingsbere, but instead of
doing so had gone on to another place they mentioned. By this time
Clare abhorred the house for ceasing to contain Tess, and hastened
away from its hated presence without once looking back.
His way was by the field in which he had first beheld her at the
dance. It was as bad as the house--even worse. He passed on through
the churchyard, where, amongst the new headstones, he saw one of a
somewhat superior design to the rest. The inscription ran thus:
In memory of John Durbeyfield, rightly d'Urberville, of
the once powerful family of that Name, and Direct
Descendant through an illustrious Line from Sir Pagan
d'Urberville, one of the Knights of the Conqueror. Died
March 10th, 18--
HOW ARE THE MIGHTY FALLEN.
Some man, apparently the sexton, had observed Clare standing there,
and drew nigh. "Ah, sir, now that's a man who didn't want to lie
here, but wished to be carried to Kingsbere, where his ancestors be."
"And why didn't they respect his wish?"
"Oh--no money. Bless your soul, sir, why--there, I wouldn't wish to
say it everywhere, but--even this headstone, for all the flourish
wrote upon en, is not paid for."
"Ah, who put it up?"
The man told the name of a mason in the village, and, on leaving the
churchyard, Clare called at the mason's house. He found that the
statement was true, and paid the bill. This done, he turned in the
direction of the migrants.
The distance was too long for a walk, but Clare felt such a strong
desire for isolation that at first he would neither hire a conveyance
nor go to a circuitous line of railway by which he might eventually
reach the place. At Shaston, however, he found he must hire; but
the way was such that he did not enter Joan's place till about seven
o'clock in the evening, having traversed a distance of over twenty
miles since leaving Marlott.
The village being small he had little difficulty in finding Mrs
Durbeyfield's tenement, which was a house in a walled garden,
remote from the main road, where she had stowed away her clumsy old
furniture as best she could. It was plain that for some reason or
other she had not wished him to visit her, and he felt his call to
be somewhat of an intrusion. She came to the door herself, and the
light from the evening sky fell upon her face.
This was the first time that Clare had ever met her, but he was too
preoccupied to observe more than that she was still a handsome woman,
in the garb of a respectable widow. He was obliged to explain that
he was Tess's husband, and his object in coming there, and he did it
awkwardly enough. "I want to see her at once," he added. "You said
you would write to me again, but you have not done so."
"Because she've not come home," said Joan.
"Do you know if she is well?"
"I don't. But you ought to, sir," said she.
"I admit it. Where is she staying?"
From the beginning of the interview Joan had disclosed her
embarrassment by keeping her hand to the side of her cheek.
"I--don't know exactly where she is staying," she answered. "She
was--but--"
"Where was she?"
"Well, she is not there now."
In her evasiveness she paused again, and the younger children had by
this time crept to the door, where, pulling at his mother's skirts,
the youngest murmured--
"Is this the gentleman who is going to marry Tess?"
"He has married her," Joan whispered. "Go inside."
Clare saw her efforts for reticence, and asked--
"Do you think Tess would wish me to try and find her? If not, of
course--"
"I don't think she would."
"Are you sure?"
"I am sure she wouldn't."
He was turning away; and then he thought of Tess's tender letter.
"I am sure she would!" he retorted passionately. "I know her better
than you do."
"That's very likely, sir; for I have never really known her."
"Please tell me her address, Mrs Durbeyfield, in kindness to a lonely
wretched man!" Tess's mother again restlessly swept her cheek with
her vertical hand, and seeing that he suffered, she at last said, is
a low voice--
"She is at Sandbourne."
"Ah--where there? Sandbourne has become a large place, they say."
"I don't know more particularly than I have said--Sandbourne. For
myself, I was never there."
It was apparent that Joan spoke the truth in this, and he pressed her
no further.
"Are you in want of anything?" he said gently.
"No, sir," she replied. "We are fairly well provided for."
Without entering the house Clare turned away. There was a station
three miles ahead, and paying off his coachman, he walked thither.
The last train to Sandbourne left shortly after, and it bore Clare
on its wheels.
| 1,482 | Phase VII: "Fulfillment," Chapter Fifty-Four | https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-54 | Only fifteen minutes after reading the two letters, Angel is setting out to find Tess. He traces her to the farm where she had worked all winter, and he learns there that she wasn't using her married name at all. From there he traces her to her parents' house in Marlott. He asks around, and finds that the Jack Durbeyfield was dead, and that the rest of the family had intended to go live at Kingsbere, but had instead moved someplace else. Angel gets the address, and leaves Marlott. He arrives at Mrs. Durbeyfield's house that evening, and Tess isn't there. He asks where she is, and Mrs. Durbeyfield says that she's not sure whether Tess would want to see him. Angel begs to know where she is, and Mrs. Durbeyfield finally says that Tess is in the town of Sandbourne, but doesn't know the exact address. Angel then offers to help them if they need anything, but Mrs. Durbeyfield declines the offer, saying that they have enough. | null | 168 | 1 | [
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3,755 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/3755-chapters/02.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Common Sense/section_3_part_0.txt | Common Sense.chapter 2 | chapter 2 | null | {"name": "Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220739/https://www.novelguide.com/common-sense/summaries/chap2", "summary": "of Monarchy and Hereditary Succession Paine goes into more detail on arguments against monarchy. First of all, men were originally equal in creation. The idea of social order came later, especially the idea of a king and his subjects. According to the Bible, there were no kings in the beginning. Monarchy was an idea introduced to the Jews by heathens. It was originally a sin for the Jews because the Lord was king. Paine goes into a long passage on Biblical history, citing the example of Samuel, whom the people begged to be king and to appoint an heir, but he refused because a king made slaves of his subjects, took their goods, and took the place of God. On top of this evil is added hereditary succession, in which one family is set up in preference to others. England has had a few good kings, says the author, but they had no divinity. There are wars over succession and usurpation of thrones. Kingship is thus a parallel of original sin. The men of England are not so proud of their king as of their republicanism--the idea of equality of all before the law.", "analysis": "Commentary on Of Monarchy and Hereditary Succession Paine makes the subject of monarchy a major consideration in his argument for separation from England. He taps into the glamour of these new radical ideas that were breathtaking to liberals of the day, not only in America, but in Europe. America was seen as the stage where this new philosophy of equality could be tested and played out. Many Europeans were sympathetic to the abolition of monarchy, which seemed to have led to so many wars and inequality of opportunity. Paine points out that the primary job of monarchs is to make war to increase territory and to hand out posts and privileges to secure their position. This does not serve the people or make sense in a rational age. England has always prided itself on being modern, but Paine tries to make Britain look incompetently out of date by adhering to monarchy."} |
MANKIND being originally equals in the order of creation, the
equality could only be destroyed by some subsequent circumstance; the
distinctions of rich, and poor, may in a great measure be accounted
for, and that without having recourse to the harsh ill sounding names
of oppression and avarice. Oppression is often the CONSEQUENCE, but
seldom or never the MEANS of riches; and though avarice will
preserve a man from being necessitously poor, it generally makes him
too timorous to be wealthy.
But there is another and greater distinction for which no truly
natural or religious reason can be assigned, and that is, the
distinction of men into KINGS and SUBJECTS. Male and female are the
distinctions of nature, good and bad the distinctions of heaven; but
how a race of men came into the world so exalted above the rest, and
distinguished like some new species, is worth enquiring into, and
whether they are the means of happiness or of misery to mankind.
In the early ages of the world, according to the scripture
chronology, there were no kings; the consequence of which was there
were no wars; it is the pride of kings which throw mankind into
confusion. Holland without a king hath enjoyed more peace for this
last century than any of the monarchical governments in Europe.
Antiquity favors the same remark; for the quiet and rural lives of
the first patriarchs hath a happy something in them, which vanishes
away when we come to the history of Jewish royalty.
Government by kings was first introduced into the world by the
Heathens, from whom the children of Israel copied the custom. It was
the most prosperous invention the Devil ever set on foot for the
promotion of idolatry. The Heathens paid divine honors to their
deceased kings, and the christian world hath improved on the plan by
doing the same to their living ones. How impious is the title of
sacred majesty applied to a worm, who in the midst of his splendor is
crumbling into dust!
As the exalting one man so greatly above the rest cannot be
justified on the equal rights of nature, so neither can it be
defended on the authority of scripture; for the will of the Almighty,
as declared by Gideon and the prophet Samuel, expressly disapproves
of government by kings. All anti-monarchical parts of scripture have
been very smoothly glossed over in monarchical governments, but they
undoubtedly merit the attention of countries which have their
governments yet to form. "RENDER UNTO CAESAR THE THINGS WHICH ARE
CAESAR'S" is the scripture doctrine of courts, yet it is no support
of monarchical government, for the Jews at that time were without a
king, and in a state of vassalage to the Romans.
Near three thousand years passed away from the Mosaic account of
the creation, till the Jews under a national delusion requested a
king. Till then their form of government (except in extraordinary
cases, where the Almighty interposed) was a kind of republic
administered by a judge and the elders of the tribes. Kings they had
none, and it was held sinful to acknowledge any being under that
title but the Lord of Hosts. And when a man seriously reflects on the
idolatrous homage which is paid to the persons of Kings, he need not
wonder, that the Almighty ever jealous of his honor, should
disapprove of a form of government which so impiously invades the
prerogative of heaven.
Monarchy is ranked in scripture as one of the sins of the Jews, for
which a curse in reserve is denounced against them. The history of
that transaction is worth attending to.
The children of Israel being oppressed by the Midianites, Gideon
marched against them with a small army, and victory, thro' the divine
interposition, decided in his favour. The Jews elate with success,
and attributing it to the generalship of Gideon, proposed making him
a king, saying, RULE THOU OVER US, THOU AND THY SON AND THY SON'S
SON. Here was temptation in its fullest extent; not a kingdom only,
but an hereditary one, but Gideon in the piety of his soul replied,
I WILL NOT RULE OVER YOU, NEITHER SHALL MY SON RULE OVER YOU. THE
LORD SHALL RULE OVER YOU. Words need not be more explicit; Gideon
doth not DECLINE the honor, but denieth their right to give it;
neither doth he compliment them with invented declarations of his
thanks, but in the positive stile of a prophet charges them with
disaffection to their proper Sovereign, the King of heaven.
About one hundred and thirty years after this, they fell again into
the same error. The hankering which the Jews had for the idolatrous
customs of the Heathens, is something exceedingly unaccountable; but
so it was, that laying hold of the misconduct of Samuel's two sons,
who were entrusted with some secular concerns, they came in an abrupt
and clamorous manner to Samuel, saying, BEHOLD THOU ART OLD, AND THY
SONS WALK NOT IN THY WAYS, NOW MAKE US A KING TO JUDGE US LIKE ALL
THE OTHER NATIONS. And here we cannot but observe that their motives
were bad, viz. that they might be LIKE unto other nations, i. e.
the Heathens, whereas their true glory laid in being as much UNLIKE
them as possible. BUT THE THING DISPLEASED SAMUEL WHEN THEY SAID,
GIVE US A KING TO JUDGE US; AND SAMUEL PRAYED UNTO THE LORD, AND THE
LORD SAID UNTO SAMUEL, HEARKEN UNTO THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE IN ALL
THAT THEY SAY UNTO THEE, FOR THEY HAVE NOT REJECTED THEE, BUT THEY
HAVE REJECTED ME, THAT I SHOULD NOT REIGN OVER THEM. ACCORDING TO
ALL THE WORKS WHICH THEY HAVE DONE SINCE THE DAY THAT I BROUGHT THEM
UP OUT OF EGYPT, EVEN UNTO THIS DAY; WHEREWITH THEY HAVE FORSAKEN ME
AND SERVED OTHER GODS; SO DO THEY ALSO UNTO THEE. NOW THEREFORE
HEARKEN UNTO THEIR VOICE, HOWBEIT, PROTEST SOLEMNLY UNTO THEM AND
SHEW THEM THE MANNER OF THE KING THAT SHALL REIGN OVER THEM, I. E.
not of any particular king, but the general manner of the kings of
the earth, whom Israel was so eagerly copying after. And
notwithstanding the great distance of time and difference of manners,
the character is still in fashion. AND SAMUEL TOLD ALL THE WORDS OF
THE LORD UNTO THE PEOPLE, THAT ASKED OF HIM A KING. AND HE SAID, THIS
SHALL BE THE MANNER OF THE KING THAT SHALL REIGN OVER YOU; HE WILL
TAKE YOUR SONS AND APPOINT THEM FOR HIMSELF, FOR HIS CHARIOTS, AND TO
BE HIS HORSEMEN, AND SOME SHALL RUN BEFORE HIS CHARIOTS (this
description agrees with the present mode of impressing men) AND HE
WILL APPOINT HIM CAPTAINS OVER THOUSANDS AND CAPTAINS OVER FIFTIES,
AND WILL SET THEM TO EAR HIS GROUND AND TO READ HIS HARVEST, AND TO
MAKE HIS INSTRUMENTS OF WAR, AND INSTRUMENTS OF HIS CHARIOTS; AND HE
WILL TAKE YOUR DAUGHTERS TO BE CONFECTIONARIES, AND TO BE COOKS AND
TO BE BAKERS (this describes the expence and luxury as well as the
oppression of kings) AND HE WILL TAKE YOUR FIELDS AND YOUR OLIVE
YARDS, EVEN THE BEST OF THEM, AND GIVE THEM TO HIS SERVANTS; AND HE
WILL TAKE THE TENTH OF YOUR FEED, AND OF YOUR VINEYARDS, AND GIVE
THEM TO HIS OFFICERS AND TO HIS SERVANTS (by which we see that
bribery, corruption, and favoritism are the standing vices of kings)
AND HE WILL TAKE THE TENTH OF YOUR MEN SERVANTS, AND YOUR MAID
SERVANTS, AND YOUR GOODLIEST YOUNG MEN AND YOUR ASSES, AND PUT THEM
TO HIS WORK; AND HE WILL TAKE THE TENTH OF YOUR SHEEP, AND YE SHALL
BE HIS SERVANTS, AND YE SHALL CRY OUT IN THAT DAY BECAUSE OF YOUR
KING WHICH YE SHALL HAVE CHOSEN, AND THE LORD WILL NOT HEAR YOU IN
THAT DAY. This accounts for the continuation of monarchy; neither do
the characters of the few good kings which have lived since, either
sanctify the title, or blot out the sinfulness of the origin; the
high encomium given of David takes no notice of him OFFICIALLY AS A
KING, but only as a MAN after God's own heart. NEVERTHELESS THE
PEOPLE REFUSED TO OBEY THE VOICE OF SAMUEL, AND THEY SAID, NAY, BUT
WE WILL HAVE A KING OVER US, THAT WE MAY BE LIKE ALL THE NATIONS, AND
THAT OUR KING MAY JUDGE US, AND GO OUT BEFORE US, AND FIGHT OUR
BATTLES. Samuel continued to reason with them, but to no purpose; he
set before them their ingratitude, but all would not avail; and
seeing them fully bent on their folly, he cried out, I WILL CALL
UNTO THE LORD, AND HE SHALL SEND THUNDER AND RAIN (which then was a
punishment, being in the time of wheat harvest) THAT YE MAY PERCEIVE
AND SEE THAT YOUR WICKEDNESS IS GREAT WHICH YE HAVE DONE IN THE SIGHT
OF THE LORD, IN ASKING YOU A KING. SO SAMUEL CALLED UNTO THE LORD,
AND THE LORD SENT THUNDER AND RAIN THAT DAY, AND ALL THE PEOPLE
GREATLY FEARED THE LORD AND SAMUEL. AND ALL THE PEOPLE SAID UNTO
SAMUEL, PRAY FOR THY SERVANTS UNTO THE LORD THY GOD THAT WE DIE NOT,
FOR WE HAVE ADDED UNTO OUR SINS THIS EVIL, TO ASK A KING. These
portions of scripture are direct and positive. They admit of no
equivocal construction. That the Almighty hath here entered his
protest against monarchical government is true, or the scripture is
false. And a man hath good reason to believe that there is as much of
king-craft, as priest-craft, in withholding the scripture from the
public in Popish countries. For monarchy in every instance is the
Popery of government.
To the evil of monarchy we have added that of hereditary
succession; and as the first is a degradation and lessening of
ourselves, so the second, claimed as a matter of right, is an insult
and an imposition on posterity. For all men being originally equals,
no ONE by BIRTH could have a right to set up his own family in
perpetual preference to all others for ever, and though himself might
deserve SOME decent degree of honors of his cotemporaries, yet his
descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them. One of the
strongest NATURAL proofs of the folly of hereditary right in kings,
is, that nature disapproves it, otherwise, she would not so
frequently turn it into ridicule by giving mankind an ASS FOR A
LION.
Secondly, as no man at first could possess any other public honors
than were bestowed upon him, so the givers of those honors could have
no power to give away the right of posterity, and though they might
say "We choose you for OUR head," they could not, without manifest
injustice to their children, say "that your children and your
children's children shall reign over OURS for ever." Because such
an unwise, unjust, unnatural compact might (perhaps) in the next
succession put them under the government of a rogue or a fool. Most
wise men, in their private sentiments, have ever treated hereditary
right with contempt; yet it is one of those evils, which when once
established is not easily removed; many submit from fear, others from
superstition, and the more powerful part shares with the king the
plunder of the rest.
This is supposing the present race of kings in the world to have
had an honorable origin; whereas it is more than probable, that could
we take off the dark covering of antiquity, and trace them to their
first rise, that we should find the first of them nothing better than
the principal ruffian of some restless gang, whose savage manners or
pre-eminence in subtility obtained him the title of chief among
plunderers; and who by increasing in power, and extending his
depredations, over-awed the quiet and defenceless to purchase their
safety by frequent contributions. Yet his electors could have no idea
of giving hereditary right to his descendants, because such a
perpetual exclusion of themselves was incompatible with the free and
unrestrained principles they professed to live by. Wherefore,
hereditary succession in the early ages of monarchy could not take
place as a matter of claim, but as something casual or complimental;
but as few or no records were extant in those days, and traditionary
history stuffed with fables, it was very easy, after the lapse of a
few generations, to trump up some superstitious tale, conveniently
timed, Mahomet like, to cram hereditary right down the throats of the
vulgar. Perhaps the disorders which threatened, or seemed to
threaten, on the decease of a leader and the choice of a new one (for
elections among ruffians could not be very orderly) induced many at
first to favor hereditary pretensions; by which means it happened, as
it hath happened since, that what at first was submitted to as a
convenience, was afterwards claimed as a right.
England, since the conquest, hath known some few good monarchs, but
groaned beneath a much larger number of bad ones; yet no man in his
senses can say that their claim under William the Conqueror is a very
honorable one. A French bastard landing with an armed banditti, and
establishing himself king of England against the consent of the
natives, is in plain terms a very paltry rascally original. It
certainly hath no divinity in it. However, it is needless to spend
much time in exposing the folly of hereditary right, if there are any
so weak as to believe it, let them promiscuously worship the ass and
lion, and welcome. I shall neither copy their humility, nor disturb
their devotion.
Yet I should be glad to ask how they suppose kings came at first?
The question admits but of three answers, viz. either by lot, by
election, or by usurpation. If the first king was taken by lot, it
establishes a precedent for the next, which excludes hereditary
succession. Saul was by lot, yet the succession was not hereditary,
neither does it appear from that transaction there was any intention
it ever should. If the first king of any country was by election,
that likewise establishes a precedent for the next; for to say, that
the RIGHT of all future generations is taken away, by the act of
the first electors, in their choice not only of a king, but of a
family of kings for ever, hath no parrallel in or out of scripture
but the doctrine of original sin, which supposes the free will of all
men lost in Adam; and from such comparison, and it will admit of no
other, hereditary succession can derive no glory. For as in Adam all
sinned, and as in the first electors all men obeyed; as in the one
all mankind were subjected to Satan, and in the other to Sovereignty;
as our innocence was lost in the first, and our authority in the
last; and as both disable us from reassuming some former state and
privilege, it unanswerably follows that original sin and hereditary
succession are parallels. Dishonorable rank! Inglorious connexion!
Yet the most subtile sophist cannot produce a juster simile.
As to usurpation, no man will be so hardy as to defend it; and that
William the Conqueror was an usurper is a fact not to be
contradicted. The plain truth is, that the antiquity of English
monarchy will not bear looking into.
But it is not so much the absurdity as the evil of hereditary
succession which concerns mankind. Did it ensure a race of good and
wise men it would have the seal of divine authority, but as it opens
a door to the FOOLISH, the WICKED, and the IMPROPER, it hath in
it the nature of oppression. Men who look upon themselves born to
reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest
of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the
world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that
they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and
when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant
and unfit of any throughout the dominions.
Another evil which attends hereditary succession is, that the
throne is subject to be possessed by a minor at any age; all which
time the regency, acting under the cover of a king, have every
opportunity and inducement to betray their trust. The same national
misfortune happens, when a king worn out with age and infirmity,
enters the last stage of human weakness. In both these cases the
public becomes a prey to every miscreant, who can tamper successfully
with the follies either of age or infancy.
The most plausible plea, which hath ever been offered in favour of
hereditary succession, is, that it preserves a nation from civil
wars; and were this true, it would be weighty; whereas, it is the
most barefaced falsity ever imposed upon mankind. The whole history
of England disowns the fact. Thirty kings and two minors have reigned
in that distracted kingdom since the conquest, in which time there
have been (including the Revolution) no less than eight civil wars
and nineteen rebellions. Wherefore instead of making for peace, it
makes against it, and destroys the very foundation it seems to stand
on.
The contest for monarchy and succession, between the houses of York
and Lancaster, laid England in a scene of blood for many years.
Twelve pitched battles, besides skirmishes and sieges, were fought
between Henry and Edward. Twice was Henry prisoner to Edward, who in
his turn was prisoner to Henry. And so uncertain is the fate of war
and the temper of a nation, when nothing but personal matters are the
ground of a quarrel, that Henry was taken in triumph from a prison to
a palace, and Edward obliged to fly from a palace to a foreign land;
yet, as sudden transitions of temper are seldom lasting, Henry in his
turn was driven from the throne, and Edward recalled to succeed him.
The parliament always following the strongest side.
This contest began in the reign of Henry the Sixth, and was not
entirely extinguished till Henry the Seventh, in whom the families
were united. Including a period of 67 years, viz. from 1422 to 1489.
In short, monarchy and succession have laid (not this or that
kingdom only) but the world in blood and ashes. 'Tis a form of
government which the word of God bears testimony against, and blood
will attend it.
If we inquire into the business of a king, we shall find that in
some countries they have none; and after sauntering away their lives
without pleasure to themselves or advantage to the nation, withdraw
from the scene, and leave their successors to tread the same idle
round. In absolute monarchies the whole weight of business, civil and
military, lies on the king; the children of Israel in their request
for a king, urged this plea "that he may judge us, and go out before
us and fight our battles." But in countries where he is neither a
judge nor a general, as in England, a man would be puzzled to know
what IS his business.
The nearer any government approaches to a republic the less
business there is for a king. It is somewhat difficult to find a
proper name for the government of England. Sir William Meredith calls
it a republic; but in its present state it is unworthy of the name,
because the corrupt influence of the crown, by having all the places
in its disposal, hath so effectually swallowed up the power, and
eaten out the virtue of the house of commons (the republican part in
the constitution) that the government of England is nearly as
monarchical as that of France or Spain. Men fall out with names
without understanding them. For it is the republican and not the
monarchical part of the constitution of England which Englishmen
glory in, viz. the liberty of choosing an house of commons from out
of their own body--and it is easy to see that when republican virtue
fails, slavery ensues. Why is the constitution of England sickly, but
because monarchy hath poisoned the republic, the crown hath engrossed
the commons?
In England a king hath little more to do than to make war and give
away places; which in plain terms, is to impoverish the nation and
set it together by the ears. A pretty business indeed for a man to be
allowed eight hundred thousand sterling a year for, and worshipped
into the bargain! Of more worth is one honest man to society and in
the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.
| 3,167 | Chapter 2 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220739/https://www.novelguide.com/common-sense/summaries/chap2 | of Monarchy and Hereditary Succession Paine goes into more detail on arguments against monarchy. First of all, men were originally equal in creation. The idea of social order came later, especially the idea of a king and his subjects. According to the Bible, there were no kings in the beginning. Monarchy was an idea introduced to the Jews by heathens. It was originally a sin for the Jews because the Lord was king. Paine goes into a long passage on Biblical history, citing the example of Samuel, whom the people begged to be king and to appoint an heir, but he refused because a king made slaves of his subjects, took their goods, and took the place of God. On top of this evil is added hereditary succession, in which one family is set up in preference to others. England has had a few good kings, says the author, but they had no divinity. There are wars over succession and usurpation of thrones. Kingship is thus a parallel of original sin. The men of England are not so proud of their king as of their republicanism--the idea of equality of all before the law. | Commentary on Of Monarchy and Hereditary Succession Paine makes the subject of monarchy a major consideration in his argument for separation from England. He taps into the glamour of these new radical ideas that were breathtaking to liberals of the day, not only in America, but in Europe. America was seen as the stage where this new philosophy of equality could be tested and played out. Many Europeans were sympathetic to the abolition of monarchy, which seemed to have led to so many wars and inequality of opportunity. Paine points out that the primary job of monarchs is to make war to increase territory and to hand out posts and privileges to secure their position. This does not serve the people or make sense in a rational age. England has always prided itself on being modern, but Paine tries to make Britain look incompetently out of date by adhering to monarchy. | 194 | 151 | [
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1,232 | false | sparknotes | all_chapterized_books/1232-chapters/25.txt | finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Prince/section_9_part_2.txt | The Prince.chapter xxv | chapter xxv | null | {"name": "Chapter XXV", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210303115306/https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/prince/section10/", "summary": "Concerning the Influence of Fortune in Human Affairs, and the Manner in Which It Is to Be Resisted Although it is often thought that fortune controls human affairs, fortune controls only half of one's actions, while free will determines the other half. Fortune is like a flooding river: it is only dangerous when men have not built dykes against it beforehand. Italy has not built dykes, and as a result it has experienced tumultuous upheaval. Germany, Spain, and France have taken better care and have reaped the benefits of stability. As fortune varies, one man may succeed and another fail, even if they both follow the same path. Times and circumstances change, so a prince must adjust to them in order to remain successful; however, men tend to stay on the course that has brought them success in the past. Circumstances allowed Julius II to act impetuously, but if he had lived longer, he would have been ruined when circumstances changed. On the whole, however, impetuosity surpasses caution. Fortune favors energetic youth over cautious age", "analysis": ""} |
It is not unknown to me how many men have had, and still have, the
opinion that the affairs of the world are in such wise governed by
fortune and by God that men with their wisdom cannot direct them and
that no one can even help them; and because of this they would have us
believe that it is not necessary to labour much in affairs, but to let
chance govern them. This opinion has been more credited in our times
because of the great changes in affairs which have been seen, and
may still be seen, every day, beyond all human conjecture. Sometimes
pondering over this, I am in some degree inclined to their opinion.
Nevertheless, not to extinguish our free will, I hold it to be true that
Fortune is the arbiter of one-half of our actions,(*) but that she still
leaves us to direct the other half, or perhaps a little less.
(*) Frederick the Great was accustomed to say: "The older
one gets the more convinced one becomes that his Majesty
King Chance does three-quarters of the business of this
miserable universe." Sorel's "Eastern Question."
I compare her to one of those raging rivers, which when in flood
overflows the plains, sweeping away trees and buildings, bearing away
the soil from place to place; everything flies before it, all yield to
its violence, without being able in any way to withstand it; and yet,
though its nature be such, it does not follow therefore that men, when
the weather becomes fair, shall not make provision, both with defences
and barriers, in such a manner that, rising again, the waters may
pass away by canal, and their force be neither so unrestrained nor so
dangerous. So it happens with fortune, who shows her power where valour
has not prepared to resist her, and thither she turns her forces where
she knows that barriers and defences have not been raised to constrain
her.
And if you will consider Italy, which is the seat of these changes, and
which has given to them their impulse, you will see it to be an open
country without barriers and without any defence. For if it had been
defended by proper valour, as are Germany, Spain, and France, either
this invasion would not have made the great changes it has made or it
would not have come at all. And this I consider enough to say concerning
resistance to fortune in general.
But confining myself more to the particular, I say that a prince may be
seen happy to-day and ruined to-morrow without having shown any change
of disposition or character. This, I believe, arises firstly from causes
that have already been discussed at length, namely, that the prince who
relies entirely on fortune is lost when it changes. I believe also that
he will be successful who directs his actions according to the spirit of
the times, and that he whose actions do not accord with the times will
not be successful. Because men are seen, in affairs that lead to the end
which every man has before him, namely, glory and riches, to get there
by various methods; one with caution, another with haste; one by force,
another by skill; one by patience, another by its opposite; and each one
succeeds in reaching the goal by a different method. One can also see of
two cautious men the one attain his end, the other fail; and similarly,
two men by different observances are equally successful, the one being
cautious, the other impetuous; all this arises from nothing else than
whether or not they conform in their methods to the spirit of the times.
This follows from what I have said, that two men working differently
bring about the same effect, and of two working similarly, one attains
his object and the other does not.
Changes in estate also issue from this, for if, to one who governs
himself with caution and patience, times and affairs converge in such a
way that his administration is successful, his fortune is made; but if
times and affairs change, he is ruined if he does not change his course
of action. But a man is not often found sufficiently circumspect to know
how to accommodate himself to the change, both because he cannot deviate
from what nature inclines him to do, and also because, having always
prospered by acting in one way, he cannot be persuaded that it is well
to leave it; and, therefore, the cautious man, when it is time to turn
adventurous, does not know how to do it, hence he is ruined; but had he
changed his conduct with the times fortune would not have changed.
Pope Julius the Second went to work impetuously in all his affairs, and
found the times and circumstances conform so well to that line of action
that he always met with success. Consider his first enterprise against
Bologna, Messer Giovanni Bentivogli being still alive. The Venetians
were not agreeable to it, nor was the King of Spain, and he had the
enterprise still under discussion with the King of France; nevertheless
he personally entered upon the expedition with his accustomed boldness
and energy, a move which made Spain and the Venetians stand irresolute
and passive, the latter from fear, the former from desire to recover
the kingdom of Naples; on the other hand, he drew after him the King of
France, because that king, having observed the movement, and desiring
to make the Pope his friend so as to humble the Venetians, found it
impossible to refuse him. Therefore Julius with his impetuous action
accomplished what no other pontiff with simple human wisdom could have
done; for if he had waited in Rome until he could get away, with his
plans arranged and everything fixed, as any other pontiff would have
done, he would never have succeeded. Because the King of France would
have made a thousand excuses, and the others would have raised a
thousand fears.
I will leave his other actions alone, as they were all alike, and they
all succeeded, for the shortness of his life did not let him experience
the contrary; but if circumstances had arisen which required him to go
cautiously, his ruin would have followed, because he would never have
deviated from those ways to which nature inclined him.
I conclude, therefore that, fortune being changeful and mankind
steadfast in their ways, so long as the two are in agreement men are
successful, but unsuccessful when they fall out. For my part I consider
that it is better to be adventurous than cautious, because fortune is
a woman, and if you wish to keep her under it is necessary to beat and
ill-use her; and it is seen that she allows herself to be mastered by
the adventurous rather than by those who go to work more coldly. She is,
therefore, always, woman-like, a lover of young men, because they are
less cautious, more violent, and with more audacity command her.
| 1,098 | Chapter XXV | https://web.archive.org/web/20210303115306/https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/prince/section10/ | Concerning the Influence of Fortune in Human Affairs, and the Manner in Which It Is to Be Resisted Although it is often thought that fortune controls human affairs, fortune controls only half of one's actions, while free will determines the other half. Fortune is like a flooding river: it is only dangerous when men have not built dykes against it beforehand. Italy has not built dykes, and as a result it has experienced tumultuous upheaval. Germany, Spain, and France have taken better care and have reaped the benefits of stability. As fortune varies, one man may succeed and another fail, even if they both follow the same path. Times and circumstances change, so a prince must adjust to them in order to remain successful; however, men tend to stay on the course that has brought them success in the past. Circumstances allowed Julius II to act impetuously, but if he had lived longer, he would have been ruined when circumstances changed. On the whole, however, impetuosity surpasses caution. Fortune favors energetic youth over cautious age | null | 175 | 1 | [
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110 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/45.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_5_part_10.txt | Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter xliv | chapter xliv | null | {"name": "Chapter XLIV", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase5-chapter35-44", "summary": "Tess decides to pay Angel's parents a visit in hopes of information about Angel. She wears boots for the fifteen-mile walk and hides them in a bush. She mingles with village people leaving church, and discovers that the two men behind her are Angel's brothers. She overhears their remarks about Angel's marriage. Then they find Tess's boots and take them to give to a poor parishioner. On her dejected walk home \"full in the conviction that a crisis in her life was approaching,\" she stops at a barn to rest. Inside she hears a clergyman preaching passionately and recognizes the voice of Alec d'Urberville.", "analysis": ". While life at Talbothays Dairy in \"Phase the Third\" was Edenic, as the novel progresses the setting becomes ever gloomier. This contributes to Hardy's pervasive pessimistic sense of tragedy and enhances the characters and the plot. For instance, the site of the doomed honeymoon, the d'Urberville mansion, is gray and dark, and the presence of portraits add to the feeling of Gothic disquiet. All is shadow, with light used merely to contrast dark. Even the outside is shadowy and evil. The sleepwalking Angel carries the passive Tess to, what else, a graveyard, where he places her in a stone coffin. Hardy utilizes the Gothic conventions which were popular in the Victorian era, as witnessed by such popular novels as Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, the story of another pure woman in danger of being disgraced in an old mansion by a love affair. In this section, Hardy heightens his condemnation of society's double standard which shrugs its shoulders at men--boys will be boys--but that castigates women for the same behavior. Angel confides in Tess about a sexual indiscretion with an older woman but, instead of feeling horror, she is gladdened because now she feels she can confess to Angel about her own past without his passing judgment on her for actions that are \"just the same\". In this, Tess could not be more wrong: the double standard is fully in force. And, instead of standing up to her new husband for his pious judgmental position, she kneels in front of him and offers to be his slave, passively allows him to place her in a coffin and even to kill herself if he wishes. In short Hardy is adamant, \"God's not in his heaven; all's wrong with the world\". Angel's sleepwalking should be viewed as a metaphor. He lies in a dream world. He invents his own religion, so to speak, where he is one with mystical Nature and eschews his family's beliefs. He sees in Tess a pure pagan woman of Nature and not a real-life human being. He fails to give his parents a chance to meet Tess and judges them for rejecting their new daughter-in-law before they meet her. He condemns the aristocracy for its behavior towards the lower classes, yet no one could be as mean-spirited and cruel to an innocent woman. When he leaves for Brazil, he is in effect a coward, running away from the reality he cannot accept. His \"was the face of a man who was no longer passion's slave\". His pride overwhelms his judgment. His cruelty to Izz Huett, when he is in need of female adoration, should also not be overlooked. Here is another country woman who loves him purely and simply and who accepts his advances only to be thrown back wailing in the dirt. Tess is forced to leave Marlott to avoid the condemnation of her parents and her neighbors--proper society--to enter into the frozen world of Flintcomb-Ash, where she might as well be dead. Simply, there is no way she can ever regain her stolen virginity. Thus, as the novel progresses Hardy tightens his deterministic thesis--people are victims of fate and regardless of how they fight, they are doomed. From the foreshadowing regarding death and dying--biers, pheasants, portraits, graveyards and coffins--there is no way Tess can avoid an early death. She is powerless; her fate was divined before she was born. In this line of thinking, however, there is an inherent flaw. Hardy also condemns society for Tess's ills--church, aristocracy, a double-standard for men and women. How then how can fate be at issue"} |
By the disclosure in the barn her thoughts were led anew in the
direction which they had taken more than once of late--to the distant
Emminster Vicarage. It was through her husband's parents that she
had been charged to send a letter to Clare if she desired; and to
write to them direct if in difficulty. But that sense of her having
morally no claim upon him had always led Tess to suspend her impulse
to send these notes; and to the family at the Vicarage, therefore,
as to her own parents since her marriage, she was virtually
non-existent. This self-effacement in both directions had been quite
in consonance with her independent character of desiring nothing
by way of favour or pity to which she was not entitled on a fair
consideration of her deserts. She had set herself to stand or fall
by her qualities, and to waive such merely technical claims upon a
strange family as had been established for her by the flimsy fact of
a member of that family, in a season of impulse, writing his name in
a church-book beside hers.
But now that she was stung to a fever by Izz's tale, there was a
limit to her powers of renunciation. Why had her husband not written
to her? He had distinctly implied that he would at least let her
know of the locality to which he had journeyed; but he had not sent a
line to notify his address. Was he really indifferent? But was he
ill? Was it for her to make some advance? Surely she might summon
the courage of solicitude, call at the Vicarage for intelligence, and
express her grief at his silence. If Angel's father were the good
man she had heard him represented to be, he would be able to enter
into her heart-starved situation. Her social hardships she could
conceal.
To leave the farm on a week-day was not in her power; Sunday was
the only possible opportunity. Flintcomb-Ash being in the middle
of the cretaceous tableland over which no railway had climbed as
yet, it would be necessary to walk. And the distance being fifteen
miles each way she would have to allow herself a long day for the
undertaking by rising early.
A fortnight later, when the snow had gone, and had been followed by
a hard black frost, she took advantage of the state of the roads to
try the experiment. At four o'clock that Sunday morning she came
downstairs and stepped out into the starlight. The weather was still
favourable, the ground ringing under her feet like an anvil.
Marian and Izz were much interested in her excursion, knowing that
the journey concerned her husband. Their lodgings were in a cottage
a little further along the lane, but they came and assisted Tess
in her departure, and argued that she should dress up in her very
prettiest guise to captivate the hearts of her parents-in-law; though
she, knowing of the austere and Calvinistic tenets of old Mr Clare,
was indifferent, and even doubtful. A year had now elapsed since
her sad marriage, but she had preserved sufficient draperies from
the wreck of her then full wardrobe to clothe her very charmingly as
a simple country girl with no pretensions to recent fashion; a soft
gray woollen gown, with white crape quilling against the pink skin of
her face and neck, and a black velvet jacket and hat.
"'Tis a thousand pities your husband can't see 'ee now--you do look
a real beauty!" said Izz Huett, regarding Tess as she stood on
the threshold between the steely starlight without and the yellow
candlelight within. Izz spoke with a magnanimous abandonment of
herself to the situation; she could not be--no woman with a heart
bigger than a hazel-nut could be--antagonistic to Tess in her
presence, the influence which she exercised over those of her own sex
being of a warmth and strength quite unusual, curiously overpowering
the less worthy feminine feelings of spite and rivalry.
With a final tug and touch here, and a slight brush there, they let
her go; and she was absorbed into the pearly air of the fore-dawn.
They heard her footsteps tap along the hard road as she stepped out
to her full pace. Even Izz hoped she would win, and, though without
any particular respect for her own virtue, felt glad that she had
been prevented wronging her friend when momentarily tempted by Clare.
It was a year ago, all but a day, that Clare had married Tess, and
only a few days less than a year that he had been absent from her.
Still, to start on a brisk walk, and on such an errand as hers, on a
dry clear wintry morning, through the rarefied air of these chalky
hogs'-backs, was not depressing; and there is no doubt that her dream
at starting was to win the heart of her mother-in-law, tell her whole
history to that lady, enlist her on her side, and so gain back the
truant.
In time she reached the edge of the vast escarpment below which
stretched the loamy Vale of Blackmoor, now lying misty and still
in the dawn. Instead of the colourless air of the uplands, the
atmosphere down there was a deep blue. Instead of the great
enclosures of a hundred acres in which she was now accustomed to
toil, there were little fields below her of less than half-a-dozen
acres, so numerous that they looked from this height like the meshes
of a net. Here the landscape was whitey-brown; down there, as in
Froom Valley, it was always green. Yet it was in that vale that her
sorrow had taken shape, and she did not love it as formerly. Beauty
to her, as to all who have felt, lay not in the thing, but in what
the thing symbolized.
Keeping the Vale on her right, she steered steadily westward; passing
above the Hintocks, crossing at right-angles the high-road from
Sherton-Abbas to Casterbridge, and skirting Dogbury Hill and
High-Stoy, with the dell between them called "The Devil's Kitchen".
Still following the elevated way she reached Cross-in-Hand, where
the stone pillar stands desolate and silent, to mark the site of a
miracle, or murder, or both. Three miles further she cut across the
straight and deserted Roman road called Long-Ash Lane; leaving which
as soon as she reached it she dipped down a hill by a transverse lane
into the small town or village of Evershead, being now about halfway
over the distance. She made a halt here, and breakfasted a second
time, heartily enough--not at the Sow-and-Acorn, for she avoided
inns, but at a cottage by the church.
The second half of her journey was through a more gentle country, by
way of Benvill Lane. But as the mileage lessened between her and the
spot of her pilgrimage, so did Tess's confidence decrease, and her
enterprise loom out more formidably. She saw her purpose in such
staring lines, and the landscape so faintly, that she was sometimes
in danger of losing her way. However, about noon she paused by a
gate on the edge of the basin in which Emminster and its Vicarage
lay.
The square tower, beneath which she knew that at that moment the
Vicar and his congregation were gathered, had a severe look in
her eyes. She wished that she had somehow contrived to come on a
week-day. Such a good man might be prejudiced against a woman who
had chosen Sunday, never realizing the necessities of her case.
But it was incumbent upon her to go on now. She took off the thick
boots in which she had walked thus far, put on her pretty thin ones
of patent leather, and, stuffing the former into the hedge by the
gatepost where she might readily find them again, descended the hill;
the freshness of colour she had derived from the keen air thinning
away in spite of her as she drew near the parsonage.
Tess hoped for some accident that might favour her, but nothing
favoured her. The shrubs on the Vicarage lawn rustled uncomfortably
in the frosty breeze; she could not feel by any stretch of
imagination, dressed to her highest as she was, that the house was
the residence of near relations; and yet nothing essential, in nature
or emotion, divided her from them: in pains, pleasures, thoughts,
birth, death, and after-death, they were the same.
She nerved herself by an effort, entered the swing-gate, and rang
the door-bell. The thing was done; there could be no retreat. No;
the thing was not done. Nobody answered to her ringing. The effort
had to be risen to and made again. She rang a second time, and the
agitation of the act, coupled with her weariness after the fifteen
miles' walk, led her to support herself while she waited by resting
her hand on her hip and her elbow against the wall of the porch. The
wind was so nipping that the ivy-leaves had become wizened and gray,
each tapping incessantly upon its neighbour with a disquieting stir
of her nerves. A piece of blood-stained paper, caught up from some
meat-buyer's dust-heap, beat up and down the road without the gate;
too flimsy to rest, too heavy to fly away; and a few straws kept it
company.
The second peal had been louder, and still nobody came. Then she
walked out of the porch, opened the gate, and passed through. And
though she looked dubiously at the house-front as if inclined to
return, it was with a breath of relied that she closed the gate. A
feeling haunted her that she might have been recognized (though how
she could not tell), and orders been given not to admit her.
Tess went as far as the corner. She had done all she could do; but
determined not to escape present trepidation at the expense of future
distress, she walked back again quite past the house, looking up at
all the windows.
Ah--the explanation was that they were all at church, every one. She
remembered her husband saying that his father always insisted upon
the household, servants included, going to morning-service, and,
as a consequence, eating cold food when they came home. It was,
therefore, only necessary to wait till the service was over. She
would not make herself conspicuous by waiting on the spot, and she
started to get past the church into the lane. But as she reached the
churchyard-gate the people began pouring out, and Tess found herself
in the midst of them.
The Emminster congregation looked at her as only a congregation of
small country-townsfolk walking home at its leisure can look at a
woman out of the common whom it perceives to be a stranger. She
quickened her pace, and ascended the road by which she had come,
to find a retreat between its hedges till the Vicar's family should
have lunched, and it might be convenient for them to receive her.
She soon distanced the churchgoers, except two youngish men, who,
linked arm-in-arm, were beating up behind her at a quick step.
As they drew nearer she could hear their voices engaged in earnest
discourse, and, with the natural quickness of a woman in her
situation, did not fail to recognize in those noises the quality
of her husband's tones. The pedestrians were his two brothers.
Forgetting all her plans, Tess's one dread was lest they should
overtake her now, in her disorganized condition, before she was
prepared to confront them; for though she felt that they could not
identify her, she instinctively dreaded their scrutiny. The more
briskly they walked, the more briskly walked she. They were plainly
bent upon taking a short quick stroll before going indoors to lunch
or dinner, to restore warmth to limbs chilled with sitting through a
long service.
Only one person had preceded Tess up the hill--a ladylike young
woman, somewhat interesting, though, perhaps, a trifle _guindee_
and prudish. Tess had nearly overtaken her when the speed of her
brothers-in-law brought them so nearly behind her back that she could
hear every word of their conversation. They said nothing, however,
which particularly interested her till, observing the young lady
still further in front, one of them remarked, "There is Mercy Chant.
Let us overtake her."
Tess knew the name. It was the woman who had been destined for
Angel's life-companion by his and her parents, and whom he probably
would have married but for her intrusive self. She would have known
as much without previous information if she had waited a moment, for
one of the brothers proceeded to say: "Ah! poor Angel, poor Angel!
I never see that nice girl without more and more regretting his
precipitancy in throwing himself away upon a dairymaid, or whatever
she may be. It is a queer business, apparently. Whether she has
joined him yet or not I don't know; but she had not done so some
months ago when I heard from him."
"I can't say. He never tells me anything nowadays. His
ill-considered marriage seems to have completed that estrangement
from me which was begun by his extraordinary opinions."
Tess beat up the long hill still faster; but she could not outwalk
them without exciting notice. At last they outsped her altogether,
and passed her by. The young lady still further ahead heard their
footsteps and turned. Then there was a greeting and a shaking of
hands, and the three went on together.
They soon reached the summit of the hill, and, evidently intending
this point to be the limit of their promenade, slackened pace and
turned all three aside to the gate whereat Tess had paused an hour
before that time to reconnoitre the town before descending into it.
During their discourse one of the clerical brothers probed the hedge
carefully with his umbrella, and dragged something to light.
"Here's a pair of old boots," he said. "Thrown away, I suppose, by
some tramp or other."
"Some imposter who wished to come into the town barefoot, perhaps,
and so excite our sympathies," said Miss Chant. "Yes, it must have
been, for they are excellent walking-boots--by no means worn out.
What a wicked thing to do! I'll carry them home for some poor
person."
Cuthbert Clare, who had been the one to find them, picked them up for
her with the crook of his stick; and Tess's boots were appropriated.
She, who had heard this, walked past under the screen of her woollen
veil till, presently looking back, she perceived that the church
party had left the gate with her boots and retreated down the hill.
Thereupon our heroine resumed her walk. Tears, blinding tears, were
running down her face. She knew that it was all sentiment, all
baseless impressibility, which had caused her to read the scene as
her own condemnation; nevertheless she could not get over it; she
could not contravene in her own defenceless person all those untoward
omens. It was impossible to think of returning to the Vicarage.
Angel's wife felt almost as if she had been hounded up that hill like
a scorned thing by those--to her--superfine clerics. Innocently
as the slight had been inflicted, it was somewhat unfortunate that
she had encountered the sons and not the father, who, despite his
narrowness, was far less starched and ironed than they, and had to
the full the gift of charity. As she again thought of her dusty
boots she almost pitied those habiliments for the quizzing to which
they had been subjected, and felt how hopeless life was for their
owner.
"Ah!" she said, still sighing in pity of herself, "THEY didn't know
that I wore those over the roughest part of the road to save these
pretty ones HE bought for me--no--they did not know it! And they
didn't think that HE chose the colour o' my pretty frock--no--how
could they? If they had known perhaps they would not have cared,
for they don't care much for him, poor thing!"
Then she grieved for the beloved man whose conventional standard of
judgement had caused her all these latter sorrows; and she went her
way without knowing that the greatest misfortune of her life was this
feminine loss of courage at the last and critical moment through her
estimating her father-in-law by his sons. Her present condition was
precisely one which would have enlisted the sympathies of old Mr and
Mrs Clare. Their hearts went out of them at a bound towards extreme
cases, when the subtle mental troubles of the less desperate among
mankind failed to win their interest or regard. In jumping at
Publicans and Sinners they would forget that a word might be said for
the worries of Scribes and Pharisees; and this defect or limitation
might have recommended their own daughter-in-law to them at this
moment as a fairly choice sort of lost person for their love.
Thereupon she began to plod back along the road by which she had come
not altogether full of hope, but full of a conviction that a crisis
in her life was approaching. No crisis, apparently, had supervened;
and there was nothing left for her to do but to continue upon that
starve-acre farm till she could again summon courage to face the
Vicarage. She did, indeed, take sufficient interest in herself to
throw up her veil on this return journey, as if to let the world see
that she could at least exhibit a face such as Mercy Chant could
not show. But it was done with a sorry shake of the head. "It is
nothing--it is nothing!" she said. "Nobody loves it; nobody sees it.
Who cares about the looks of a castaway like me!"
Her journey back was rather a meander than a march. It had no
sprightliness, no purpose; only a tendency. Along the tedious length
of Benvill Lane she began to grow tired, and she leant upon gates and
paused by milestones.
She did not enter any house till, at the seventh or eighth mile, she
descended the steep long hill below which lay the village or townlet
of Evershead, where in the morning she had breakfasted with such
contrasting expectations. The cottage by the church, in which she
again sat down, was almost the first at that end of the village, and
while the woman fetched her some milk from the pantry, Tess, looking
down the street, perceived that the place seemed quite deserted.
"The people are gone to afternoon service, I suppose?" she said.
"No, my dear," said the old woman. "'Tis too soon for that; the
bells hain't strook out yet. They be all gone to hear the preaching
in yonder barn. A ranter preaches there between the services--an
excellent, fiery, Christian man, they say. But, Lord, I don't go to
hear'n! What comes in the regular way over the pulpit is hot enough
for I."
Tess soon went onward into the village, her footsteps echoing against
the houses as though it were a place of the dead. Nearing the
central part, her echoes were intruded on by other sounds; and seeing
the barn not far off the road, she guessed these to be the utterances
of the preacher.
His voice became so distinct in the still clear air that she could
soon catch his sentences, though she was on the closed side of
the barn. The sermon, as might be expected, was of the extremest
antinomian type; on justification by faith, as expounded in the
theology of St Paul. This fixed idea of the rhapsodist was delivered
with animated enthusiasm, in a manner entirely declamatory, for he
had plainly no skill as a dialectician. Although Tess had not heard
the beginning of the address, she learnt what the text had been from
its constant iteration--
"O foolish galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye
should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ
hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?"
Tess was all the more interested, as she stood listening behind, in
finding that the preacher's doctrine was a vehement form of the view
of Angel's father, and her interest intensified when the speaker
began to detail his own spiritual experiences of how he had come by
those views. He had, he said, been the greatest of sinners. He had
scoffed; he had wantonly associated with the reckless and the lewd.
But a day of awakening had come, and, in a human sense, it had been
brought about mainly by the influence of a certain clergyman, whom he
had at first grossly insulted; but whose parting words had sunk into
his heart, and had remained there, till by the grace of Heaven they
had worked this change in him, and made him what they saw him.
But more startling to Tess than the doctrine had been the voice,
which, impossible as it seemed, was precisely that of Alec
d'Urberville. Her face fixed in painful suspense, she came round
to the front of the barn, and passed before it. The low winter sun
beamed directly upon the great double-doored entrance on this side;
one of the doors being open, so that the rays stretched far in over
the threshing-floor to the preacher and his audience, all snugly
sheltered from the northern breeze. The listeners were entirely
villagers, among them being the man whom she had seen carrying the
red paint-pot on a former memorable occasion. But her attention
was given to the central figure, who stood upon some sacks of corn,
facing the people and the door. The three o'clock sun shone full
upon him, and the strange enervating conviction that her seducer
confronted her, which had been gaining ground in Tess ever since she
had heard his words distinctly, was at last established as a fact
indeed.
END OF PHASE THE FIFTH
Phase the Sixth: The Convert
| 3,437 | Chapter XLIV | https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase5-chapter35-44 | Tess decides to pay Angel's parents a visit in hopes of information about Angel. She wears boots for the fifteen-mile walk and hides them in a bush. She mingles with village people leaving church, and discovers that the two men behind her are Angel's brothers. She overhears their remarks about Angel's marriage. Then they find Tess's boots and take them to give to a poor parishioner. On her dejected walk home "full in the conviction that a crisis in her life was approaching," she stops at a barn to rest. Inside she hears a clergyman preaching passionately and recognizes the voice of Alec d'Urberville. | . While life at Talbothays Dairy in "Phase the Third" was Edenic, as the novel progresses the setting becomes ever gloomier. This contributes to Hardy's pervasive pessimistic sense of tragedy and enhances the characters and the plot. For instance, the site of the doomed honeymoon, the d'Urberville mansion, is gray and dark, and the presence of portraits add to the feeling of Gothic disquiet. All is shadow, with light used merely to contrast dark. Even the outside is shadowy and evil. The sleepwalking Angel carries the passive Tess to, what else, a graveyard, where he places her in a stone coffin. Hardy utilizes the Gothic conventions which were popular in the Victorian era, as witnessed by such popular novels as Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, the story of another pure woman in danger of being disgraced in an old mansion by a love affair. In this section, Hardy heightens his condemnation of society's double standard which shrugs its shoulders at men--boys will be boys--but that castigates women for the same behavior. Angel confides in Tess about a sexual indiscretion with an older woman but, instead of feeling horror, she is gladdened because now she feels she can confess to Angel about her own past without his passing judgment on her for actions that are "just the same". In this, Tess could not be more wrong: the double standard is fully in force. And, instead of standing up to her new husband for his pious judgmental position, she kneels in front of him and offers to be his slave, passively allows him to place her in a coffin and even to kill herself if he wishes. In short Hardy is adamant, "God's not in his heaven; all's wrong with the world". Angel's sleepwalking should be viewed as a metaphor. He lies in a dream world. He invents his own religion, so to speak, where he is one with mystical Nature and eschews his family's beliefs. He sees in Tess a pure pagan woman of Nature and not a real-life human being. He fails to give his parents a chance to meet Tess and judges them for rejecting their new daughter-in-law before they meet her. He condemns the aristocracy for its behavior towards the lower classes, yet no one could be as mean-spirited and cruel to an innocent woman. When he leaves for Brazil, he is in effect a coward, running away from the reality he cannot accept. His "was the face of a man who was no longer passion's slave". His pride overwhelms his judgment. His cruelty to Izz Huett, when he is in need of female adoration, should also not be overlooked. Here is another country woman who loves him purely and simply and who accepts his advances only to be thrown back wailing in the dirt. Tess is forced to leave Marlott to avoid the condemnation of her parents and her neighbors--proper society--to enter into the frozen world of Flintcomb-Ash, where she might as well be dead. Simply, there is no way she can ever regain her stolen virginity. Thus, as the novel progresses Hardy tightens his deterministic thesis--people are victims of fate and regardless of how they fight, they are doomed. From the foreshadowing regarding death and dying--biers, pheasants, portraits, graveyards and coffins--there is no way Tess can avoid an early death. She is powerless; her fate was divined before she was born. In this line of thinking, however, there is an inherent flaw. Hardy also condemns society for Tess's ills--church, aristocracy, a double-standard for men and women. How then how can fate be at issue | 104 | 597 | [
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5,658 | false | pinkmonkey | all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/22.txt | finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Lord Jim/section_21_part_0.txt | Lord Jim.chapter 22 | chapter 22 | null | {"name": "Chapter 22", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim31.asp", "summary": "The chapter opens with Marlow describing Patusan, which is truly a wild and remote island. It is the place where the seventeenth century spice traders went to obtain pepper and adventure; many lost their lives in the process. Since pepper is no longer a valued treasure, the island is not presently an important trading post. Currently, the hills are inhabited by two different factions of Malays. The Sultan of the island is an \"imbecile youth\" whose uncles are constantly at war. The most evil of the uncles is Raja Tungku Allang, a man who lives by terrorizing all those who have to use the river. After the opening descriptions, Marlow flashes back to the time when he first told Jim about Patusan. At first the young sailor was unexcited about the opportunity, but the more he thought about the remote island, the more excited he grew. His excitement blossomed into joy, for he soon realized that Patusan offered him the chance he had been seeking. No one there would know his past history. He would be judged only by what he could perform. Marlow take Jim to Stein's house for further instructions about Patusan. While there, Jim is given a ring that Stein wants him to take to Doramin.", "analysis": "Notes Jim is delighted with the Patusan opportunity, for he thinks it will allow him to start afresh. Because of its remote location, the island will offer him a refuge; Jim can pretend that the world outside does not exist. Since he is a romantic, Jim is not the least bit fearful about the strange island or concerned about whether he will be successful there. He considers himself superior to ordinary men and is eager for the chance to prove his worth. Marlow takes Jim to introduce him to Stein, who gives the young man further instructions about his responsibilities in Patusan. Stein's romantic nature is again emphasized. The ring that he gives Jim to take to Doramin has great significance and plays a very important role at the end of the novel."} |
'The conquest of love, honour, men's confidence--the pride of it, the
power of it, are fit materials for a heroic tale; only our minds are
struck by the externals of such a success, and to Jim's successes there
were no externals. Thirty miles of forest shut it off from the sight of
an indifferent world, and the noise of the white surf along the coast
overpowered the voice of fame. The stream of civilisation, as if divided
on a headland a hundred miles north of Patusan, branches east and
south-east, leaving its plains and valleys, its old trees and its old
mankind, neglected and isolated, such as an insignificant and crumbling
islet between the two branches of a mighty, devouring stream. You find
the name of the country pretty often in collections of old voyages. The
seventeenth-century traders went there for pepper, because the passion
for pepper seemed to burn like a flame of love in the breast of Dutch
and English adventurers about the time of James the First. Where
wouldn't they go for pepper! For a bag of pepper they would cut each
other's throats without hesitation, and would forswear their souls,
of which they were so careful otherwise: the bizarre obstinacy of that
desire made them defy death in a thousand shapes--the unknown seas, the
loathsome and strange diseases; wounds, captivity, hunger, pestilence,
and despair. It made them great! By heavens! it made them heroic; and
it made them pathetic too in their craving for trade with the inflexible
death levying its toll on young and old. It seems impossible to believe
that mere greed could hold men to such a steadfastness of purpose, to
such a blind persistence in endeavour and sacrifice. And indeed those
who adventured their persons and lives risked all they had for a slender
reward. They left their bones to lie bleaching on distant shores, so
that wealth might flow to the living at home. To us, their less tried
successors, they appear magnified, not as agents of trade but as
instruments of a recorded destiny, pushing out into the unknown in
obedience to an inward voice, to an impulse beating in the blood, to a
dream of the future. They were wonderful; and it must be owned they
were ready for the wonderful. They recorded it complacently in their
sufferings, in the aspect of the seas, in the customs of strange
nations, in the glory of splendid rulers.
'In Patusan they had found lots of pepper, and had been impressed by the
magnificence and the wisdom of the Sultan; but somehow, after a century
of chequered intercourse, the country seems to drop gradually out of the
trade. Perhaps the pepper had given out. Be it as it may, nobody cares
for it now; the glory has departed, the Sultan is an imbecile youth
with two thumbs on his left hand and an uncertain and beggarly revenue
extorted from a miserable population and stolen from him by his many
uncles.
'This of course I have from Stein. He gave me their names and a short
sketch of the life and character of each. He was as full of information
about native states as an official report, but infinitely more amusing.
He _had_ to know. He traded in so many, and in some districts--as in
Patusan, for instance--his firm was the only one to have an agency by
special permit from the Dutch authorities. The Government trusted his
discretion, and it was understood that he took all the risks. The men
he employed understood that too, but he made it worth their while
apparently. He was perfectly frank with me over the breakfast-table in
the morning. As far as he was aware (the last news was thirteen months
old, he stated precisely), utter insecurity for life and property was
the normal condition. There were in Patusan antagonistic forces, and one
of them was Rajah Allang, the worst of the Sultan's uncles, the governor
of the river, who did the extorting and the stealing, and ground down
to the point of extinction the country-born Malays, who, utterly
defenceless, had not even the resource of emigrating--"For indeed," as
Stein remarked, "where could they go, and how could they get away?"
No doubt they did not even desire to get away. The world (which is
circumscribed by lofty impassable mountains) has been given into the
hand of the high-born, and _this_ Rajah they knew: he was of their own
royal house. I had the pleasure of meeting the gentleman later on. He
was a dirty, little, used-up old man with evil eyes and a weak mouth,
who swallowed an opium pill every two hours, and in defiance of common
decency wore his hair uncovered and falling in wild stringy locks about
his wizened grimy face. When giving audience he would clamber upon a
sort of narrow stage erected in a hall like a ruinous barn with a rotten
bamboo floor, through the cracks of which you could see, twelve or
fifteen feet below, the heaps of refuse and garbage of all kinds lying
under the house. That is where and how he received us when, accompanied
by Jim, I paid him a visit of ceremony. There were about forty people in
the room, and perhaps three times as many in the great courtyard below.
There was constant movement, coming and going, pushing and murmuring,
at our backs. A few youths in gay silks glared from the distance; the
majority, slaves and humble dependants, were half naked, in ragged
sarongs, dirty with ashes and mud-stains. I had never seen Jim look so
grave, so self-possessed, in an impenetrable, impressive way. In the
midst of these dark-faced men, his stalwart figure in white apparel,
the gleaming clusters of his fair hair, seemed to catch all the sunshine
that trickled through the cracks in the closed shutters of that dim
hall, with its walls of mats and a roof of thatch. He appeared like a
creature not only of another kind but of another essence. Had they not
seen him come up in a canoe they might have thought he had descended
upon them from the clouds. He did, however, come in a crazy dug-out,
sitting (very still and with his knees together, for fear of overturning
the thing)--sitting on a tin box--which I had lent him--nursing on his
lap a revolver of the Navy pattern--presented by me on parting--which,
through an interposition of Providence, or through some wrong-headed
notion, that was just like him, or else from sheer instinctive sagacity,
he had decided to carry unloaded. That's how he ascended the Patusan
river. Nothing could have been more prosaic and more unsafe, more
extravagantly casual, more lonely. Strange, this fatality that would
cast the complexion of a flight upon all his acts, of impulsive
unreflecting desertion of a jump into the unknown.
'It is precisely the casualness of it that strikes me most. Neither
Stein nor I had a clear conception of what might be on the other side
when we, metaphorically speaking, took him up and hove him over the
wall with scant ceremony. At the moment I merely wished to achieve his
disappearance; Stein characteristically enough had a sentimental motive.
He had a notion of paying off (in kind, I suppose) the old debt he had
never forgotten. Indeed he had been all his life especially friendly to
anybody from the British Isles. His late benefactor, it is true, was a
Scot--even to the length of being called Alexander McNeil--and Jim came
from a long way south of the Tweed; but at the distance of six or
seven thousand miles Great Britain, though never diminished, looks
foreshortened enough even to its own children to rob such details of
their importance. Stein was excusable, and his hinted intentions were
so generous that I begged him most earnestly to keep them secret for
a time. I felt that no consideration of personal advantage should be
allowed to influence Jim; that not even the risk of such influence
should be run. We had to deal with another sort of reality. He wanted
a refuge, and a refuge at the cost of danger should be offered
him--nothing more.
'Upon every other point I was perfectly frank with him, and I even (as
I believed at the time) exaggerated the danger of the undertaking. As
a matter of fact I did not do it justice; his first day in Patusan was
nearly his last--would have been his last if he had not been so reckless
or so hard on himself and had condescended to load that revolver. I
remember, as I unfolded our precious scheme for his retreat, how his
stubborn but weary resignation was gradually replaced by surprise,
interest, wonder, and by boyish eagerness. This was a chance he had been
dreaming of. He couldn't think how he merited that I . . . He would be
shot if he could see to what he owed . . . And it was Stein, Stein the
merchant, who . . . but of course it was me he had to . . . I cut him
short. He was not articulate, and his gratitude caused me inexplicable
pain. I told him that if he owed this chance to any one especially, it
was to an old Scot of whom he had never heard, who had died many years
ago, of whom little was remembered besides a roaring voice and a rough
sort of honesty. There was really no one to receive his thanks. Stein
was passing on to a young man the help he had received in his own young
days, and I had done no more than to mention his name. Upon this he
coloured, and, twisting a bit of paper in his fingers, he remarked
bashfully that I had always trusted him.
'I admitted that such was the case, and added after a pause that I
wished he had been able to follow my example. "You think I don't?" he
asked uneasily, and remarked in a mutter that one had to get some sort
of show first; then brightening up, and in a loud voice he protested he
would give me no occasion to regret my confidence, which--which . . .
'"Do not misapprehend," I interrupted. "It is not in your power to make
me regret anything." There would be no regrets; but if there were, it
would be altogether my own affair: on the other hand, I wished him to
understand clearly that this arrangement, this--this--experiment, was
his own doing; he was responsible for it and no one else. "Why? Why," he
stammered, "this is the very thing that I . . ." I begged him not to
be dense, and he looked more puzzled than ever. He was in a fair way
to make life intolerable to himself . . . "Do you think so?" he asked,
disturbed; but in a moment added confidently, "I was going on though.
Was I not?" It was impossible to be angry with him: I could not help a
smile, and told him that in the old days people who went on like
this were on the way of becoming hermits in a wilderness. "Hermits be
hanged!" he commented with engaging impulsiveness. Of course he didn't
mind a wilderness. . . . "I was glad of it," I said. That was where
he would be going to. He would find it lively enough, I ventured to
promise. "Yes, yes," he said, keenly. He had shown a desire, I continued
inflexibly, to go out and shut the door after him. . . . "Did I?" he
interrupted in a strange access of gloom that seemed to envelop him
from head to foot like the shadow of a passing cloud. He was wonderfully
expressive after all. Wonderfully! "Did I?" he repeated bitterly. "You
can't say I made much noise about it. And I can keep it up, too--only,
confound it! you show me a door." . . . "Very well. Pass on," I struck
in. I could make him a solemn promise that it would be shut behind him
with a vengeance. His fate, whatever it was, would be ignored,
because the country, for all its rotten state, was not judged ripe
for interference. Once he got in, it would be for the outside world as
though he had never existed. He would have nothing but the soles of his
two feet to stand upon, and he would have first to find his ground at
that. "Never existed--that's it, by Jove," he murmured to himself. His
eyes, fastened upon my lips, sparkled. If he had thoroughly understood
the conditions, I concluded, he had better jump into the first gharry he
could see and drive on to Stein's house for his final instructions. He
flung out of the room before I had fairly finished speaking.'
| 1,980 | Chapter 22 | https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim31.asp | The chapter opens with Marlow describing Patusan, which is truly a wild and remote island. It is the place where the seventeenth century spice traders went to obtain pepper and adventure; many lost their lives in the process. Since pepper is no longer a valued treasure, the island is not presently an important trading post. Currently, the hills are inhabited by two different factions of Malays. The Sultan of the island is an "imbecile youth" whose uncles are constantly at war. The most evil of the uncles is Raja Tungku Allang, a man who lives by terrorizing all those who have to use the river. After the opening descriptions, Marlow flashes back to the time when he first told Jim about Patusan. At first the young sailor was unexcited about the opportunity, but the more he thought about the remote island, the more excited he grew. His excitement blossomed into joy, for he soon realized that Patusan offered him the chance he had been seeking. No one there would know his past history. He would be judged only by what he could perform. Marlow take Jim to Stein's house for further instructions about Patusan. While there, Jim is given a ring that Stein wants him to take to Doramin. | Notes Jim is delighted with the Patusan opportunity, for he thinks it will allow him to start afresh. Because of its remote location, the island will offer him a refuge; Jim can pretend that the world outside does not exist. Since he is a romantic, Jim is not the least bit fearful about the strange island or concerned about whether he will be successful there. He considers himself superior to ordinary men and is eager for the chance to prove his worth. Marlow takes Jim to introduce him to Stein, who gives the young man further instructions about his responsibilities in Patusan. Stein's romantic nature is again emphasized. The ring that he gives Jim to take to Doramin has great significance and plays a very important role at the end of the novel. | 209 | 133 | [
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28,054 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/58.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_57_part_0.txt | The Brothers Karamazov.book 9.chapter 5 | book 9, chapter 5 | null | {"name": "Book 9, Chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-9-chapter-5", "summary": "Parfenovich and Kirillovich then ask Dmitri about his visit to his father's. Dmitri insists that the gate to the garden was closed, while Parfenovich and Kirillovich insist that it was open. Dmitri then tells his interrogators about the secret signals that only he, Smerdyakov, his father, and Grushenka knew, the signals that would announce Grushenka's arrival to Fyodor. Parfenovich suggests that Smerdyakov may have killed his father, but Dmitri rejects this possibility because he believes Smerdyakov is a weak-willed coward. The interrogators keep pestering Dmitri, even asking him to demonstrate exactly how he sat on the garden wall when Grigory accosted him. Dmitri tells them about getting his pistols back from Perkhotin, his suicide plans, and even gives them the note he had shown to Perkhotin in Book 8, Chapter 5. The interrogators go back to the question of the money. They estimate, given how much money they've found on Dmitri right now and the amount he spent on the festivities, that he had roughly 1,500 roubles on him, not 3,000. Dmitri refuses to tell them how he got the money or why he had claimed previously that he had 3,000 roubles. They then ask Dmitri to strip so they can search his possessions.", "analysis": ""} | Chapter V. The Third Ordeal
Though Mitya spoke sullenly, it was evident that he was trying more than
ever not to forget or miss a single detail of his story. He told them how
he had leapt over the fence into his father's garden; how he had gone up
to the window; told them all that had passed under the window. Clearly,
precisely, distinctly, he described the feelings that troubled him during
those moments in the garden when he longed so terribly to know whether
Grushenka was with his father or not. But, strange to say, both the
lawyers listened now with a sort of awful reserve, looked coldly at him,
asked few questions. Mitya could gather nothing from their faces.
"They're angry and offended," he thought. "Well, bother them!"
When he described how he made up his mind at last to make the "signal" to
his father that Grushenka had come, so that he should open the window, the
lawyers paid no attention to the word "signal," as though they entirely
failed to grasp the meaning of the word in this connection: so much so,
that Mitya noticed it. Coming at last to the moment when, seeing his
father peering out of the window, his hatred flared up and he pulled the
pestle out of his pocket, he suddenly, as though of design, stopped short.
He sat gazing at the wall and was aware that their eyes were fixed upon
him.
"Well?" said the investigating lawyer. "You pulled out the weapon and ...
and what happened then?"
"Then? Why, then I murdered him ... hit him on the head and cracked his
skull.... I suppose that's your story. That's it!"
His eyes suddenly flashed. All his smothered wrath suddenly flamed up with
extraordinary violence in his soul.
"Our story?" repeated Nikolay Parfenovitch. "Well--and yours?"
Mitya dropped his eyes and was a long time silent.
"My story, gentlemen? Well, it was like this," he began softly. "Whether
it was some one's tears, or my mother prayed to God, or a good angel
kissed me at that instant, I don't know. But the devil was conquered. I
rushed from the window and ran to the fence. My father was alarmed and,
for the first time, he saw me then, cried out, and sprang back from the
window. I remember that very well. I ran across the garden to the fence
... and there Grigory caught me, when I was sitting on the fence."
At that point he raised his eyes at last and looked at his listeners. They
seemed to be staring at him with perfectly unruffled attention. A sort of
paroxysm of indignation seized on Mitya's soul.
"Why, you're laughing at me at this moment, gentlemen!" he broke off
suddenly.
"What makes you think that?" observed Nikolay Parfenovitch.
"You don't believe one word--that's why! I understand, of course, that I
have come to the vital point. The old man's lying there now with his skull
broken, while I--after dramatically describing how I wanted to kill him,
and how I snatched up the pestle--I suddenly run away from the window. A
romance! Poetry! As though one could believe a fellow on his word. Ha ha!
You are scoffers, gentlemen!"
And he swung round on his chair so that it creaked.
"And did you notice," asked the prosecutor suddenly, as though not
observing Mitya's excitement, "did you notice when you ran away from the
window, whether the door into the garden was open?"
"No, it was not open."
"It was not?"
"It was shut. And who could open it? Bah! the door. Wait a bit!" he seemed
suddenly to bethink himself, and almost with a start:
"Why, did you find the door open?"
"Yes, it was open."
"Why, who could have opened it if you did not open it yourselves?" cried
Mitya, greatly astonished.
"The door stood open, and your father's murderer undoubtedly went in at
that door, and, having accomplished the crime, went out again by the same
door," the prosecutor pronounced deliberately, as though chiseling out
each word separately. "That is perfectly clear. The murder was committed
in the room and _not through the __ window_; that is absolutely certain
from the examination that has been made, from the position of the body and
everything. There can be no doubt of that circumstance."
Mitya was absolutely dumbfounded.
"But that's utterly impossible!" he cried, completely at a loss. "I ... I
didn't go in.... I tell you positively, definitely, the door was shut the
whole time I was in the garden, and when I ran out of the garden. I only
stood at the window and saw him through the window. That's all, that's
all.... I remember to the last minute. And if I didn't remember, it would
be just the same. I know it, for no one knew the signals except
Smerdyakov, and me, and the dead man. And he wouldn't have opened the door
to any one in the world without the signals."
"Signals? What signals?" asked the prosecutor, with greedy, almost
hysterical, curiosity. He instantly lost all trace of his reserve and
dignity. He asked the question with a sort of cringing timidity. He
scented an important fact of which he had known nothing, and was already
filled with dread that Mitya might be unwilling to disclose it.
"So you didn't know!" Mitya winked at him with a malicious and mocking
smile. "What if I won't tell you? From whom could you find out? No one
knew about the signals except my father, Smerdyakov, and me: that was all.
Heaven knew, too, but it won't tell you. But it's an interesting fact.
There's no knowing what you might build on it. Ha ha! Take comfort,
gentlemen, I'll reveal it. You've some foolish idea in your hearts. You
don't know the man you have to deal with! You have to do with a prisoner
who gives evidence against himself, to his own damage! Yes, for I'm a man
of honor and you--are not."
The prosecutor swallowed this without a murmur. He was trembling with
impatience to hear the new fact. Minutely and diffusely Mitya told them
everything about the signals invented by Fyodor Pavlovitch for Smerdyakov.
He told them exactly what every tap on the window meant, tapped the
signals on the table, and when Nikolay Parfenovitch said that he supposed
he, Mitya, had tapped the signal "Grushenka has come," when he tapped to
his father, he answered precisely that he had tapped that signal, that
"Grushenka had come."
"So now you can build up your tower," Mitya broke off, and again turned
away from them contemptuously.
"So no one knew of the signals but your dead father, you, and the valet
Smerdyakov? And no one else?" Nikolay Parfenovitch inquired once more.
"Yes. The valet Smerdyakov, and Heaven. Write down about Heaven. That may
be of use. Besides, you will need God yourselves."
And they had already, of course, begun writing it down. But while they
wrote, the prosecutor said suddenly, as though pitching on a new idea:
"But if Smerdyakov also knew of these signals and you absolutely deny all
responsibility for the death of your father, was it not he, perhaps, who
knocked the signal agreed upon, induced your father to open to him, and
then ... committed the crime?"
Mitya turned upon him a look of profound irony and intense hatred. His
silent stare lasted so long that it made the prosecutor blink.
"You've caught the fox again," commented Mitya at last; "you've got the
beast by the tail. Ha ha! I see through you, Mr. Prosecutor. You thought,
of course, that I should jump at that, catch at your prompting, and shout
with all my might, 'Aie! it's Smerdyakov; he's the murderer.' Confess
that's what you thought. Confess, and I'll go on."
But the prosecutor did not confess. He held his tongue and waited.
"You're mistaken. I'm not going to shout 'It's Smerdyakov,' " said Mitya.
"And you don't even suspect him?"
"Why, do you suspect him?"
"He is suspected, too."
Mitya fixed his eyes on the floor.
"Joking apart," he brought out gloomily. "Listen. From the very beginning,
almost from the moment when I ran out to you from behind the curtain, I've
had the thought of Smerdyakov in my mind. I've been sitting here, shouting
that I'm innocent and thinking all the time 'Smerdyakov!' I can't get
Smerdyakov out of my head. In fact, I, too, thought of Smerdyakov just
now; but only for a second. Almost at once I thought, 'No, it's not
Smerdyakov.' It's not his doing, gentlemen."
"In that case is there anybody else you suspect?" Nikolay Parfenovitch
inquired cautiously.
"I don't know any one it could be, whether it's the hand of Heaven or
Satan, but ... not Smerdyakov," Mitya jerked out with decision.
"But what makes you affirm so confidently and emphatically that it's not
he?"
"From my conviction--my impression. Because Smerdyakov is a man of the most
abject character and a coward. He's not a coward, he's the epitome of all
the cowardice in the world walking on two legs. He has the heart of a
chicken. When he talked to me, he was always trembling for fear I should
kill him, though I never raised my hand against him. He fell at my feet
and blubbered; he has kissed these very boots, literally, beseeching me
'not to frighten him.' Do you hear? 'Not to frighten him.' What a thing to
say! Why, I offered him money. He's a puling chicken--sickly, epileptic,
weak-minded--a child of eight could thrash him. He has no character worth
talking about. It's not Smerdyakov, gentlemen. He doesn't care for money;
he wouldn't take my presents. Besides, what motive had he for murdering
the old man? Why, he's very likely his son, you know--his natural son. Do
you know that?"
"We have heard that legend. But you are your father's son, too, you know;
yet you yourself told every one you meant to murder him."
"That's a thrust! And a nasty, mean one, too! I'm not afraid! Oh,
gentlemen, isn't it too base of you to say that to my face? It's base,
because I told you that myself. I not only wanted to murder him, but I
might have done it. And, what's more, I went out of my way to tell you of
my own accord that I nearly murdered him. But, you see, I didn't murder
him; you see, my guardian angel saved me--that's what you've not taken into
account. And that's why it's so base of you. For I didn't kill him, I
didn't kill him! Do you hear, I did not kill him."
He was almost choking. He had not been so moved before during the whole
interrogation.
"And what has he told you, gentlemen--Smerdyakov, I mean?" he added
suddenly, after a pause. "May I ask that question?"
"You may ask any question," the prosecutor replied with frigid severity,
"any question relating to the facts of the case, and we are, I repeat,
bound to answer every inquiry you make. We found the servant Smerdyakov,
concerning whom you inquire, lying unconscious in his bed, in an epileptic
fit of extreme severity, that had recurred, possibly, ten times. The
doctor who was with us told us, after seeing him, that he may possibly not
outlive the night."
"Well, if that's so, the devil must have killed him," broke suddenly from
Mitya, as though until that moment he had been asking himself: "Was it
Smerdyakov or not?"
"We will come back to this later," Nikolay Parfenovitch decided. "Now,
wouldn't you like to continue your statement?"
Mitya asked for a rest. His request was courteously granted. After
resting, he went on with his story. But he was evidently depressed. He was
exhausted, mortified and morally shaken. To make things worse the
prosecutor exasperated him, as though intentionally, by vexatious
interruptions about "trifling points." Scarcely had Mitya described how,
sitting on the wall, he had struck Grigory on the head with the pestle,
while the old man had hold of his left leg, and how he had then jumped
down to look at him, when the prosecutor stopped him to ask him to
describe exactly how he was sitting on the wall. Mitya was surprised.
"Oh, I was sitting like this, astride, one leg on one side of the wall and
one on the other."
"And the pestle?"
"The pestle was in my hand."
"Not in your pocket? Do you remember that precisely? Was it a violent blow
you gave him?"
"It must have been a violent one. But why do you ask?"
"Would you mind sitting on the chair just as you sat on the wall then and
showing us just how you moved your arm, and in what direction?"
"You're making fun of me, aren't you?" asked Mitya, looking haughtily at
the speaker; but the latter did not flinch.
Mitya turned abruptly, sat astride on his chair, and swung his arm.
"This was how I struck him! That's how I knocked him down! What more do
you want?"
"Thank you. May I trouble you now to explain why you jumped down, with
what object, and what you had in view?"
"Oh, hang it!... I jumped down to look at the man I'd hurt ... I don't
know what for!"
"Though you were so excited and were running away?"
"Yes, though I was excited and running away."
"You wanted to help him?"
"Help!... Yes, perhaps I did want to help him.... I don't remember."
"You don't remember? Then you didn't quite know what you were doing?"
"Not at all. I remember everything--every detail. I jumped down to look at
him, and wiped his face with my handkerchief."
"We have seen your handkerchief. Did you hope to restore him to
consciousness?"
"I don't know whether I hoped it. I simply wanted to make sure whether he
was alive or not."
"Ah! You wanted to be sure? Well, what then?"
"I'm not a doctor. I couldn't decide. I ran away thinking I'd killed him.
And now he's recovered."
"Excellent," commented the prosecutor. "Thank you. That's all I wanted.
Kindly proceed."
Alas! it never entered Mitya's head to tell them, though he remembered it,
that he had jumped back from pity, and standing over the prostrate figure
had even uttered some words of regret: "You've come to grief, old
man--there's no help for it. Well, there you must lie."
The prosecutor could only draw one conclusion: that the man had jumped
back "at such a moment and in such excitement simply with the object of
ascertaining whether the _only_ witness of his crime were dead; that he
must therefore have been a man of great strength, coolness, decision and
foresight even at such a moment," ... and so on. The prosecutor was
satisfied: "I've provoked the nervous fellow by 'trifles' and he has said
more than he meant to."
With painful effort Mitya went on. But this time he was pulled up
immediately by Nikolay Parfenovitch.
"How came you to run to the servant, Fedosya Markovna, with your hands so
covered with blood, and, as it appears, your face, too?"
"Why, I didn't notice the blood at all at the time," answered Mitya.
"That's quite likely. It does happen sometimes." The prosecutor exchanged
glances with Nikolay Parfenovitch.
"I simply didn't notice. You're quite right there, prosecutor," Mitya
assented suddenly.
Next came the account of Mitya's sudden determination to "step aside" and
make way for their happiness. But he could not make up his mind to open
his heart to them as before, and tell them about "the queen of his soul."
He disliked speaking of her before these chilly persons "who were
fastening on him like bugs." And so in response to their reiterated
questions he answered briefly and abruptly:
"Well, I made up my mind to kill myself. What had I left to live for? That
question stared me in the face. Her first rightful lover had come back,
the man who wronged her but who'd hurried back to offer his love, after
five years, and atone for the wrong with marriage.... So I knew it was all
over for me.... And behind me disgrace, and that blood--Grigory's.... What
had I to live for? So I went to redeem the pistols I had pledged, to load
them and put a bullet in my brain to-morrow."
"And a grand feast the night before?"
"Yes, a grand feast the night before. Damn it all, gentlemen! Do make
haste and finish it. I meant to shoot myself not far from here, beyond the
village, and I'd planned to do it at five o'clock in the morning. And I
had a note in my pocket already. I wrote it at Perhotin's when I loaded my
pistols. Here's the letter. Read it! It's not for you I tell it," he added
contemptuously. He took it from his waistcoat pocket and flung it on the
table. The lawyers read it with curiosity, and, as is usual, added it to
the papers connected with the case.
"And you didn't even think of washing your hands at Perhotin's? You were
not afraid then of arousing suspicion?"
"What suspicion? Suspicion or not, I should have galloped here just the
same, and shot myself at five o'clock, and you wouldn't have been in time
to do anything. If it hadn't been for what's happened to my father, you
would have known nothing about it, and wouldn't have come here. Oh, it's
the devil's doing. It was the devil murdered father, it was through the
devil that you found it out so soon. How did you manage to get here so
quick? It's marvelous, a dream!"
"Mr. Perhotin informed us that when you came to him, you held in your
hands ... your blood-stained hands ... your money ... a lot of money ... a
bundle of hundred-rouble notes, and that his servant-boy saw it too."
"That's true, gentlemen. I remember it was so."
"Now, there's one little point presents itself. Can you inform us,"
Nikolay Parfenovitch began, with extreme gentleness, "where did you get so
much money all of a sudden, when it appears from the facts, from the
reckoning of time, that you had not been home?"
The prosecutor's brows contracted at the question being asked so plainly,
but he did not interrupt Nikolay Parfenovitch.
"No, I didn't go home," answered Mitya, apparently perfectly composed, but
looking at the floor.
"Allow me then to repeat my question," Nikolay Parfenovitch went on as
though creeping up to the subject. "Where were you able to procure such a
sum all at once, when by your own confession, at five o'clock the same day
you--"
"I was in want of ten roubles and pledged my pistols with Perhotin, and
then went to Madame Hohlakov to borrow three thousand which she wouldn't
give me, and so on, and all the rest of it," Mitya interrupted sharply.
"Yes, gentlemen, I was in want of it, and suddenly thousands turned up,
eh? Do you know, gentlemen, you're both afraid now 'what if he won't tell
us where he got it?' That's just how it is. I'm not going to tell you,
gentlemen. You've guessed right. You'll never know," said Mitya, chipping
out each word with extraordinary determination. The lawyers were silent
for a moment.
"You must understand, Mr. Karamazov, that it is of vital importance for us
to know," said Nikolay Parfenovitch, softly and suavely.
"I understand; but still I won't tell you."
The prosecutor, too, intervened, and again reminded the prisoner that he
was at liberty to refuse to answer questions, if he thought it to his
interest, and so on. But in view of the damage he might do himself by his
silence, especially in a case of such importance as--
"And so on, gentlemen, and so on. Enough! I've heard that rigmarole
before," Mitya interrupted again. "I can see for myself how important it
is, and that this is the vital point, and still I won't say."
"What is it to us? It's not our business, but yours. You are doing
yourself harm," observed Nikolay Parfenovitch nervously.
"You see, gentlemen, joking apart"--Mitya lifted his eyes and looked firmly
at them both--"I had an inkling from the first that we should come to
loggerheads at this point. But at first when I began to give my evidence,
it was all still far away and misty; it was all floating, and I was so
simple that I began with the supposition of mutual confidence existing
between us. Now I can see for myself that such confidence is out of the
question, for in any case we were bound to come to this cursed stumbling-
block. And now we've come to it! It's impossible and there's an end of it!
But I don't blame you. You can't believe it all simply on my word. I
understand that, of course."
He relapsed into gloomy silence.
"Couldn't you, without abandoning your resolution to be silent about the
chief point, could you not, at the same time, give us some slight hint as
to the nature of the motives which are strong enough to induce you to
refuse to answer, at a crisis so full of danger to you?"
Mitya smiled mournfully, almost dreamily.
"I'm much more good-natured than you think, gentlemen. I'll tell you the
reason why and give you that hint, though you don't deserve it. I won't
speak of that, gentlemen, because it would be a stain on my honor. The
answer to the question where I got the money would expose me to far
greater disgrace than the murder and robbing of my father, if I had
murdered and robbed him. That's why I can't tell you. I can't for fear of
disgrace. What, gentlemen, are you going to write that down?"
"Yes, we'll write it down," lisped Nikolay Parfenovitch.
"You ought not to write that down about 'disgrace.' I only told you that
in the goodness of my heart. I needn't have told you. I made you a present
of it, so to speak, and you pounce upon it at once. Oh, well, write--write
what you like," he concluded, with scornful disgust. "I'm not afraid of
you and I can still hold up my head before you."
"And can't you tell us the nature of that disgrace?" Nikolay Parfenovitch
hazarded.
The prosecutor frowned darkly.
"No, no, _c'est fini_, don't trouble yourselves. It's not worth while
soiling one's hands. I have soiled myself enough through you as it is.
You're not worth it--no one is ... Enough, gentlemen. I'm not going on."
This was said too peremptorily. Nikolay Parfenovitch did not insist
further, but from Ippolit Kirillovitch's eyes he saw that he had not given
up hope.
"Can you not, at least, tell us what sum you had in your hands when you
went into Mr. Perhotin's--how many roubles exactly?"
"I can't tell you that."
"You spoke to Mr. Perhotin, I believe, of having received three thousand
from Madame Hohlakov."
"Perhaps I did. Enough, gentlemen. I won't say how much I had."
"Will you be so good then as to tell us how you came here and what you
have done since you arrived?"
"Oh! you might ask the people here about that. But I'll tell you if you
like."
He proceeded to do so, but we won't repeat his story. He told it dryly and
curtly. Of the raptures of his love he said nothing, but told them that he
abandoned his determination to shoot himself, owing to "new factors in the
case." He told the story without going into motives or details. And this
time the lawyers did not worry him much. It was obvious that there was no
essential point of interest to them here.
"We shall verify all that. We will come back to it during the examination
of the witnesses, which will, of course, take place in your presence,"
said Nikolay Parfenovitch in conclusion. "And now allow me to request you
to lay on the table everything in your possession, especially all the
money you still have about you."
"My money, gentlemen? Certainly. I understand that that is necessary. I'm
surprised, indeed, that you haven't inquired about it before. It's true I
couldn't get away anywhere. I'm sitting here where I can be seen. But
here's my money--count it--take it. That's all, I think."
He turned it all out of his pockets; even the small change--two pieces of
twenty copecks--he pulled out of his waistcoat pocket. They counted the
money, which amounted to eight hundred and thirty-six roubles, and forty
copecks.
"And is that all?" asked the investigating lawyer.
"Yes."
"You stated just now in your evidence that you spent three hundred roubles
at Plotnikovs'. You gave Perhotin ten, your driver twenty, here you lost
two hundred, then...."
Nikolay Parfenovitch reckoned it all up. Mitya helped him readily. They
recollected every farthing and included it in the reckoning. Nikolay
Parfenovitch hurriedly added up the total.
"With this eight hundred you must have had about fifteen hundred at
first?"
"I suppose so," snapped Mitya.
"How is it they all assert there was much more?"
"Let them assert it."
"But you asserted it yourself."
"Yes, I did, too."
"We will compare all this with the evidence of other persons not yet
examined. Don't be anxious about your money. It will be properly taken
care of and be at your disposal at the conclusion of ... what is beginning
... if it appears, or, so to speak, is proved that you have undisputed
right to it. Well, and now...."
Nikolay Parfenovitch suddenly got up, and informed Mitya firmly that it
was his duty and obligation to conduct a minute and thorough search "of
your clothes and everything else...."
"By all means, gentlemen. I'll turn out all my pockets, if you like."
And he did, in fact, begin turning out his pockets.
"It will be necessary to take off your clothes, too."
"What! Undress? Ugh! Damn it! Won't you search me as I am! Can't you?"
"It's utterly impossible, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. You must take off your
clothes."
"As you like," Mitya submitted gloomily; "only, please, not here, but
behind the curtains. Who will search them?"
"Behind the curtains, of course."
Nikolay Parfenovitch bent his head in assent. His small face wore an
expression of peculiar solemnity.
| 4,005 | Book 9, Chapter 5 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-9-chapter-5 | Parfenovich and Kirillovich then ask Dmitri about his visit to his father's. Dmitri insists that the gate to the garden was closed, while Parfenovich and Kirillovich insist that it was open. Dmitri then tells his interrogators about the secret signals that only he, Smerdyakov, his father, and Grushenka knew, the signals that would announce Grushenka's arrival to Fyodor. Parfenovich suggests that Smerdyakov may have killed his father, but Dmitri rejects this possibility because he believes Smerdyakov is a weak-willed coward. The interrogators keep pestering Dmitri, even asking him to demonstrate exactly how he sat on the garden wall when Grigory accosted him. Dmitri tells them about getting his pistols back from Perkhotin, his suicide plans, and even gives them the note he had shown to Perkhotin in Book 8, Chapter 5. The interrogators go back to the question of the money. They estimate, given how much money they've found on Dmitri right now and the amount he spent on the festivities, that he had roughly 1,500 roubles on him, not 3,000. Dmitri refuses to tell them how he got the money or why he had claimed previously that he had 3,000 roubles. They then ask Dmitri to strip so they can search his possessions. | null | 204 | 1 | [
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28,054 | false | sparknotes | all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/54.txt | finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_11_part_1.txt | The Brothers Karamazov.book 9.chapter 1 | book 9, chapter 1 | null | {"name": "book 9, Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section12/", "summary": "The Start of the Official Perkhotin's Career After Dmitri leaves Perkhotin, the official is naturally suspicious. He wonders how Dmitri got his hands on such a large amount of money, when he had been so obviously broke just hours before. Perkhotin snoops after Dmitri, learning about the brass pestle from Grushenka's maid. Then, rather than going to Fyodor Pavlovich's, he goes to Madame Khokhlakov's house, where he learns that Madame Khokhlakov refused to give Dmitri a loan. Perkhotin remembers that Fyodor Pavlovich has kept 3,000 rubles on hand in his attempt to seduce Grushenka, and he suddenly worries that Dmitri has stolen the money from his father", "analysis": ""} | Book IX. The Preliminary Investigation Chapter I. The Beginning Of Perhotin's Official Career
Pyotr Ilyitch Perhotin, whom we left knocking at the strong locked gates
of the widow Morozov's house, ended, of course, by making himself heard.
Fenya, who was still excited by the fright she had had two hours before,
and too much "upset" to go to bed, was almost frightened into hysterics on
hearing the furious knocking at the gate. Though she had herself seen him
drive away, she fancied that it must be Dmitri Fyodorovitch knocking
again, no one else could knock so savagely. She ran to the house-porter,
who had already waked up and gone out to the gate, and began imploring him
not to open it. But having questioned Pyotr Ilyitch, and learned that he
wanted to see Fenya on very "important business," the man made up his mind
at last to open. Pyotr Ilyitch was admitted into Fenya's kitchen, but the
girl begged him to allow the house-porter to be present, "because of her
misgivings." He began questioning her and at once learnt the most vital
fact, that is, that when Dmitri Fyodorovitch had run out to look for
Grushenka, he had snatched up a pestle from the mortar, and that when he
returned, the pestle was not with him and his hands were smeared with
blood.
"And the blood was simply flowing, dripping from him, dripping!" Fenya
kept exclaiming. This horrible detail was simply the product of her
disordered imagination. But although not "dripping," Pyotr Ilyitch had
himself seen those hands stained with blood, and had helped to wash them.
Moreover, the question he had to decide was not how soon the blood had
dried, but where Dmitri Fyodorovitch had run with the pestle, or rather,
whether it really was to Fyodor Pavlovitch's, and how he could
satisfactorily ascertain. Pyotr Ilyitch persisted in returning to this
point, and though he found out nothing conclusive, yet he carried away a
conviction that Dmitri Fyodorovitch could have gone nowhere but to his
father's house, and that therefore something must have happened there.
"And when he came back," Fenya added with excitement, "I told him the
whole story, and then I began asking him, 'Why have you got blood on your
hands, Dmitri Fyodorovitch?' and he answered that that was human blood,
and that he had just killed some one. He confessed it all to me, and
suddenly ran off like a madman. I sat down and began thinking, where's he
run off to now like a madman? He'll go to Mokroe, I thought, and kill my
mistress there. I ran out to beg him not to kill her. I was running to his
lodgings, but I looked at Plotnikov's shop, and saw him just setting off,
and there was no blood on his hands then." (Fenya had noticed this and
remembered it.) Fenya's old grandmother confirmed her evidence as far as
she was capable. After asking some further questions, Pyotr Ilyitch left
the house, even more upset and uneasy than he had been when he entered it.
The most direct and the easiest thing for him to do would have been to go
straight to Fyodor Pavlovitch's, to find out whether anything had happened
there, and if so, what; and only to go to the police captain, as Pyotr
Ilyitch firmly intended doing, when he had satisfied himself of the fact.
But the night was dark, Fyodor Pavlovitch's gates were strong, and he
would have to knock again. His acquaintance with Fyodor Pavlovitch was of
the slightest, and what if, after he had been knocking, they opened to
him, and nothing had happened? Then Fyodor Pavlovitch in his jeering way
would go telling the story all over the town, how a stranger, called
Perhotin, had broken in upon him at midnight to ask if any one had killed
him. It would make a scandal. And scandal was what Pyotr Ilyitch dreaded
more than anything in the world.
Yet the feeling that possessed him was so strong, that though he stamped
his foot angrily and swore at himself, he set off again, not to Fyodor
Pavlovitch's but to Madame Hohlakov's. He decided that if she denied
having just given Dmitri Fyodorovitch three thousand roubles, he would go
straight to the police captain, but if she admitted having given him the
money, he would go home and let the matter rest till next morning.
It is, of course, perfectly evident that there was even more likelihood of
causing scandal by going at eleven o'clock at night to a fashionable lady,
a complete stranger, and perhaps rousing her from her bed to ask her an
amazing question, than by going to Fyodor Pavlovitch. But that is just how
it is, sometimes, especially in cases like the present one, with the
decisions of the most precise and phlegmatic people. Pyotr Ilyitch was by
no means phlegmatic at that moment. He remembered all his life how a
haunting uneasiness gradually gained possession of him, growing more and
more painful and driving him on, against his will. Yet he kept cursing
himself, of course, all the way for going to this lady, but "I will get to
the bottom of it, I will!" he repeated for the tenth time, grinding his
teeth, and he carried out his intention.
It was exactly eleven o'clock when he entered Madame Hohlakov's house. He
was admitted into the yard pretty quickly, but, in response to his inquiry
whether the lady was still up, the porter could give no answer, except
that she was usually in bed by that time.
"Ask at the top of the stairs. If the lady wants to receive you, she'll
receive you. If she won't, she won't."
Pyotr Ilyitch went up, but did not find things so easy here. The footman
was unwilling to take in his name, but finally called a maid. Pyotr
Ilyitch politely but insistently begged her to inform her lady that an
official, living in the town, called Perhotin, had called on particular
business, and that if it were not of the greatest importance he would not
have ventured to come. "Tell her in those words, in those words exactly,"
he asked the girl.
She went away. He remained waiting in the entry. Madame Hohlakov herself
was already in her bedroom, though not yet asleep. She had felt upset ever
since Mitya's visit, and had a presentiment that she would not get through
the night without the sick headache which always, with her, followed such
excitement. She was surprised on hearing the announcement from the maid.
She irritably declined to see him, however, though the unexpected visit at
such an hour, of an "official living in the town," who was a total
stranger, roused her feminine curiosity intensely. But this time Pyotr
Ilyitch was as obstinate as a mule. He begged the maid most earnestly to
take another message in these very words:
"That he had come on business of the greatest importance, and that Madame
Hohlakov might have cause to regret it later, if she refused to see him
now."
"I plunged headlong," he described it afterwards.
The maid, gazing at him in amazement, went to take his message again.
Madame Hohlakov was impressed. She thought a little, asked what he looked
like, and learned that he was "very well dressed, young and so polite." We
may note, parenthetically, that Pyotr Ilyitch was a rather good-looking
young man, and well aware of the fact. Madame Hohlakov made up her mind to
see him. She was in her dressing-gown and slippers, but she flung a black
shawl over her shoulders. "The official" was asked to walk into the
drawing-room, the very room in which Mitya had been received shortly
before. The lady came to meet her visitor, with a sternly inquiring
countenance, and, without asking him to sit down, began at once with the
question:
"What do you want?"
"I have ventured to disturb you, madam, on a matter concerning our common
acquaintance, Dmitri Fyodorovitch Karamazov," Perhotin began.
But he had hardly uttered the name, when the lady's face showed signs of
acute irritation. She almost shrieked, and interrupted him in a fury:
"How much longer am I to be worried by that awful man?" she cried
hysterically. "How dare you, sir, how could you venture to disturb a lady
who is a stranger to you, in her own house at such an hour!... And to
force yourself upon her to talk of a man who came here, to this very
drawing-room, only three hours ago, to murder me, and went stamping out of
the room, as no one would go out of a decent house. Let me tell you, sir,
that I shall lodge a complaint against you, that I will not let it pass.
Kindly leave me at once.... I am a mother.... I ... I--"
"Murder! then he tried to murder you, too?"
"Why, has he killed somebody else?" Madame Hohlakov asked impulsively.
"If you would kindly listen, madam, for half a moment, I'll explain it all
in a couple of words," answered Perhotin, firmly. "At five o'clock this
afternoon Dmitri Fyodorovitch borrowed ten roubles from me, and I know for
a fact he had no money. Yet at nine o'clock, he came to see me with a
bundle of hundred-rouble notes in his hand, about two or three thousand
roubles. His hands and face were all covered with blood, and he looked
like a madman. When I asked him where he had got so much money, he
answered that he had just received it from you, that you had given him a
sum of three thousand to go to the gold-mines...."
Madame Hohlakov's face assumed an expression of intense and painful
excitement.
"Good God! He must have killed his old father!" she cried, clasping her
hands. "I have never given him money, never! Oh, run, run!... Don't say
another word! Save the old man ... run to his father ... run!"
"Excuse me, madam, then you did not give him money? You remember for a
fact that you did not give him any money?"
"No, I didn't, I didn't! I refused to give it him, for he could not
appreciate it. He ran out in a fury, stamping. He rushed at me, but I
slipped away.... And let me tell you, as I wish to hide nothing from you
now, that he positively spat at me. Can you fancy that! But why are we
standing? Ah, sit down."
"Excuse me, I...."
"Or better run, run, you must run and save the poor old man from an awful
death!"
"But if he has killed him already?"
"Ah, good heavens, yes! Then what are we to do now? What do you think we
must do now?"
Meantime she had made Pyotr Ilyitch sit down and sat down herself, facing
him. Briefly, but fairly clearly, Pyotr Ilyitch told her the history of
the affair, that part of it at least which he had himself witnessed. He
described, too, his visit to Fenya, and told her about the pestle. All
these details produced an overwhelming effect on the distracted lady, who
kept uttering shrieks, and covering her face with her hands....
"Would you believe it, I foresaw all this! I have that special faculty,
whatever I imagine comes to pass. And how often I've looked at that awful
man and always thought, that man will end by murdering me. And now it's
happened ... that is, if he hasn't murdered me, but only his own father,
it's only because the finger of God preserved me, and what's more, he was
ashamed to murder me because, in this very place, I put the holy ikon from
the relics of the holy martyr, Saint Varvara, on his neck.... And to think
how near I was to death at that minute, I went close up to him and he
stretched out his neck to me!... Do you know, Pyotr Ilyitch (I think you
said your name was Pyotr Ilyitch), I don't believe in miracles, but that
ikon and this unmistakable miracle with me now--that shakes me, and I'm
ready to believe in anything you like. Have you heard about Father
Zossima?... But I don't know what I'm saying ... and only fancy, with the
ikon on his neck he spat at me.... He only spat, it's true, he didn't
murder me and ... he dashed away! But what shall we do, what must we do
now? What do you think?"
Pyotr Ilyitch got up, and announced that he was going straight to the
police captain, to tell him all about it, and leave him to do what he
thought fit.
"Oh, he's an excellent man, excellent! Mihail Makarovitch, I know him. Of
course, he's the person to go to. How practical you are, Pyotr Ilyitch!
How well you've thought of everything! I should never have thought of it
in your place!"
"Especially as I know the police captain very well, too," observed Pyotr
Ilyitch, who still continued to stand, and was obviously anxious to escape
as quickly as possible from the impulsive lady, who would not let him say
good-by and go away.
"And be sure, be sure," she prattled on, "to come back and tell me what
you see there, and what you find out ... what comes to light ... how
they'll try him ... and what he's condemned to.... Tell me, we have no
capital punishment, have we? But be sure to come, even if it's at three
o'clock at night, at four, at half-past four.... Tell them to wake me, to
wake me, to shake me, if I don't get up.... But, good heavens, I shan't
sleep! But wait, hadn't I better come with you?"
"N--no. But if you would write three lines with your own hand, stating that
you did not give Dmitri Fyodorovitch money, it might, perhaps, be of use
... in case it's needed...."
"To be sure!" Madame Hohlakov skipped, delighted, to her bureau. "And you
know I'm simply struck, amazed at your resourcefulness, your good sense in
such affairs. Are you in the service here? I'm delighted to think that
you're in the service here!"
And still speaking, she scribbled on half a sheet of notepaper the
following lines:
I've never in my life lent to that unhappy man, Dmitri
Fyodorovitch Karamazov (for, in spite of all, he is unhappy),
three thousand roubles to-day. I've never given him money, never:
That I swear by all that's holy!
K. HOHLAKOV.
"Here's the note!" she turned quickly to Pyotr Ilyitch. "Go, save him.
It's a noble deed on your part!"
And she made the sign of the cross three times over him. She ran out to
accompany him to the passage.
"How grateful I am to you! You can't think how grateful I am to you for
having come to me, first. How is it I haven't met you before? I shall feel
flattered at seeing you at my house in the future. How delightful it is
that you are living here!... Such precision! Such practical ability!...
They must appreciate you, they must understand you. If there's anything I
can do, believe me ... oh, I love young people! I'm in love with young
people! The younger generation are the one prop of our suffering country.
Her one hope.... Oh, go, go!..."
But Pyotr Ilyitch had already run away or she would not have let him go so
soon. Yet Madame Hohlakov had made a rather agreeable impression on him,
which had somewhat softened his anxiety at being drawn into such an
unpleasant affair. Tastes differ, as we all know. "She's by no means so
elderly," he thought, feeling pleased, "on the contrary I should have
taken her for her daughter."
As for Madame Hohlakov, she was simply enchanted by the young man. "Such
sense! such exactness! in so young a man! in our day! and all that with
such manners and appearance! People say the young people of to-day are no
good for anything, but here's an example!" etc. So she simply forgot this
"dreadful affair," and it was only as she was getting into bed, that,
suddenly recalling "how near death she had been," she exclaimed: "Ah, it
is awful, awful!"
But she fell at once into a sound, sweet sleep.
I would not, however, have dwelt on such trivial and irrelevant details,
if this eccentric meeting of the young official with the by no means
elderly widow had not subsequently turned out to be the foundation of the
whole career of that practical and precise young man. His story is
remembered to this day with amazement in our town, and I shall perhaps
have something to say about it, when I have finished my long history of
the Brothers Karamazov.
| 2,592 | book 9, Chapter 1 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section12/ | The Start of the Official Perkhotin's Career After Dmitri leaves Perkhotin, the official is naturally suspicious. He wonders how Dmitri got his hands on such a large amount of money, when he had been so obviously broke just hours before. Perkhotin snoops after Dmitri, learning about the brass pestle from Grushenka's maid. Then, rather than going to Fyodor Pavlovich's, he goes to Madame Khokhlakov's house, where he learns that Madame Khokhlakov refused to give Dmitri a loan. Perkhotin remembers that Fyodor Pavlovich has kept 3,000 rubles on hand in his attempt to seduce Grushenka, and he suddenly worries that Dmitri has stolen the money from his father | null | 107 | 1 | [
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23,042 | false | sparknotes | all_chapterized_books/23042-chapters/3.txt | finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Tempest/section_3_part_0.txt | The Tempest.act ii.scene i | act ii, scene i | null | {"name": "Act II, scene i", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210131162607/https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/tempest/section4/", "summary": "While Ferdinand is falling in love with Miranda, Alonso, Sebastian, Antonio, Gonzalo, and other shipwrecked lords search for him on another part of the island. Alonso is quite despondent and unreceptive to the good-natured Gonzalo's attempts to cheer him up. Gonzalo meets resistance from Antonio and Sebastian as well. These two childishly mock Gonzalo's suggestion that the island is a good place to be and that they are all lucky to have survived. Alonso finally brings the repartee to a halt when he bursts out at Gonzalo and openly expresses regret at having married away his daughter in Tunis. Francisco, a minor lord, pipes up at this point that he saw Ferdinand swimming valiantly after the wreck, but this does not comfort Alonso. Sebastian and Antonio continue to provide little help. Sebastian tells his brother that he is indeed to blame for Ferdinand's death--if he had not married his daughter to an African , none of this would have happened. Gonzalo tells the lords that they are only making the situation worse and attempts to change the subject, discussing what he might do if he were the lord of the island. Antonio and Sebastian mock his utopian vision. Ariel then enters, playing \"solemn music\" , and gradually all but Sebastian and Antonio fall asleep. Seeing the vulnerability of his sleeping companions, Antonio tries to persuade Sebastian to kill his brother. He rationalizes this scheme by explaining that Claribel, who is now Queen of Tunis, is too far from Naples to inherit the kingdom should her father die, and as a result, Sebastian would be the heir to the throne. Sebastian begins to warm to the idea, especially after Antonio tells him that usurping Prospero's dukedom was the best move he ever made. Sebastian wonders aloud whether he will be afflicted by conscience, but Antonio dismisses this out of hand. Sebastian is at last convinced, and the two men draw their swords. Sebastian, however, seems to have second thoughts at the last moment and stops. While he and Antonio confer, Ariel enters with music, singing in Gonzalo's ear that a conspiracy is under way and that he should \"Awake, awake!\" . Gonzalo wakes and shouts \"Preserve the King!\" His exclamation wakes everyone else . Sebastian quickly concocts a story about hearing a loud noise that caused him and Antonio to draw their swords. Gonzalo is obviously suspicious but does not challenge the lords. The group continues its search for Ferdinand.", "analysis": "Analysis As in the storm scene in Act I, scene i, Shakespeare emphasizes and undercuts the capacity of the bare stage to create a convincing illusion throughout Act II, scene i. As the shipwrecked mariners look around the island, they describe it in poetry of great imagistic richness, giving the audience an imaginary picture of the setting of the play. Even so, they disagree about what they see, and even argue over what the island actually looks like. Adrian finds it to be of \"subtle, tender, and delicate temperance,\" where \"the air breathes upon us . . . most sweetly\" . Gonzalo says that the grass is \"lush and lusty\" and \"green\" . Antonio and Sebastian, however, cynical to the last, refuse to let these descriptions rest in the audience's mind. They say that the air smells \"as 'twere perfumed by a fen\" , meaning a swamp, and that the ground \"indeed is tawny\" , or brown. The remarks of Antonio and Sebastian could be easily discounted as mere grumpiness, were it not for the fact that Gonzalo and Adrian do seem at times to be stretching the truth. .) Thus the bareness of the stage allows the beauty and other qualities of the island to be largely a matter of perspective. The island may be a paradise, but only if one chooses to see it that way. Shakespeare uses this ambiguous setting for several different purposes. First, the setting heightens the sense of wonder and mystery that surrounds the magical island. It also gives each audience member a great deal of freedom to imagine the island as he or she so chooses. Most importantly, however, it enables the island to work as a reflection of character--we know a great deal about different characters simply from how they choose to see the island. Hence the dark, sensitive Caliban can find it both a place of terror--as when he enters, frightened and overworked in Act II, scene ii--and of great beauty--as in his \"the isle is full of noises\" speech . Therefore, both Gonzalo and Trinculo , colonially minded, are so easily able to imagine it as the site of their own utopian societies. Gonzalo's fantasy about the plantation he would like to build on the island is a remarkable poetic evocation of a utopian society, in which no one would work, all people would be equal and live off the land, and all women would be \"innocent and pure.\" This vision indicates something of Gonzalo's own innocence and purity. Shakespeare treats the old man's idea of the island as a kind of lovely dream, in which the frustrations and obstructions of life would be removed and all could live naturally and authentically. Though Gonzalo's idea is not presented as a practical possibility , Gonzalo's dream contrasts to his credit with the power-obsessed ideas of most of the other characters, including Prospero. Gonzalo would do away with the very master-servant motif that lies at the heart of The Tempest. The mockery dished out by Antonio and Sebastian reveals, by contrast, something of the noblemen's cynicism and lack of feeling. Where Gonzalo is simply grateful and optimistic about having survived the shipwreck, Antonio and Sebastian seem mainly to be annoyed by it, though not so annoyed that they stop their incessant jesting with each other. Gonzalo says that they are simply loudmouthed jokers, who \"would lift the moon out of her sphere, if she would continue in it five weeks without changing\" . By conspiring against the king, however, they reveal themselves as more sinister and greedier than Gonzalo recognizes, using their verbal wit to cover up their darker and more wicked impulses. However, their greediness for power is both foolish and clumsy. As they attempt to cover their treachery with the story of the \"bellowing / Like bulls, or rather lions\" , it seems hard to believe that Antonio ever could have risen successfully against his brother. The absurdly aggressive behavior of Antonio and Sebastian makes Prospero's exercise of power in the previous and following scenes seem necessary. It also puts Alonso in a sympathetic position. He is a potential victim of the duo's treachery, a fact that helps the audience believe his conversion when he reconciles with Prospero at the end."} | ACT II. SCENE I.
_Another part of the island._
_Enter ALONSO, SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, GONZALO, ADRIAN, FRANCISCO,
and others._
_Gon._ Beseech you, sir, be merry; you have cause,
So have we all, of joy; for our escape
Is much beyond our loss. Our hint of woe
Is common; every day, some sailor's wife,
The masters of some merchant, and the merchant, 5
Have just our theme of woe; but for the miracle,
I mean our preservation, few in millions
Can speak like us: then wisely, good sir, weigh
Our sorrow with our comfort.
_Alon._ Prithee, peace.
_Seb._ He receives comfort like cold porridge. 10
_Ant._ The visitor will not give him o'er so.
_Seb._ Look, he's winding up the watch of his wit; by
and by it will strike.
_Gon._ Sir,--
_Seb._ One: tell. 15
_Gon._ When every grief is entertain'd that's offer'd,
Comes to the entertainer--
_Seb._ A dollar.
_Gon._ Dolour comes to him, indeed: you have spoken
truer than you purposed. 20
_Seb._ You have taken it wiselier than I meant you should.
_Gon._ Therefore, my lord,--
_Ant._ Fie, what a spendthrift is he of his tongue!
_Alon._ I prithee, spare.
_Gon._ Well, I have done: but yet,-- 25
_Seb._ He will be talking.
_Ant._ Which, of he or Adrian, for a good wager, first
begins to crow?
_Seb._ The old cock.
_Ant._ The cockerel. 30
_Seb._ Done. The wager?
_Ant._ A laughter.
_Seb._ A match!
_Adr._ Though this island seem to be desert,--
_Seb._ Ha, ha, ha!--So, you're paid. 35
_Adr._ Uninhabitable, and almost inaccessible,--
_Seb._ Yet,--
_Adr._ Yet,--
_Ant._ He could not miss't.
_Adr._ It must needs be of subtle, tender and delicate 40
temperance.
_Ant._ Temperance was a delicate wench.
_Seb._ Ay, and a subtle; as he most learnedly delivered.
_Adr._ The air breathes upon us here most sweetly.
_Seb._ As if it had lungs, and rotten ones. 45
_Ant._ Or as 'twere perfumed by a fen.
_Gon._ Here is every thing advantageous to life.
_Ant._ True; save means to live.
_Seb._ Of that there's none, or little.
_Gon._ How lush and lusty the grass looks! how green! 50
_Ant._ The ground, indeed, is tawny.
_Seb._ With an eye of green in't.
_Ant._ He misses not much.
_Seb._ No; he doth but mistake the truth totally.
_Gon._ But the rarity of it is,--which is indeed almost 55
beyond credit,--
_Seb._ As many vouched rarities are.
_Gon._ That our garments, being, as they were, drenched
in the sea, hold, notwithstanding, their freshness and glosses,
being rather new-dyed than stained with salt water. 60
_Ant._ If but one of his pockets could speak, would it
not say he lies?
_Seb._ Ay, or very falsely pocket up his report.
_Gon._ Methinks our garments are now as fresh as when
we put them on first in Afric, at the marriage of the king's 65
fair daughter Claribel to the King of Tunis.
_Seb._ 'Twas a sweet marriage, and we prosper well in
our return.
_Adr._ Tunis was never graced before with such a paragon
to their queen. 70
_Gon._ Not since widow Dido's time.
_Ant._ Widow! a pox o' that! How came that widow
in? widow Dido!
_Seb._ What if he had said 'widower Aeneas' too? Good
Lord, how you take it! 75
_Adr._ 'Widow Dido' said you? you make me study of
that: she was of Carthage, not of Tunis.
_Gon._ This Tunis, sir, was Carthage.
_Adr._ Carthage?
_Gon._ I assure you, Carthage. 80
_Seb._ His word is more than the miraculous harp; he
hath raised the wall, and houses too.
_Ant._ What impossible matter will he make easy next?
_Seb._ I think he will carry this island home in his
pocket, and give it his son for an apple. 85
_Ant._ And, sowing the kernels of it in the sea, bring
forth more islands.
_Gon._ Ay.
_Ant._ Why, in good time.
_Gon._ Sir, we were talking that our garments seem now 90
as fresh as when we were at Tunis at the marriage of your
daughter, who is now queen.
_Ant._ And the rarest that e'er came there.
_Seb._ Bate, I beseech you, widow Dido.
_Ant._ O, widow Dido! ay, widow Dido. 95
_Gon._ Is not, sir, my doublet as fresh as the first day I
wore it? I mean, in a sort.
_Ant._ That sort was well fished for.
_Gon._ When I wore it at your daughter's marriage?
_Alon._ You cram these words into mine ears against 100
The stomach of my sense. Would I had never
Married my daughter there! for, coming thence,
My son is lost, and, in my rate, she too.
Who is so far from Italy removed
I ne'er again shall see her. O thou mine heir 105
Of Naples and of Milan, what strange fish
Hath made his meal on thee?
_Fran._ Sir, he may live:
I saw him beat the surges under him,
And ride upon their backs; he trod the water.
Whose enmity he flung aside, and breasted 110
The surge most swoln that met him; his bold head
'Bove the contentious waves he kept, and oar'd
Himself with his good arms in lusty stroke
To the shore, that o'er his wave-worn basis bow'd,
As stooping to relieve him: I not doubt 115
He came alive to land.
_Alon._ No, no, he's gone.
_Seb._ Sir, you may thank yourself for this great loss,
That would not bless our Europe with your daughter,
But rather lose her to an African;
Where she, at least, is banish'd from your eye, 120
Who hath cause to wet the grief on't.
_Alon._ Prithee, peace.
_Seb._ You were kneel'd to, and importuned otherwise,
By all of us; and the fair soul herself
Weigh'd between loathness and obedience, at
Which end o' the beam should bow. We have lost your son, 125
I fear, for ever: Milan and Naples have
More widows in them of this business' making
Than we bring men to comfort them:
The fault's your own.
_Alon._ So is the dear'st o' the loss.
_Gon._ My lord Sebastian, 130
The truth you speak doth lack some gentleness,
And time to speak it in: you rub the sore,
When you should bring the plaster.
_Seb._ Very well.
_Ant._ And most chirurgeonly.
_Gon._ It is foul weather in us all, good sir, 135
When you are cloudy.
_Seb._ Foul weather?
_Ant._ Very foul.
_Gon._ Had I plantation of this isle, my lord,--
_Ant._ He'ld sow't with nettle-seed.
_Seb._ Or docks, or mallows.
_Gon._ And were the king on't, what would I do?
_Seb._ 'Scape being drunk for want of wine. 140
_Gon._ I' the commonwealth I would by contraries
Execute all things; for no kind of traffic
Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
And use of service, none; contract, succession, 145
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;
No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;
No occupation; all men idle, all;
And women too, but innocent and pure;
No sovereignty;-- 150
_Seb._ Yet he would be king on't.
_Ant._ The latter end of his commonwealth forgets the
beginning.
_Gon._ All things in common nature should produce
Without sweat or endeavour: treason, felony,
Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine, 155
Would I not have; but nature should bring forth,
Of its own kind, all foison, all abundance,
To feed my innocent people.
_Seb._ No marrying 'mong his subjects?
_Ant._ None, man; all idle; whores and knaves. 160
_Gon._ I would with such perfection govern, sir,
To excel the golden age.
_Seb._ 'Save his majesty!
_Ant._ Long live Gonzalo!
_Gon._ And,--do you mark me, sir?
_Alon._ Prithee, no more: thou dost talk nothing to me.
_Gon._ I do well believe your highness; and did it to minister 165
occasion to these gentlemen, who are of such sensible
and nimble lungs that they always use to laugh at nothing.
_Ant._ 'Twas you we laughed at.
_Gon._ Who in this kind of merry fooling am nothing to
you: so you may continue, and laugh at nothing still. 170
_Ant._ What a blow was there given!
_Seb._ An it had not fallen flat-long.
_Gon._ You are gentlemen of brave mettle; you would
lift the moon out of her sphere, if she would continue in it
five weeks without changing. 175
_Enter ARIEL (invisible) playing solemn music._
_Seb._ We would so, and then go a bat-fowling.
_Ant._ Nay, good my lord, be not angry.
_Gon._ No, I warrant you; I will not adventure my discretion
so weakly. Will you laugh me asleep, for I am very
heavy? 180
_Ant._ Go sleep, and hear us.
[_All sleep except Alon., Seb., and Ant._
_Alon._ What, all so soon asleep! I wish mine eyes
Would, with themselves, shut up my thoughts: I find
They are inclined to do so.
_Seb._ Please you, sir,
Do not omit the heavy offer of it: 185
It seldom visits sorrow; when it doth,
It is a comforter.
_Ant._ We two, my lord,
Will guard your person while you take your rest,
And watch your safety.
_Alon._ Thank you.--Wondrous heavy.
[_Alonso sleeps. Exit Ariel._
_Seb._ What a strange drowsiness possesses them! 190
_Ant._ It is the quality o' the climate.
_Seb._ Why
Doth it not then our eyelids sink? I find not
Myself disposed to sleep.
_Ant._ Nor I; my spirits are nimble.
They fell together all, as by consent;
They dropp'd, as by a thunder-stroke. What might, 195
Worthy Sebastian?--O, what might?--No more:--
And yet methinks I see it in thy face,
What thou shouldst be: the occasion speaks thee; and
My strong imagination sees a crown
Dropping upon thy head.
_Seb._ What, art thou waking? 200
_Ant._ Do you not hear me speak?
_Seb._ I do; and surely
It is a sleepy language, and thou speak'st
Out of thy sleep. What is it thou didst say?
This is a strange repose, to be asleep
With eyes wide open; standing, speaking, moving, 205
And yet so fast asleep.
_Ant._ Noble Sebastian,
Thou let'st thy fortune sleep--die, rather; wink'st
Whiles thou art waking.
_Seb._ Thou dost snore distinctly;
There's meaning in thy snores.
_Ant._ I am more serious than my custom: you 210
Must be so too, if heed me; which to do
Trebles thee o'er.
_Seb._ Well, I am standing water.
_Ant._ I'll teach you how to flow.
_Seb._ Do so: to ebb
Hereditary sloth instructs me.
_Ant._ O,
If you but knew how you the purpose cherish 215
Whiles thus you mock it! how, in stripping it,
You more invest it! Ebbing men, indeed,
Most often do so near the bottom run
By their own fear or sloth.
_Seb._ Prithee, say on:
The setting of thine eye and cheek proclaim 220
A matter from thee; and a birth, indeed,
Which throes thee much to yield.
_Ant._ Thus, sir:
Although this lord of weak remembrance, this,
Who shall be of as little memory
When he is earth'd, hath here almost persuaded,-- 225
For he's a spirit of persuasion, only
Professes to persuade,--the king his son's alive,
'Tis as impossible that he's undrown'd
As he that sleeps here swims.
_Seb._ I have no hope
That he's undrown'd.
_Ant._ O, out of that 'no hope' 230
What great hope have you! no hope that way is
Another way so high a hope that even
Ambition cannot pierce a wink beyond,
But doubt discovery there. Will you grant with me
That Ferdinand is drown'd?
_Seb._ He's gone.
_Ant._ Then, tell me, 235
Who's the next heir of Naples?
_Seb._ Claribel.
_Ant._ She that is queen of Tunis; she that dwells
Ten leagues beyond man's life; she that from Naples
Can have no note, unless the sun were post,--
The man i' the moon's too slow,--till new-born chins 240
Be rough and razorable; she that from whom
We all were sea-swallow'd, though some cast again,
And by that destiny, to perform an act
Whereof what's past is prologue; what to come,
In yours and my discharge.
_Seb._ What stuff is this! How say you? 245
'Tis true, my brother's daughter's queen of Tunis;
So is she heir of Naples; 'twixt which regions
There is some space.
_Ant._ A space whose every cubit
Seems to cry out, "How shall that Claribel
Measure us back to Naples? Keep in Tunis, 250
And let Sebastian wake." Say, this were death
That now hath seized them; why, they were no worse
Than now they are. There be that can rule Naples
As well as he that sleeps; lords that can prate
As amply and unnecessarily 255
As this Gonzalo; I myself could make
A chough of as deep chat. O, that you bore
The mind that I do! what a sleep were this
For your advancement! Do you understand me?
_Seb._ Methinks I do.
_Ant._ And how does your content 260
Tender your own good fortune?
_Seb._ I remember
You did supplant your brother Prospero.
_Ant._ True:
And look how well my garments sit upon me;
Much feater than before: my brother's servants
Were then my fellows; now they are my men. 265
_Seb._ But for your conscience.
_Ant._ Ay, sir; where lies that? if 'twere a kibe,
'Twould put me to my slipper: but I feel not
This deity in my bosom: twenty consciences,
That stand 'twixt me and Milan, candied be they, 270
And melt, ere they molest! Here lies your brother,
No better than the earth he lies upon,
If he were that which now he's like, that's dead;
Whom I, with this obedient steel, three inches of it,
Can lay to bed for ever; whiles you, doing thus, 275
To the perpetual wink for aye might put
This ancient morsel, this Sir Prudence, who
Should not upbraid our course. For all the rest,
They'll take suggestion as a cat laps milk;
They'll tell the clock to any business that 280
We say befits the hour.
_Seb._ Thy case, dear friend,
Shall be my precedent; as thou got'st Milan,
I'll come by Naples. Draw thy sword: one stroke
Shall free thee from the tribute which thou payest;
And I the king shall love thee.
_Ant._ Draw together; 285
And when I rear my hand, do you the like,
To fall it on Gonzalo.
_Seb._ O, but one word. [_They talk apart._
_Re-enter ARIEL invisible._
_Ari._ My master through his art foresees the danger
That you, his friend, are in; and sends me forth,--
For else his project dies,--to keep them living. 290
[_Sings in Gonzalo's ear._
While you here do snoring lie,
Open-eyed conspiracy
His time doth take.
If of life you keep a care,
Shake off slumber, and beware: 295
Awake, awake!
_Ant._ Then let us both be sudden.
_Gon._ Now, good angels
Preserve the king! [_They wake._
_Alon._ Why, how now? ho, awake!--Why are you drawn?
Wherefore this ghastly looking?
_Gon._ What's the matter? 300
_Seb._ Whiles we stood here securing your repose,
Even now, we heard a hollow burst of bellowing
Like bulls, or rather lions: did't not wake you?
It struck mine ear most terribly.
_Alon._ I heard nothing.
_Ant._ O, 'twas a din to fright a monster's ear, 305
To make an earthquake! sure, it was the roar
Of a whole herd of lions.
_Alon._ Heard you this, Gonzalo?
_Gon._ Upon mine honour, sir, I heard a humming,
And that a strange one too, which did awake me:
I shaked you, sir, and cried: as mine eyes open'd, 310
I saw their weapons drawn:--there was a noise,
That's verily. 'Tis best we stand upon our guard,
Or that we quit this place: let's draw our weapons.
_Alon._ Lead off this ground; and let's make further search
For my poor son.
_Gon._ Heavens keep him from these beasts! 315
For he is, sure, i' th' island.
_Alon._ Lead away.
_Ari._ Prospero my lord shall know what I have done:
So, king, go safely on to seek thy son. [_Exeunt._
Notes: II, 1.
3: _hint_] _stint_ Warburton.
5: _masters_] _master_ Johnson. _mistress_ Steevens conj.
_master's_ Edd. conj.
6: _of woe_] om. Steevens conj.
11-99: Marked as interpolated by Pope.
11: _visitor_] _'viser_ Warburton.
_him_] om. Rowe.
15: _one_] F1. _on_ F2 F3 F4.
16: _entertain'd ... Comes_] Capell. _entertain'd, That's offer'd
comes_] Ff. Printed as prose by Pope.
27: _of he_] Ff. _of them, he_ Pope. _or he_ Collier MS.
See note (VII).
35: Seb. _Ha, ha, ha!--So you're paid_] Theobald. Seb. _Ha, ha, ha!_
Ant. _So you'r paid_ Ff. Ant. _So you've paid_ Capell.
81, 82: Seb. _His ... too_] Edd. Ant. _His ... harp._
Seb. _He ... too_ Ff.
88: _Ay._] I. Ff. _Ay?_ Pope.
96: _sir, my doublet_] F1. _my doublet, sir_ F2 F3 F4.
113: _stroke_] F1 F2 F3. _strokes_ F4.
124: _Weigh'd_] _Sway'd_ S. Verges conj.
_at_] _as_ Collier MS.]
125: _o' the_] _the_ Pope.
_should_] _she'd_ Malone.
129: _The fault's your own_] _the fault's your own_ (at the end
of 128) Capell. _the fault's Your own_ Malone.
137: _plantation_] _the plantation_ Rowe. _the planting_ Hanmer.
139: _on't_] _of it_ Hanmer.
144: _riches, poverty_] _wealth, poverty_ Pope. _poverty, riches_
Capell.
145: _contract, succession_] _succession, Contract_ Malone conj.
_succession, None_ id. conj.
146: _none_] _olives, none_ Hanmer.
157: _its_] F3 F4. _it_ F1 F2. See note (VIII).
162: _'Save_] F1 F2 F3. _Save_ F4. _God save_ Edd. conj.
175: Enter ... invisible ... music.] Malone. Enter Ariel, playing
solemn music. Ff. om. Pope. [Solemn music. Capell.
181: [All sleep ... Ant.] Stage direction to the same effect,
first inserted by Capell.
182-189: Text as in Pope. In Ff. the lines begin _Would ... I find
... Do not ... It seldom ... We two ... While ... Thank._
189: [Exit Ariel] Malone.
192: _find not_ Pope. _find Not_ Ff.
211: _so too, if heed_] _so too, if you heed_ Rowe.
_so, if you heed_ Pope.
212: _Trebles thee o'er_] _Troubles thee o'er_ Pope.
_Troubles thee not_ Hanmer.
222: _throes_] Pope. _throwes_ F1 F2 F3. _throws_ F4.
_Thus, sir_] _Why then thus Sir_ Hanmer.
226: _he's_] _he'as_ Hanmer. _he_ Johnson conj.
227: _Professes to persuade_] om. Steevens.
234: _doubt_] _drops_ Hanmer. _doubts_ Capell.
241: _she that from whom_] Ff. _she from whom_ Rowe.
_she for whom_ Pope. _she from whom coming_ Singer.
_she that--from whom?_ Spedding conj. See note (IX).
242: _all_] om. Pope.
243: _And ... to perform_] _May ... perform_ Pope. _And by that
destin'd to perform_ Musgrave conj. _(And that by destiny)
to perform_ Staunton conj.
244: _is_] F1. _in_ F2 F3 F4.
245: _In_] _Is_ Pope.
250: _to_] F1. _by_ F2 F3 F4.
_Keep_] _Sleep_ Johnson conj.
251: See note (X).
267: _'twere_] _it were_ Singer.
267-271: Pope ends the lines with _that? ... slipper ... bosom ...
Milan ... molest ... brother._
267: See note (XI).
269: _twenty_] _Ten_ Pope.
270: _stand_] _stood_ Hanmer.
_candied_] _Discandy'd_ Upton conj.
271: _And melt_] _Would melt_ Johnson conj. _Or melt_ id. conj.
273, 274: _like, that's dead; Whom I, with_] _like, whom I With_
Steevens (Farmer conj.).
275: _whiles_] om. Pope.
277: _morsel_] _Moral_ Warburton.
280, 281: _business ... hour._] _hour ... business._ Farmer conj.
282: _precedent_] Pope. _president_ Ff.
_O_] om. Pope.
[They talk apart] Capell.
Re-enter Ariel invisible.] Capell. Enter Ariel with music and
song. Ff.
289: _you, his friend,_] _these, his friends_ Steevens
(Johnson conj.).
289, 290: _friend ... project dies ... them_] _friend ... projects
dies ... you_ Hanmer. _friend ... projects die ... them_
Malone conj. _friend ... project dies ... thee_ Dyce.
298: [They wake.] Rowe.
300: _this_] _thus_ Collier MS.
307: _Gonzalo_] om. Pope.
312: _verily_] _verity_ Pope.
_upon our guard_] _on guard_ Pope.
| 5,527 | Act II, scene i | https://web.archive.org/web/20210131162607/https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/tempest/section4/ | While Ferdinand is falling in love with Miranda, Alonso, Sebastian, Antonio, Gonzalo, and other shipwrecked lords search for him on another part of the island. Alonso is quite despondent and unreceptive to the good-natured Gonzalo's attempts to cheer him up. Gonzalo meets resistance from Antonio and Sebastian as well. These two childishly mock Gonzalo's suggestion that the island is a good place to be and that they are all lucky to have survived. Alonso finally brings the repartee to a halt when he bursts out at Gonzalo and openly expresses regret at having married away his daughter in Tunis. Francisco, a minor lord, pipes up at this point that he saw Ferdinand swimming valiantly after the wreck, but this does not comfort Alonso. Sebastian and Antonio continue to provide little help. Sebastian tells his brother that he is indeed to blame for Ferdinand's death--if he had not married his daughter to an African , none of this would have happened. Gonzalo tells the lords that they are only making the situation worse and attempts to change the subject, discussing what he might do if he were the lord of the island. Antonio and Sebastian mock his utopian vision. Ariel then enters, playing "solemn music" , and gradually all but Sebastian and Antonio fall asleep. Seeing the vulnerability of his sleeping companions, Antonio tries to persuade Sebastian to kill his brother. He rationalizes this scheme by explaining that Claribel, who is now Queen of Tunis, is too far from Naples to inherit the kingdom should her father die, and as a result, Sebastian would be the heir to the throne. Sebastian begins to warm to the idea, especially after Antonio tells him that usurping Prospero's dukedom was the best move he ever made. Sebastian wonders aloud whether he will be afflicted by conscience, but Antonio dismisses this out of hand. Sebastian is at last convinced, and the two men draw their swords. Sebastian, however, seems to have second thoughts at the last moment and stops. While he and Antonio confer, Ariel enters with music, singing in Gonzalo's ear that a conspiracy is under way and that he should "Awake, awake!" . Gonzalo wakes and shouts "Preserve the King!" His exclamation wakes everyone else . Sebastian quickly concocts a story about hearing a loud noise that caused him and Antonio to draw their swords. Gonzalo is obviously suspicious but does not challenge the lords. The group continues its search for Ferdinand. | Analysis As in the storm scene in Act I, scene i, Shakespeare emphasizes and undercuts the capacity of the bare stage to create a convincing illusion throughout Act II, scene i. As the shipwrecked mariners look around the island, they describe it in poetry of great imagistic richness, giving the audience an imaginary picture of the setting of the play. Even so, they disagree about what they see, and even argue over what the island actually looks like. Adrian finds it to be of "subtle, tender, and delicate temperance," where "the air breathes upon us . . . most sweetly" . Gonzalo says that the grass is "lush and lusty" and "green" . Antonio and Sebastian, however, cynical to the last, refuse to let these descriptions rest in the audience's mind. They say that the air smells "as 'twere perfumed by a fen" , meaning a swamp, and that the ground "indeed is tawny" , or brown. The remarks of Antonio and Sebastian could be easily discounted as mere grumpiness, were it not for the fact that Gonzalo and Adrian do seem at times to be stretching the truth. .) Thus the bareness of the stage allows the beauty and other qualities of the island to be largely a matter of perspective. The island may be a paradise, but only if one chooses to see it that way. Shakespeare uses this ambiguous setting for several different purposes. First, the setting heightens the sense of wonder and mystery that surrounds the magical island. It also gives each audience member a great deal of freedom to imagine the island as he or she so chooses. Most importantly, however, it enables the island to work as a reflection of character--we know a great deal about different characters simply from how they choose to see the island. Hence the dark, sensitive Caliban can find it both a place of terror--as when he enters, frightened and overworked in Act II, scene ii--and of great beauty--as in his "the isle is full of noises" speech . Therefore, both Gonzalo and Trinculo , colonially minded, are so easily able to imagine it as the site of their own utopian societies. Gonzalo's fantasy about the plantation he would like to build on the island is a remarkable poetic evocation of a utopian society, in which no one would work, all people would be equal and live off the land, and all women would be "innocent and pure." This vision indicates something of Gonzalo's own innocence and purity. Shakespeare treats the old man's idea of the island as a kind of lovely dream, in which the frustrations and obstructions of life would be removed and all could live naturally and authentically. Though Gonzalo's idea is not presented as a practical possibility , Gonzalo's dream contrasts to his credit with the power-obsessed ideas of most of the other characters, including Prospero. Gonzalo would do away with the very master-servant motif that lies at the heart of The Tempest. The mockery dished out by Antonio and Sebastian reveals, by contrast, something of the noblemen's cynicism and lack of feeling. Where Gonzalo is simply grateful and optimistic about having survived the shipwreck, Antonio and Sebastian seem mainly to be annoyed by it, though not so annoyed that they stop their incessant jesting with each other. Gonzalo says that they are simply loudmouthed jokers, who "would lift the moon out of her sphere, if she would continue in it five weeks without changing" . By conspiring against the king, however, they reveal themselves as more sinister and greedier than Gonzalo recognizes, using their verbal wit to cover up their darker and more wicked impulses. However, their greediness for power is both foolish and clumsy. As they attempt to cover their treachery with the story of the "bellowing / Like bulls, or rather lions" , it seems hard to believe that Antonio ever could have risen successfully against his brother. The absurdly aggressive behavior of Antonio and Sebastian makes Prospero's exercise of power in the previous and following scenes seem necessary. It also puts Alonso in a sympathetic position. He is a potential victim of the duo's treachery, a fact that helps the audience believe his conversion when he reconciles with Prospero at the end. | 409 | 713 | [
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28,054 | false | sparknotes | all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/55.txt | finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_11_part_2.txt | The Brothers Karamazov.book 9.chapter 2 | book 9, chapter 2 | null | {"name": "book 9, Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section12/", "summary": "The Alarm Perkhotin goes to tell the police about his fear, but he finds that the station is already a hubbub of activity. Grigory's wife has made another report to the police. Fyodor Pavlovich has been murdered", "analysis": ""} | Chapter II. The Alarm
Our police captain, Mihail Makarovitch Makarov, a retired lieutenant-
colonel, was a widower and an excellent man. He had only come to us three
years previously, but had won general esteem, chiefly because he "knew how
to keep society together." He was never without visitors, and could not
have got on without them. Some one or other was always dining with him; he
never sat down to table without guests. He gave regular dinners, too, on
all sorts of occasions, sometimes most surprising ones. Though the fare
was not _recherche_, it was abundant. The fish-pies were excellent, and
the wine made up in quantity for what it lacked in quality.
The first room his guests entered was a well-fitted billiard-room, with
pictures of English race-horses, in black frames on the walls, an
essential decoration, as we all know, for a bachelor's billiard-room.
There was card-playing every evening at his house, if only at one table.
But at frequent intervals, all the society of our town, with the mammas
and young ladies, assembled at his house to dance. Though Mihail
Makarovitch was a widower, he did not live alone. His widowed daughter
lived with him, with her two unmarried daughters, grown-up girls, who had
finished their education. They were of agreeable appearance and lively
character, and though every one knew they would have no dowry, they
attracted all the young men of fashion to their grandfather's house.
Mihail Makarovitch was by no means very efficient in his work, though he
performed his duties no worse than many others. To speak plainly, he was a
man of rather narrow education. His understanding of the limits of his
administrative power could not always be relied upon. It was not so much
that he failed to grasp certain reforms enacted during the present reign,
as that he made conspicuous blunders in his interpretation of them. This
was not from any special lack of intelligence, but from carelessness, for
he was always in too great a hurry to go into the subject.
"I have the heart of a soldier rather than of a civilian," he used to say
of himself. He had not even formed a definite idea of the fundamental
principles of the reforms connected with the emancipation of the serfs,
and only picked it up, so to speak, from year to year, involuntarily
increasing his knowledge by practice. And yet he was himself a landowner.
Pyotr Ilyitch knew for certain that he would meet some of Mihail
Makarovitch's visitors there that evening, but he didn't know which. As it
happened, at that moment the prosecutor, and Varvinsky, our district
doctor, a young man, who had only just come to us from Petersburg after
taking a brilliant degree at the Academy of Medicine, were playing whist
at the police captain's. Ippolit Kirillovitch, the prosecutor (he was
really the deputy prosecutor, but we always called him the prosecutor),
was rather a peculiar man, of about five and thirty, inclined to be
consumptive, and married to a fat and childless woman. He was vain and
irritable, though he had a good intellect, and even a kind heart. It
seemed that all that was wrong with him was that he had a better opinion
of himself than his ability warranted. And that made him seem constantly
uneasy. He had, moreover, certain higher, even artistic, leanings, towards
psychology, for instance, a special study of the human heart, a special
knowledge of the criminal and his crime. He cherished a grievance on this
ground, considering that he had been passed over in the service, and being
firmly persuaded that in higher spheres he had not been properly
appreciated, and had enemies. In gloomy moments he even threatened to give
up his post, and practice as a barrister in criminal cases. The unexpected
Karamazov case agitated him profoundly: "It was a case that might well be
talked about all over Russia." But I am anticipating.
Nikolay Parfenovitch Nelyudov, the young investigating lawyer, who had
only come from Petersburg two months before, was sitting in the next room
with the young ladies. People talked about it afterwards and wondered that
all the gentlemen should, as though intentionally, on the evening of "the
crime" have been gathered together at the house of the executive
authority. Yet it was perfectly simple and happened quite naturally.
Ippolit Kirillovitch's wife had had toothache for the last two days, and
he was obliged to go out to escape from her groans. The doctor, from the
very nature of his being, could not spend an evening except at cards.
Nikolay Parfenovitch Nelyudov had been intending for three days past to
drop in that evening at Mihail Makarovitch's, so to speak casually, so as
slyly to startle the eldest granddaughter, Olga Mihailovna, by showing
that he knew her secret, that he knew it was her birthday, and that she
was trying to conceal it on purpose, so as not to be obliged to give a
dance. He anticipated a great deal of merriment, many playful jests about
her age, and her being afraid to reveal it, about his knowing her secret
and telling everybody, and so on. The charming young man was a great adept
at such teasing; the ladies had christened him "the naughty man," and he
seemed to be delighted at the name. He was extremely well-bred, however,
of good family, education and feelings, and, though leading a life of
pleasure, his sallies were always innocent and in good taste. He was
short, and delicate-looking. On his white, slender, little fingers he
always wore a number of big, glittering rings. When he was engaged in his
official duties, he always became extraordinarily grave, as though
realizing his position and the sanctity of the obligations laid upon him.
He had a special gift for mystifying murderers and other criminals of the
peasant class during interrogation, and if he did not win their respect,
he certainly succeeded in arousing their wonder.
Pyotr Ilyitch was simply dumbfounded when he went into the police
captain's. He saw instantly that every one knew. They had positively
thrown down their cards, all were standing up and talking. Even Nikolay
Parfenovitch had left the young ladies and run in, looking strenuous and
ready for action. Pyotr Ilyitch was met with the astounding news that old
Fyodor Pavlovitch really had been murdered that evening in his own house,
murdered and robbed. The news had only just reached them in the following
manner.
Marfa Ignatyevna, the wife of old Grigory, who had been knocked senseless
near the fence, was sleeping soundly in her bed and might well have slept
till morning after the draught she had taken. But, all of a sudden she
waked up, no doubt roused by a fearful epileptic scream from Smerdyakov,
who was lying in the next room unconscious. That scream always preceded
his fits, and always terrified and upset Marfa Ignatyevna. She could never
get accustomed to it. She jumped up and ran half-awake to Smerdyakov's
room. But it was dark there, and she could only hear the invalid beginning
to gasp and struggle. Then Marfa Ignatyevna herself screamed out and was
going to call her husband, but suddenly realized that when she had got up,
he was not beside her in bed. She ran back to the bedstead and began
groping with her hands, but the bed was really empty. Then he must have
gone out--where? She ran to the steps and timidly called him. She got no
answer, of course, but she caught the sound of groans far away in the
garden in the darkness. She listened. The groans were repeated, and it was
evident they came from the garden.
"Good Lord! Just as it was with Lizaveta Smerdyastchaya!" she thought
distractedly. She went timidly down the steps and saw that the gate into
the garden was open.
"He must be out there, poor dear," she thought. She went up to the gate
and all at once she distinctly heard Grigory calling her by name, "Marfa!
Marfa!" in a weak, moaning, dreadful voice.
"Lord, preserve us from harm!" Marfa Ignatyevna murmured, and ran towards
the voice, and that was how she found Grigory. But she found him not by
the fence where he had been knocked down, but about twenty paces off. It
appeared later, that he had crawled away on coming to himself, and
probably had been a long time getting so far, losing consciousness several
times. She noticed at once that he was covered with blood, and screamed at
the top of her voice. Grigory was muttering incoherently:
"He has murdered ... his father murdered.... Why scream, silly ... run ...
fetch some one...."
But Marfa continued screaming, and seeing that her master's window was
open and that there was a candle alight in the window, she ran there and
began calling Fyodor Pavlovitch. But peeping in at the window, she saw a
fearful sight. Her master was lying on his back, motionless, on the floor.
His light-colored dressing-gown and white shirt were soaked with blood.
The candle on the table brightly lighted up the blood and the motionless
dead face of Fyodor Pavlovitch. Terror-stricken, Marfa rushed away from
the window, ran out of the garden, drew the bolt of the big gate and ran
headlong by the back way to the neighbor, Marya Kondratyevna. Both mother
and daughter were asleep, but they waked up at Marfa's desperate and
persistent screaming and knocking at the shutter. Marfa, shrieking and
screaming incoherently, managed to tell them the main fact, and to beg for
assistance. It happened that Foma had come back from his wanderings and
was staying the night with them. They got him up immediately and all three
ran to the scene of the crime. On the way, Marya Kondratyevna remembered
that at about eight o'clock she heard a dreadful scream from their garden,
and this was no doubt Grigory's scream, "Parricide!" uttered when he
caught hold of Mitya's leg.
"Some one person screamed out and then was silent," Marya Kondratyevna
explained as she ran. Running to the place where Grigory lay, the two
women with the help of Foma carried him to the lodge. They lighted a
candle and saw that Smerdyakov was no better, that he was writhing in
convulsions, his eyes fixed in a squint, and that foam was flowing from
his lips. They moistened Grigory's forehead with water mixed with vinegar,
and the water revived him at once. He asked immediately:
"Is the master murdered?"
Then Foma and both the women ran to the house and saw this time that not
only the window, but also the door into the garden was wide open, though
Fyodor Pavlovitch had for the last week locked himself in every night and
did not allow even Grigory to come in on any pretext. Seeing that door
open, they were afraid to go in to Fyodor Pavlovitch "for fear anything
should happen afterwards." And when they returned to Grigory, the old man
told them to go straight to the police captain. Marya Kondratyevna ran
there and gave the alarm to the whole party at the police captain's. She
arrived only five minutes before Pyotr Ilyitch, so that his story came,
not as his own surmise and theory, but as the direct confirmation, by a
witness, of the theory held by all, as to the identity of the criminal (a
theory he had in the bottom of his heart refused to believe till that
moment).
It was resolved to act with energy. The deputy police inspector of the
town was commissioned to take four witnesses, to enter Fyodor Pavlovitch's
house and there to open an inquiry on the spot, according to the regular
forms, which I will not go into here. The district doctor, a zealous man,
new to his work, almost insisted on accompanying the police captain, the
prosecutor, and the investigating lawyer.
I will note briefly that Fyodor Pavlovitch was found to be quite dead,
with his skull battered in. But with what? Most likely with the same
weapon with which Grigory had been attacked. And immediately that weapon
was found, Grigory, to whom all possible medical assistance was at once
given, described in a weak and breaking voice how he had been knocked
down. They began looking with a lantern by the fence and found the brass
pestle dropped in a most conspicuous place on the garden path. There were
no signs of disturbance in the room where Fyodor Pavlovitch was lying. But
by the bed, behind the screen, they picked up from the floor a big and
thick envelope with the inscription: "A present of three thousand roubles
for my angel Grushenka, if she is willing to come." And below had been
added by Fyodor Pavlovitch, "For my little chicken." There were three
seals of red sealing-wax on the envelope, but it had been torn open and
was empty: the money had been removed. They found also on the floor a
piece of narrow pink ribbon, with which the envelope had been tied up.
One piece of Pyotr Ilyitch's evidence made a great impression on the
prosecutor and the investigating magistrate, namely, his idea that Dmitri
Fyodorovitch would shoot himself before daybreak, that he had resolved to
do so, had spoken of it to Ilyitch, had taken the pistols, loaded them
before him, written a letter, put it in his pocket, etc. When Pyotr
Ilyitch, though still unwilling to believe in it, threatened to tell some
one so as to prevent the suicide, Mitya had answered grinning: "You'll be
too late." So they must make haste to Mokroe to find the criminal, before
he really did shoot himself.
"That's clear, that's clear!" repeated the prosecutor in great excitement.
"That's just the way with mad fellows like that: 'I shall kill myself to-
morrow, so I'll make merry till I die!' "
The story of how he had bought the wine and provisions excited the
prosecutor more than ever.
"Do you remember the fellow that murdered a merchant called Olsufyev,
gentlemen? He stole fifteen hundred, went at once to have his hair curled,
and then, without even hiding the money, carrying it almost in his hand in
the same way, he went off to the girls."
All were delayed, however, by the inquiry, the search, and the
formalities, etc., in the house of Fyodor Pavlovitch. It all took time and
so, two hours before starting, they sent on ahead to Mokroe the officer of
the rural police, Mavriky Mavrikyevitch Schmertsov, who had arrived in the
town the morning before to get his pay. He was instructed to avoid raising
the alarm when he reached Mokroe, but to keep constant watch over the
"criminal" till the arrival of the proper authorities, to procure also
witnesses for the arrest, police constables, and so on. Mavriky
Mavrikyevitch did as he was told, preserving his incognito, and giving no
one but his old acquaintance, Trifon Borissovitch, the slightest hint of
his secret business. He had spoken to him just before Mitya met the
landlord in the balcony, looking for him in the dark, and noticed at once
a change in Trifon Borissovitch's face and voice. So neither Mitya nor any
one else knew that he was being watched. The box with the pistols had been
carried off by Trifon Borissovitch and put in a suitable place. Only after
four o'clock, almost at sunrise, all the officials, the police captain,
the prosecutor, the investigating lawyer, drove up in two carriages, each
drawn by three horses. The doctor remained at Fyodor Pavlovitch's to make
a post-mortem next day on the body. But he was particularly interested in
the condition of the servant, Smerdyakov.
"Such violent and protracted epileptic fits, recurring continually for
twenty-four hours, are rarely to be met with, and are of interest to
science," he declared enthusiastically to his companions, and as they left
they laughingly congratulated him on his find. The prosecutor and the
investigating lawyer distinctly remembered the doctor's saying that
Smerdyakov could not outlive the night.
After these long, but I think necessary explanations, we will return to
that moment of our tale at which we broke off.
| 2,479 | book 9, Chapter 2 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section12/ | The Alarm Perkhotin goes to tell the police about his fear, but he finds that the station is already a hubbub of activity. Grigory's wife has made another report to the police. Fyodor Pavlovich has been murdered | null | 37 | 1 | [
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107 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/04.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Far from the Madding Crowd/section_3_part_0.txt | Far from the Madding Crowd.chapter 4 | chapter 4 | null | {"name": "Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-4", "summary": "Gabriel ascertained in town that the young woman was Bathsheba Everdene. \"This well-favoured and comely girl soon made appreciable inroads upon the emotional constitution of young Farmer Oak.\" He waited to watch her each day at the milking and dreaded the time when the cow should go dry and Bathsheba would no longer come to the shed. He constantly repeated her name. \"I'll make her my wife, or upon my soul I shall be good for nothing!\" Seeking an excuse to visit her, Gabriel decided to take as a gift a tiny lamb whose mother had died. He groomed himself with care and set forth, accompanied by his faithful dog, George. From behind a hedge near her house he heard a feminine voice calming a frightened cat. He called out that his dog was \"as mild as milk,\" but nobody answered. Once inside the house, Gabriel told the girl's aunt, Mrs. Hurst, of his desire to marry and inquired whether Bathsheba had suitors. Hoping to make a match, the aunt assured him that Bathsheba had many. Abashed, her would-be wooer replied, \"That's unfortunate. . . . I'm only an everyday sort of man, and my only chance was in being the first comer.\" Forlorn, he walked away but was pursued by the tomboy calls of Bathsheba, who regretted having been away when he visited. Naively, she assured him that there were no other suitors. \"'Really and truly I am glad to hear that!' said Farmer Oak, smiling . . . and blushing with gladness.\" Earnestly, Gabriel promised her all manner of things, including a piano. Hesitating over some of the items, Bathsheba said at last, \"I've tried hard all the time I've been thinking; for a marriage would be very nice in one sense. People would talk about me and think I had won my battle, and I should feel triumphant, and all that. But a husband -- .\" Finally Bathsheba admitted that she did not love Gabriel, and although the farmer said he would be happy if she just liked him, Bathsheba replied, \"You'd get to despise me.\" Gabriel vehemently asserted, \"Never. . . . I shall . . . keep wanting you till I die.\" He asked if he could come calling. She laughingly replied that that would be ridiculous, considering his feelings. \"'Very well,' said Oak firmly. . . . 'Then I'll ask you no more.'\"", "analysis": "With pronounced humor, Hardy gives the details of Gabriel's courtship of Bathsheba. He spruces up for his visit, polishing the silver chain of his watch and cutting himself a new walking stick. Auntie's boasts of numerous suitors for Bathsheba; Gabriel's offers of a piano, newspaper notices, and cucumber frames; Bathsheba's eagerness to be a bride unencumbered by a husband these are all amusing and convincing bits of life. The scene also gives us a chance to see more of Bathsheba's vanity and an aspect of Gabriel we had not yet observed -- pride."} |
GABRIEL'S RESOLVE--THE VISIT--THE MISTAKE
The only superiority in women that is tolerable to the rival sex is,
as a rule, that of the unconscious kind; but a superiority which
recognizes itself may sometimes please by suggesting possibilities
of capture to the subordinated man.
This well-favoured and comely girl soon made appreciable inroads upon
the emotional constitution of young Farmer Oak.
Love, being an extremely exacting usurer (a sense of exorbitant
profit, spiritually, by an exchange of hearts, being at the bottom of
pure passions, as that of exorbitant profit, bodily or materially,
is at the bottom of those of lower atmosphere), every morning Oak's
feelings were as sensitive as the money-market in calculations upon
his chances. His dog waited for his meals in a way so like that in
which Oak waited for the girl's presence, that the farmer was quite
struck with the resemblance, felt it lowering, and would not look at
the dog. However, he continued to watch through the hedge for her
regular coming, and thus his sentiments towards her were deepened
without any corresponding effect being produced upon herself. Oak
had nothing finished and ready to say as yet, and not being able to
frame love phrases which end where they begin; passionate tales--
--Full of sound and fury
--Signifying nothing--
he said no word at all.
By making inquiries he found that the girl's name was Bathsheba
Everdene, and that the cow would go dry in about seven days. He
dreaded the eighth day.
At last the eighth day came. The cow had ceased to give milk for
that year, and Bathsheba Everdene came up the hill no more. Gabriel
had reached a pitch of existence he never could have anticipated
a short time before. He liked saying "Bathsheba" as a private
enjoyment instead of whistling; turned over his taste to black hair,
though he had sworn by brown ever since he was a boy, isolated
himself till the space he filled in the public eye was contemptibly
small. Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness. Marriage
transforms a distraction into a support, the power of which should
be, and happily often is, in direct proportion to the degree of
imbecility it supplants. Oak began now to see light in this
direction, and said to himself, "I'll make her my wife, or upon my
soul I shall be good for nothing!"
All this while he was perplexing himself about an errand on which he
might consistently visit the cottage of Bathsheba's aunt.
He found his opportunity in the death of a ewe, mother of a living
lamb. On a day which had a summer face and a winter constitution--a
fine January morning, when there was just enough blue sky visible
to make cheerfully-disposed people wish for more, and an occasional
gleam of silvery sunshine, Oak put the lamb into a respectable Sunday
basket, and stalked across the fields to the house of Mrs. Hurst, the
aunt--George, the dog walking behind, with a countenance of great
concern at the serious turn pastoral affairs seemed to be taking.
Gabriel had watched the blue wood-smoke curling from the chimney with
strange meditation. At evening he had fancifully traced it down the
chimney to the spot of its origin--seen the hearth and Bathsheba
beside it--beside it in her out-door dress; for the clothes she had
worn on the hill were by association equally with her person included
in the compass of his affection; they seemed at this early time of
his love a necessary ingredient of the sweet mixture called Bathsheba
Everdene.
He had made a toilet of a nicely-adjusted kind--of a nature between
the carefully neat and the carelessly ornate--of a degree between
fine-market-day and wet-Sunday selection. He thoroughly cleaned his
silver watch-chain with whiting, put new lacing straps to his boots,
looked to the brass eyelet-holes, went to the inmost heart of the
plantation for a new walking-stick, and trimmed it vigorously on his
way back; took a new handkerchief from the bottom of his clothes-box,
put on the light waistcoat patterned all over with sprigs of an
elegant flower uniting the beauties of both rose and lily without the
defects of either, and used all the hair-oil he possessed upon his
usually dry, sandy, and inextricably curly hair, till he had deepened
it to a splendidly novel colour, between that of guano and Roman
cement, making it stick to his head like mace round a nutmeg, or wet
seaweed round a boulder after the ebb.
Nothing disturbed the stillness of the cottage save the chatter of a
knot of sparrows on the eaves; one might fancy scandal and rumour to
be no less the staple topic of these little coteries on roofs than of
those under them. It seemed that the omen was an unpropitious one,
for, as the rather untoward commencement of Oak's overtures, just
as he arrived by the garden gate, he saw a cat inside, going into
various arched shapes and fiendish convulsions at the sight of his
dog George. The dog took no notice, for he had arrived at an age at
which all superfluous barking was cynically avoided as a waste of
breath--in fact, he never barked even at the sheep except to order,
when it was done with an absolutely neutral countenance, as a sort of
Commination-service, which, though offensive, had to be gone through
once now and then to frighten the flock for their own good.
A voice came from behind some laurel-bushes into which the cat had
run:
"Poor dear! Did a nasty brute of a dog want to kill it;--did he,
poor dear!"
"I beg your pardon," said Oak to the voice, "but George was walking
on behind me with a temper as mild as milk."
Almost before he had ceased speaking, Oak was seized with a misgiving
as to whose ear was the recipient of his answer. Nobody appeared, and
he heard the person retreat among the bushes.
Gabriel meditated, and so deeply that he brought small furrows into
his forehead by sheer force of reverie. Where the issue of an
interview is as likely to be a vast change for the worse as for
the better, any initial difference from expectation causes nipping
sensations of failure. Oak went up to the door a little abashed:
his mental rehearsal and the reality had had no common grounds of
opening.
Bathsheba's aunt was indoors. "Will you tell Miss Everdene that
somebody would be glad to speak to her?" said Mr. Oak. (Calling
one's self merely Somebody, without giving a name, is not to be taken
as an example of the ill-breeding of the rural world: it springs
from a refined modesty, of which townspeople, with their cards and
announcements, have no notion whatever.)
Bathsheba was out. The voice had evidently been hers.
"Will you come in, Mr. Oak?"
"Oh, thank 'ee," said Gabriel, following her to the fireplace. "I've
brought a lamb for Miss Everdene. I thought she might like one to
rear; girls do."
"She might," said Mrs. Hurst, musingly; "though she's only a visitor
here. If you will wait a minute, Bathsheba will be in."
"Yes, I will wait," said Gabriel, sitting down. "The lamb isn't
really the business I came about, Mrs. Hurst. In short, I was going
to ask her if she'd like to be married."
"And were you indeed?"
"Yes. Because if she would, I should be very glad to marry her.
D'ye know if she's got any other young man hanging about her at all?"
"Let me think," said Mrs. Hurst, poking the fire superfluously....
"Yes--bless you, ever so many young men. You see, Farmer Oak, she's
so good-looking, and an excellent scholar besides--she was going to
be a governess once, you know, only she was too wild. Not that her
young men ever come here--but, Lord, in the nature of women, she must
have a dozen!"
"That's unfortunate," said Farmer Oak, contemplating a crack in the
stone floor with sorrow. "I'm only an every-day sort of man, and my
only chance was in being the first comer ... Well, there's no use in
my waiting, for that was all I came about: so I'll take myself off
home-along, Mrs. Hurst."
When Gabriel had gone about two hundred yards along the down, he
heard a "hoi-hoi!" uttered behind him, in a piping note of more
treble quality than that in which the exclamation usually embodies
itself when shouted across a field. He looked round, and saw a girl
racing after him, waving a white handkerchief.
Oak stood still--and the runner drew nearer. It was Bathsheba
Everdene. Gabriel's colour deepened: hers was already deep, not, as
it appeared, from emotion, but from running.
"Farmer Oak--I--" she said, pausing for want of breath pulling up in
front of him with a slanted face and putting her hand to her side.
"I have just called to see you," said Gabriel, pending her further
speech.
"Yes--I know that," she said panting like a robin, her face red and
moist from her exertions, like a peony petal before the sun dries off
the dew. "I didn't know you had come to ask to have me, or I should
have come in from the garden instantly. I ran after you to say--that
my aunt made a mistake in sending you away from courting me--"
Gabriel expanded. "I'm sorry to have made you run so fast, my dear,"
he said, with a grateful sense of favours to come. "Wait a bit till
you've found your breath."
"--It was quite a mistake--aunt's telling you I had a young man
already," Bathsheba went on. "I haven't a sweetheart at all--and I
never had one, and I thought that, as times go with women, it was
SUCH a pity to send you away thinking that I had several."
"Really and truly I am glad to hear that!" said Farmer Oak, smiling
one of his long special smiles, and blushing with gladness. He held
out his hand to take hers, which, when she had eased her side by
pressing it there, was prettily extended upon her bosom to still her
loud-beating heart. Directly he seized it she put it behind her, so
that it slipped through his fingers like an eel.
"I have a nice snug little farm," said Gabriel, with half a degree
less assurance than when he had seized her hand.
"Yes; you have."
"A man has advanced me money to begin with, but still, it will soon
be paid off, and though I am only an every-day sort of man, I have
got on a little since I was a boy." Gabriel uttered "a little" in a
tone to show her that it was the complacent form of "a great deal."
He continued: "When we be married, I am quite sure I can work twice
as hard as I do now."
He went forward and stretched out his arm again. Bathsheba had
overtaken him at a point beside which stood a low stunted holly bush,
now laden with red berries. Seeing his advance take the form of an
attitude threatening a possible enclosure, if not compression, of her
person, she edged off round the bush.
"Why, Farmer Oak," she said, over the top, looking at him with
rounded eyes, "I never said I was going to marry you."
"Well--that IS a tale!" said Oak, with dismay. "To run after anybody
like this, and then say you don't want him!"
"What I meant to tell you was only this," she said eagerly, and yet
half conscious of the absurdity of the position she had made for
herself--"that nobody has got me yet as a sweetheart, instead of my
having a dozen, as my aunt said; I HATE to be thought men's property
in that way, though possibly I shall be had some day. Why, if I'd
wanted you I shouldn't have run after you like this; 'twould have
been the FORWARDEST thing! But there was no harm in hurrying to
correct a piece of false news that had been told you."
"Oh, no--no harm at all." But there is such a thing as being too
generous in expressing a judgment impulsively, and Oak added with a
more appreciative sense of all the circumstances--"Well, I am not
quite certain it was no harm."
"Indeed, I hadn't time to think before starting whether I wanted to
marry or not, for you'd have been gone over the hill."
"Come," said Gabriel, freshening again; "think a minute or two. I'll
wait a while, Miss Everdene. Will you marry me? Do, Bathsheba. I
love you far more than common!"
"I'll try to think," she observed, rather more timorously; "if I can
think out of doors; my mind spreads away so."
"But you can give a guess."
"Then give me time." Bathsheba looked thoughtfully into the
distance, away from the direction in which Gabriel stood.
"I can make you happy," said he to the back of her head, across the
bush. "You shall have a piano in a year or two--farmers' wives are
getting to have pianos now--and I'll practise up the flute right well
to play with you in the evenings."
"Yes; I should like that."
"And have one of those little ten-pound gigs for market--and nice
flowers, and birds--cocks and hens I mean, because they be useful,"
continued Gabriel, feeling balanced between poetry and practicality.
"I should like it very much."
"And a frame for cucumbers--like a gentleman and lady."
"Yes."
"And when the wedding was over, we'd have it put in the newspaper
list of marriages."
"Dearly I should like that!"
"And the babies in the births--every man jack of 'em! And at home by
the fire, whenever you look up, there I shall be--and whenever I look
up there will be you."
"Wait, wait, and don't be improper!"
Her countenance fell, and she was silent awhile. He regarded the red
berries between them over and over again, to such an extent, that
holly seemed in his after life to be a cypher signifying a proposal
of marriage. Bathsheba decisively turned to him.
"No; 'tis no use," she said. "I don't want to marry you."
"Try."
"I have tried hard all the time I've been thinking; for a marriage
would be very nice in one sense. People would talk about me, and
think I had won my battle, and I should feel triumphant, and all
that, But a husband--"
"Well!"
"Why, he'd always be there, as you say; whenever I looked up, there
he'd be."
"Of course he would--I, that is."
"Well, what I mean is that I shouldn't mind being a bride at a
wedding, if I could be one without having a husband. But since a
woman can't show off in that way by herself, I shan't marry--at least
yet."
"That's a terrible wooden story!"
At this criticism of her statement Bathsheba made an addition to her
dignity by a slight sweep away from him.
"Upon my heart and soul, I don't know what a maid can say stupider
than that," said Oak. "But dearest," he continued in a palliative
voice, "don't be like it!" Oak sighed a deep honest sigh--none the
less so in that, being like the sigh of a pine plantation, it was
rather noticeable as a disturbance of the atmosphere. "Why won't you
have me?" he appealed, creeping round the holly to reach her side.
"I cannot," she said, retreating.
"But why?" he persisted, standing still at last in despair of ever
reaching her, and facing over the bush.
"Because I don't love you."
"Yes, but--"
She contracted a yawn to an inoffensive smallness, so that it was
hardly ill-mannered at all. "I don't love you," she said.
"But I love you--and, as for myself, I am content to be liked."
"Oh Mr. Oak--that's very fine! You'd get to despise me."
"Never," said Mr Oak, so earnestly that he seemed to be coming, by
the force of his words, straight through the bush and into her arms.
"I shall do one thing in this life--one thing certain--that is, love
you, and long for you, and KEEP WANTING YOU till I die." His voice
had a genuine pathos now, and his large brown hands perceptibly
trembled.
"It seems dreadfully wrong not to have you when you feel so much!"
she said with a little distress, and looking hopelessly around
for some means of escape from her moral dilemma. "How I wish I
hadn't run after you!" However she seemed to have a short cut for
getting back to cheerfulness, and set her face to signify archness.
"It wouldn't do, Mr Oak. I want somebody to tame me; I am too
independent; and you would never be able to, I know."
Oak cast his eyes down the field in a way implying that it was
useless to attempt argument.
"Mr. Oak," she said, with luminous distinctness and common sense,
"you are better off than I. I have hardly a penny in the world--I am
staying with my aunt for my bare sustenance. I am better educated
than you--and I don't love you a bit: that's my side of the case.
Now yours: you are a farmer just beginning; and you ought in common
prudence, if you marry at all (which you should certainly not think
of doing at present), to marry a woman with money, who would stock a
larger farm for you than you have now."
Gabriel looked at her with a little surprise and much admiration.
"That's the very thing I had been thinking myself!" he naively said.
Farmer Oak had one-and-a-half Christian characteristics too many to
succeed with Bathsheba: his humility, and a superfluous moiety of
honesty. Bathsheba was decidedly disconcerted.
"Well, then, why did you come and disturb me?" she said, almost
angrily, if not quite, an enlarging red spot rising in each cheek.
"I can't do what I think would be--would be--"
"Right?"
"No: wise."
"You have made an admission NOW, Mr. Oak," she exclaimed, with even
more hauteur, and rocking her head disdainfully. "After that, do you
think I could marry you? Not if I know it."
He broke in passionately. "But don't mistake me like that! Because
I am open enough to own what every man in my shoes would have thought
of, you make your colours come up your face, and get crabbed with me.
That about your not being good enough for me is nonsense. You speak
like a lady--all the parish notice it, and your uncle at Weatherbury
is, I have heerd, a large farmer--much larger than ever I shall be.
May I call in the evening, or will you walk along with me o' Sundays?
I don't want you to make-up your mind at once, if you'd rather not."
"No--no--I cannot. Don't press me any more--don't. I don't love
you--so 'twould be ridiculous," she said, with a laugh.
No man likes to see his emotions the sport of a merry-go-round of
skittishness. "Very well," said Oak, firmly, with the bearing of one
who was going to give his days and nights to Ecclesiastes for ever.
"Then I'll ask you no more."
| 2,982 | Chapter 4 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-4 | Gabriel ascertained in town that the young woman was Bathsheba Everdene. "This well-favoured and comely girl soon made appreciable inroads upon the emotional constitution of young Farmer Oak." He waited to watch her each day at the milking and dreaded the time when the cow should go dry and Bathsheba would no longer come to the shed. He constantly repeated her name. "I'll make her my wife, or upon my soul I shall be good for nothing!" Seeking an excuse to visit her, Gabriel decided to take as a gift a tiny lamb whose mother had died. He groomed himself with care and set forth, accompanied by his faithful dog, George. From behind a hedge near her house he heard a feminine voice calming a frightened cat. He called out that his dog was "as mild as milk," but nobody answered. Once inside the house, Gabriel told the girl's aunt, Mrs. Hurst, of his desire to marry and inquired whether Bathsheba had suitors. Hoping to make a match, the aunt assured him that Bathsheba had many. Abashed, her would-be wooer replied, "That's unfortunate. . . . I'm only an everyday sort of man, and my only chance was in being the first comer." Forlorn, he walked away but was pursued by the tomboy calls of Bathsheba, who regretted having been away when he visited. Naively, she assured him that there were no other suitors. "'Really and truly I am glad to hear that!' said Farmer Oak, smiling . . . and blushing with gladness." Earnestly, Gabriel promised her all manner of things, including a piano. Hesitating over some of the items, Bathsheba said at last, "I've tried hard all the time I've been thinking; for a marriage would be very nice in one sense. People would talk about me and think I had won my battle, and I should feel triumphant, and all that. But a husband -- ." Finally Bathsheba admitted that she did not love Gabriel, and although the farmer said he would be happy if she just liked him, Bathsheba replied, "You'd get to despise me." Gabriel vehemently asserted, "Never. . . . I shall . . . keep wanting you till I die." He asked if he could come calling. She laughingly replied that that would be ridiculous, considering his feelings. "'Very well,' said Oak firmly. . . . 'Then I'll ask you no more.'" | With pronounced humor, Hardy gives the details of Gabriel's courtship of Bathsheba. He spruces up for his visit, polishing the silver chain of his watch and cutting himself a new walking stick. Auntie's boasts of numerous suitors for Bathsheba; Gabriel's offers of a piano, newspaper notices, and cucumber frames; Bathsheba's eagerness to be a bride unencumbered by a husband these are all amusing and convincing bits of life. The scene also gives us a chance to see more of Bathsheba's vanity and an aspect of Gabriel we had not yet observed -- pride. | 399 | 93 | [
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1,232 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/1232-chapters/26.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Prince/section_26_part_0.txt | The Prince.chapter 26 | chapter 26 | null | {"name": "Chapter 26", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210420060055/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/prince-machiavelli/summary/chapter-26", "summary": "At the end of it all, Machiavelli has an appeal to Lorenzo de' Medici. Please take over Italy. Pretty please! It goes a little something like this: It's time for a new ruler. If he wants to, Medici can be like Moses, Cyrus, and all the greats. He can rebuild Italy from its broken down state and be part of the history books. Doesn't that sound sweet? There was one guy who might have been Italy's savior, but well, that didn't work out so well and now look where we are. Italy is ready for someone to save her, and who better than the smart, rich, famous, powerful--and did we mention good-smelling?--Lorenzo de' Medici? Now that he's presumably read the book, Medici has all the knowledge he needs to be a first-rate ruler. God wants him to do it. He has sent miracles. Does he want to displease God? Does he want to get smote? Look at Italy. It's down in the dumps, but its peoples are hard workers. Better than any other country. The best. They just need a leader. Whose name begins with an \"L.\" By the way, Lorenzo, if you haven't gotten it already, if you plan to rule Italy, please establish an army. It's only the right thing to do. Italy can take on the Spanish, it can take on the Swiss--just give it a chance. So, Lorenzo, don't pass up this limited-time offer of ruling Italy. Everyone would love you, everyone would be loyal, and you would be the most adored ruler in the history of Italy. Why would you pass that up? Machiavelli leaves de' Medici with a patriotic quote from Petrarch about taking up arms, and his plea is over.", "analysis": ""} |
Having carefully considered the subject of the above discourses, and
wondering within myself whether the present times were propitious to
a new prince, and whether there were elements that would give an
opportunity to a wise and virtuous one to introduce a new order of
things which would do honour to him and good to the people of this
country, it appears to me that so many things concur to favour a new
prince that I never knew a time more fit than the present.
And if, as I said, it was necessary that the people of Israel should be
captive so as to make manifest the ability of Moses; that the Persians
should be oppressed by the Medes so as to discover the greatness of the
soul of Cyrus; and that the Athenians should be dispersed to illustrate
the capabilities of Theseus: then at the present time, in order to
discover the virtue of an Italian spirit, it was necessary that Italy
should be reduced to the extremity that she is now in, that she should
be more enslaved than the Hebrews, more oppressed than the Persians,
more scattered than the Athenians; without head, without order, beaten,
despoiled, torn, overrun; and to have endured every kind of desolation.
Although lately some spark may have been shown by one, which made us
think he was ordained by God for our redemption, nevertheless it was
afterwards seen, in the height of his career, that fortune rejected him;
so that Italy, left as without life, waits for him who shall yet heal
her wounds and put an end to the ravaging and plundering of Lombardy,
to the swindling and taxing of the kingdom and of Tuscany, and cleanse
those sores that for long have festered. It is seen how she entreats God
to send someone who shall deliver her from these wrongs and barbarous
insolencies. It is seen also that she is ready and willing to follow a
banner if only someone will raise it.
Nor is there to be seen at present one in whom she can place more hope
than in your illustrious house,(*) with its valour and fortune, favoured
by God and by the Church of which it is now the chief, and which could
be made the head of this redemption. This will not be difficult if you
will recall to yourself the actions and lives of the men I have named.
And although they were great and wonderful men, yet they were men, and
each one of them had no more opportunity than the present offers, for
their enterprises were neither more just nor easier than this, nor was
God more their friend than He is yours.
(*) Giuliano de Medici. He had just been created a cardinal
by Leo X. In 1523 Giuliano was elected Pope, and took the
title of Clement VII.
With us there is great justice, because that war is just which is
necessary, and arms are hallowed when there is no other hope but in
them. Here there is the greatest willingness, and where the willingness
is great the difficulties cannot be great if you will only follow those
men to whom I have directed your attention. Further than this, how
extraordinarily the ways of God have been manifested beyond example:
the sea is divided, a cloud has led the way, the rock has poured
forth water, it has rained manna, everything has contributed to
your greatness; you ought to do the rest. God is not willing to do
everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory
which belongs to us.
And it is not to be wondered at if none of the above-named Italians
have been able to accomplish all that is expected from your illustrious
house; and if in so many revolutions in Italy, and in so many campaigns,
it has always appeared as if military virtue were exhausted, this has
happened because the old order of things was not good, and none of us
have known how to find a new one. And nothing honours a man more than to
establish new laws and new ordinances when he himself was newly risen.
Such things when they are well founded and dignified will make him
revered and admired, and in Italy there are not wanting opportunities to
bring such into use in every form.
Here there is great valour in the limbs whilst it fails in the head.
Look attentively at the duels and the hand-to-hand combats, how superior
the Italians are in strength, dexterity, and subtlety. But when it comes
to armies they do not bear comparison, and this springs entirely from
the insufficiency of the leaders, since those who are capable are not
obedient, and each one seems to himself to know, there having never been
any one so distinguished above the rest, either by valour or fortune,
that others would yield to him. Hence it is that for so long a time,
and during so much fighting in the past twenty years, whenever there
has been an army wholly Italian, it has always given a poor account of
itself; the first witness to this is Il Taro, afterwards Allesandria,
Capua, Genoa, Vaila, Bologna, Mestri.(*)
(*) The battles of Il Taro, 1495; Alessandria, 1499; Capua,
1501; Genoa, 1507; Vaila, 1509; Bologna, 1511; Mestri, 1513.
If, therefore, your illustrious house wishes to follow these remarkable
men who have redeemed their country, it is necessary before all things,
as a true foundation for every enterprise, to be provided with your
own forces, because there can be no more faithful, truer, or better
soldiers. And although singly they are good, altogether they will
be much better when they find themselves commanded by their prince,
honoured by him, and maintained at his expense. Therefore it is
necessary to be prepared with such arms, so that you can be defended
against foreigners by Italian valour.
And although Swiss and Spanish infantry may be considered very
formidable, nevertheless there is a defect in both, by reason of which
a third order would not only be able to oppose them, but might be relied
upon to overthrow them. For the Spaniards cannot resist cavalry, and the
Switzers are afraid of infantry whenever they encounter them in close
combat. Owing to this, as has been and may again be seen, the Spaniards
are unable to resist French cavalry, and the Switzers are overthrown by
Spanish infantry. And although a complete proof of this latter cannot
be shown, nevertheless there was some evidence of it at the battle of
Ravenna, when the Spanish infantry were confronted by German battalions,
who follow the same tactics as the Swiss; when the Spaniards, by agility
of body and with the aid of their shields, got in under the pikes of the
Germans and stood out of danger, able to attack, while the Germans stood
helpless, and, if the cavalry had not dashed up, all would have been
over with them. It is possible, therefore, knowing the defects of both
these infantries, to invent a new one, which will resist cavalry and not
be afraid of infantry; this need not create a new order of arms, but
a variation upon the old. And these are the kind of improvements which
confer reputation and power upon a new prince.
This opportunity, therefore, ought not to be allowed to pass for letting
Italy at last see her liberator appear. Nor can one express the love
with which he would be received in all those provinces which have
suffered so much from these foreign scourings, with what thirst for
revenge, with what stubborn faith, with what devotion, with what tears.
What door would be closed to him? Who would refuse obedience to him?
What envy would hinder him? What Italian would refuse him homage? To all
of us this barbarous dominion stinks. Let, therefore, your illustrious
house take up this charge with that courage and hope with which all
just enterprises are undertaken, so that under its standard our native
country may be ennobled, and under its auspices may be verified that
saying of Petrarch:
Virtu contro al Furore
Prendera l'arme, e fia il combatter corto:
Che l'antico valore
Negli italici cuor non e ancor morto.
Virtue against fury shall advance the fight,
And it i' th' combat soon shall put to flight:
For the old Roman valour is not dead,
Nor in th' Italians' brests extinguished.
Edward Dacre, 1640.
| 1,359 | Chapter 26 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210420060055/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/prince-machiavelli/summary/chapter-26 | At the end of it all, Machiavelli has an appeal to Lorenzo de' Medici. Please take over Italy. Pretty please! It goes a little something like this: It's time for a new ruler. If he wants to, Medici can be like Moses, Cyrus, and all the greats. He can rebuild Italy from its broken down state and be part of the history books. Doesn't that sound sweet? There was one guy who might have been Italy's savior, but well, that didn't work out so well and now look where we are. Italy is ready for someone to save her, and who better than the smart, rich, famous, powerful--and did we mention good-smelling?--Lorenzo de' Medici? Now that he's presumably read the book, Medici has all the knowledge he needs to be a first-rate ruler. God wants him to do it. He has sent miracles. Does he want to displease God? Does he want to get smote? Look at Italy. It's down in the dumps, but its peoples are hard workers. Better than any other country. The best. They just need a leader. Whose name begins with an "L." By the way, Lorenzo, if you haven't gotten it already, if you plan to rule Italy, please establish an army. It's only the right thing to do. Italy can take on the Spanish, it can take on the Swiss--just give it a chance. So, Lorenzo, don't pass up this limited-time offer of ruling Italy. Everyone would love you, everyone would be loyal, and you would be the most adored ruler in the history of Italy. Why would you pass that up? Machiavelli leaves de' Medici with a patriotic quote from Petrarch about taking up arms, and his plea is over. | null | 287 | 1 | [
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14,328 | true | gradesaver | all_chapterized_books/14328-chapters/book_iv.txt | finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Consolation of Philosophy/section_3_part_0.txt | The Consolation of Philosophy.book iv | book iv | null | {"name": "Book IV", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201128165942/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-consolation-of-philosophy/study-guide/summary-book-iv", "summary": "Book IV examines the problem of evil's existence. Boethius has listened to and agreed with all of the arguments Philosophy has so far presented. But if God is perfect in his goodness, and is the unity of all things rules the world, how is it that evil is allowed to exist and is not always punished? In addition, where wickedness flourishes, virtue is often downtrodden and even stamped out. If God is omniscient and omnipotent and beneficent how can this evil continue in His world? Lady Philosophy reminds Boethius of his catechism - that God has said no evil will go unpunished, no virtue will be forgotten. Philosophy also asserts that the wicked are weak and have no power, and the virtuous are strong and powerful. All people strive to true happiness; the wicked cannot possibly attain it, and the virtuous can attain it. The evil people of the world seek happiness in misguided ways, and they will never attain their goal. Evil people are excluded from attaining the supreme good of perfect happiness, and therefore they are excluded from all that really exists. Since they cannot possibly attain the only thing of value any earthly power they have is not actually power at all. Evil people, Philosophy says, cease to exist. The wicked lose power and strength by striving for things that do not matter. They also lose their humanity, and become like the animals they represent by their various desires . Boethius agrees, but he laments that the wicked harm the virtuous and are not punished. Wickedness, like virtue, Philosophy assures Boethius, is its own reward. The wicked, by the fact of their very wickedness, are rewarded by their lack of existence and their descent into bestiality. The are, by their own actions rather than by any outside punishment, denied happiness. If they are punished, the evil people of the world are given a good, for they have a chance at redeeming themselves and changing their ways. When the evil people of the world escape punishment, their capacity and likelihood for more wickedness increases. Boethius finds this difficult, and protests. He can't abide that the good must suffer the earthly punishments that the evil, who deserve them, inflict upon them. This is acceptable in a world where nothing is determinate, but our world, he says, is ruled by God. How can God in his omnipotence allow this? The following argument for the foreknowledge of God is famous and somewhat difficult. Philosophy agrees that this is indeed a mystery, and no human being can hope to understand it fully. All events on Earth are happening in the unchanging mind of God, for whom there is no past, present or future. Since we are temporal beings, we cannot understand how everything that has ever happened or will happen is happening for God simultaneously, but every occurrence is contained within His mind. The government of all changeable things is called Providence. When this is applied in the temporal realm, it is called by the old pagan name of Fate. In short, Providence represents the foreknowledge of God of all things, and controls of the nature of all things. The actual connection of events which occur on Earth is Fate. Providence is the divine reason by which the world is ordered. Fate is the same reason when applied the temporal world. Because we on earth cannot understand Providence, Fate sometimes seems unordered and cruel. Because of this, anything that happens to you, good fortune or bad, is good, because if your fortune is bad it is an instruction toward virtue. This is, in short, the best of all possible worlds, for evil doesn't actually have any substance or power, and all the events of the world have been planned by Providence.", "analysis": "This discussion of evil in the world - this theodicy - is one of the most famous and important passages of this book. The argument that evil has no substance and does not exist is not always considered an orthodox Catholic idea, but it breaks no rules of the catechism and is easier to prove logically than the existence of the devil. The fact that the omniscience, omnipotence, and beneficence of God is retained is the important point here, and Boethius does it with verve and daring. Some critics have read the seed of fascism in the idea that the truly wicked are no longer human but have become animals. Some fascist states, such as Nazi Germany, similarly contended that the \"wicked\" are not really human. In Boethius' defense, Lady Philosophy advises compassion toward the wicked, rather than contempt, an idea that is never part of fascist philosophy. However, Philosophy does continue by saying that we should punish the wicked as a cure for their wickedness. Boethius never really examines the human social context that is an inevitable part of determining who is \"wicked\" and who isn't. If human beings, who are inevitably flawed and cannot understand the true nature of good and evil, take it upon themselves to punish the \"wicked\" among them, surely injustice may result. Critics have also said that it is possible that Boethius' injunction to purge the wicked justified torture and death for heretics, in order to enable them to \"lay aside the filth of vice through the pains of punishment.\" Again, Boethius does not directly address the difficulty of locating absolute values like \"vice\" and \"virtue\" among inevitably flawed, imperfect human beings. Certainly Boethius foreshadows the extremes of the Inquisition and the mass slaughter of Jews and other \"heretics\" at the hands of Christians. Boethius' argument that evil does not have any substance is not his own idea. Various philosophies and religions, including Neo-Platonism, had argued this idea before. The way Philosophy explains it through the ineffectual actions of evil people follows from previous arguments she has presented to Boethius. Rather than starting with a cosmic idea of good and evil and the nature of God, she starts, as she has every argument so far, with practical discussions of what is done by human beings on earth. This is, after all, supposed to be a \"consolation,\" not necessarily a cosmography. When Boethius to be able to start with something he knows - the actions of the virtuous and the evil here on earth - he is better able to find comfort in his situation. Perhaps this is the reason Boethius wrote this book to begin with - to explain to himself and others how he was able to, without resorting to the revealed knowledge of the Bible, reconcile himself to his fate. Providence and Fate are perhaps the two most difficult concepts to understand in this book. Because so much of what Boethius says inspired by faith, the arguments for these concepts may seem flip or inadequate. The concept of God holding all events in his mind at one time, outside of the temporal world, and Fate being the ordering of events in the temporal world, is, in the understatement of Philosophy, a \"mystery.\" This is as complete an explanation of it as can be found, however, outside of a theological text. Accepting that all fortune is good, and that this is the best of all possible worlds, is as difficult for Boethius as it is for the rest of us. Perhaps few today would accept that bad fortune leads us toward virtue and good fortune leads us to vice. However, this argument comforts Boethius, and makes him more accepting of his fate. Indeed, the Consolation of Philosophy in general functions more as a guidebook for salvaging happiness in the most adverse conditions rather than a theological proof of God's existence or the necessity of evil. One might go so far as to say that Boethius' Lady Philosophy insists upon the existence of God simply because that belief is conducive to Boethius' consolation. Truth and pristine logic are not Boethius' object; resignation in the face of unjust realities is."} | <CHAPTER>
BOOK IV. I.
Softly and sweetly Philosophy sang these verses to the end without
losing aught of the dignity of her expression or the seriousness of her
tones; then, forasmuch as I was as yet unable to forget my deeply-seated
sorrow, just as she was about to say something further, I broke in and
cried: 'O thou guide into the way of true light, all that thy voice hath
uttered from the beginning even unto now has manifestly seemed to me at
once divine contemplated in itself, and by the force of thy arguments
placed beyond the possibility of overthrow. Moreover, these truths have
not been altogether unfamiliar to me heretofore, though because of
indignation at my wrongs they have for a time been forgotten. But, lo!
herein is the very chiefest cause of my grief--that, while there exists
a good ruler of the universe, it is possible that evil should be at all,
still more that it should go unpunished. Surely thou must see how
deservedly this of itself provokes astonishment. But a yet greater
marvel follows: While wickedness reigns and flourishes, virtue not only
lacks its reward, but is even thrust down and trampled under the feet of
the wicked, and suffers punishment in the place of crime. That this
should happen under the rule of a God who knows all things and can do
all things, but wills only the good, cannot be sufficiently wondered at
nor sufficiently lamented.'
Then said she: 'It would indeed be infinitely astounding, and of all
monstrous things most horrible, if, as thou esteemest, in the
well-ordered home of so great a householder, the base vessels should be
held in honour, the precious left to neglect. But it is not so. For if
we hold unshaken those conclusions which we lately reached, thou shall
learn that, by the will of Him of whose realm we are speaking, the good
are always strong, the bad always weak and impotent; that vices never go
unpunished, nor virtues unrewarded; that good fortune ever befalls the
good, and ill fortune the bad, and much more of the sort, which shall
hush thy murmurings, and stablish thee in the strong assurance of
conviction. And since by my late instructions thou hast seen the form of
happiness, hast learnt, too, the seat where it is to be found, all due
preliminaries being discharged, I will now show thee the road which will
lead thee home. Wings, also, will I fasten to thy mind wherewith thou
mayst soar aloft, that so, all disturbing doubts removed, thou mayst
return safe to thy country, under my guidance, in the path I will show
thee, and by the means which I furnish.'
SONG I. THE SOUL'S FLIGHT.
Wings are mine; above the pole
Far aloft I soar.
Clothed with these, my nimble soul
Scorns earth's hated shore,
Cleaves the skies upon the wind,
Sees the clouds left far behind.
Soon the glowing point she nears,
Where the heavens rotate,
Follows through the starry spheres
Phoebus' course, or straight
Takes for comrade 'mid the stars
Saturn cold or glittering Mars;
Thus each circling orb explores
Through Night's stole that peers;
Then, when all are numbered, soars
Far beyond the spheres,
Mounting heaven's supremest height
To the very Fount of light.
There the Sovereign of the world
His calm sway maintains;
As the globe is onward whirled
Guides the chariot reins,
And in splendour glittering
Reigns the universal King.
Hither if thy wandering feet
Find at last a way,
Here thy long-lost home thou'lt greet:
'Dear lost land,' thou'lt say,
'Though from thee I've wandered wide,
Hence I came, here will abide.'
Yet if ever thou art fain
Visitant to be
Of earth's gloomy night again,
Surely thou wilt see
Tyrants whom the nations fear
Dwell in hapless exile here.
II.
Then said I: 'Verily, wondrous great are thy promises; yet I do not
doubt but thou canst make them good: only keep me not in suspense after
raising such hopes.'
'Learn, then, first,' said she, 'how that power ever waits upon the
good, while the bad are left wholly destitute of strength.[K] Of these
truths the one proves the other; for since good and evil are contraries,
if it is made plain that good is power, the feebleness of evil is
clearly seen, and, conversely, if the frail nature of evil is made
manifest, the strength of good is thereby known. However, to win ampler
credence for my conclusion, I will pursue both paths, and draw
confirmation for my statements first in one way and then in the other.
'The carrying out of any human action depends upon two things--to wit,
will and power; if either be wanting, nothing can be accomplished. For
if the will be lacking, no attempt at all is made to do what is not
willed; whereas if there be no power, the will is all in vain. And so,
if thou seest any man wishing to attain some end, yet utterly failing to
attain it, thou canst not doubt that he lacked the power of getting what
he wished for.'
'Why, certainly not; there is no denying it.'
'Canst thou, then, doubt that he whom thou seest to have accomplished
what he willed had also the power to accomplish it?'
'Of course not.'
'Then, in respect of what he can accomplish a man is to be reckoned
strong, in respect of what he cannot accomplish weak?'
'Granted,' said I.
'Then, dost thou remember that, by our former reasonings, it was
concluded that the whole aim of man's will, though the means of pursuit
vary, is set intently upon happiness?'
'I do remember that this, too, was proved.'
'Dost thou also call to mind how happiness is absolute good, and
therefore that, when happiness is sought, it is good which is in all
cases the object of desire?'
'Nay, I do not so much call to mind as keep it fixed in my memory.'
'Then, all men, good and bad alike, with one indistinguishable purpose
strive to reach good?'
'Yes, that follows.'
'But it is certain that by the attainment of good men become good?'
'It is.'
'Then, do the good attain their object?'
'It seems so.'
'But if the bad were to attain the good which is _their_ object, they
could not be bad?'
'No.'
'Then, since both seek good, but while the one sort attain it, the other
attain it not, is there any doubt that the good are endued with power,
while they who are bad are weak?'
'If any doubt it, he is incapable of reflecting on the nature of things,
or the consequences involved in reasoning.'
'Again, supposing there are two things to which the same function is
prescribed in the course of nature, and one of these successfully
accomplishes the function by natural action, the other is altogether
incapable of that natural action, instead of which, in a way other than
is agreeable to its nature, it--I will not say fulfils its function, but
feigns to fulfil it: which of these two would in thy view be the
stronger?'
'I guess thy meaning, but I pray thee let me hear thee more at large.'
'Walking is man's natural motion, is it not?'
'Certainly.'
'Thou dost not doubt, I suppose, that it is natural for the feet to
discharge this function?'
'No; surely I do not.'
'Now, if one man who is able to use his feet walks, and another to whom
the natural use of his feet is wanting tries to walk on his hands,
which of the two wouldst thou rightly esteem the stronger?'
'Go on,' said I; 'no one can question but that he who has the natural
capacity has more strength than he who has it not.'
'Now, the supreme good is set up as the end alike for the bad and for
the good; but the good seek it through the natural action of the
virtues, whereas the bad try to attain this same good through all manner
of concupiscence, which is not the natural way of attaining good. Or
dost thou think otherwise?'
'Nay; rather, one further consequence is clear to me: for from my
admissions it must needs follow that the good have power, and the bad
are impotent.'
'Thou anticipatest rightly, and that as physicians reckon is a sign that
nature is set working, and is throwing off the disease. But, since I see
thee so ready at understanding, I will heap proof on proof. Look how
manifest is the extremity of vicious men's weakness; they cannot even
reach that goal to which the aim of nature leads and almost constrains
them. What if they were left without this mighty, this well-nigh
irresistible help of nature's guidance! Consider also how momentous is
the powerlessness which incapacitates the wicked. Not light or
trivial[L] are the prizes which they contend for, but which they cannot
win or hold; nay, their failure concerns the very sum and crown of
things. Poor wretches! they fail to compass even that for which they
toil day and night. Herein also the strength of the good conspicuously
appears. For just as thou wouldst judge him to be the strongest walker
whose legs could carry him to a point beyond which no further advance
was possible, so must thou needs account him strong in power who so
attains the end of his desires that nothing further to be desired lies
beyond. Whence follows the obvious conclusion that they who are wicked
are seen likewise to be wholly destitute of strength. For why do they
forsake virtue and follow vice? Is it from ignorance of what is good?
Well, what is more weak and feeble than the blindness of ignorance? Do
they know what they ought to follow, but lust drives them aside out of
the way? If it be so, they are still frail by reason of their
incontinence, for they cannot fight against vice. Or do they knowingly
and wilfully forsake the good and turn aside to vice? Why, at this rate,
they not only cease to have power, but cease to be at all. For they who
forsake the common end of all things that are, they likewise also cease
to be at all. Now, to some it may seem strange that we should assert
that the bad, who form the greater part of mankind, do not exist. But
the fact is so. I do not, indeed, deny that they who are bad are bad,
but that they _are_ in an unqualified and absolute sense I deny. Just as
we call a corpse a dead man, but cannot call it simply "man," so I would
allow the vicious to be bad, but that they _are_ in an absolute sense I
cannot allow. That only _is_ which maintains its place and keeps its
nature; whatever falls away from this forsakes the existence which is
essential to its nature. "But," thou wilt say, "the bad have an
ability." Nor do I wish to deny it; only this ability of theirs comes
not from strength, but from impotence. For their ability is to do evil,
which would have had no efficacy at all if they could have continued in
the performance of good. So this ability of theirs proves them still
more plainly to have no power. For if, as we concluded just now, evil is
nothing, 'tis clear that the wicked can effect nothing, since they are
only able to do evil.'
''Tis evident.'
'And that thou mayst understand what is the precise force of this power,
we determined, did we not, awhile back, that nothing has more power than
supreme good?'
'We did,' said I.
'But that same highest good cannot do evil?'
'Certainly not.'
'Is there anyone, then, who thinks that men are able to do all things?'
'None but a madman.'
'Yet they are able to do evil?'
'Ay; would they could not!'
'Since, then, he who can do only good is omnipotent, while they who can
do evil also are not omnipotent, it is manifest that they who can do
evil have less power. There is this also: we have shown that all power
is to be reckoned among things desirable, and that all desirable things
are referred to good as to a kind of consummation of their nature. But
the ability to commit crime cannot be referred to the good; therefore it
is not a thing to be desired. And yet all power is desirable; it is
clear, then, that ability to do evil is not power. From all which
considerations appeareth the power of the good, and the indubitable
weakness of the bad, and it is clear that Plato's judgment was true; the
wise alone are able to do what they would, while the wicked follow their
own hearts' lust, but can _not_ accomplish what they would. For they go
on in their wilfulness fancying they will attain what they wish for in
the paths of delight; but they are very far from its attainment, since
shameful deeds lead not to happiness.'
FOOTNOTES:
[K] The paradoxes in this chapter and chapter iv. are taken from Plato's
'Gorgias.' See Jowett, vol. ii., pp. 348-366, and also pp. 400, 401
('Gorgias,' 466-479, and 508, 509).
[L]
'No trivial game is here; the strife Is waged for Turnus' own dear
life.'
_Conington_.
See Virgil, AEneid,' xii. 764, 745: _cf_. 'Iliad,' xxii. 159-162.
SONG II. THE BONDAGE OF PASSION.
When high-enthroned the monarch sits, resplendent in the pride
Of purple robes, while flashing steel guards him on every side;
When baleful terrors on his brow with frowning menace lower,
And Passion shakes his labouring breast--how dreadful seems his power!
But if the vesture of his state from such a one thou tear,
Thou'lt see what load of secret bonds this lord of earth doth wear.
Lust's poison rankles; o'er his mind rage sweeps in tempest rude;
Sorrow his spirit vexes sore, and empty hopes delude.
Then thou'lt confess: one hapless wretch, whom many lords oppress,
Does never what he would, but lives in thraldom's helplessness.
III.
'Thou seest, then, in what foulness unrighteous deeds are sunk, with
what splendour righteousness shines. Whereby it is manifest that
goodness never lacks its reward, nor crime its punishment. For, verily,
in all manner of transactions that for the sake of which the particular
action is done may justly be accounted the reward of that action, even
as the wreath for the sake of which the race is run is the reward
offered for running. Now, we have shown happiness to be that very good
for the sake of which all things are done. Absolute good, then, is
offered as the common prize, as it were, of all human actions. But,
truly, this is a reward from which it is impossible to separate the good
man, for one who is without good cannot properly be called good at all;
wherefore righteous dealing never misses its reward. Rage the wicked,
then, never so violently, the crown shall not fall from the head of the
wise, nor wither. Verily, other men's unrighteousness cannot pluck from
righteous souls their proper glory. Were the reward in which the soul of
the righteous delighteth received from without, then might it be taken
away by him who gave it, or some other; but since it is conferred by his
own righteousness, then only will he lose his prize when he has ceased
to be righteous. Lastly, since every prize is desired because it is
believed to be good, who can account him who possesses good to be
without reward? And what a prize, the fairest and grandest of all! For
remember the corollary which I chiefly insisted on a little while back,
and reason thus: Since absolute good is happiness, 'tis clear that all
the good must be happy for the very reason that they are good. But it
was agreed that those who are happy are gods. So, then, the prize of the
good is one which no time may impair, no man's power lessen, no man's
unrighteousness tarnish; 'tis very Godship. And this being so, the wise
man cannot doubt that punishment is inseparable from the bad. For since
good and bad, and likewise reward and punishment, are contraries, it
necessarily follows that, corresponding to all that we see accrue as
reward of the good, there is some penalty attached as punishment of
evil. As, then, righteousness itself is the reward of the righteous, so
wickedness itself is the punishment of the unrighteous. Now, no one who
is visited with punishment doubts that he is visited with evil.
Accordingly, if they were but willing to weigh their own case, could
_they_ think themselves free from punishment whom wickedness, worst of
all evils, has not only touched, but deeply tainted?
'See, also, from the opposite standpoint--the standpoint of the
good--what a penalty attends upon the wicked. Thou didst learn a little
since that whatever is is one, and that unity itself is good.
Accordingly, by this way of reckoning, whatever falls away from goodness
ceases to be; whence it comes to pass that the bad cease to be what they
were, while only the outward aspect is still left to show they have been
men. Wherefore, by their perversion to badness, they have lost their
true human nature. Further, since righteousness alone can raise men
above the level of humanity, it must needs be that unrighteousness
degrades below man's level those whom it has cast out of man's estate.
It results, then, that thou canst not consider him human whom thou seest
transformed by vice. The violent despoiler of other men's goods,
enflamed with covetousness, surely resembles a wolf. A bold and restless
spirit, ever wrangling in law-courts, is like some yelping cur. The
secret schemer, taking pleasure in fraud and stealth, is own brother to
the fox. The passionate man, phrenzied with rage, we might believe to be
animated with the soul of a lion. The coward and runaway, afraid where
no fear is, may be likened to the timid deer. He who is sunk in
ignorance and stupidity lives like a dull ass. He who is light and
inconstant, never holding long to one thing, is for all the world like a
bird. He who wallows in foul and unclean lusts is sunk in the pleasures
of a filthy hog. So it comes to pass that he who by forsaking
righteousness ceases to be a man cannot pass into a Godlike condition,
but actually turns into a brute beast.'
SONG III. CIRCE'S CUP.
Th' Ithacan discreet,
And all his storm-tossed fleet,
Far o'er the ocean wave
The winds of heaven drave--
Drave to the mystic isle,
Where dwelleth in her guile
That fair and faithless one,
The daughter of the Sun.
There for the stranger crew
With cunning spells she knew
To mix th' enchanted cup.
For whoso drinks it up,
Must suffer hideous change
To monstrous shapes and strange.
One like a boar appears;
This his huge form uprears,
Mighty in bulk and limb--
An Afric lion--grim
With claw and fang. Confessed
A wolf, this, sore distressed
When he would weep, doth howl;
And, strangely tame, these prowl
The Indian tiger's mates.
And though in such sore straits,
The pity of the god
Who bears the mystic rod
Had power the chieftain brave
From her fell arts to save;
His comrades, unrestrained,
The fatal goblet drained.
All now with low-bent head,
Like swine, on acorns fed;
Man's speech and form were reft,
No human feature left;
But steadfast still, the mind,
Unaltered, unresigned,
The monstrous change bewailed.
How little, then, availed
The potencies of ill!
These herbs, this baneful skill,
May change each outward part,
But cannot touch the heart.
In its true home, deep-set,
Man's spirit liveth yet.
_Those_ poisons are more fell,
More potent to expel
Man from his high estate,
Which subtly penetrate,
And leave the body whole,
But deep infect the soul.
IV.
Then said I: 'This is very true. I see that the vicious, though they
keep the outward form of man, are rightly said to be changed into beasts
in respect of their spiritual nature; but, inasmuch as their cruel and
polluted minds vent their rage in the destruction of the good, I would
this license were not permitted to them.'
'Nor is it,' said she, 'as shall be shown in the fitting place. Yet if
that license which thou believest to be permitted to them were taken
away, the punishment of the wicked would be in great part remitted. For
verily, incredible as it may seem to some, it needs must be that the bad
are more unfortunate when they have accomplished their desires than if
they are unable to get them fulfilled. If it is wretched to will evil,
to have been able to accomplish evil is more wretched; for without the
power the wretched will would fail of effect. Accordingly, those whom
thou seest to will, to be able to accomplish, and to accomplish crime,
must needs be the victims of a threefold wretchedness, since each one of
these states has its own measure of wretchedness.'
'Yes,' said I; 'yet I earnestly wish they might speedily be quit of this
misfortune by losing the ability to accomplish crime.'
'They will lose it,' said she, 'sooner than perchance thou wishest, or
they themselves think likely; since, verily, within the narrow bounds of
our brief life there is nothing so late in coming that anyone, least of
all an immortal spirit, should deem it long to wait for. Their great
expectations, the lofty fabric of their crimes, is oft overthrown by a
sudden and unlooked-for ending, and this but sets a limit to their
misery. For if wickedness makes men wretched, he is necessarily more
wretched who is wicked for a longer time; and were it not that death, at
all events, puts an end to the evil doings of the wicked, I should
account them wretched to the last degree. Indeed, if we have formed true
conclusions about the ill fortune of wickedness, that wretchedness is
plainly infinite which is doomed to be eternal.'
Then said I: 'A wonderful inference, and difficult to grant; but I see
that it agrees entirely with our previous conclusions.'
'Thou art right,' said she; 'but if anyone finds it hard to admit the
conclusion, he ought in fairness either to prove some falsity in the
premises, or to show that the combination of propositions does not
adequately enforce the necessity of the conclusion; otherwise, if the
premises be granted, nothing whatever can be said against the inference
of the conclusion. And here is another statement which seems not less
wonderful, but on the premises assumed is equally necessary.'
'What is that?'
'The wicked are happier in undergoing punishment than if no penalty of
justice chasten them. And I am not now meaning what might occur to
anyone--that bad character is amended by retribution, and is brought
into the right path by the terror of punishment, or that it serves as an
example to warn others to avoid transgression; but I believe that in
another way the wicked are more unfortunate when they go unpunished,
even though no account be taken of amendment, and no regard be paid to
example.'
'Why, what other way is there beside these?' said I.
Then said she: 'Have we not agreed that the good are happy, and the evil
wretched?'
'Yes,' said I.
'Now, if,' said she, 'to one in affliction there be given along with his
misery some good thing, is he not happier than one whose misery is
misery pure and simple without admixture of any good?'
'It would seem so.'
'But if to one thus wretched, one destitute of all good, some further
evil be added besides those which make him wretched, is he not to be
judged far more unhappy than he whose ill fortune is alleviated by some
share of good?'
'It could scarcely be otherwise.'
'Surely, then, the wicked, when they are punished, have a good thing
added to them--to wit, the punishment which by the law of justice is
good; and likewise, when they escape punishment, a new evil attaches to
them in that very freedom from punishment which thou hast rightly
acknowledged to be an evil in the case of the unrighteous.'
'I cannot deny it.'
'Then, the wicked are far more unhappy when indulged with an unjust
freedom from punishment than when punished by a just retribution. Now,
it is manifest that it is just for the wicked to be punished, and for
them to escape unpunished is unjust.'
'Why, who would venture to deny it?'
'This, too, no one can possibly deny--that all which is just is good,
and, conversely, all which is unjust is bad.'
Then I answered: 'These inferences do indeed follow from what we lately
concluded; but tell me,' said I, 'dost thou take no account of the
punishment of the soul after the death of the body?'
'Nay, truly,' said she, 'great are these penalties, some of them
inflicted, I imagine, in the severity of retribution, others in the
mercy of purification. But it is not my present purpose to speak of
these. So far, my aim hath been to make thee recognise that the power of
the bad which shocked thee so exceedingly is no power; to make thee see
that those of whose freedom from punishment thou didst complain are
never without the proper penalties of their unrighteousness; to teach
thee that the license which thou prayedst might soon come to an end is
not long-enduring; that it would be more unhappy if it lasted longer,
most unhappy of all if it lasted for ever; thereafter that the
unrighteous are more wretched if unjustly let go without punishment than
if punished by a just retribution--from which point of view it follows
that the wicked are afflicted with more severe penalties just when they
are supposed to escape punishment.'
Then said I: 'While I follow thy reasonings, I am deeply impressed with
their truth; but if I turn to the common convictions of men, I find few
who will even listen to such arguments, let alone admit them to be
credible.'
'True,' said she; 'they cannot lift eyes accustomed to darkness to the
light of clear truth, and are like those birds whose vision night
illumines and day blinds; for while they regard, not the order of the
universe, but their own dispositions of mind, they think the license to
commit crime, and the escape from punishment, to be fortunate. But mark
the ordinance of eternal law. Hast thou fashioned thy soul to the
likeness of the better, thou hast no need of a judge to award the
prize--by thine own act hast thou raised thyself in the scale of
excellence; hast thou perverted thy affections to baser things, look not
for punishment from one without thee--thine own act hath degraded thee,
and thrust thee down. Even so, if alternately thou turn thy gaze upon
the vile earth and upon the heavens, though all without thee stand
still, by the mere laws of sight thou seemest now sunk in the mire, now
soaring among the stars. But the common herd regards not these things.
What, then? Shall we go over to those whom we have shown to be like
brute beasts? Why, suppose, now, one who had quite lost his sight
should likewise forget that he had ever possessed the faculty of vision,
and should imagine that nothing was wanting in him to human perfection,
should we deem those who saw as well as ever blind? Why, they will not
even assent to this, either--that they who do wrong are more wretched
than those who suffer wrong, though the proof of this rests on grounds
of reason no less strong.'
'Let me hear these same reasons,' said I.
'Wouldst thou deny that every wicked man deserves punishment?'
'I would not, certainly.'
'And that those who are wicked are unhappy is clear in manifold ways?'
'Yes,' I replied.
'Thou dost not doubt, then, that those who deserve punishment are
wretched?'
'Agreed,' said I.
'So, then, if thou wert sitting in judgment, on whom wouldst thou decree
the infliction of punishment--on him who had done the wrong, or on him
who had suffered it?'
'Without doubt, I would compensate the sufferer at the cost of the doer
of the wrong.'
'Then, the injurer would seem more wretched than the injured?'
'Yes; it follows. And so for this and other reasons resting on the same
ground, inasmuch as baseness of its own nature makes men wretched, it is
plain that a wrong involves the misery of the doer, not of the
sufferer.'
'And yet,' says she, 'the practice of the law-courts is just the
opposite: advocates try to arouse the commiseration of the judges for
those who have endured some grievous and cruel wrong; whereas pity is
rather due to the criminal, who ought to be brought to the judgment-seat
by his accusers in a spirit not of anger, but of compassion and
kindness, as a sick man to the physician, to have the ulcer of his fault
cut away by punishment. Whereby the business of the advocate would
either wholly come to a standstill, or, did men prefer to make it
serviceable to mankind, would be restricted to the practice of
accusation. The wicked themselves also, if through some chink or cranny
they were permitted to behold the virtue they have forsaken, and were to
see that by the pains of punishment they would rid themselves of the
uncleanness of their vices, and win in exchange the recompense of
righteousness, they would no longer think these sufferings pains; they
would refuse the help of advocates, and would commit themselves wholly
into the hands of their accusers and judges. Whence it comes to pass
that for the wise no place is left for hatred; only the most foolish
would hate the good, and to hate the bad is unreasonable. For if vicious
propensity is, as it were, a disease of the soul like bodily sickness,
even as we account the sick in body by no means deserving of hate, but
rather of pity, so, and much more, should they be pitied whose minds are
assailed by wickedness, which is more frightful than any sickness.'
SONG IV. THE UNREASONABLENESS OF HATRED.
Why all this furious strife? Oh, why
With rash and wilful hand provoke death's destined day?
If death ye seek--lo! Death is nigh,
Not of their master's will those coursers swift delay!
The wild beasts vent on man their rage,
Yet 'gainst their brothers' lives men point the murderous steel;
Unjust and cruel wars they wage,
And haste with flying darts the death to meet or deal.
No right nor reason can they show;
'Tis but because their lands and laws are not the same.
Wouldst _thou_ give each his due; then know
Thy love the good must have, the bad thy pity claim.
V.
On this I said: 'I see how there is a happiness and misery founded on
the actual deserts of the righteous and the wicked. Nevertheless, I
wonder in myself whether there is not some good and evil in fortune as
the vulgar understand it. Surely, no sensible man would rather be
exiled, poor and disgraced, than dwell prosperously in his own country,
powerful, wealthy, and high in honour. Indeed, the work of wisdom is
more clear and manifest in its operation when the happiness of rulers is
somehow passed on to the people around them, especially considering that
the prison, the law, and the other pains of legal punishment are
properly due only to mischievous citizens on whose account they were
originally instituted. Accordingly, I do exceedingly marvel why all this
is completely reversed--why the good are harassed with the penalties due
to crime, and the bad carry off the rewards of virtue; and I long to
hear from thee what reason may be found for so unjust a state of
disorder. For assuredly I should wonder less if I could believe that all
things are the confused result of chance. But now my belief in God's
governance doth add amazement to amazement. For, seeing that He
sometimes assigns fair fortune to the good and harsh fortune to the bad,
and then again deals harshly with the good, and grants to the bad their
hearts' desire, how does this differ from chance, unless some reason is
discovered for it all?'
'Nay; it is not wonderful,' said she, 'if all should be thought random
and confused when the principle of order is not known. And though thou
knowest not the causes on which this great system depends, yet forasmuch
as a good ruler governs the world, doubt not for thy part that all is
rightly done.'
SONG V. WONDER AND IGNORANCE.
Who knoweth not how near the pole
Bootes' course doth go,
Must marvel by what heavenly law
He moves his Wain so slow;
Why late he plunges 'neath the main,
And swiftly lights his beams again.
When the full-orbed moon grows pale
In the mid course of night,
And suddenly the stars shine forth
That languished in her light,
Th' astonied nations stand at gaze,
And beat the air in wild amaze.[M]
None marvels why upon the shore
The storm-lashed breakers beat,
Nor why the frost-bound glaciers melt
At summer's fervent heat;
For here the cause seems plain and clear,
Only what's dark and hid we fear.
Weak-minded folly magnifies
All that is rare and strange,
And the dull herd's o'erwhelmed with awe
At unexpected change.
But wonder leaves enlightened minds,
When ignorance no longer blinds.
FOOTNOTES:
[M] To frighten away the monster swallowing the moon. The superstition
was once common. See Tylor's 'Primitive Culture,' pp. 296-302.
VI.
'True,' said I; 'but, since it is thy office to unfold the hidden cause
of things, and explain principles veiled in darkness, inform me, I pray
thee, of thine own conclusions in this matter, since the marvel of it is
what more than aught else disturbs my mind.'
A smile played one moment upon her lips as she replied: 'Thou callest me
to the greatest of all subjects of inquiry, a task for which the most
exhaustive treatment barely suffices. Such is its nature that, as fast
as one doubt is cut away, innumerable others spring up like Hydra's
heads, nor could we set any limit to their renewal did we not apply the
mind's living fire to suppress them. For there come within its scope the
questions of the essential simplicity of providence, of the order of
fate, of unforeseen chance, of the Divine knowledge and predestination,
and of the freedom of the will. How heavy is the weight of all this
thou canst judge for thyself. But, inasmuch as to know these things also
is part of the treatment of thy malady, we will try to give them some
consideration, despite the restrictions of the narrow limits of our
time. Moreover, thou must for a time dispense with the pleasures of
music and song, if so be that thou findest any delight therein, whilst I
weave together the connected train of reasons in proper order.'
'As thou wilt,' said I.
Then, as if making a new beginning, she thus discoursed: 'The coming
into being of all things, the whole course of development in things that
change, every sort of thing that moves in any wise, receives its due
cause, order, and form from the steadfastness of the Divine mind. This
mind, calm in the citadel of its own essential simplicity, has decreed
that the method of its rule shall be manifold. Viewed in the very purity
of the Divine intelligence, this method is called _providence_; but
viewed in regard to those things which it moves and disposes, it is
what the ancients called _fate_. That these two are different will
easily be clear to anyone who passes in review their respective
efficacies. Providence is the Divine reason itself, seated in the
Supreme Being, which disposes all things; fate is the disposition
inherent in all things which move, through which providence joins all
things in their proper order. Providence embraces all things, however
different, however infinite; fate sets in motion separately individual
things, and assigns to them severally their position, form, and time.
'So the unfolding of this temporal order unified into the foreview of
the Divine mind is providence, while the same unity broken up and
unfolded in time is fate. And although these are different, yet is there
a dependence between them; for the order of destiny issues from the
essential simplicity of providence. For as the artificer, forming in his
mind beforehand the idea of the thing to be made, carries out his
design, and develops from moment to moment what he had before seen in a
single instant as a whole, so God in His providence ordains all things
as parts of a single unchanging whole, but carries out these very
ordinances by fate in a time of manifold unity. So whether fate is
accomplished by Divine spirits as the ministers of providence, or by a
soul, or by the service of all nature--whether by the celestial motion
of the stars, by the efficacy of angels, or by the many-sided cunning of
demons--whether by all or by some of these the destined series is woven,
this, at least, is manifest: that providence is the fixed and simple
form of destined events, fate their shifting series in order of time, as
by the disposal of the Divine simplicity they are to take place. Whereby
it is that all things which are under fate are subjected also to
providence, on which fate itself is dependent; whereas certain things
which are set under providence are above the chain of fate--viz., those
things which by their nearness to the primal Divinity are steadfastly
fixed, and lie outside the order of fate's movements. For as the
innermost of several circles revolving round the same centre approaches
the simplicity of the midmost point, and is, as it were, a pivot round
which the exterior circles turn, while the outermost, whirled in ampler
orbit, takes in a wider and wider sweep of space in proportion to its
departure from the indivisible unity of the centre--while, further,
whatever joins and allies itself to the centre is narrowed to a like
simplicity, and no longer expands vaguely into space--even so whatsoever
departs widely from primal mind is involved more deeply in the meshes of
fate, and things are free from fate in proportion as they seek to come
nearer to that central pivot; while if aught cleaves close to supreme
mind in its absolute fixity, this, too, being free from movement, rises
above fate's necessity. Therefore, as is reasoning to pure intelligence,
as that which is generated to that which is, time to eternity, a circle
to its centre, so is the shifting series of fate to the steadfastness
and simplicity of providence.
'It is this causal series which moves heaven and the stars, attempers
the elements to mutual accord, and again in turn transforms them into
new combinations; _this_ which renews the series of all things that are
born and die through like successions of germ and birth; it is _its_
operation which binds the destinies of men by an indissoluble nexus of
causality, and, since it issues in the beginning from unalterable
providence, these destinies also must of necessity be immutable.
Accordingly, the world is ruled for the best if this unity abiding in
the Divine mind puts forth an inflexible order of causes. And this
order, by its intrinsic immutability, restricts things mutable which
otherwise would ebb and flow at random. And so it happens that, although
to you, who are not altogether capable of understanding this order, all
things seem confused and disordered, nevertheless there is everywhere an
appointed limit which guides all things to good. Verily, nothing can be
done for the sake of evil even by the wicked themselves; for, as we
abundantly proved, they seek good, but are drawn out of the way by
perverse error; far less can this order which sets out from the supreme
centre of good turn aside anywhither from the way in which it began.
'"Yet what confusion," thou wilt say, "can be more unrighteous than that
prosperity and adversity should indifferently befall the good, what
they like and what they loathe come alternately to the bad!" Yes; but
have men in real life such soundness of mind that their judgments of
righteousness and wickedness must necessarily correspond with facts?
Why, on this very point their verdicts conflict, and those whom some
deem worthy of reward, others deem worthy of punishment. Yet granted
there were one who could rightly distinguish the good and bad, yet would
he be able to look into the soul's inmost constitution, as it were, if
we may borrow an expression used of the body? The marvel here is not
unlike that which astonishes one who does not know why in health sweet
things suit some constitutions, and bitter others, or why some sick men
are best alleviated by mild remedies, others by severe. But the
physician who distinguishes the precise conditions and characteristics
of health and sickness does not marvel. Now, the health of the soul is
nothing but righteousness, and vice is its sickness. God, the guide and
physician of the mind, it is who preserves the good and banishes the
bad. And He looks forth from the lofty watch-tower of His providence,
perceives what is suited to each, and assigns what He knows to be
suitable.
'This, then, is what that extraordinary mystery of the order of destiny
comes to--that something is done by one who knows, whereat the ignorant
are astonished. But let us consider a few instances whereby appears what
is the competency of human reason to fathom the Divine unsearchableness.
Here is one whom thou deemest the perfection of justice and scrupulous
integrity; to all-knowing Providence it seems far otherwise. We all know
our Lucan's admonition that it was the winning cause that found favour
with the gods, the beaten cause with Cato. So, shouldst thou see
anything in this world happening differently from thy expectation, doubt
not but events are rightly ordered; it is in thy judgment that there is
perverse confusion.
'Grant, however, there be somewhere found one of so happy a character
that God and man alike agree in their judgments about him; yet is he
somewhat infirm in strength of mind. It may be, if he fall into
adversity, he will cease to practise that innocency which has failed to
secure his fortune. Therefore, God's wise dispensation spares him whom
adversity might make worse, will not let him suffer who is ill fitted
for endurance. Another there is perfect in all virtue, so holy and nigh
to God that providence judges it unlawful that aught untoward should
befall him; nay, doth not even permit him to be afflicted with bodily
disease. As one more excellent than I[N] hath said:
'"The very body of the holy saint
Is built of purest ether."
Often it happens that the governance is given to the good that a
restraint may be put upon superfluity of wickedness. To others
providence assigns some mixed lot suited to their spiritual nature; some
it will plague lest they grow rank through long prosperity; others it
will suffer to be vexed with sore afflictions to confirm their virtues
by the exercise and practice of patience. Some fear overmuch what they
have strength to bear; others despise overmuch that to which their
strength is unequal. All these it brings to the test of their true self
through misfortune. Some also have bought a name revered to future ages
at the price of a glorious death; some by invincible constancy under
their sufferings have afforded an example to others that virtue cannot
be overcome by calamity--all which things, without doubt, come to pass
rightly and in due order, and to the benefit of those to whom they are
seen to happen.
'As to the other side of the marvel, that the bad now meet with
affliction, now get their hearts' desire, this, too, springs from the
same causes. As to the afflictions, of course no one marvels, because
all hold the wicked to be ill deserving. The truth is, their punishments
both frighten others from crime, and amend those on whom they are
inflicted; while their prosperity is a powerful sermon to the good, what
judgments they ought to pass on good fortune of this kind, which often
attends the wicked so assiduously.
'There is another object which may, I believe, be attained in such
cases: there is one, perhaps, whose nature is so reckless and violent
that poverty would drive him more desperately into crime. _His_ disorder
providence relieves by allowing him to amass money. Such a one, in the
uneasiness of a conscience stained with guilt, while he contrasts his
character with his fortune, perchance grows alarmed lest he should come
to mourn the loss of that whose possession is so pleasant to him. He
will, then, reform his ways, and through the fear of losing his fortune
he forsakes his iniquity. Some, through a prosperity unworthily borne,
have been hurled headlong to ruin; to some the power of the sword has
been committed, to the end that the good may be tried by discipline, and
the bad punished. For while there can be no peace between the righteous
and the wicked, neither can the wicked agree among themselves. How
should they, when each is at variance with himself, because his vices
rend his conscience, and ofttimes they do things which, when they are
done, they judge ought not to have been done. Hence it is that this
supreme providence brings to pass this notable marvel--that the bad make
the bad good. For some, when they see the injustice which they
themselves suffer at the hands of evil-doers, are inflamed with
detestation of the offenders, and, in the endeavour to be unlike those
whom they hate, return to the ways of virtue. It is the Divine power
alone to which things evil are also good, in that, by putting them to
suitable use, it bringeth them in the end to some good issue. For order
in some way or other embraceth all things, so that even that which has
departed from the appointed laws of the order, nevertheless falleth
within _an_ order, though _another_ order, that nothing in the realm of
providence may be left to haphazard. But
'"Hard were the task, as a god, to recount all, nothing omitting."
Nor, truly, is it lawful for man to compass in thought all the mechanism
of the Divine work, or set it forth in speech. Let us be content to
have apprehended this only--that God, the creator of universal nature,
likewise disposeth all things, and guides them to good; and while He
studies to preserve in likeness to Himself all that He has created, He
banishes all evil from the borders of His commonweal through the links
of fatal necessity. Whereby it comes to pass that, if thou look to
disposing providence, thou wilt nowhere find the evils which are
believed so to abound on earth.
'But I see thou hast long been burdened with the weight of the subject,
and fatigued with the prolixity of the argument, and now lookest for
some refreshment of sweet poesy. Listen, then, and may the draught so
restore thee that thou wilt bend thy mind more resolutely to what
remains.'
FOOTNOTES:
[N] Parmenides. Boethius seems to forget for the moment that Philosophy
is speaking.
SONG VI. THE UNIVERSAL AIM.
Wouldst thou with unclouded mind
View the laws by God designed,
Lift thy steadfast gaze on high
To the starry canopy;
See in rightful league of love
All the constellations move.
Fiery Sol, in full career,
Ne'er obstructs cold Phoebe's sphere;
When the Bear, at heaven's height,
Wheels his coursers' rapid flight,
Though he sees the starry train
Sinking in the western main,
He repines not, nor desires
In the flood to quench his fires.
In true sequence, as decreed,
Daily morn and eve succeed;
Vesper brings the shades of night,
Lucifer the morning light.
Love, in alternation due,
Still the cycle doth renew,
And discordant strife is driven
From the starry realm of heaven.
Thus, in wondrous amity,
Warring elements agree;
Hot and cold, and moist and dry,
Lay their ancient quarrel by;
High the flickering flame ascends,
Downward earth for ever tends.
So the year in spring's mild hours
Loads the air with scent of flowers;
Summer paints the golden grain;
Then, when autumn comes again,
Bright with fruit the orchards glow;
Winter brings the rain and snow.
Thus the seasons' fixed progression,
Tempered in a due succession,
Nourishes and brings to birth
All that lives and breathes on earth.
Then, soon run life's little day,
All it brought it takes away.
But One sits and guides the reins,
He who made and all sustains;
King and Lord and Fountain-head,
Judge most holy, Law most dread;
Now impels and now keeps back,
Holds each waverer in the track.
Else, were once the power withheld
That the circling spheres compelled
In their orbits to revolve,
This world's order would dissolve,
And th' harmonious whole would all
In one hideous ruin fall.
But through this connected frame
Runs one universal aim;
Towards the Good do all things tend,
Many paths, but one the end.
For naught lasts, unless it turns
Backward in its course, and yearns
To that Source to flow again
Whence its being first was ta'en.
VII.
'Dost thou, then, see the consequence of all that we have said?'
'Nay; what consequence?'
'That absolutely every fortune is good fortune.'
'And how can that be?' said I.
'Attend,' said she. 'Since every fortune, welcome and unwelcome alike,
has for its object the reward or trial of the good, and the punishing or
amending of the bad, every fortune must be good, since it is either just
or useful.'
'The reasoning is exceeding true,' said I, 'the conclusion, so long as I
reflect upon the providence and fate of which thou hast taught me, based
on a strong foundation. Yet, with thy leave, we will count it among
those which just now thou didst set down as paradoxical.'
'And why so?' said she.
'Because ordinary speech is apt to assert, and that frequently, that
some men's fortune is bad.'
'Shall we, then, for awhile approach more nearly to the language of the
vulgar, that we may not seem to have departed too far from the usages of
men?'
'At thy good pleasure,' said I.
'That which advantageth thou callest good, dost thou not?'
'Certainly.'
'And that which either tries or amends advantageth?'
'Granted.'
'Is good, then?'
'Of course.'
'Well, this is _their_ case who have attained virtue and wage war with
adversity, or turn from vice and lay hold on the path of virtue.'
'I cannot deny it.'
'What of the good fortune which is given as reward of the good--do the
vulgar adjudge it bad?'
'Anything but that; they deem it to be the best, as indeed it is.'
'What, then, of that which remains, which, though it is harsh, puts the
restraint of just punishment on the bad--does popular opinion deem it
good?'
'Nay; of all that can be imagined, it is accounted the most miserable.'
'Observe, then, if, in following popular opinion, we have not ended in a
conclusion quite paradoxical.'
'How so?' said I.
'Why, it results from our admissions that of all who have attained, or
are advancing in, or are aiming at virtue, the fortune is in every case
good, while for those who remain in their wickedness fortune is always
utterly bad.'
'It is true,' said I; 'yet no one dare acknowledge it.'
'Wherefore,' said she, 'the wise man ought not to take it ill, if ever
he is involved in one of fortune's conflicts, any more than it becomes a
brave soldier to be offended when at any time the trumpet sounds for
battle. The time of trial is the express opportunity for the one to win
glory, for the other to perfect his wisdom. Hence, indeed, virtue gets
its name, because, relying on its own efficacy, it yieldeth not to
adversity. And ye who have taken your stand on virtue's steep ascent,
it is not for you to be dissolved in delights or enfeebled by pleasure;
ye close in conflict--yea, in conflict most sharp--with all fortune's
vicissitudes, lest ye suffer foul fortune to overwhelm or fair fortune
to corrupt you. Hold the mean with all your strength. Whatever falls
short of this, or goes beyond, is fraught with scorn of happiness, and
misses the reward of toil. It rests with you to make your fortune what
you will. Verily, every harsh-seeming fortune, unless it either
disciplines or amends, is punishment.'
SONG VII. THE HERO'S PATH.
Ten years a tedious warfare raged,
Ere Ilium's smoking ruins paid
For wedlock stained and faith betrayed,
And great Atrides' wrath assuaged.
But when heaven's anger asked a life,
And baffling winds his course withstood,
The king put off his fatherhood,
And slew his child with priestly knife.
When by the cavern's glimmering light
His comrades dear Odysseus saw
In the huge Cyclops' hideous maw
Engulfed, he wept the piteous sight.
But blinded soon, and wild with pain--
In bitter tears and sore annoy--
For that foul feast's unholy joy
Grim Polyphemus paid again.
His labours for Alcides win
A name of glory far and wide;
He tamed the Centaur's haughty pride,
And from the lion reft his skin.
The foul birds with sure darts he slew;
The golden fruit he stole--in vain
The dragon's watch; with triple chain
From hell's depths Cerberus he drew.
With their fierce lord's own flesh he fed
The wild steeds; Hydra overcame
With fire. 'Neath his own waves in shame
Maimed Achelous hid his head.
Huge Cacus for his crimes was slain;
On Libya's sands Antaeus hurled;
The shoulders that upheld the world
The great boar's dribbled spume did stain.
Last toil of all--his might sustained
The ball of heaven, nor did he bend
Beneath; this toil, his labour's end,
The prize of heaven's high glory gained.
Brave hearts, press on! Lo, heavenward lead
These bright examples! From the fight
Turn not your backs in coward flight;
Earth's conflict won, the stars your meed!
</CHAPTER>
BOOK V.
FREE WILL AND GOD'S FOREKNOWLEDGE.
SUMMARY.
CH. I. Boethius asks if there is really any such thing as chance.
Philosophy answers, in conformity with Aristotle's definition
(Phys., II. iv.), that chance is merely relative to human purpose,
and that what seems fortuitous really depends on a more subtle form
of causation.--CH. II. Has man, then, any freedom, if the reign of
law is thus absolute? Freedom of choice, replies Philosophy, is a
necessary attribute of reason. Man has a measure of freedom, though
a less perfect freedom than divine natures.--CH. III. But how can
man's freedom be reconciled with God's absolute foreknowledge? If
God's foreknowledge be certain, it seems to exclude the possibility
of man's free will. But if man has no freedom of choice, it
follows that rewards and punishments are unjust as well as useless;
that merit and demerit are mere names; that God is the cause of
men's wickednesses; that prayer is meaningless.--CH. IV. The
explanation is that man's reasoning faculties are not adequate to
the apprehension of the ways of God's foreknowledge. If we could
know, as He knows, all that is most perplexing in this problem
would be made plain. For knowledge depends not on the nature of the
thing known, but on the faculty of the knower.--CH. V. Now, where
our senses conflict with our reason, we defer the judgment of the
lower faculty to the judgment of the higher. Our present perplexity
arises from our viewing God's foreknowledge from the standpoint of
human reason. We must try and rise to the higher standpoint of
God's immediate intuition.--CH. VI. To understand this higher form
of cognition, we must consider God's nature. God is eternal.
Eternity is more than mere everlasting duration. Accordingly, His
knowledge surveys past and future in the timelessness of an eternal
present. His foreseeing is seeing. Yet this foreseeing does not in
itself impose necessity, any more than our seeing things happen
makes their happening necessary. We may, however, if we please,
distinguish two necessities--one absolute, the other conditional on
knowledge. In this conditional sense alone do the things which God
foresees necessarily come to pass. But this kind of necessity
affects not the nature of things. It leaves the reality of free
will unimpaired, and the evils feared do not ensue. Our
responsibility is great, since all that we do is done in the sight
of all-seeing Providence.
</CHAPTER>
| 9,762 | Book IV | https://web.archive.org/web/20201128165942/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-consolation-of-philosophy/study-guide/summary-book-iv | Book IV examines the problem of evil's existence. Boethius has listened to and agreed with all of the arguments Philosophy has so far presented. But if God is perfect in his goodness, and is the unity of all things rules the world, how is it that evil is allowed to exist and is not always punished? In addition, where wickedness flourishes, virtue is often downtrodden and even stamped out. If God is omniscient and omnipotent and beneficent how can this evil continue in His world? Lady Philosophy reminds Boethius of his catechism - that God has said no evil will go unpunished, no virtue will be forgotten. Philosophy also asserts that the wicked are weak and have no power, and the virtuous are strong and powerful. All people strive to true happiness; the wicked cannot possibly attain it, and the virtuous can attain it. The evil people of the world seek happiness in misguided ways, and they will never attain their goal. Evil people are excluded from attaining the supreme good of perfect happiness, and therefore they are excluded from all that really exists. Since they cannot possibly attain the only thing of value any earthly power they have is not actually power at all. Evil people, Philosophy says, cease to exist. The wicked lose power and strength by striving for things that do not matter. They also lose their humanity, and become like the animals they represent by their various desires . Boethius agrees, but he laments that the wicked harm the virtuous and are not punished. Wickedness, like virtue, Philosophy assures Boethius, is its own reward. The wicked, by the fact of their very wickedness, are rewarded by their lack of existence and their descent into bestiality. The are, by their own actions rather than by any outside punishment, denied happiness. If they are punished, the evil people of the world are given a good, for they have a chance at redeeming themselves and changing their ways. When the evil people of the world escape punishment, their capacity and likelihood for more wickedness increases. Boethius finds this difficult, and protests. He can't abide that the good must suffer the earthly punishments that the evil, who deserve them, inflict upon them. This is acceptable in a world where nothing is determinate, but our world, he says, is ruled by God. How can God in his omnipotence allow this? The following argument for the foreknowledge of God is famous and somewhat difficult. Philosophy agrees that this is indeed a mystery, and no human being can hope to understand it fully. All events on Earth are happening in the unchanging mind of God, for whom there is no past, present or future. Since we are temporal beings, we cannot understand how everything that has ever happened or will happen is happening for God simultaneously, but every occurrence is contained within His mind. The government of all changeable things is called Providence. When this is applied in the temporal realm, it is called by the old pagan name of Fate. In short, Providence represents the foreknowledge of God of all things, and controls of the nature of all things. The actual connection of events which occur on Earth is Fate. Providence is the divine reason by which the world is ordered. Fate is the same reason when applied the temporal world. Because we on earth cannot understand Providence, Fate sometimes seems unordered and cruel. Because of this, anything that happens to you, good fortune or bad, is good, because if your fortune is bad it is an instruction toward virtue. This is, in short, the best of all possible worlds, for evil doesn't actually have any substance or power, and all the events of the world have been planned by Providence. | This discussion of evil in the world - this theodicy - is one of the most famous and important passages of this book. The argument that evil has no substance and does not exist is not always considered an orthodox Catholic idea, but it breaks no rules of the catechism and is easier to prove logically than the existence of the devil. The fact that the omniscience, omnipotence, and beneficence of God is retained is the important point here, and Boethius does it with verve and daring. Some critics have read the seed of fascism in the idea that the truly wicked are no longer human but have become animals. Some fascist states, such as Nazi Germany, similarly contended that the "wicked" are not really human. In Boethius' defense, Lady Philosophy advises compassion toward the wicked, rather than contempt, an idea that is never part of fascist philosophy. However, Philosophy does continue by saying that we should punish the wicked as a cure for their wickedness. Boethius never really examines the human social context that is an inevitable part of determining who is "wicked" and who isn't. If human beings, who are inevitably flawed and cannot understand the true nature of good and evil, take it upon themselves to punish the "wicked" among them, surely injustice may result. Critics have also said that it is possible that Boethius' injunction to purge the wicked justified torture and death for heretics, in order to enable them to "lay aside the filth of vice through the pains of punishment." Again, Boethius does not directly address the difficulty of locating absolute values like "vice" and "virtue" among inevitably flawed, imperfect human beings. Certainly Boethius foreshadows the extremes of the Inquisition and the mass slaughter of Jews and other "heretics" at the hands of Christians. Boethius' argument that evil does not have any substance is not his own idea. Various philosophies and religions, including Neo-Platonism, had argued this idea before. The way Philosophy explains it through the ineffectual actions of evil people follows from previous arguments she has presented to Boethius. Rather than starting with a cosmic idea of good and evil and the nature of God, she starts, as she has every argument so far, with practical discussions of what is done by human beings on earth. This is, after all, supposed to be a "consolation," not necessarily a cosmography. When Boethius to be able to start with something he knows - the actions of the virtuous and the evil here on earth - he is better able to find comfort in his situation. Perhaps this is the reason Boethius wrote this book to begin with - to explain to himself and others how he was able to, without resorting to the revealed knowledge of the Bible, reconcile himself to his fate. Providence and Fate are perhaps the two most difficult concepts to understand in this book. Because so much of what Boethius says inspired by faith, the arguments for these concepts may seem flip or inadequate. The concept of God holding all events in his mind at one time, outside of the temporal world, and Fate being the ordering of events in the temporal world, is, in the understatement of Philosophy, a "mystery." This is as complete an explanation of it as can be found, however, outside of a theological text. Accepting that all fortune is good, and that this is the best of all possible worlds, is as difficult for Boethius as it is for the rest of us. Perhaps few today would accept that bad fortune leads us toward virtue and good fortune leads us to vice. However, this argument comforts Boethius, and makes him more accepting of his fate. Indeed, the Consolation of Philosophy in general functions more as a guidebook for salvaging happiness in the most adverse conditions rather than a theological proof of God's existence or the necessity of evil. One might go so far as to say that Boethius' Lady Philosophy insists upon the existence of God simply because that belief is conducive to Boethius' consolation. Truth and pristine logic are not Boethius' object; resignation in the face of unjust realities is. | 629 | 719 | [
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12,915 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/12915-chapters/10.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The White Devil/section_9_part_0.txt | The White Devil.act 4.scene 3 | act 4, scene 3 | null | {"name": "Act 4, Scene 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210510044810/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/the-white-devil/summary/act-4-scene-3", "summary": "Francisco, Lodovico, Gasparo, and six Ambassadors all enter. They're at the Vatican. It's about to get holy up in here. Francisco tells Lodovico to guard the conclave so no one will disturb the cardinals as they vote on a pope. Lodovico agrees. Gasparo asks why the ambassadors are so well-dressed today, and Francisco explains that they're dressed in the clothing of the different orders of knights to which they belong. As servants come to bring dinner into the cardinals, Lodovico searches under the dishes to make sure that no one is sneaking in any bribes or secret messages to influence the election . But the cardinals turn away their meals--they're in the middle of the actual election of the pope. In a moment, the cardinal of Aragon steps out and announces the election of the pope in Latin: the new pope is Pope Paul IV... who is actually the same as Monticelso. At the same time, a servant comes up and tells Francisco that Vittoria and Brachiano have escaped. Francisco orders the matron arrested, and regrets sending the letter since it apparently gave Brachiano his own escape plan. He swears that he'll get his revenge, again. Monticelso arrives in state. He says that he is officially excommunicating Vittoria and Brachiano from the Church and banishing them and all their people from entering Rome. All exit except for Francisco and Lodovico. Francisco makes sure Lodovico's ready to get revenge. He also tells Lodovico that he is going to help out, and get some of the glory of the deed. Francisco exits. Monticelso re-enters and asks Lodovico why Francisco worked to get him pardoned and reverse his banishment. Lodovico says Francisco must be a generous dude. Monticelso knows there's more to it than that and keeps pressing, unsatisfied when Lodovico claims that Francisco was just telling him about a horse and nothing else a moment ago. Monticelso condemns Lodovico, saying that he knows he's out for some kind of murderous deed. Lodovico says that he'll tell him--but as a confessing sinner, so that Monticelso will be bound by religion not to tell. Lodovico admits that he pursued Isabella with lust, though she wasn't aware of it, and wants to avenge her murderer. Monticelso says this is damnable and denounces him before exiting. Lodovico is a little surprised, since he thought Monticelso wanted to avenge Camillo's murder. Francisco re-enters with a servant. He tells the servant to give a thousand ducats to Lodovico, and tell him they come from the Pope . Francisco exits. The servant gives Lodovico the money. Lodovico is surprised to learn they come from the Pope, and marvels at how crafty Monticelso is. He seems to admire that Monticelso is able to act one way in public and another way in private. Lodovico exits, revved up with the urge to get revenge.", "analysis": ""} | SCENE III
Enter Francisco, Lodovico, Gasparo, and six Ambassadors
Fran. So, my lord, I commend your diligence.
Guard well the conclave; and, as the order is,
Let none have conference with the cardinals.
Lodo. I shall, my lord. Room for the ambassadors.
Gas. They 're wondrous brave to-day: why do they wear
These several habits?
Lodo. Oh, sir, they 're knights
Of several orders:
That lord i' th' black cloak, with the silver cross,
Is Knight of Rhodes; the next, Knight of St. Michael;
That, of the Golden Fleece; the Frenchman, there,
Knight of the Holy Ghost; my Lord of Savoy,
Knight of th' Annunciation; the Englishman
Is Knight of th' honour'd Garter, dedicated
Unto their saint, St. George. I could describe to you
Their several institutions, with the laws
Annexed to their orders; but that time
Permits not such discovery.
Fran. Where 's Count Lodowick?
Lodo. Here, my lord.
Fran. 'Tis o' th' point of dinner time;
Marshal the cardinals' service.
Lodo. Sir, I shall. [Enter Servants, with several dishes covered.
Stand, let me search your dish. Who 's this for?
Servant. For my Lord Cardinal Monticelso.
Lodo. Whose this?
Servant. For my Lord Cardinal of Bourbon.
Fr. Ambass. Why doth he search the dishes? to observe
What meat is dressed?
Eng. Ambass. No, sir, but to prevent
Lest any letters should be convey'd in,
To bribe or to solicit the advancement
Of any cardinal. When first they enter,
'Tis lawful for the ambassadors of princes
To enter with them, and to make their suit
For any man their prince affecteth best;
But after, till a general election,
No man may speak with them.
Lodo. You that attend on the lord cardinals,
Open the window, and receive their viands.
Card. [Within.] You must return the service: the lord cardinals
Are busied 'bout electing of the Pope;
They have given o'er scrutiny, and are fallen
To admiration.
Lodo. Away, away.
Fran. I 'll lay a thousand ducats you hear news
Of a Pope presently. Hark; sure he 's elected:
Behold, my Lord of Arragon appears
On the church battlements. [A Cardinal on the terrace.
Arragon. Denuntio vobis gaudium magnum: Reverendissimus Cardinalis
Lorenzo de Monticelso electus est in sedem apostolicam, et elegit sibi
nomen Paulum Quartum.
Omnes. Vivat Sanctus Pater Paulus Quartus!
Servant. Vittoria, my lord----
Fran. Well, what of her?
Servant. Is fled the city----
Fran. Ha!
Servant. With Duke Brachiano.
Fran. Fled! where 's the Prince Giovanni?
Servant. Gone with his father.
Fran. Let the Matrona of the Convertites
Be apprehended. Fled? O damnable!
How fortunate are my wishes! why, 'twas this
I only labour'd: I did send the letter
T' instruct him what to do. Thy fame, fond duke,
I first have poison'd; directed thee the way
To marry a whore; what can be worse? This follows:
The hand must act to drown the passionate tongue,
I scorn to wear a sword and prate of wrong.
Enter Monticelso in State
Mont. Concedimus vobis Apostolicam benedictionem, et remissionem
peccatorum.
My lord reports Vittoria Corombona
Is stol'n from forth the House of Convertites
By Brachiano, and they 're fled the city.
Now, though this be the first day of our seat,
We cannot better please the Divine Power,
Than to sequester from the Holy Church
These cursed persons. Make it therefore known,
We do denounce excommunication
Against them both: all that are theirs in Rome
We likewise banish. Set on.
[Exeunt all but Francisco and Lodovico.
Fran. Come, dear Lodovico;
You have ta'en the sacrament to prosecute
Th' intended murder?
Lodo. With all constancy.
But, sir, I wonder you 'll engage yourself
In person, being a great prince.
Fran. Divert me not.
Most of his court are of my faction,
And some are of my council. Noble friend,
Our danger shall be like in this design:
Give leave part of the glory may be mine. [Exit Francisco.
Enter Monticelso
Mont. Why did the Duke of Florence with such care
Labour your pardon? say.
Lodo. Italian beggars will resolve you that,
Who, begging of alms, bid those they beg of,
Do good for their own sakes; or 't may be,
He spreads his bounty with a sowing hand,
Like kings, who many times give out of measure,
Not for desert so much, as for their pleasure.
Mont. I know you 're cunning. Come, what devil was that
That you were raising?
Lodo. Devil, my lord?
Mont. I ask you,
How doth the duke employ you, that his bonnet
Fell with such compliment unto his knee,
When he departed from you?
Lodo. Why, my lord,
He told me of a resty Barbary horse
Which he would fain have brought to the career,
The sault, and the ring galliard: now, my lord,
I have a rare French rider.
Mont. Take your heed,
Lest the jade break your neck. Do you put me off
With your wild horse-tricks? Sirrah, you do lie.
Oh, thou 'rt a foul black cloud, and thou dost threat
A violent storm!
Lodo. Storms are i' th' air, my lord;
I am too low to storm.
Mont. Wretched creature!
I know that thou art fashion'd for all ill,
Like dogs, that once get blood, they 'll ever kill.
About some murder, was 't not?
Lodo. I 'll not tell you:
And yet I care not greatly if I do;
Marry, with this preparation. Holy father,
I come not to you as an intelligencer,
But as a penitent sinner: what I utter
Is in confession merely; which, you know,
Must never be reveal'd.
Mont. You have o'erta'en me.
Lodo. Sir, I do love Brachiano's duchess dearly,
Or rather I pursued her with hot lust,
Though she ne'er knew on 't. She was poison'd;
Upon my soul she was: for which I have sworn
T' avenge her murder.
Mont. To the Duke of Florence?
Lodo. To him I have.
Mont. Miserable creature!
If thou persist in this, 'tis damnable.
Dost thou imagine, thou canst slide on blood,
And not be tainted with a shameful fall?
Or, like the black and melancholic yew-tree,
Dost think to root thyself in dead men's graves,
And yet to prosper? Instruction to thee
Comes like sweet showers to o'er-harden'd ground;
They wet, but pierce not deep. And so I leave thee,
With all the furies hanging 'bout thy neck,
Till by thy penitence thou remove this evil,
In conjuring from thy breast that cruel devil. [Exit.
Lodo. I 'll give it o'er; he says 'tis damnable:
Besides I did expect his suffrage,
By reason of Camillo's death.
Enter Servant and Francisco
Fran. Do you know that count?
Servant. Yes, my lord.
Fran. Bear him these thousand ducats to his lodging.
Tell him the Pope hath sent them. Happily
That will confirm more than all the rest. [Exit.
Servant. Sir.
Lodo. To me, sir?
Servant. His Holiness hath sent you a thousand crowns,
And wills you, if you travel, to make him
Your patron for intelligence.
Lodo. His creature ever to be commanded.--
Why now 'tis come about. He rail'd upon me;
And yet these crowns were told out, and laid ready,
Before he knew my voyage. Oh, the art,
The modest form of greatness! that do sit,
Like brides at wedding-dinners, with their looks turn'd
From the least wanton jests, their puling stomach
Sick from the modesty, when their thoughts are loose,
Even acting of those hot and lustful sports
Are to ensue about midnight: such his cunning!
He sounds my depth thus with a golden plummet.
I am doubly arm'd now. Now to th' act of blood,
There 's but three furies found in spacious hell,
But in a great man's breast three thousand dwell. [Exit.
| 1,602 | Act 4, Scene 3 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210510044810/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/the-white-devil/summary/act-4-scene-3 | Francisco, Lodovico, Gasparo, and six Ambassadors all enter. They're at the Vatican. It's about to get holy up in here. Francisco tells Lodovico to guard the conclave so no one will disturb the cardinals as they vote on a pope. Lodovico agrees. Gasparo asks why the ambassadors are so well-dressed today, and Francisco explains that they're dressed in the clothing of the different orders of knights to which they belong. As servants come to bring dinner into the cardinals, Lodovico searches under the dishes to make sure that no one is sneaking in any bribes or secret messages to influence the election . But the cardinals turn away their meals--they're in the middle of the actual election of the pope. In a moment, the cardinal of Aragon steps out and announces the election of the pope in Latin: the new pope is Pope Paul IV... who is actually the same as Monticelso. At the same time, a servant comes up and tells Francisco that Vittoria and Brachiano have escaped. Francisco orders the matron arrested, and regrets sending the letter since it apparently gave Brachiano his own escape plan. He swears that he'll get his revenge, again. Monticelso arrives in state. He says that he is officially excommunicating Vittoria and Brachiano from the Church and banishing them and all their people from entering Rome. All exit except for Francisco and Lodovico. Francisco makes sure Lodovico's ready to get revenge. He also tells Lodovico that he is going to help out, and get some of the glory of the deed. Francisco exits. Monticelso re-enters and asks Lodovico why Francisco worked to get him pardoned and reverse his banishment. Lodovico says Francisco must be a generous dude. Monticelso knows there's more to it than that and keeps pressing, unsatisfied when Lodovico claims that Francisco was just telling him about a horse and nothing else a moment ago. Monticelso condemns Lodovico, saying that he knows he's out for some kind of murderous deed. Lodovico says that he'll tell him--but as a confessing sinner, so that Monticelso will be bound by religion not to tell. Lodovico admits that he pursued Isabella with lust, though she wasn't aware of it, and wants to avenge her murderer. Monticelso says this is damnable and denounces him before exiting. Lodovico is a little surprised, since he thought Monticelso wanted to avenge Camillo's murder. Francisco re-enters with a servant. He tells the servant to give a thousand ducats to Lodovico, and tell him they come from the Pope . Francisco exits. The servant gives Lodovico the money. Lodovico is surprised to learn they come from the Pope, and marvels at how crafty Monticelso is. He seems to admire that Monticelso is able to act one way in public and another way in private. Lodovico exits, revved up with the urge to get revenge. | null | 473 | 1 | [
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28,054 | false | sparknotes | all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/4.txt | finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_0_part_5.txt | The Brothers Karamazov.book 1.chapter 4 | book 1, chapter 4 | null | {"name": "book 1, Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section1/", "summary": "The Third Son, Alyosha Alyosha is twenty years old when Dmitri moves to their father's home. Alyosha has lived in the monastery in his father's town for about a year before his brothers' arrival. He is religious--not in a mystical or superstitious way, but simply out of a generous and innate love of humankind. Alyosha even seems to love his father and is never critical of him or unkind to him. Everyone loves Alyosha, for despite his tendency to remain detached from others, he exudes a kind of blissful serenity. He has been extremely popular as a student despite his passive nature and his innocence--the only thing the other students ever tease him about is the acute embarrassment he feels whenever the topics of women or sex arise. After Alyosha moves back to his father's town, he quickly grows close to Fyodor Pavlovich, who uncharacteristically donates a great deal of money to the monastery after Alyosha visits his mother's grave. Fyodor Pavlovich becomes very sentimental when Alyosha tells him that he intends to enter the monastery and study under the elder Zosima", "analysis": ""} | Chapter IV. The Third Son, Alyosha
He was only twenty, his brother Ivan was in his twenty-fourth year at the
time, while their elder brother Dmitri was twenty-seven. First of all, I
must explain that this young man, Alyosha, was not a fanatic, and, in my
opinion at least, was not even a mystic. I may as well give my full
opinion from the beginning. He was simply an early lover of humanity, and
that he adopted the monastic life was simply because at that time it
struck him, so to say, as the ideal escape for his soul struggling from
the darkness of worldly wickedness to the light of love. And the reason
this life struck him in this way was that he found in it at that time, as
he thought, an extraordinary being, our celebrated elder, Zossima, to whom
he became attached with all the warm first love of his ardent heart. But I
do not dispute that he was very strange even at that time, and had been so
indeed from his cradle. I have mentioned already, by the way, that though
he lost his mother in his fourth year he remembered her all his life--her
face, her caresses, "as though she stood living before me." Such memories
may persist, as every one knows, from an even earlier age, even from two
years old, but scarcely standing out through a whole lifetime like spots
of light out of darkness, like a corner torn out of a huge picture, which
has all faded and disappeared except that fragment. That is how it was
with him. He remembered one still summer evening, an open window, the
slanting rays of the setting sun (that he recalled most vividly of all);
in a corner of the room the holy image, before it a lighted lamp, and on
her knees before the image his mother, sobbing hysterically with cries and
moans, snatching him up in both arms, squeezing him close till it hurt,
and praying for him to the Mother of God, holding him out in both arms to
the image as though to put him under the Mother's protection ... and
suddenly a nurse runs in and snatches him from her in terror. That was the
picture! And Alyosha remembered his mother's face at that minute. He used
to say that it was frenzied but beautiful as he remembered. But he rarely
cared to speak of this memory to any one. In his childhood and youth he
was by no means expansive, and talked little indeed, but not from shyness
or a sullen unsociability; quite the contrary, from something different,
from a sort of inner preoccupation entirely personal and unconcerned with
other people, but so important to him that he seemed, as it were, to
forget others on account of it. But he was fond of people: he seemed
throughout his life to put implicit trust in people: yet no one ever
looked on him as a simpleton or naive person. There was something about
him which made one feel at once (and it was so all his life afterwards)
that he did not care to be a judge of others--that he would never take it
upon himself to criticize and would never condemn any one for anything. He
seemed, indeed, to accept everything without the least condemnation though
often grieving bitterly: and this was so much so that no one could
surprise or frighten him even in his earliest youth. Coming at twenty to
his father's house, which was a very sink of filthy debauchery, he, chaste
and pure as he was, simply withdrew in silence when to look on was
unbearable, but without the slightest sign of contempt or condemnation.
His father, who had once been in a dependent position, and so was
sensitive and ready to take offense, met him at first with distrust and
sullenness. "He does not say much," he used to say, "and thinks the more."
But soon, within a fortnight indeed, he took to embracing him and kissing
him terribly often, with drunken tears, with sottish sentimentality, yet
he evidently felt a real and deep affection for him, such as he had never
been capable of feeling for any one before.
Every one, indeed, loved this young man wherever he went, and it was so
from his earliest childhood. When he entered the household of his patron
and benefactor, Yefim Petrovitch Polenov, he gained the hearts of all the
family, so that they looked on him quite as their own child. Yet he
entered the house at such a tender age that he could not have acted from
design nor artfulness in winning affection. So that the gift of making
himself loved directly and unconsciously was inherent in him, in his very
nature, so to speak. It was the same at school, though he seemed to be
just one of those children who are distrusted, sometimes ridiculed, and
even disliked by their schoolfellows. He was dreamy, for instance, and
rather solitary. From his earliest childhood he was fond of creeping into
a corner to read, and yet he was a general favorite all the while he was
at school. He was rarely playful or merry, but any one could see at the
first glance that this was not from any sullenness. On the contrary he was
bright and good-tempered. He never tried to show off among his
schoolfellows. Perhaps because of this, he was never afraid of any one,
yet the boys immediately understood that he was not proud of his
fearlessness and seemed to be unaware that he was bold and courageous. He
never resented an insult. It would happen that an hour after the offense
he would address the offender or answer some question with as trustful and
candid an expression as though nothing had happened between them. And it
was not that he seemed to have forgotten or intentionally forgiven the
affront, but simply that he did not regard it as an affront, and this
completely conquered and captivated the boys. He had one characteristic
which made all his schoolfellows from the bottom class to the top want to
mock at him, not from malice but because it amused them. This
characteristic was a wild fanatical modesty and chastity. He could not
bear to hear certain words and certain conversations about women. There
are "certain" words and conversations unhappily impossible to eradicate in
schools. Boys pure in mind and heart, almost children, are fond of talking
in school among themselves, and even aloud, of things, pictures, and
images of which even soldiers would sometimes hesitate to speak. More than
that, much that soldiers have no knowledge or conception of is familiar to
quite young children of our intellectual and higher classes. There is no
moral depravity, no real corrupt inner cynicism in it, but there is the
appearance of it, and it is often looked upon among them as something
refined, subtle, daring, and worthy of imitation. Seeing that Alyosha
Karamazov put his fingers in his ears when they talked of "that," they
used sometimes to crowd round him, pull his hands away, and shout
nastiness into both ears, while he struggled, slipped to the floor, tried
to hide himself without uttering one word of abuse, enduring their insults
in silence. But at last they left him alone and gave up taunting him with
being a "regular girl," and what's more they looked upon it with
compassion as a weakness. He was always one of the best in the class but
was never first.
At the time of Yefim Petrovitch's death Alyosha had two more years to
complete at the provincial gymnasium. The inconsolable widow went almost
immediately after his death for a long visit to Italy with her whole
family, which consisted only of women and girls. Alyosha went to live in
the house of two distant relations of Yefim Petrovitch, ladies whom he had
never seen before. On what terms he lived with them he did not know
himself. It was very characteristic of him, indeed, that he never cared at
whose expense he was living. In that respect he was a striking contrast to
his elder brother Ivan, who struggled with poverty for his first two years
in the university, maintained himself by his own efforts, and had from
childhood been bitterly conscious of living at the expense of his
benefactor. But this strange trait in Alyosha's character must not, I
think, be criticized too severely, for at the slightest acquaintance with
him any one would have perceived that Alyosha was one of those youths,
almost of the type of religious enthusiast, who, if they were suddenly to
come into possession of a large fortune, would not hesitate to give it
away for the asking, either for good works or perhaps to a clever rogue.
In general he seemed scarcely to know the value of money, not, of course,
in a literal sense. When he was given pocket-money, which he never asked
for, he was either terribly careless of it so that it was gone in a
moment, or he kept it for weeks together, not knowing what to do with it.
In later years Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miuesov, a man very sensitive on the
score of money and bourgeois honesty, pronounced the following judgment,
after getting to know Alyosha:
"Here is perhaps the one man in the world whom you might leave alone
without a penny, in the center of an unknown town of a million
inhabitants, and he would not come to harm, he would not die of cold and
hunger, for he would be fed and sheltered at once; and if he were not, he
would find a shelter for himself, and it would cost him no effort or
humiliation. And to shelter him would be no burden, but, on the contrary,
would probably be looked on as a pleasure."
He did not finish his studies at the gymnasium. A year before the end of
the course he suddenly announced to the ladies that he was going to see
his father about a plan which had occurred to him. They were sorry and
unwilling to let him go. The journey was not an expensive one, and the
ladies would not let him pawn his watch, a parting present from his
benefactor's family. They provided him liberally with money and even
fitted him out with new clothes and linen. But he returned half the money
they gave him, saying that he intended to go third class. On his arrival
in the town he made no answer to his father's first inquiry why he had
come before completing his studies, and seemed, so they say, unusually
thoughtful. It soon became apparent that he was looking for his mother's
tomb. He practically acknowledged at the time that that was the only
object of his visit. But it can hardly have been the whole reason of it.
It is more probable that he himself did not understand and could not
explain what had suddenly arisen in his soul, and drawn him irresistibly
into a new, unknown, but inevitable path. Fyodor Pavlovitch could not show
him where his second wife was buried, for he had never visited her grave
since he had thrown earth upon her coffin, and in the course of years had
entirely forgotten where she was buried.
Fyodor Pavlovitch, by the way, had for some time previously not been
living in our town. Three or four years after his wife's death he had gone
to the south of Russia and finally turned up in Odessa, where he spent
several years. He made the acquaintance at first, in his own words, "of a
lot of low Jews, Jewesses, and Jewkins," and ended by being received by
"Jews high and low alike." It may be presumed that at this period he
developed a peculiar faculty for making and hoarding money. He finally
returned to our town only three years before Alyosha's arrival. His former
acquaintances found him looking terribly aged, although he was by no means
an old man. He behaved not exactly with more dignity but with more
effrontery. The former buffoon showed an insolent propensity for making
buffoons of others. His depravity with women was not simply what it used
to be, but even more revolting. In a short time he opened a great number
of new taverns in the district. It was evident that he had perhaps a
hundred thousand roubles or not much less. Many of the inhabitants of the
town and district were soon in his debt, and, of course, had given good
security. Of late, too, he looked somehow bloated and seemed more
irresponsible, more uneven, had sunk into a sort of incoherence, used to
begin one thing and go on with another, as though he were letting himself
go altogether. He was more and more frequently drunk. And, if it had not
been for the same servant Grigory, who by that time had aged considerably
too, and used to look after him sometimes almost like a tutor, Fyodor
Pavlovitch might have got into terrible scrapes. Alyosha's arrival seemed
to affect even his moral side, as though something had awakened in this
prematurely old man which had long been dead in his soul.
"Do you know," he used often to say, looking at Alyosha, "that you are
like her, 'the crazy woman' "--that was what he used to call his dead wife,
Alyosha's mother. Grigory it was who pointed out the "crazy woman's" grave
to Alyosha. He took him to our town cemetery and showed him in a remote
corner a cast-iron tombstone, cheap but decently kept, on which were
inscribed the name and age of the deceased and the date of her death, and
below a four-lined verse, such as are commonly used on old-fashioned
middle-class tombs. To Alyosha's amazement this tomb turned out to be
Grigory's doing. He had put it up on the poor "crazy woman's" grave at his
own expense, after Fyodor Pavlovitch, whom he had often pestered about the
grave, had gone to Odessa, abandoning the grave and all his memories.
Alyosha showed no particular emotion at the sight of his mother's grave.
He only listened to Grigory's minute and solemn account of the erection of
the tomb; he stood with bowed head and walked away without uttering a
word. It was perhaps a year before he visited the cemetery again. But this
little episode was not without an influence upon Fyodor Pavlovitch--and a
very original one. He suddenly took a thousand roubles to our monastery to
pay for requiems for the soul of his wife; but not for the second,
Alyosha's mother, the "crazy woman," but for the first, Adelaida Ivanovna,
who used to thrash him. In the evening of the same day he got drunk and
abused the monks to Alyosha. He himself was far from being religious; he
had probably never put a penny candle before the image of a saint. Strange
impulses of sudden feeling and sudden thought are common in such types.
I have mentioned already that he looked bloated. His countenance at this
time bore traces of something that testified unmistakably to the life he
had led. Besides the long fleshy bags under his little, always insolent,
suspicious, and ironical eyes; besides the multitude of deep wrinkles in
his little fat face, the Adam's apple hung below his sharp chin like a
great, fleshy goiter, which gave him a peculiar, repulsive, sensual
appearance; add to that a long rapacious mouth with full lips, between
which could be seen little stumps of black decayed teeth. He slobbered
every time he began to speak. He was fond indeed of making fun of his own
face, though, I believe, he was well satisfied with it. He used
particularly to point to his nose, which was not very large, but very
delicate and conspicuously aquiline. "A regular Roman nose," he used to
say, "with my goiter I've quite the countenance of an ancient Roman
patrician of the decadent period." He seemed proud of it.
Not long after visiting his mother's grave Alyosha suddenly announced that
he wanted to enter the monastery, and that the monks were willing to
receive him as a novice. He explained that this was his strong desire, and
that he was solemnly asking his consent as his father. The old man knew
that the elder Zossima, who was living in the monastery hermitage, had
made a special impression upon his "gentle boy."
"That is the most honest monk among them, of course," he observed, after
listening in thoughtful silence to Alyosha, and seeming scarcely surprised
at his request. "H'm!... So that's where you want to be, my gentle boy?"
He was half drunk, and suddenly he grinned his slow half-drunken grin,
which was not without a certain cunning and tipsy slyness. "H'm!... I had
a presentiment that you would end in something like this. Would you
believe it? You were making straight for it. Well, to be sure you have
your own two thousand. That's a dowry for you. And I'll never desert you,
my angel. And I'll pay what's wanted for you there, if they ask for it.
But, of course, if they don't ask, why should we worry them? What do you
say? You know, you spend money like a canary, two grains a week. H'm!...
Do you know that near one monastery there's a place outside the town where
every baby knows there are none but 'the monks' wives' living, as they are
called. Thirty women, I believe. I have been there myself. You know, it's
interesting in its own way, of course, as a variety. The worst of it is
it's awfully Russian. There are no French women there. Of course they
could get them fast enough, they have plenty of money. If they get to hear
of it they'll come along. Well, there's nothing of that sort here, no
'monks' wives,' and two hundred monks. They're honest. They keep the
fasts. I admit it.... H'm.... So you want to be a monk? And do you know
I'm sorry to lose you, Alyosha; would you believe it, I've really grown
fond of you? Well, it's a good opportunity. You'll pray for us sinners; we
have sinned too much here. I've always been thinking who would pray for
me, and whether there's any one in the world to do it. My dear boy, I'm
awfully stupid about that. You wouldn't believe it. Awfully. You see,
however stupid I am about it, I keep thinking, I keep thinking--from time
to time, of course, not all the while. It's impossible, I think, for the
devils to forget to drag me down to hell with their hooks when I die. Then
I wonder--hooks? Where would they get them? What of? Iron hooks? Where do
they forge them? Have they a foundry there of some sort? The monks in the
monastery probably believe that there's a ceiling in hell, for instance.
Now I'm ready to believe in hell, but without a ceiling. It makes it more
refined, more enlightened, more Lutheran that is. And, after all, what
does it matter whether it has a ceiling or hasn't? But, do you know,
there's a damnable question involved in it? If there's no ceiling there
can be no hooks, and if there are no hooks it all breaks down, which is
unlikely again, for then there would be none to drag me down to hell, and
if they don't drag me down what justice is there in the world? _Il
faudrait les inventer_, those hooks, on purpose for me alone, for, if you
only knew, Alyosha, what a blackguard I am."
"But there are no hooks there," said Alyosha, looking gently and seriously
at his father.
"Yes, yes, only the shadows of hooks, I know, I know. That's how a
Frenchman described hell: '_J'ai bu l'ombre d'un cocher qui avec l'ombre
d'une brosse frottait l'ombre d'une carrosse._' How do you know there are
no hooks, darling? When you've lived with the monks you'll sing a
different tune. But go and get at the truth there, and then come and tell
me. Anyway it's easier going to the other world if one knows what there is
there. Besides, it will be more seemly for you with the monks than here
with me, with a drunken old man and young harlots ... though you're like
an angel, nothing touches you. And I dare say nothing will touch you
there. That's why I let you go, because I hope for that. You've got all
your wits about you. You will burn and you will burn out; you will be
healed and come back again. And I will wait for you. I feel that you're
the only creature in the world who has not condemned me. My dear boy, I
feel it, you know. I can't help feeling it."
And he even began blubbering. He was sentimental. He was wicked and
sentimental.
| 3,239 | book 1, Chapter 4 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section1/ | The Third Son, Alyosha Alyosha is twenty years old when Dmitri moves to their father's home. Alyosha has lived in the monastery in his father's town for about a year before his brothers' arrival. He is religious--not in a mystical or superstitious way, but simply out of a generous and innate love of humankind. Alyosha even seems to love his father and is never critical of him or unkind to him. Everyone loves Alyosha, for despite his tendency to remain detached from others, he exudes a kind of blissful serenity. He has been extremely popular as a student despite his passive nature and his innocence--the only thing the other students ever tease him about is the acute embarrassment he feels whenever the topics of women or sex arise. After Alyosha moves back to his father's town, he quickly grows close to Fyodor Pavlovich, who uncharacteristically donates a great deal of money to the monastery after Alyosha visits his mother's grave. Fyodor Pavlovich becomes very sentimental when Alyosha tells him that he intends to enter the monastery and study under the elder Zosima | null | 182 | 1 | [
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5,658 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/12.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Lord Jim/section_11_part_0.txt | Lord Jim.chapter 12 | chapter 12 | null | {"name": "Chapter 12", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-12", "summary": "Resuming his story, Jim tells us that the men in the lifeboat were rescued by the Avondale. But of course before we can settle in to the story again, Marlow breaks in with his own information on the Patna and how the news of it broke. He seems to have something against telling stories in chronological order. We jump forward in time to Marlow's conversation with a French lieutenant, who was serving aboard the vessel that rescued the Patna. The two meet up in Sydney, and Marlow learns from the lieutenant that his French gunboat towed the Patna to safety. The French lieutenant recalls being bored during much of this, though he and his crew were very interested in the dead body they found .", "analysis": ""} |
'All around everything was still as far as the ear could reach. The mist
of his feelings shifted between us, as if disturbed by his struggles,
and in the rifts of the immaterial veil he would appear to my staring
eyes distinct of form and pregnant with vague appeal like a symbolic
figure in a picture. The chill air of the night seemed to lie on my
limbs as heavy as a slab of marble.
'"I see," I murmured, more to prove to myself that I could break my
state of numbness than for any other reason.
'"The Avondale picked us up just before sunset," he remarked moodily.
"Steamed right straight for us. We had only to sit and wait."
'After a long interval, he said, "They told their story." And again
there was that oppressive silence. "Then only I knew what it was I had
made up my mind to," he added.
'"You said nothing," I whispered.
'"What could I say?" he asked, in the same low tone. . . . "Shock
slight. Stopped the ship. Ascertained the damage. Took measures to get
the boats out without creating a panic. As the first boat was lowered
ship went down in a squall. Sank like lead. . . . What could be more
clear" . . . he hung his head . . . "and more awful?" His lips quivered
while he looked straight into my eyes. "I had jumped--hadn't I?" he
asked, dismayed. "That's what I had to live down. The story didn't
matter." . . . He clasped his hands for an instant, glanced right and
left into the gloom: "It was like cheating the dead," he stammered.
'"And there were no dead," I said.
'He went away from me at this. That is the only way I can describe it.
In a moment I saw his back close to the balustrade. He stood there for
some time, as if admiring the purity and the peace of the night. Some
flowering-shrub in the garden below spread its powerful scent through
the damp air. He returned to me with hasty steps.
'"And that did not matter," he said, as stubbornly as you please.
'"Perhaps not," I admitted. I began to have a notion he was too much for
me. After all, what did _I_ know?
'"Dead or not dead, I could not get clear," he said. "I had to live;
hadn't I?"
'"Well, yes--if you take it in that way," I mumbled.
'"I was glad, of course," he threw out carelessly, with his mind fixed
on something else. "The exposure," he pronounced slowly, and lifted
his head. "Do you know what was my first thought when I heard? I was
relieved. I was relieved to learn that those shouts--did I tell you I
had heard shouts? No? Well, I did. Shouts for help . . . blown along
with the drizzle. Imagination, I suppose. And yet I can hardly . . . How
stupid. . . . The others did not. I asked them afterwards. They all
said No. No? And I was hearing them even then! I might have known--but
I didn't think--I only listened. Very faint screams--day after day. Then
that little half-caste chap here came up and spoke to me. 'The
Patna . . . French gunboat . . . towed successfully to Aden . . .
Investigation . . . Marine Office . . . Sailors' Home . . . arrangements
made for your board and lodging!' I walked along with him, and I enjoyed
the silence. So there had been no shouting. Imagination. I had to
believe him. I could hear nothing any more. I wonder how long I could
have stood it. It was getting worse, too . . . I mean--louder." 'He fell
into thought.
'"And I had heard nothing! Well--so be it. But the lights! The lights
did go! We did not see them. They were not there. If they had been, I
would have swam back--I would have gone back and shouted alongside--I
would have begged them to take me on board. . . . I would have had my
chance. . . . You doubt me? . . . How do you know how I felt? . . . What
right have you to doubt? . . . I very nearly did it as it was--do you
understand?" His voice fell. "There was not a glimmer--not a glimmer,"
he protested mournfully. "Don't you understand that if there had been,
you would not have seen me here? You see me--and you doubt."
'I shook my head negatively. This question of the lights being lost
sight of when the boat could not have been more than a quarter of a mile
from the ship was a matter for much discussion. Jim stuck to it that
there was nothing to be seen after the first shower had cleared away;
and the others had affirmed the same thing to the officers of the
Avondale. Of course people shook their heads and smiled. One old skipper
who sat near me in court tickled my ear with his white beard to murmur,
"Of course they would lie." As a matter of fact nobody lied; not even
the chief engineer with his story of the mast-head light dropping like a
match you throw down. Not consciously, at least. A man with his liver in
such a state might very well have seen a floating spark in the corner of
his eye when stealing a hurried glance over his shoulder. They had seen
no light of any sort though they were well within range, and they could
only explain this in one way: the ship had gone down. It was obvious
and comforting. The foreseen fact coming so swiftly had justified their
haste. No wonder they did not cast about for any other explanation. Yet
the true one was very simple, and as soon as Brierly suggested it the
court ceased to bother about the question. If you remember, the ship had
been stopped, and was lying with her head on the course steered through
the night, with her stern canted high and her bows brought low down in
the water through the filling of the fore-compartment. Being thus out of
trim, when the squall struck her a little on the quarter, she swung head
to wind as sharply as though she had been at anchor. By this change in
her position all her lights were in a very few moments shut off from
the boat to leeward. It may very well be that, had they been seen, they
would have had the effect of a mute appeal--that their glimmer lost in
the darkness of the cloud would have had the mysterious power of the
human glance that can awaken the feelings of remorse and pity. It would
have said, "I am here--still here" . . . and what more can the eye of
the most forsaken of human beings say? But she turned her back on them
as if in disdain of their fate: she had swung round, burdened, to glare
stubbornly at the new danger of the open sea which she so strangely
survived to end her days in a breaking-up yard, as if it had been her
recorded fate to die obscurely under the blows of many hammers. What
were the various ends their destiny provided for the pilgrims I am
unable to say; but the immediate future brought, at about nine o'clock
next morning, a French gunboat homeward bound from Reunion. The report
of her commander was public property. He had swept a little out of
his course to ascertain what was the matter with that steamer floating
dangerously by the head upon a still and hazy sea. There was an ensign,
union down, flying at her main gaff (the serang had the sense to make a
signal of distress at daylight); but the cooks were preparing the food
in the cooking-boxes forward as usual. The decks were packed as close
as a sheep-pen: there were people perched all along the rails, jammed on
the bridge in a solid mass; hundreds of eyes stared, and not a sound was
heard when the gunboat ranged abreast, as if all that multitude of lips
had been sealed by a spell.
'The Frenchman hailed, could get no intelligible reply, and after
ascertaining through his binoculars that the crowd on deck did not look
plague-stricken, decided to send a boat. Two officers came on board,
listened to the serang, tried to talk with the Arab, couldn't make head
or tail of it: but of course the nature of the emergency was obvious
enough. They were also very much struck by discovering a white man, dead
and curled up peacefully on the bridge. "Fort intrigues par ce cadavre,"
as I was informed a long time after by an elderly French lieutenant whom
I came across one afternoon in Sydney, by the merest chance, in a sort
of cafe, and who remembered the affair perfectly. Indeed this affair,
I may notice in passing, had an extraordinary power of defying the
shortness of memories and the length of time: it seemed to live, with
a sort of uncanny vitality, in the minds of men, on the tips of their
tongues. I've had the questionable pleasure of meeting it often, years
afterwards, thousands of miles away, emerging from the remotest possible
talk, coming to the surface of the most distant allusions. Has it not
turned up to-night between us? And I am the only seaman here. I am the
only one to whom it is a memory. And yet it has made its way out! But if
two men who, unknown to each other, knew of this affair met accidentally
on any spot of this earth, the thing would pop up between them as sure
as fate, before they parted. I had never seen that Frenchman before, and
at the end of an hour we had done with each other for life: he did not
seem particularly talkative either; he was a quiet, massive chap in a
creased uniform, sitting drowsily over a tumbler half full of some
dark liquid. His shoulder-straps were a bit tarnished, his clean-shaved
cheeks were large and sallow; he looked like a man who would be given
to taking snuff--don't you know? I won't say he did; but the habit would
have fitted that kind of man. It all began by his handing me a number of
Home News, which I didn't want, across the marble table. I said "Merci."
We exchanged a few apparently innocent remarks, and suddenly, before
I knew how it had come about, we were in the midst of it, and he was
telling me how much they had been "intrigued by that corpse." It turned
out he had been one of the boarding officers.
'In the establishment where we sat one could get a variety of foreign
drinks which were kept for the visiting naval officers, and he took a
sip of the dark medical-looking stuff, which probably was nothing more
nasty than cassis a l'eau, and glancing with one eye into the tumbler,
shook his head slightly. "Impossible de comprendre--vous concevez," he
said, with a curious mixture of unconcern and thoughtfulness. I could
very easily conceive how impossible it had been for them to understand.
Nobody in the gunboat knew enough English to get hold of the story as
told by the serang. There was a good deal of noise, too, round the two
officers. "They crowded upon us. There was a circle round that dead
man (autour de ce mort)," he described. "One had to attend to the most
pressing. These people were beginning to agitate themselves--Parbleu!
A mob like that--don't you see?" he interjected with philosophic
indulgence. As to the bulkhead, he had advised his commander that the
safest thing was to leave it alone, it was so villainous to look at.
They got two hawsers on board promptly (en toute hale) and took the
Patna in tow--stern foremost at that--which, under the circumstances,
was not so foolish, since the rudder was too much out of the water to
be of any great use for steering, and this manoeuvre eased the strain on
the bulkhead, whose state, he expounded with stolid glibness, demanded
the greatest care (exigeait les plus grands menagements). I could not
help thinking that my new acquaintance must have had a voice in most of
these arrangements: he looked a reliable officer, no longer very active,
and he was seamanlike too, in a way, though as he sat there, with his
thick fingers clasped lightly on his stomach, he reminded you of one
of those snuffy, quiet village priests, into whose ears are poured the
sins, the sufferings, the remorse of peasant generations, on whose faces
the placid and simple expression is like a veil thrown over the mystery
of pain and distress. He ought to have had a threadbare black soutane
buttoned smoothly up to his ample chin, instead of a frock-coat with
shoulder-straps and brass buttons. His broad bosom heaved regularly
while he went on telling me that it had been the very devil of a job,
as doubtless (sans doute) I could figure to myself in my quality of a
seaman (en votre qualite de marin). At the end of the period he inclined
his body slightly towards me, and, pursing his shaved lips, allowed the
air to escape with a gentle hiss. "Luckily," he continued, "the sea was
level like this table, and there was no more wind than there is here."
. . . The place struck me as indeed intolerably stuffy, and very hot;
my face burned as though I had been young enough to be embarrassed and
blushing. They had directed their course, he pursued, to the nearest
English port "naturellement," where their responsibility ceased, "Dieu
merci." . . . He blew out his flat cheeks a little. . . . "Because,
mind you (notez bien), all the time of towing we had two quartermasters
stationed with axes by the hawsers, to cut us clear of our tow in case
she . . ." He fluttered downwards his heavy eyelids, making his meaning
as plain as possible. . . . "What would you! One does what one can
(on fait ce qu'on peut)," and for a moment he managed to invest
his ponderous immobility with an air of resignation. "Two
quartermasters--thirty hours--always there. Two!" he repeated, lifting
up his right hand a little, and exhibiting two fingers. This was
absolutely the first gesture I saw him make. It gave me the opportunity
to "note" a starred scar on the back of his hand--effect of a gunshot
clearly; and, as if my sight had been made more acute by this discovery,
I perceived also the seam of an old wound, beginning a little below the
temple and going out of sight under the short grey hair at the side of
his head--the graze of a spear or the cut of a sabre. He clasped his
hands on his stomach again. "I remained on board that--that--my memory
is going (s'en va). Ah! Patt-na. C'est bien ca. Patt-na. Merci. It is
droll how one forgets. I stayed on that ship thirty hours. . . ."
'"You did!" I exclaimed. Still gazing at his hands, he pursed his lips a
little, but this time made no hissing sound. "It was judged proper," he
said, lifting his eyebrows dispassionately, "that one of the officers
should remain to keep an eye open (pour ouvrir l'oeil)" . . . he sighed
idly . . . "and for communicating by signals with the towing ship--do
you see?--and so on. For the rest, it was my opinion too. We made our
boats ready to drop over--and I also on that ship took measures. . . .
Enfin! One has done one's possible. It was a delicate position. Thirty
hours! They prepared me some food. As for the wine--go and whistle for
it--not a drop." In some extraordinary way, without any marked change in
his inert attitude and in the placid expression of his face, he managed
to convey the idea of profound disgust. "I--you know--when it comes to
eating without my glass of wine--I am nowhere."
'I was afraid he would enlarge upon the grievance, for though he didn't
stir a limb or twitch a feature, he made one aware how much he was
irritated by the recollection. But he seemed to forget all about it.
They delivered their charge to the "port authorities," as he expressed
it. He was struck by the calmness with which it had been received. "One
might have thought they had such a droll find (drole de trouvaille)
brought them every day. You are extraordinary--you others," he
commented, with his back propped against the wall, and looking himself
as incapable of an emotional display as a sack of meal. There happened
to be a man-of-war and an Indian Marine steamer in the harbour at the
time, and he did not conceal his admiration of the efficient manner in
which the boats of these two ships cleared the Patna of her passengers.
Indeed his torpid demeanour concealed nothing: it had that mysterious,
almost miraculous, power of producing striking effects by means
impossible of detection which is the last word of the highest art.
"Twenty-five minutes--watch in hand--twenty-five, no more." . . . He
unclasped and clasped again his fingers without removing his hands from
his stomach, and made it infinitely more effective than if he had thrown
up his arms to heaven in amazement. . . . "All that lot (tout ce monde)
on shore--with their little affairs--nobody left but a guard of
seamen (marins de l'Etat) and that interesting corpse (cet interessant
cadavre). Twenty-five minutes." . . . With downcast eyes and his head
tilted slightly on one side he seemed to roll knowingly on his tongue
the savour of a smart bit of work. He persuaded one without any further
demonstration that his approval was eminently worth having, and resuming
his hardly interrupted immobility, he went on to inform me that, being
under orders to make the best of their way to Toulon, they left in
two hours' time, "so that (de sorte que) there are many things in this
incident of my life (dans cet episode de ma vie) which have remained
obscure."' | 2,831 | Chapter 12 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-12 | Resuming his story, Jim tells us that the men in the lifeboat were rescued by the Avondale. But of course before we can settle in to the story again, Marlow breaks in with his own information on the Patna and how the news of it broke. He seems to have something against telling stories in chronological order. We jump forward in time to Marlow's conversation with a French lieutenant, who was serving aboard the vessel that rescued the Patna. The two meet up in Sydney, and Marlow learns from the lieutenant that his French gunboat towed the Patna to safety. The French lieutenant recalls being bored during much of this, though he and his crew were very interested in the dead body they found . | null | 125 | 1 | [
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44,747 | true | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/part_2_chapters_43_to_45.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/The Red and the Black/section_21_part_0.txt | The Red and the Black.part 2.chapters 43-45 | chapters 43-45 | null | {"name": "Chapters 43-45", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201128052739/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/the-red-and-the-black/summary-and-analysis/part-2-chapters-4345", "summary": "Julien is overjoyed by a visit from Mme. de Renal. He agrees to appeal if she will visit him every day in his cell. They know complete happiness. After three days, M. de Renal has ordered that his wife return to Verrieres. An ambitious priest has undertaken the conversion of Julien and has posted himself in all weather outside the prison, where much to Julien's annoyance, he attracts a great crowd. In desperation, Julien admits him, then rids himself of the troublesome priest by sending him to say masses for the poor. Mathilde arrives on the heels of the departing priest to relate the treachery of Valenod and to try to convince Julien of the necessity of requesting a reprieve. Julien finally sends her away, requesting that she listen to a mass for him. The much dreaded visit of his father occurs. Sorel ceases his reproaches when Julien suggests that he will bequeath his money to his father and brothers. Julien then shares a bottle of champagne with two other prisoners and listens to the life story of one. Finally, Julien is left to his gloomy meditations. Julien submits to confession, and provincial public opinion is thereby satisfied. Mme. de Renal has left Verrieres and, living with her aunt in Besancon, visits Julien twice a day. This bliss is interrupted by the daily visits of Mathilde. M. de Croisenois has been killed in a duel defending the honor of Mathilde. Julien angrily rejects a Jansenist's entreaties that he make a spectacular conversion, which, according to the priest, would encourage many lost souls to return to the Church. Julien must dissuade Mme. de Renal from begging a reprieve from the king at Saint-Cloud. After the execution, Mathilde visits the cell and carries off Julien's head. Fouque, carrying out Julien's last wishes, negotiates his burial on a high hill overlooking Verrieres. Mathilde accompanies the procession and with her own hands buries Julien's head. Mme. de Renal dies three days after the death of Julien.", "analysis": "In the time of the novel, the action of Chapter 43 occurs only one hour after Mathilde had left Julien's cell in the preceding chapter. In Chapter 43, the incident of greatest importance is, of course, Mme. de Renal's visit with Julien. Then in almost a sentence, Stendhal indicates that \"three days after these visits had been taking place,\" M. de Renal recalls her home. The end of the chapter elaborates another short incident, the interview of the priest, and Chapter 44 opens with the immediate reaction of Julien after the priest has left. This is typical of Stendhal's treatment of time and events. A single chapter develops one incident , culminates it , and introduces a second . The long-awaited event is the reunion of Mme. de Renal with Julien. Stendhal tells us that Julien has never known such happiness, although the author's \"pudeur\" prevents him, as usual, from elaborating the ecstatic happiness that both enjoy during this supreme moment. He passes over it with: \"much later, when they were able to speak.\" Mme. de Renal loves Julien as a human should love only God. This is no doubt the love that Stendhal would have wanted to receive. Mme. de Renal's sadness and admission of her disgrace prompt a \"new happiness\" in Julien. In Stendhal's conception of love, one constantly makes new discoveries in the object, which increases one's love for her. We are now aware of the extent of Julien's love for Mme. de Renal and of how instrumental it has been in his calm acceptance of the death penalty up to this point. Imagining himself bereft of her love, Julien was prepared for death. Now, a new possibility of happiness opens up before him, and he will really know the terror of the condemned man. The priest's visit serves to materialize Julien's despair, and thereafter, he sees death as horrible. It was no doubt Stendhal's \"pudeur\" that prevented him from giving titles to the last four chapters in the original version of the novel. It is as if the suggestion of privacy were thus made after Julien has been condemned to death. Within one short chapter, Julien moves from the heights of bliss to the depths of despair. Weeping about his own death, Julien will be visited, in Chapter 44, by three more \"misfortunes\": the visits of Mathilde and of his father, and exposure to the criminals with whom he shares a bottle of champagne. From these he will draw food for meditation. During these meditations, the reader will witness, for the last time, Julien's solitude. There exists in this chapter the same movement as in the preceding one, but in reverse: From the depths of despair, Julien will emerge \"strong and resolute, as a man who sees clearly into his own heart.\" Julien finally learns about the machinations of Mathilde and Frilair. The latter, no doubt in an effort to mitigate the betrayal he has suffered personally from Valenod, has tried to shift the blame for Julien's conviction to Julien himself. Frilair sees the courtroom oration as an invitation for condemnation to death. Julien has great difficulty in concealing his despair from Mathilde. His remark concerning the prisoner's public situation vis-a-vis the world sets the tone for the chapter. Just as in life outside, Julien is forced to adopt a hypocritical air in dealing with his visitors to protect what remains of his courage. The interlude of the prisoners is at once a moment of respite, of relief -- an escape from the horror of the present moment -- thereby permitting Julien to transform his self-reproach and grief into a more objective melancholy, and a pendant to the visit by his father. Both incidents are inspirational to his musings in the latter part of the chapter. The prisoner episode is reminiscent of the appearance of Geronomo at the Renal home in Part I, which constituted a sort of poetic escape from the misfortunes of the family. Here, there is a more macabre note. Greed for money has motivated the life of this criminal, otherwise endowed with a brave heart. Thus taken out of himself, Julien is able to recapture the necessary detachment to arrive at the re-creation of the required attitude before death. From Julien's meditations result some of the very important ingredients of beylism: the need to see man for what he is, not to be taken in, not to betray one's real nature; the danger of trading the present moment of happiness, so hard to come by, for sterile meditations about the unfathomable; in the absence of any ethical basis of society, the necessity of the creation of and adherence to a private code of morality based upon duty toward oneself. Five days elapsed during Chapter 44. Stendhal terminates his novel with rapidity. One would be hard put to say over what extent of time the action takes place in the final chapter. It opens as a continuation of the final scene of the preceding chapter: Fouque awakens Julien, the latter having regained his composure and resolution. Stendhal is winding up, moving from Julien's relationship to Mme. de Renal, to Mathilde, almost without transition. Julien admits to Mme. de Renal that he mistook, at the time, the real happiness he had known with her in Vergy. Mathilde is insanely jealous of Mme. de Renal's visits, and Julien's own role toward Mathilde has now become almost paternal, just as Mme. de Renal's love for him still has a maternal character. Stendhal's refusal to indulge in hyperbolic description and pathos is evidenced by his very sparse treatment of the execution of Julien, which has been termed literary euthanasia. We are told that the weather was beautiful and that Julien was poetic, courageous, observant of decorum. Stendhal even makes Julien \"speak\" after the narration of his death, as instructions to Fouque concerning burial are given. Note the final utilization of the \"high place\" motif in the burial of Julien. The cell has been the scene of his last happiness, and the heights culminate this representation beyond death. It is fitting that Mathilde be portrayed in this macabre scene retrieving Julien's head. It permits her to play the final scene in the drama from the past which she has re-enacted in her affair with Julien. There is likewise a kind of poetic justice attained thereby -- her \"amour de tete\" is recompensed. One wonders at the future of Mathilde de la Mole. Stendhal has hinted in a previous chapter that Frilair's attempts to replace Julien had not yet been noticed by Mathilde. As for Mme. de Renal, her death is the logical consequence of her character and conduct. She and Julien have shared a more vital identity. Mathilde and Mme. de Renal, each reflecting aspects of Julien, are complementary."} | CHAPTER LXXIII
When he was deep asleep an hour afterwards, he was woken up by feeling
tears flow over his hand. "Oh, it is Mathilde again," he thought, only
half awake. "She has come again, faithful to her tactics of attacking
my resolution by her sentimentalism." Bored by the prospect of this
new scene of hackneyed pathos he did not open his eyes. The verses of
Belphgor, as he ran away from his wife, came into his mind. He heard a
strange sigh. He opened his eyes. It was madame de Renal.
"Ah, so I see you again before I die, or is it an illusion," he
exclaimed as he threw himself at her feet.
"But, forgive me, madame, you must look upon me as a mere murderer," he
said, immediately, as he recovered himself.
"Monsieur, I have come to entreat you to appeal; I know you do not want
to...." her sobs choked her; she was unable to speak.
"Deign to forgive me."
"If you want me to forgive you," she said to him, getting up and
throwing herself into his arms, "appeal immediately against your death
sentence."
Julien covered her with kisses.
"Will you come and see me every day during those two months?"
"I swear it--every day, unless my husband forbids me."
"I will sign it," exclaimed Julien.
"What! you really forgive me! Is it possible?"
He clasped her in his arms; he was mad. She gave a little cry.
"It is nothing," she said to him. "You hurt me."
"Your shoulder," exclaimed Julien, bursting into tears. He drew back
a little, and covered her hands with kisses of fire. "Who could
have prophesied this, dear, the last time I saw you in your room at
Verrieres?"
"Who could have prophesied then that I should write that infamous
letter to M. de la Mole?"
"Know that I have always loved you, and that I have never loved anyone
but you."
"Is it possible?" cried Madame de Renal, who was delighted in her turn.
She leant on Julien, who was on his knees, and they cried silently for
a long time.
Julien had never experienced moments like this at any period of his
whole life.
"And how about that young madame Michelet?" said Madame de Renal, a
long time afterwards when they were able to speak. "Or rather, that
mademoiselle de la Mole? for I am really beginning to believe in that
strange romance."
"It is only superficially true," answered Julien. "She is my wife, but
she is not my mistress."
After interrupting each other a hundred times over, they managed with
great difficulty to explain to each other what they did not know. The
letter written to M. de la Mole had been drafted by the young priest
who directed Madame de Renal's conscience, and had been subsequently
copied by her, "What a horrible thing religion has made me do," she
said to him, "and even so I softened the most awful passages in the
letter."
Julien's ecstatic happiness proved the fulness of her forgiveness. He
had never been so mad with love.
"And yet I regard myself as devout," madame de Renal went on to say to
him in the ensuing conversation. "I believe sincerely in God! I equally
believe, and I even have full proof of it, that the crime which I am
committing is an awful one, and yet the very minute I see you, even
after you have fired two pistol shots at me--" and at this point, in
spite of her resistance, Julien covered her with kisses.
"Leave me alone," she continued, "I want to argue with you, I am
frightened lest I should forget.... The very minute I see you all my
duties disappear. I have nothing but love for you, dear, or rather, the
word love is too weak. I feel for you what I ought only to feel for
God; a mixture of respect, love, obedience.... As a matter of fact, I
don't know what you inspire me with.... If you were to tell me to stab
the gaoler with a knife, the crime would be committed before I had
given it a thought. Explain this very clearly to me before I leave you.
I want to see down to the bottom of my heart; for we shall take leave
of each other in two months.... By the bye, shall we take leave of each
other?" she said to him with a smile.
"I take back my words," exclaimed Julien, getting up, "I shall not
appeal from my death sentence, if you try, either by poison, knife,
pistol, charcoal, or any other means whatsoever, to put an end to your
life, or make any attempt upon it."
Madame de Renal's expression suddenly changed. The most lively
tenderness was succeeded by a mood of deep meditation.
"Supposing we were to die at once," she said to him.
"Who knows what one will find in the other life," answered Julien,
"perhaps torment, perhaps nothing at all. Cannot we pass two delicious
months together? Two months means a good many days. I shall never have
been so happy."
"You will never have been so happy?"
"Never," repeated Julien ecstatically, "and I am talking to you just as
I should talk to myself. May God save me from exaggerating."
"Words like that are a command," she said with a timid melancholy smile.
"Well, you will swear by the love you have for me, to make no attempt
either direct or indirect, upon your life ... remember," he added,
"that you must live for my son, whom Mathilde will hand over to lackeys
as soon as she is marquise de Croisenois."
"I swear," she answered coldly, "but I want to take away your notice
of appeal, drawn and signed by yourself. I will go myself to M. the
procureur-general."
"Be careful, you will compromise yourself."
"After having taken the step of coming to see you in your prison, I
shall be a heroine of local scandal for Besancon, and the whole of
Franche-Comte," she said very dejectedly. "I have crossed the bounds of
austere modesty.... I am a woman who has lost her honour; it is true
that it is for your sake...."
Her tone was so sad that Julien embraced her with a happiness which was
quite novel to him. It was no longer the intoxication of love, it was
extreme gratitude. He had just realised for the first time the full
extent of the sacrifice which she had made for him.
Some charitable soul, no doubt informed M. de Renal of the long visits
which his wife paid to Julien's prison; for at the end of three days
he sent her his carriage with the express order to return to Verrieres
immediately.
This cruel separation had been a bad beginning for Julien's day. He
was informed two or three hours later that a certain intriguing priest
(who had, however, never managed to make any headway among the Jesuits
of Besancon) had, since the morning, established himself in the street
outside the prison gates. It was raining a great deal, and the man out
there was pretending to play the martyr. Julien was in a weak mood, and
this piece of stupidity annoyed him deeply.
In the morning, he had already refused this priest's visit, but the man
had taken it into his head to confess Julien, and to win a name for
himself among the young women of Besancon by all the confidences which
he would pretend to have received from him.
He declared in a loud voice that he would pass the day and the night by
the prison gates. "God has sent me to touch the heart of this apostate
..." and the lower classes, who are always curious to see a scene,
began to make a crowd.
"Yes, my brothers," he said to them, "I will pass the day here and the
night, as well as all the days and all the nights which will follow.
The Holy Ghost has spoken to me. I am commissioned from above; I am the
man who must save the soul of young Sorel. Do you join in my prayers,
etc."
Julien had a horror of scandal, and of anything which could attract
attention to him. He thought of seizing the opportunity of escaping
from the world incognito; but he had some hope of seeing madame de
Renal again, and he was desperately in love.
The prison gates were situated in one of the most populous streets. His
soul was tortured by the idea of this filthy priest attracting a crowd
and creating a scandal--"and doubtless he is repeating my name at every
single minute!" This moment was more painful than death.
He called the turnkey who was devoted to him, and sent sent him two or
three times at intervals of one hour to see if the priest was still by
the prison gates.
"Monsieur," said the turnkey to him on each occasion, "he is on both
his knees in the mud; he is praying at the top of his voice, and saying
litanies for your soul.
"The impudent fellow," thought Julien. At this moment he actually heard
a dull buzz. It was the responses of the people to the litanies. His
patience was strained to the utmost when he saw the turnkey himself
move his lips while he repeated the Latin words.
"They are beginning to say," added the turnkey, "that you must have a
very hardened heart to refuse the help of this holy man."
"Oh my country, how barbarous you still are!" exclaimed Julien, beside
himself with anger. And he continued his train of thought aloud,
without giving a thought to the turn-key's presence.
"The man wants an article in the paper about him, and that's a way in
which he will certainly get it.
"Oh you cursed provincials! At Paris I should not be subjected to all
these annoyances. There they are more skilled in their charlatanism.
"Show in the holy priest," he said at last to the turnkey, and great
streams of sweat flowed down his forehead. The turnkey made the sign of
the cross and went out rejoicing.
The holy priest turned out to be very ugly, he was even dirtier than he
was ugly. The cold rain intensified the obscurity and dampness of the
cell. The priest wanted to embrace Julien, and began to wax pathetic as
he spoke to him. The basest hypocrisy was only too palpable; Julien had
never been so angry in his whole life.
A quarter of an hour after the priest had come in Julien felt an
absolute coward. Death appeared horrible to him for the first time. He
began to think about the state of decomposition which his body would be
in two days after the execution, etc., etc.
He was on the point of betraying himself by some sign of weakness or
throwing himself on the priest and strangling him with his chain, when
it occurred to him to beg the holy man to go and say a good forty franc
mass for him on that very day.
It was twelve o'clock, so the priest took himself off.
CHAPTER LXXIV
As soon as he had gone out Julien wept desperately and for a long time.
He gradually admitted to himself that if madame de Renal had been at
Besancon he would have confessed his weakness to her. The moment when
he was regretting the absence of this beloved woman he heard Mathilde's
step.
"The worst evil of being in prison," he thought "is one's inability to
close one's door." All Mathilde said only irritated him.
She told him that M. de Valenod had had his nomination to the
prefectship in his pocket on the day of his trial, and had consequently
dared to defy M. de Frilair and give himself the pleasure of condemning
him to death.
"Why did your friend take it into his head," M. de Frilair just said
to me, "to awaken and attack the petty vanity of that bourgeois
aristocracy. Why talk about caste? He pointed out to them what they
ought to do in their own political interest; the fools had not been
giving it a thought and were quite ready to weep. That caste interest
intervened and blinded their eyes to the horror of condemning a man to
death. One must admit that M. Sorel is very inexperienced. If we do not
succeed in saving him by a petition for a reprieve, his death will be a
kind of suicide."
Mathilde was careful not to tell Julien a matter concerning which she
had now no longer any doubts; it was that the abbe de Frilair seeing
that Julien was ruined, had thought that it would further his ambitious
projects to try and become his successor.
"Go and listen to a mass for me," he said to Mathilde, almost beside
himself with vexation and impotent rage, and leave me a moment in
peace. Mathilde who was already very jealous of madame de Renal's
visits and who had just learned of her departure realised the cause of
Julien's bad temper and burst into tears.
Her grief was real; Julien saw this and was only the more irritated. He
had a crying need of solitude, and how was he to get it?
Eventually Mathilde, after having tried to melt him by every possible
argument, left him alone. But almost at the same moment, Fouque
presented himself.
"I need to be alone," he said, to this faithful friend, and as he saw
him hesitate: "I am composing a memorial for my petition for pardon ...
one thing more ... do me a favour, and never speak to me about death.
If I have need of any especial services on that day, let me be the
first to speak to you about it."
When Julien had eventually procured solitude, he found himself more
prostrate and more cowardly than he had been before. The little force
which this enfeebled soul still possessed had all been spent in
concealing his condition from mademoiselle de la Mole.
Towards the evening he found consolation in this idea.
"If at the very moment this morning, when death seemed so ugly to
me, I had been given notice of my execution, the public eye would
have acted as a spur to glory, my demeanour would perhaps have had a
certain stiffness about it, like a nervous fop entering a salon. A few
penetrating people, if there are any amongst these provincial might
have managed to divine my weakness.... But no one would have seen it."
And he felt relieved of part of his unhappiness. "I am a coward at this
very moment," he sang to himself, "but no one will know it."
An even more unpleasant episode awaited him on the following day. His
father had been announcing that he would come and see him for some time
past: the old white-haired carpenter appeared in Julien's cell before
he woke up.
Julien felt weak, he was anticipating the most unpleasant reproaches.
His painful emotion was intensified by the fact that on this particular
morning he felt a keen remorse for not loving his father.
"Chance placed us next to each other in the world," he said to himself,
while the turnkey was putting the cell a little in order, "and we have
practically done each other all the harm we possibly could. He has come
to administer the final blow at the moment of my death."
As soon as they were without witnesses, the old man commenced his stern
reproaches.
Julien could not restrain his tears. "What an unworthy weakness," he
said to himself querulously. "He will go about everywhere exaggerating
my lack of courage: what a triumph for the Valenod, and for all the
fatuous hypocrites who rule in Verrieres! They are very great in
France, they combine all the social advantages. But hitherto, I could
at any rate say to myself, it is true they are in receipt of money, and
that all the honours lavished on them, but I have a noble heart.
"But here is a witness whom everyone will believe, and who will testify
to the whole of Verrieres that I shewed weakness when confronted with
death, and who will exaggerate it into the bargain! I shall be taken
for a coward in an ordeal which comes home to all!"
Julien was nearly desperate. He did not know how to get rid of his
father. He felt it absolutely beyond his strength to invent a ruse
capable of deceiving so shrewd an old man.
His mind rapidly reviewed all the alternatives. "I have saved some
money," he suddenly exclaimed.
This inspiration produced a change in the expression of the old man and
in Julien's own condition.
"How ought I to dispose of it?" continued Julien more quietly. The
result had freed him from any feeling of inferiority.
The old carpenter was burning not to let the money slip by him, but
it seemed that Julien wanted to leave part of it to his brothers. He
talked at length and with animation. Julien felt cynical.
"Well, the Lord has given me a message with regard to my will. I will
give a thousand francs to each of my brothers and the rest to you."
"Very good," said the old man. "The rest is due to me: but since God
has been gracious enough to touch your heart, your debts ought to be
paid if you wish to die like a good Christian. There are, moreover, the
expenses of your board and your education, which I advanced to you,
but which you are not thinking of."
"Such is paternal love," repeated Julien to himself, dejectedly, when
he was at last alone. Soon the gaoler appeared.
"Monsieur, I always bring my visitors a good bottle of champagne after
near relations have come to see them. It is a little dear, six francs a
bottle, but it rejoices the heart."
"Bring three glasses," said Julien to him, with a childish eagerness,
"and bring in two of the prisoners whom I have heard walking about
in the corridor." The gaoler brought two men into him who had once
been condemned to the gallows, and had now been convicted of the same
offence again, and were preparing to return to penal servitude. They
were very cheerful scoundrels, and really very remarkable by reason of
their subtlety, their courage, and their coolness.
"If you give me twenty francs," said one of them to Julien, "I will
tell you the story of my life in detail. It's rich."
"But you will lie," said Julien.
"Not me," he answered, "my friend there, who is jealous of my twenty
francs will give me away if I say anything untrue."
His history was atrocious. It was evidence of a courageous heart which
had only one passion--that of money.
After their departure Julien was no longer the same man. All his anger
with himself had disappeared. The awful grief which had been poisoned
and rendered more acute by the weakness of which he had been a victim
since madame de Renal's departure had turned to melancholy.
"If I had been less taken in by appearances," he said to himself, "I
would have had a better chance of seeing that the Paris salons are full
of honest men like my father, or clever scoundrels like those felons.
They are right. The men in the salons never get up in the morning with
this poignant thought in their minds, how am I going to get my dinner?
They boast about their honesty and when they are summoned on the jury,
they take pride in convicting the man who has stolen a silver dish
because he felt starving.
"But if there is a court, and it's a question of losing or winning a
portfolio, my worthy salon people will commit crimes exactly similar to
those, which the need of getting a dinner inspired those two felons to
perpetrate.
"There is no such thing as natural law, the expression is nothing
more than a silly anachronism well worthy of the advocate-general who
harried me the other day, and whose grandfather was enriched by one of
the confiscations of Louis XIV. There is no such thing as right, except
when there is a law to forbid a certain thing under pain of punishment.
"Before law existed, the only natural thing was the strength of the
lion, or the need of a creature who was cold or hungry, to put it
in one word, need. No, the people whom the world honours are merely
villains who have had the good fortune not to have been caught
red-handed. The prosecutor whom society put on my track was enriched by
an infamous act. I have committed a murder, and I am justly condemned,
but the Valenod who has condemned me, is by reason alone of that very
deed, a hundred times more harmful to society.
"Well," added Julien sadly but not angrily, "in spite of his avarice,
my father is worth more than all those men. He never loved me.
The disgrace I bring upon him by an infamous death has proved the
last straw. That fear of lacking money, that distorted view of the
wickedness of mankind, which is called avarice, make him find a
tremendous consolation and sense of security in a sum of three or four
hundred louis, which I have been able to leave him. Some Sunday, after
dinner, he will shew his gold to all the envious men in Verrieres.
'Which of you would not be delighted to have a son guillotined at a
price like this,' will be the message they will read in his eyes."
This philosophy might be true, but it was of such a character as to
make him wish for death. In this way five long days went by. He was
polite and gentle to Mathilde, whom he saw was exasperated by the
most violent jealousy. One evening Julien seriously thought of taking
his own life. His soul was demoralised by the deep unhappiness in
which madame de Renal's departure had thrown him. He could no longer
find pleasure in anything, either in real life or in the sphere of
the imagination. Lack of exercise began to affect his health, and
to produce in him all the weakness and exaltation of a young German
student. He began to lose that virile disdain which repels with a
drastic oath certain undignified ideas which besiege the soul of the
unhappy.
"I loved truth.... Where is it? Hypocrisy everywhere or at any rate
charlatanism. Even in the most virtuous, even in the greatest," and his
lips assumed an expression of disgust. "No, man cannot trust man."
"Madame de ---- when she was making a collection for her poor orphans,
used to tell me that such and such a prince had just given ten louis, a
sheer lie. But what am I talking about. Napoleon at St. Helena ... Pure
charlatanism like the proclamation in favour of the king of Rome.
"Great God! If a man like that at a time when misfortune ought to
summon him sternly to his duty will sink to charlatanism, what is one
to expect from the rest of the human species?"
"Where is truth? In religion. Yes," he added, with a bitter smile
of utter contempt. "In the mouth of the Maslons, the Frilairs, the
Castanedes--perhaps in that true Christianity whose priests were not
paid any more than were the apostles. But St. Paul was paid by the
pleasure of commanding, speaking, getting himself talked about."
"Oh, if there were only a true religion. Fool that I am. I see a Gothic
cathedral and venerable stained-glass windows, and my weak heart
conjures up the priest to fit the scene. My soul would understand him,
my soul has need of him. I only find a nincompoop with dirty hair.
About as comforting as a chevalier de Beauvoisis.
"But a true priest, a Massillon, a Fenelon. Massillon sacrificed
Dubois. Saint-Simon's memoirs have spoilt the illusion of Fenelon, but
he was a true priest anyway. In those days, tender souls could have a
place in the world where they could meet together. We should not then
have been isolated. That good priest would have talked to us of God.
But what God? Not the one of the Bible, a cruel petty despot, full of
vindictiveness, but the God of Voltaire, just, good, infinite."
He was troubled by all the memories of that Bible which he knew by
heart. "But how on earth, when the deity is three people all at the
same time, is one to believe in the great name of GOD, after the
frightful way in which our priests have abused it."
"Living alone. What a torture."
"I am growing mad and unreasonable," said Julien to himself, striking
his forehead. "I am alone here in this cell, but I have not lived
alone on earth. I had the powerful idea of duty. The duty which rightly
or wrongly I laid down for myself, has been to me like the trunk of a
solid tree which I could lean on during the storm, I stumbled, I was
agitated. After all I was only a man, but I was not swept away.
"It must be the damp air of this cell which made me think of being
alone.
"Why should I still play the hypocrite by cursing hypocrisy? It is
neither death, nor the cell, nor the damp air, but madame de Renal's
absence which prostrates me. If, in order to see her at Verrieres, I
had to live whole weeks at Verrieres concealed in the cellars of her
house, would I complain?"
"The influence of my contemporaries wins the day," he said aloud, with
a bitter laugh. "Though I am talking to myself and within an ace of
death, I still play the hypocrite. Oh you nineteenth century! A hunter
fires a gun shot in the forest, his quarry falls, he hastens forward
to seize it. His foot knocks against a two-foot anthill, knocks down
the dwelling place of the ants, and scatters the ants and their eggs
far and wide. The most philosophic among the ants will never be able to
understand that black, gigantic and terrifying body, the hunter's boot,
which suddenly invaded their home with incredible rapidity, preceded by
a frightful noise, and accompanied by flashes of reddish fire."
"In the same way, death, life and eternity, are very simple things for
anyone who has organs sufficiently vast to conceive them. An ephemeral
fly is born at nine o'clock in the morning in the long summer days, to
die at five o'clock in the evening. How is it to understand the word
'night'?"
"Give it five more hours of existence, and it will see night, and
understand its meaning."
"So, in my case, I shall die at the age of twenty-three. Give me five
more years of life in order to live with madame de Renal."
He began to laugh like Mephistopheles. How foolish to debate these
great problems.
"(1). I am as hypocritical as though there were someone there to listen
to me.
"(2). I am forgetting to live and to love when I have so few days left
to live. Alas, madame de Renal is absent; perhaps her husband will
not let her come back to Besancon any more, to go on compromising her
honour."
"That is what makes me lonely, and not the absence of a God who is
just, good and omnipotent, devoid of malice, and in no wise greedy of
vengeance."
"Oh, if He did exist. Alas I should fall at His feet. I have deserved
death, I should say to Him, but oh Thou great God, good God, indulgent
God, give me back her whom I love!"
By this time the night was far advanced. After an hour or two of
peaceful sleep, Fouque arrived.
Julien felt strongly resolute, like a man who sees to the bottom of his
soul.
CHAPTER LXXV
"I cannot play such a trick on that poor abbe Chas-Bernard, as to
summon him," he said to Fouque: "it would prevent him from dining for
three whole days.--But try and find some Jansenist who is a friend of
M. Pirard."
Fouque was impatiently waiting for this suggestion. Julien acquitted
himself becomingly of all the duty a man owes to provincial opinion.
Thanks to M. the abbe de Frilair, and in spite of his bad choice of a
confessor, Julien enjoyed in his cell the protection of the priestly
congregation; with a little more diplomacy he might have managed to
escape. But the bad air of the cell produced its effect, and his
strength of mind diminished. But this only intensified his happiness at
madame de Renal's return.
"My first duty is towards you, my dear," she said as she embraced him;
"I have run away from Verrieres."
Julien felt no petty vanity in his relations with her, and told her all
his weaknesses. She was good and charming to him.
In the evening she had scarcely left the prison before she made the
priest, who had clung on to Julien like a veritable prey, go to her
aunt's: as his only object was to win prestige among the young women
who belonged to good Besancon society, madame de Renal easily prevailed
upon him to go and perform a novena at the abbey of Bray-le-Haut.
No words can do justice to the madness and extravagance of Julien's
love.
By means of gold, and by using and abusing the influence of her aunt,
who was devout, rich and well-known, madame de Renal managed to see him
twice a day.
At this news, Mathilde's jealousy reached a pitch of positive madness.
M. de Frilair had confessed to her that all his influence did not go
so far as to admit of flouting the conventions by allowing her to
see her sweetheart more than once every day. Mathilde had madame de
Renal followed so as to know the smallest thing she did. M. de Frilair
exhausted all the resources of an extremely clever intellect in order
to prove to her that Julien was unworthy of her.
Plunged though she was in all these torments, she only loved him the
more, and made a horrible scene nearly every day.
Julien wished, with all his might, to behave to the very end like an
honourable man towards this poor young girl whom he had so strangely
compromised, but the reckless love which he felt for madame de Renal
swept him away at every single minute. When he could not manage to
persuade Mathilde of the innocence of her rival's visits by all his
thin excuses, he would say to himself: "at any rate the end of the
drama ought to be quite near. The very fact of not being able to lie
better will be an excuse for me."
Mademoiselle de La Mole learnt of the death of the marquis de
Croisenois. The rich M. de Thaler had indulged in some unpleasant
remarks concerning Mathilde's disappearance: M. de Croisenois went
and asked him to recant them: M. de Thaler showed him some anonymous
letters which had been sent to him, and which were full of details so
artfully put together that the poor marquis could not help catching a
glimpse of the truth.
M. de Thaler indulged in some jests which were devoid of all taste.
Maddened by anger and unhappiness, M. de Croisenois demanded such
unqualified satisfaction, that the millionaire preferred to fight a
duel. Stupidity triumphed, and one of the most lovable of men met with
his death before he was twenty-four.
This death produced a strange and morbid impression on Julien's
demoralised soul.
"Poor Croisenois," he said to Mathilde, "really behaved very reasonably
and very honourably towards us; he had ample ground for hating me and
picking a quarrel with me, by reason of your indiscretion in your
mother's salon; for the hatred which follows on contempt is usually
frenzied."
M. de Croisenois' death changed all Julien's ideas concerning
Mathilde's future. He spent several days in proving to her that she
ought to accept the hand of M. de Luz. "He is a nervous man, not too
much of a Jesuit, and will doubtless be a candidate," he said to her.
"He has a more sinister and persevering ambition than poor Croisenois,
and as there has never been a dukedom in his family, he will be only
too glad to marry Julien Sorel's widow."
"A widow, though, who scorns the grand passions," answered Mathilde
coldly, "for she has lived long enough to see her lover prefer to
her after six months another woman who was the origin of all their
unhappiness."
"You are unjust! Madame de Renal's visits will furnish my advocate
at Paris, who is endeavouring to procure my pardon, with the subject
matter for some sensational phrases; he will depict the murderer
honoured by the attention of his victim. That may produce an
impression, and perhaps some day or other, you will see me provide the
plot of some melodrama or other, etc., etc."
A furious and impotent jealousy, a prolonged and hopeless unhappiness
(for even supposing Julien was saved, how was she to win back his
heart?), coupled with her shame and anguish at loving this unfaithful
lover more than ever had plunged mademoiselle de la Mole into a gloomy
silence, from which all the careful assiduity of M. de Frilair was as
little able to draw her as the rugged frankness of Fouque.
As for Julien, except in those moments which were taken up by
Mathilde's presence, he lived on love with scarcely a thought for the
future.
"In former days," Julien said to her, "when I might have been so happy,
during our walks in the wood of Vergy, a frenzied ambition swept my
soul into the realms of imagination. Instead of pressing to my heart
that charming arm which is so near my lips, the thoughts of my future
took me away from you; I was engaged in countless combats which I
should have to sustain in order to lay the foundations of a colossal
fortune. No, I should have died without knowing what happiness was if
you had not come to see me in this prison."
Two episodes ruffled this tranquil life. Julien's confessor, Jansenist
though he was, was not proof against an intrigue of the Jesuits, and
became their tool without knowing it.
He came to tell him one day that unless he meant to fall into the awful
sin of suicide, he ought to take every possible step to procure his
pardon. Consequently, as the clergy have a great deal of influence with
the minister of Justice at Paris, an easy means presented itself; he
ought to become converted with all publicity.
"With publicity," repeated Julien. "Ha, Ha! I have caught you at it--I
have caught you as well, my father, playing a part like any missionary."
"Your youth," replied the Jansenist gravely, "the interesting
appearance which Providence has given you, the still unsolved mystery
of the motive for your crime, the heroic steps which mademoiselle de
la Mole has so freely taken on your behalf, everything, up to the
surprising affection which your victim manifests towards you, has
contributed to make you the hero of the young women of Besancon.
They have forgotten everything, even politics, on your account. Your
conversion will reverberate in their hearts and will leave behind it a
deep impression. You can be of considerable use to religion, and I was
about to hesitate for the trivial reason that in a similar circumstance
the Jesuits would follow a similar course. But if I did, even in the
one case which has escaped their greedy clutches they would still be
exercising their mischief. The tears which your conversation will
cause to be shed will annul the poisonous effect of ten editions of
Voltaire's works."
"And what will be left for me," answered Julien, coldly, "if I despise
myself? I have been ambitious; I do not mean to blame myself in any
way. Further, I have acted in accordance with the code of the age. Now
I am living from day to day. But I should make myself very unhappy
if I were to yield to what the locality would regard as a piece of
cowardice...."
Madame de Renal was responsible for the other episode which affected
Julien in quite another way. Some intriguing woman friend or other had
managed to persuade this naive and timid soul that it was her duty
to leave for St. Cloud, and go and throw herself at the feet of King
Charles X.
She had made the sacrifice of separating from Julien, and after
a strain as great as that, she no longer thought anything of the
unpleasantness of making an exhibition of herself, though in former
times she would have thought that worse than death.
"I will go to the king. I will confess freely that you are my lover.
The life of a man, and of a man like Julien, too, ought to prevail over
every consideration. I will tell him that it was because of jealousy
that you made an attempt upon my life. There are numerous instances of
poor young people who have been saved in such a case by the clemency of
the jury or of the king."
"I will leave off seeing you; I will shut myself up in my prison,"
exclaimed Julien, "and you can be quite certain that if you do not
promise me to take no step which will make a public exhibition of us
both, I will kill myself in despair the day afterwards. This idea of
going to Paris is not your own. Tell me the name of the intriguing
woman who suggested it to you.
"Let us be happy during the small number of days of this short life.
Let us hide our existence; my crime was only too self-evident.
Mademoiselle de la Mole enjoys all possible influence at Paris. Take
it from me that she has done all that is humanly possible. Here in
the provinces I have all the men of wealth and prestige against me.
Your conduct will still further aggravate those rich and essentially
moderate people to whom life comes so easy.... Let us not give the
Maslons, the Valenods, and the thousand other people who are worth more
than they, anything to laugh about."
Julien came to find the bad air of the cell unbearable. Fortunately,
nature was rejoicing in a fine sunshine on the day when they announced
to him that he would have to die, and he was in a courageous vein.
He found walking in the open air as delicious a sensation as the
navigator, who has been at sea for a long time, finds walking on the
ground. "Come on, everything is going all right," he said to himself.
"I am not lacking in courage."
His head had never looked so poetical as at that moment when it was on
the point of falling. The sweet minutes which he had formerly spent in
the woods of Vergy crowded back upon his mind with extreme force.
Everything went off simply, decorously, and without any affectation on
his part.
Two days before he had said to Fouque: "I cannot guarantee not to
show some emotion. This dense, squalid cell gives me fits of fever in
which I do not recognise myself, but fear?--no! I shall not be seen to
flinch."
He had made his arrangements in advance for Fouque to take Mathilde and
madame de Renal away on the morning of his last day.
"Drive them away in the same carriage," he had said. "Do you see that
the post-horses do not leave off galloping. They will either fall into
each other's arms, or manifest towards each other a mortal hatred.
In either case the poor women will have something to distract them a
little from their awful grief."
Julien had made madame de Renal swear that she would live to look after
Mathilde's son.
"Who knows? Perhaps we have still some sensations after our death," he
had said one day to Fouque. "I should like to rest, for rest is the
right word, in that little grotto in the great mountain which dominates
Verrieres. Many a time, as I have told you, I have spent the night
alone in that grotto, and as my gaze would plunge far and wide over the
richest provinces of France, ambition would inflame my heart. In those
days it was my passion.... Anyway, I hold that grotto dear, and one
cannot dispute that its situation might well arouse the desires of the
philosopher's soul.... Well, you know! those good priests of Besancon
will make money out of everything. If you know how to manage it, they
will sell you my mortal remains."
Fouque succeeded in this melancholy business. He was passing the night
alone in his room by his friend's body when, to his great surprise, he
saw Mathilde come in. A few hours before he had left her ten leagues
from Besancon. Her face and eyes looked distraught.
"I want to see him," she said.
Fouque had not the courage either to speak or get up. He pointed with
his finger to a big blue cloak on the floor; there was wrapped in it
all that remained of Julien.
She threw herself on her knees. The memory of Boniface de la Mole, and
of Marguerite of Navarre gave her, no doubt, a superhuman courage. Her
trembling hands undid the cloak. Fouque turned away his eyes.
He heard Mathilde walking feverishly about the room. She lit several
candles. When Fouque could bring himself to look at her, she had placed
Julien's head on a little marble table in front of her, and was kissing
it on the forehead.
Mathilde followed her lover to the tomb which he had chosen. A great
number of priests convoyed the bier, and, alone in her draped carriage,
without anyone knowing it, she carried on her knees the head of the man
whom she had loved so much.
When they arrived in this way at the most elevated peak of the high
mountains of the Jura, twenty priests celebrated the service of the
dead in the middle of the night in this little grotto, which was
magnificently illuminated by a countless number of wax candles.
Attracted by this strange and singular ceremony, all the inhabitants
of the little mountain villages which the funeral had passed through,
followed it.
Mathilde appeared in their midst in long mourning garments, and had
several thousands of five-franc pieces thrown to them at the end of the
service.
When she was left alone with Fouque, she insisted on burying her
lover's head with her own hands. Fouque nearly went mad with grief.
Mathilde took care that this wild grotto should be decorated with
marble monuments that had been sculpted in Italy at great expense.
Madame de Renal kept her promise. She did not try to make any attempt
upon her life; but she died embracing her children, three days after
Julien.
THE END.
| 6,580 | Chapters 43-45 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201128052739/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/the-red-and-the-black/summary-and-analysis/part-2-chapters-4345 | Julien is overjoyed by a visit from Mme. de Renal. He agrees to appeal if she will visit him every day in his cell. They know complete happiness. After three days, M. de Renal has ordered that his wife return to Verrieres. An ambitious priest has undertaken the conversion of Julien and has posted himself in all weather outside the prison, where much to Julien's annoyance, he attracts a great crowd. In desperation, Julien admits him, then rids himself of the troublesome priest by sending him to say masses for the poor. Mathilde arrives on the heels of the departing priest to relate the treachery of Valenod and to try to convince Julien of the necessity of requesting a reprieve. Julien finally sends her away, requesting that she listen to a mass for him. The much dreaded visit of his father occurs. Sorel ceases his reproaches when Julien suggests that he will bequeath his money to his father and brothers. Julien then shares a bottle of champagne with two other prisoners and listens to the life story of one. Finally, Julien is left to his gloomy meditations. Julien submits to confession, and provincial public opinion is thereby satisfied. Mme. de Renal has left Verrieres and, living with her aunt in Besancon, visits Julien twice a day. This bliss is interrupted by the daily visits of Mathilde. M. de Croisenois has been killed in a duel defending the honor of Mathilde. Julien angrily rejects a Jansenist's entreaties that he make a spectacular conversion, which, according to the priest, would encourage many lost souls to return to the Church. Julien must dissuade Mme. de Renal from begging a reprieve from the king at Saint-Cloud. After the execution, Mathilde visits the cell and carries off Julien's head. Fouque, carrying out Julien's last wishes, negotiates his burial on a high hill overlooking Verrieres. Mathilde accompanies the procession and with her own hands buries Julien's head. Mme. de Renal dies three days after the death of Julien. | In the time of the novel, the action of Chapter 43 occurs only one hour after Mathilde had left Julien's cell in the preceding chapter. In Chapter 43, the incident of greatest importance is, of course, Mme. de Renal's visit with Julien. Then in almost a sentence, Stendhal indicates that "three days after these visits had been taking place," M. de Renal recalls her home. The end of the chapter elaborates another short incident, the interview of the priest, and Chapter 44 opens with the immediate reaction of Julien after the priest has left. This is typical of Stendhal's treatment of time and events. A single chapter develops one incident , culminates it , and introduces a second . The long-awaited event is the reunion of Mme. de Renal with Julien. Stendhal tells us that Julien has never known such happiness, although the author's "pudeur" prevents him, as usual, from elaborating the ecstatic happiness that both enjoy during this supreme moment. He passes over it with: "much later, when they were able to speak." Mme. de Renal loves Julien as a human should love only God. This is no doubt the love that Stendhal would have wanted to receive. Mme. de Renal's sadness and admission of her disgrace prompt a "new happiness" in Julien. In Stendhal's conception of love, one constantly makes new discoveries in the object, which increases one's love for her. We are now aware of the extent of Julien's love for Mme. de Renal and of how instrumental it has been in his calm acceptance of the death penalty up to this point. Imagining himself bereft of her love, Julien was prepared for death. Now, a new possibility of happiness opens up before him, and he will really know the terror of the condemned man. The priest's visit serves to materialize Julien's despair, and thereafter, he sees death as horrible. It was no doubt Stendhal's "pudeur" that prevented him from giving titles to the last four chapters in the original version of the novel. It is as if the suggestion of privacy were thus made after Julien has been condemned to death. Within one short chapter, Julien moves from the heights of bliss to the depths of despair. Weeping about his own death, Julien will be visited, in Chapter 44, by three more "misfortunes": the visits of Mathilde and of his father, and exposure to the criminals with whom he shares a bottle of champagne. From these he will draw food for meditation. During these meditations, the reader will witness, for the last time, Julien's solitude. There exists in this chapter the same movement as in the preceding one, but in reverse: From the depths of despair, Julien will emerge "strong and resolute, as a man who sees clearly into his own heart." Julien finally learns about the machinations of Mathilde and Frilair. The latter, no doubt in an effort to mitigate the betrayal he has suffered personally from Valenod, has tried to shift the blame for Julien's conviction to Julien himself. Frilair sees the courtroom oration as an invitation for condemnation to death. Julien has great difficulty in concealing his despair from Mathilde. His remark concerning the prisoner's public situation vis-a-vis the world sets the tone for the chapter. Just as in life outside, Julien is forced to adopt a hypocritical air in dealing with his visitors to protect what remains of his courage. The interlude of the prisoners is at once a moment of respite, of relief -- an escape from the horror of the present moment -- thereby permitting Julien to transform his self-reproach and grief into a more objective melancholy, and a pendant to the visit by his father. Both incidents are inspirational to his musings in the latter part of the chapter. The prisoner episode is reminiscent of the appearance of Geronomo at the Renal home in Part I, which constituted a sort of poetic escape from the misfortunes of the family. Here, there is a more macabre note. Greed for money has motivated the life of this criminal, otherwise endowed with a brave heart. Thus taken out of himself, Julien is able to recapture the necessary detachment to arrive at the re-creation of the required attitude before death. From Julien's meditations result some of the very important ingredients of beylism: the need to see man for what he is, not to be taken in, not to betray one's real nature; the danger of trading the present moment of happiness, so hard to come by, for sterile meditations about the unfathomable; in the absence of any ethical basis of society, the necessity of the creation of and adherence to a private code of morality based upon duty toward oneself. Five days elapsed during Chapter 44. Stendhal terminates his novel with rapidity. One would be hard put to say over what extent of time the action takes place in the final chapter. It opens as a continuation of the final scene of the preceding chapter: Fouque awakens Julien, the latter having regained his composure and resolution. Stendhal is winding up, moving from Julien's relationship to Mme. de Renal, to Mathilde, almost without transition. Julien admits to Mme. de Renal that he mistook, at the time, the real happiness he had known with her in Vergy. Mathilde is insanely jealous of Mme. de Renal's visits, and Julien's own role toward Mathilde has now become almost paternal, just as Mme. de Renal's love for him still has a maternal character. Stendhal's refusal to indulge in hyperbolic description and pathos is evidenced by his very sparse treatment of the execution of Julien, which has been termed literary euthanasia. We are told that the weather was beautiful and that Julien was poetic, courageous, observant of decorum. Stendhal even makes Julien "speak" after the narration of his death, as instructions to Fouque concerning burial are given. Note the final utilization of the "high place" motif in the burial of Julien. The cell has been the scene of his last happiness, and the heights culminate this representation beyond death. It is fitting that Mathilde be portrayed in this macabre scene retrieving Julien's head. It permits her to play the final scene in the drama from the past which she has re-enacted in her affair with Julien. There is likewise a kind of poetic justice attained thereby -- her "amour de tete" is recompensed. One wonders at the future of Mathilde de la Mole. Stendhal has hinted in a previous chapter that Frilair's attempts to replace Julien had not yet been noticed by Mathilde. As for Mme. de Renal, her death is the logical consequence of her character and conduct. She and Julien have shared a more vital identity. Mathilde and Mme. de Renal, each reflecting aspects of Julien, are complementary. | 332 | 1,131 | [
2,
139,
21274,
3387,
214,
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107 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/07.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Far From the Madding Crowd/section_6_part_0.txt | Far From the Madding Crowd.chapter 7 | chapter 7 | null | {"name": "Chapter 7", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-7", "summary": "The townspeople think that Oak is a real hero and basically convince Bathsheba to hire him as her shepherd. Bathsheba never lets on that she knows who Oak is. She's probably wondering how Gabriel was reduced to the low position of shepherd-for-hire. Everyone moves away to get a celebratory drink at the nearby inn. Gabriel stays behind for a moment and walks alone. He is eventually stopped by a stranger: a very slender young woman in clothes that are too thin for the cold night. He asks her the way to the malt house and she gives him directions. The girl in turn asks him how to get to an inn, but he admits he has no clue because he's new to the area. Before they part ways, the girl makes him promise not to tell anyone that he saw her. He agrees and gives her some money because he thinks she needs it, and because he is the best dude ever. They part ways and he heads to the malt house to meet up with the townspeople.", "analysis": ""} |
RECOGNITION--A TIMID GIRL
Bathsheba withdrew into the shade. She scarcely knew whether most to
be amused at the singularity of the meeting, or to be concerned at
its awkwardness. There was room for a little pity, also for a very
little exultation: the former at his position, the latter at her own.
Embarrassed she was not, and she remembered Gabriel's declaration of
love to her at Norcombe only to think she had nearly forgotten it.
"Yes," she murmured, putting on an air of dignity, and turning again
to him with a little warmth of cheek; "I do want a shepherd. But--"
"He's the very man, ma'am," said one of the villagers, quietly.
Conviction breeds conviction. "Ay, that 'a is," said a second,
decisively.
"The man, truly!" said a third, with heartiness.
"He's all there!" said number four, fervidly.
"Then will you tell him to speak to the bailiff," said Bathsheba.
All was practical again now. A summer eve and loneliness would have
been necessary to give the meeting its proper fulness of romance.
The bailiff was pointed out to Gabriel, who, checking the palpitation
within his breast at discovering that this Ashtoreth of strange
report was only a modification of Venus the well-known and admired,
retired with him to talk over the necessary preliminaries of hiring.
The fire before them wasted away. "Men," said Bathsheba, "you shall
take a little refreshment after this extra work. Will you come to
the house?"
"We could knock in a bit and a drop a good deal freer, Miss, if so be
ye'd send it to Warren's Malthouse," replied the spokesman.
Bathsheba then rode off into the darkness, and the men straggled on
to the village in twos and threes--Oak and the bailiff being left by
the rick alone.
"And now," said the bailiff, finally, "all is settled, I think, about
your coming, and I am going home-along. Good-night to ye, shepherd."
"Can you get me a lodging?" inquired Gabriel.
"That I can't, indeed," he said, moving past Oak as a Christian edges
past an offertory-plate when he does not mean to contribute. "If you
follow on the road till you come to Warren's Malthouse, where they
are all gone to have their snap of victuals, I daresay some of 'em
will tell you of a place. Good-night to ye, shepherd."
The bailiff who showed this nervous dread of loving his neighbour as
himself, went up the hill, and Oak walked on to the village, still
astonished at the reencounter with Bathsheba, glad of his nearness to
her, and perplexed at the rapidity with which the unpractised girl of
Norcombe had developed into the supervising and cool woman here. But
some women only require an emergency to make them fit for one.
Obliged, to some extent, to forgo dreaming in order to find the way,
he reached the churchyard, and passed round it under the wall where
several ancient trees grew. There was a wide margin of grass along
here, and Gabriel's footsteps were deadened by its softness, even at
this indurating period of the year. When abreast of a trunk which
appeared to be the oldest of the old, he became aware that a figure
was standing behind it. Gabriel did not pause in his walk, and in
another moment he accidentally kicked a loose stone. The noise was
enough to disturb the motionless stranger, who started and assumed
a careless position.
It was a slim girl, rather thinly clad.
"Good-night to you," said Gabriel, heartily.
"Good-night," said the girl to Gabriel.
The voice was unexpectedly attractive; it was the low and dulcet note
suggestive of romance; common in descriptions, rare in experience.
"I'll thank you to tell me if I'm in the way for Warren's Malthouse?"
Gabriel resumed, primarily to gain the information, indirectly to get
more of the music.
"Quite right. It's at the bottom of the hill. And do you know--"
The girl hesitated and then went on again. "Do you know how late
they keep open the Buck's Head Inn?" She seemed to be won by
Gabriel's heartiness, as Gabriel had been won by her modulations.
"I don't know where the Buck's Head is, or anything about it. Do you
think of going there to-night?"
"Yes--" The woman again paused. There was no necessity for any
continuance of speech, and the fact that she did add more seemed to
proceed from an unconscious desire to show unconcern by making a
remark, which is noticeable in the ingenuous when they are acting by
stealth. "You are not a Weatherbury man?" she said, timorously.
"I am not. I am the new shepherd--just arrived."
"Only a shepherd--and you seem almost a farmer by your ways."
"Only a shepherd," Gabriel repeated, in a dull cadence of finality.
His thoughts were directed to the past, his eyes to the feet of the
girl; and for the first time he saw lying there a bundle of some
sort. She may have perceived the direction of his face, for she said
coaxingly,--
"You won't say anything in the parish about having seen me here, will
you--at least, not for a day or two?"
"I won't if you wish me not to," said Oak.
"Thank you, indeed," the other replied. "I am rather poor, and I
don't want people to know anything about me." Then she was silent
and shivered.
"You ought to have a cloak on such a cold night," Gabriel observed.
"I would advise 'ee to get indoors."
"O no! Would you mind going on and leaving me? I thank you much for
what you have told me."
"I will go on," he said; adding hesitatingly,--"Since you are not
very well off, perhaps you would accept this trifle from me. It is
only a shilling, but it is all I have to spare."
"Yes, I will take it," said the stranger gratefully.
She extended her hand; Gabriel his. In feeling for each other's palm
in the gloom before the money could be passed, a minute incident
occurred which told much. Gabriel's fingers alighted on the young
woman's wrist. It was beating with a throb of tragic intensity. He
had frequently felt the same quick, hard beat in the femoral artery
of his lambs when overdriven. It suggested a consumption too great
of a vitality which, to judge from her figure and stature, was
already too little.
"What is the matter?"
"Nothing."
"But there is?"
"No, no, no! Let your having seen me be a secret!"
"Very well; I will. Good-night, again."
"Good-night."
The young girl remained motionless by the tree, and Gabriel descended
into the village of Weatherbury, or Lower Longpuddle as it was
sometimes called. He fancied that he had felt himself in the
penumbra of a very deep sadness when touching that slight and fragile
creature. But wisdom lies in moderating mere impressions, and
Gabriel endeavoured to think little of this.
| 1,074 | Chapter 7 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-7 | The townspeople think that Oak is a real hero and basically convince Bathsheba to hire him as her shepherd. Bathsheba never lets on that she knows who Oak is. She's probably wondering how Gabriel was reduced to the low position of shepherd-for-hire. Everyone moves away to get a celebratory drink at the nearby inn. Gabriel stays behind for a moment and walks alone. He is eventually stopped by a stranger: a very slender young woman in clothes that are too thin for the cold night. He asks her the way to the malt house and she gives him directions. The girl in turn asks him how to get to an inn, but he admits he has no clue because he's new to the area. Before they part ways, the girl makes him promise not to tell anyone that he saw her. He agrees and gives her some money because he thinks she needs it, and because he is the best dude ever. They part ways and he heads to the malt house to meet up with the townspeople. | null | 178 | 1 | [
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161 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/37.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Sense and Sensibility/section_25_part_0.txt | Sense and Sensibility.chapter 37 | chapter 37 | null | {"name": "Chapter 37", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapter-37", "summary": "While visiting her daughter Charlotte, Mrs. Jennings learned from Doctor Donovan that he had just left Mrs. John Dashwood, who was suffering from hysterics. Anne Steele had innocently revealed the news of Lucy Steele's engagement to Edward, and Fanny, aghast, had ordered Lucy out of her house. Elinor realized that she must tell Marianne about the whole affair before Marianne heard it from Mrs. Jennings. Her sister was heartbroken.\" What!\" she said. \"While attending me in all my misery, has this been on your heart?\" Elinor, taking advantage of her sister's recriminations, made Marianne promise to show discretion when hearing or talking about the affair. On the following day, the sisters again heard the story, this time from John Dashwood. He told them that Fanny had told her mother about the engagement, and Mrs. Ferrars had sent for Edward, who refused to break it. He left the house in spite of his mother's declaration that she would disinherit him. Mrs. Ferrars' latest plan was to give Edward's inheritance to his brother Robert, immediately.", "analysis": "Mrs. Jennings continues to reveal herself as the kindly and sensible creature she is. Her tactless curiosity and gossip began by offending Elinor and Marianne, but the sisters have by now learned that she has a big heart, which is what really matters. She energetically sides with Lucy against the wealth and family connections of the Dashwoods and the Ferrarses. \"I declare I have no patience with your sister,\" she says, indignant because Fanny Dashwood has thrown Lucy out of her house, \"and I hope, with all my heart, it will be a match in spite of her. . . . I have no notion of people's making such a to-do about money and greatness.\" Ironically, her simple heart can see no contrivance in the devious Lucy."} |
Mrs. Palmer was so well at the end of a fortnight, that her mother felt
it no longer necessary to give up the whole of her time to her; and,
contenting herself with visiting her once or twice a day, returned from
that period to her own home, and her own habits, in which she found the
Miss Dashwoods very ready to resume their former share.
About the third or fourth morning after their being thus resettled in
Berkeley Street, Mrs. Jennings, on returning from her ordinary visit to
Mrs. Palmer, entered the drawing-room, where Elinor was sitting by
herself, with an air of such hurrying importance as prepared her to
hear something wonderful; and giving her time only to form that idea,
began directly to justify it, by saying,
"Lord! my dear Miss Dashwood! have you heard the news?"
"No, ma'am. What is it?"
"Something so strange! But you shall hear it all.-- When I got to Mr.
Palmer's, I found Charlotte quite in a fuss about the child. She was
sure it was very ill--it cried, and fretted, and was all over pimples.
So I looked at it directly, and, 'Lord! my dear,' says I, 'it is
nothing in the world, but the red gum--' and nurse said just the same.
But Charlotte, she would not be satisfied, so Mr. Donavan was sent for;
and luckily he happened to just come in from Harley Street, so he
stepped over directly, and as soon as ever Mama, he said
just as we did, that it was nothing in the world but the red gum, and
then Charlotte was easy. And so, just as he was going away again, it
came into my head, I am sure I do not know how I happened to think of
it, but it came into my head to ask him if there was any news. So upon
that, he smirked, and simpered, and looked grave, and seemed to know
something or other, and at last he said in a whisper, 'For fear any
unpleasant report should reach the young ladies under your care as to
their sister's indisposition, I think it advisable to say, that I
believe there is no great reason for alarm; I hope Mrs. Dashwood will
do very well.'"
"What! is Fanny ill?"
"That is exactly what I said, my dear. 'Lord!' says I, 'is Mrs.
Dashwood ill?' So then it all came out; and the long and the short of
the matter, by all I can learn, seems to be this. Mr. Edward Ferrars,
the very young man I used to joke with you about (but however, as it
turns out, I am monstrous glad there was never any thing in it), Mr.
Edward Ferrars, it seems, has been engaged above this twelvemonth to my
cousin Lucy!--There's for you, my dear!--And not a creature knowing a
syllable of the matter, except Nancy!--Could you have believed such a
thing possible?-- There is no great wonder in their liking one another;
but that matters should be brought so forward between them, and nobody
suspect it!--THAT is strange!--I never happened to see them together,
or I am sure I should have found it out directly. Well, and so this
was kept a great secret, for fear of Mrs. Ferrars, and neither she nor
your brother or sister suspected a word of the matter;--till this very
morning, poor Nancy, who, you know, is a well-meaning creature, but no
conjurer, popt it all out. 'Lord!' thinks she to herself, 'they are
all so fond of Lucy, to be sure they will make no difficulty about it;'
and so, away she went to your sister, who was sitting all alone at her
carpet-work, little suspecting what was to come--for she had just been
saying to your brother, only five minutes before, that she thought to
make a match between Edward and some Lord's daughter or other, I forget
who. So you may think what a blow it was to all her vanity and pride.
She fell into violent hysterics immediately, with such screams as
reached your brother's ears, as he was sitting in his own dressing-room
down stairs, thinking about writing a letter to his steward in the
country. So up he flew directly, and a terrible scene took place, for
Lucy was come to them by that time, little dreaming what was going on.
Poor soul! I pity HER. And I must say, I think she was used very
hardly; for your sister scolded like any fury, and soon drove her into
a fainting fit. Nancy, she fell upon her knees, and cried bitterly;
and your brother, he walked about the room, and said he did not know
what to do. Mrs. Dashwood declared they should not stay a minute
longer in the house, and your brother was forced to go down upon HIS
knees too, to persuade her to let them stay till they had packed up
their clothes. THEN she fell into hysterics again, and he was so
frightened that he would send for Mr. Donavan, and Mr. Donavan found
the house in all this uproar. The carriage was at the door ready to
take my poor cousins away, and they were just stepping in as he came
off; poor Lucy in such a condition, he says, she could hardly walk; and
Nancy, she was almost as bad. I declare, I have no patience with your
sister; and I hope, with all my heart, it will be a match in spite of
her. Lord! what a taking poor Mr. Edward will be in when he hears of
it! To have his love used so scornfully! for they say he is monstrous
fond of her, as well he may. I should not wonder, if he was to be in
the greatest passion!--and Mr. Donavan thinks just the same. He and I
had a great deal of talk about it; and the best of all is, that he is
gone back again to Harley Street, that he may be within call when Mrs.
Ferrars is told of it, for she was sent for as soon as ever my cousins
left the house, for your sister was sure SHE would be in hysterics too;
and so she may, for what I care. I have no pity for either of them. I
have no notion of people's making such a to-do about money and
greatness. There is no reason on earth why Mr. Edward and Lucy should
not marry; for I am sure Mrs. Ferrars may afford to do very well by her
son, and though Lucy has next to nothing herself, she knows better than
any body how to make the most of every thing; I dare say, if Mrs.
Ferrars would only allow him five hundred a-year, she would make as
good an appearance with it as any body else would with eight. Lord!
how snug they might live in such another cottage as yours--or a little
bigger--with two maids, and two men; and I believe I could help them to
a housemaid, for my Betty has a sister out of place, that would fit
them exactly."
Here Mrs. Jennings ceased, and as Elinor had had time enough to collect
her thoughts, she was able to give such an answer, and make such
observations, as the subject might naturally be supposed to produce.
Happy to find that she was not suspected of any extraordinary interest
in it; that Mrs. Jennings (as she had of late often hoped might be the
case) had ceased to imagine her at all attached to Edward; and happy
above all the rest, in the absence of Marianne, she felt very well able
to speak of the affair without embarrassment, and to give her judgment,
as she believed, with impartiality on the conduct of every one
concerned in it.
She could hardly determine what her own expectation of its event really
was; though she earnestly tried to drive away the notion of its being
possible to end otherwise at last, than in the marriage of Edward and
Lucy. What Mrs. Ferrars would say and do, though there could not be a
doubt of its nature, she was anxious to hear; and still more anxious to
know how Edward would conduct himself. For HIM she felt much
compassion;--for Lucy very little--and it cost her some pains to
procure that little;--for the rest of the party none at all.
As Mrs. Jennings could talk on no other subject, Elinor soon saw the
necessity of preparing Marianne for its discussion. No time was to be
lost in undeceiving her, in making her acquainted with the real truth,
and in endeavouring to bring her to hear it talked of by others,
without betraying that she felt any uneasiness for her sister, or any
resentment against Edward.
Elinor's office was a painful one.--She was going to remove what she
really believed to be her sister's chief consolation,--to give such
particulars of Edward as she feared would ruin him for ever in her good
opinion,-and to make Marianne, by a resemblance in their situations,
which to HER fancy would seem strong, feel all her own disappointment
over again. But unwelcome as such a task must be, it was necessary to
be done, and Elinor therefore hastened to perform it.
She was very far from wishing to dwell on her own feelings, or to
represent herself as suffering much, any otherwise than as the
self-command she had practised since her first knowledge of Edward's
engagement, might suggest a hint of what was practicable to Marianne.
Her narration was clear and simple; and though it could not be given
without emotion, it was not accompanied by violent agitation, nor
impetuous grief.--THAT belonged rather to the hearer, for Marianne
listened with horror, and cried excessively. Elinor was to be the
comforter of others in her own distresses, no less than in theirs; and
all the comfort that could be given by assurances of her own composure
of mind, and a very earnest vindication of Edward from every charge but
of imprudence, was readily offered.
But Marianne for some time would give credit to neither. Edward seemed
a second Willoughby; and acknowledging as Elinor did, that she HAD
loved him most sincerely, could she feel less than herself! As for
Lucy Steele, she considered her so totally unamiable, so absolutely
incapable of attaching a sensible man, that she could not be persuaded
at first to believe, and afterwards to pardon, any former affection of
Edward for her. She would not even admit it to have been natural; and
Elinor left her to be convinced that it was so, by that which only
could convince her, a better knowledge of mankind.
Her first communication had reached no farther than to state the fact
of the engagement, and the length of time it had existed.--Marianne's
feelings had then broken in, and put an end to all regularity of
detail; and for some time all that could be done was to soothe her
distress, lessen her alarms, and combat her resentment. The first
question on her side, which led to farther particulars, was,--
"How long has this been known to you, Elinor? has he written to you?"
"I have known it these four months. When Lucy first came to Barton
Park last November, she told me in confidence of her engagement."
At these words, Marianne's eyes expressed the astonishment which her
lips could not utter. After a pause of wonder, she exclaimed--
"Four months!--Have you known of this four months?"
Elinor confirmed it.
"What!--while attending me in all my misery, has this been on your
heart?--And I have reproached you for being happy!"--
"It was not fit that you should then know how much I was the reverse!"
"Four months!"--cried Marianne again.--"So calm!--so cheerful!--how
have you been supported?"--
"By feeling that I was doing my duty.--My promise to Lucy, obliged me
to be secret. I owed it to her, therefore, to avoid giving any hint of
the truth; and I owed it to my family and friends, not to create in
them a solicitude about me, which it could not be in my power to
satisfy."
Marianne seemed much struck.
"I have very often wished to undeceive yourself and my mother," added
Elinor; "and once or twice I have attempted it;--but without betraying
my trust, I never could have convinced you."
"Four months!--and yet you loved him!"--
"Yes. But I did not love only him;--and while the comfort of others was
dear to me, I was glad to spare them from knowing how much I felt.
Now, I can think and speak of it with little emotion. I would not have
you suffer on my account; for I assure you I no longer suffer
materially myself. I have many things to support me. I am not
conscious of having provoked the disappointment by any imprudence of my
own, I have borne it as much as possible without spreading it farther.
I acquit Edward of essential misconduct. I wish him very happy; and I
am so sure of his always doing his duty, that though now he may harbour
some regret, in the end he must become so. Lucy does not want sense,
and that is the foundation on which every thing good may be built.--And
after all, Marianne, after all that is bewitching in the idea of a
single and constant attachment, and all that can be said of one's
happiness depending entirely on any particular person, it is not
meant--it is not fit--it is not possible that it should be so.-- Edward
will marry Lucy; he will marry a woman superior in person and
understanding to half her sex; and time and habit will teach him to
forget that he ever thought another superior to HER."--
"If such is your way of thinking," said Marianne, "if the loss of what
is most valued is so easily to be made up by something else, your
resolution, your self-command, are, perhaps, a little less to be
wondered at.--They are brought more within my comprehension."
"I understand you.--You do not suppose that I have ever felt much.--For
four months, Marianne, I have had all this hanging on my mind, without
being at liberty to speak of it to a single creature; knowing that it
would make you and my mother most unhappy whenever it were explained to
you, yet unable to prepare you for it in the least.-- It was told
me,--it was in a manner forced on me by the very person herself, whose
prior engagement ruined all my prospects; and told me, as I thought,
with triumph.-- This person's suspicions, therefore, I have had to
oppose, by endeavouring to appear indifferent where I have been most
deeply interested;--and it has not been only once;--I have had her
hopes and exultation to listen to again and again.-- I have known
myself to be divided from Edward for ever, without hearing one
circumstance that could make me less desire the connection.--Nothing
has proved him unworthy; nor has anything declared him indifferent to
me.-- I have had to contend against the unkindness of his sister, and
the insolence of his mother; and have suffered the punishment of an
attachment, without enjoying its advantages.-- And all this has been
going on at a time, when, as you know too well, it has not been my only
unhappiness.-- If you can think me capable of ever feeling--surely you
may suppose that I have suffered NOW. The composure of mind with which
I have brought myself at present to consider the matter, the
consolation that I have been willing to admit, have been the effect of
constant and painful exertion;--they did not spring up of
themselves;--they did not occur to relieve my spirits at first.-- No,
Marianne.--THEN, if I had not been bound to silence, perhaps nothing
could have kept me entirely--not even what I owed to my dearest
friends--from openly shewing that I was VERY unhappy."--
Marianne was quite subdued.--
"Oh! Elinor," she cried, "you have made me hate myself for ever.--How
barbarous have I been to you!--you, who have been my only comfort, who
have borne with me in all my misery, who have seemed to be only
suffering for me!--Is this my gratitude?--Is this the only return I can
make you?--Because your merit cries out upon myself, I have been trying
to do it away."
The tenderest caresses followed this confession. In such a frame of
mind as she was now in, Elinor had no difficulty in obtaining from her
whatever promise she required; and at her request, Marianne engaged
never to speak of the affair to any one with the least appearance of
bitterness;--to meet Lucy without betraying the smallest increase of
dislike to her;--and even to see Edward himself, if chance should bring
them together, without any diminution of her usual cordiality.-- These
were great concessions;--but where Marianne felt that she had injured,
no reparation could be too much for her to make.
She performed her promise of being discreet, to admiration.--She
attended to all that Mrs. Jennings had to say upon the subject, with an
unchanging complexion, dissented from her in nothing, and was heard
three times to say, "Yes, ma'am."--She listened to her praise of Lucy
with only moving from one chair to another, and when Mrs. Jennings
talked of Edward's affection, it cost her only a spasm in her
throat.--Such advances towards heroism in her sister, made Elinor feel
equal to any thing herself.
The next morning brought a farther trial of it, in a visit from their
brother, who came with a most serious aspect to talk over the dreadful
affair, and bring them news of his wife.
"You have heard, I suppose," said he with great solemnity, as soon as
he was seated, "of the very shocking discovery that took place under
our roof yesterday."
They all looked their assent; it seemed too awful a moment for speech.
"Your sister," he continued, "has suffered dreadfully. Mrs. Ferrars
too--in short it has been a scene of such complicated distress--but I
will hope that the storm may be weathered without our being any of us
quite overcome. Poor Fanny! she was in hysterics all yesterday. But I
would not alarm you too much. Donavan says there is nothing materially
to be apprehended; her constitution is a good one, and her resolution
equal to any thing. She has borne it all, with the fortitude of an
angel! She says she never shall think well of anybody again; and one
cannot wonder at it, after being so deceived!--meeting with such
ingratitude, where so much kindness had been shewn, so much confidence
had been placed! It was quite out of the benevolence of her heart,
that she had asked these young women to her house; merely because she
thought they deserved some attention, were harmless, well-behaved
girls, and would be pleasant companions; for otherwise we both wished
very much to have invited you and Marianne to be with us, while your
kind friend there, was attending her daughter. And now to be so
rewarded! 'I wish, with all my heart,' says poor Fanny in her
affectionate way, 'that we had asked your sisters instead of them.'"
Here he stopped to be thanked; which being done, he went on.
"What poor Mrs. Ferrars suffered, when first Fanny broke it to her, is
not to be described. While she with the truest affection had been
planning a most eligible connection for him, was it to be supposed that
he could be all the time secretly engaged to another person!--such a
suspicion could never have entered her head! If she suspected ANY
prepossession elsewhere, it could not be in THAT quarter. 'THERE, to
be sure,' said she, 'I might have thought myself safe.' She was quite
in an agony. We consulted together, however, as to what should be
done, and at last she determined to send for Edward. He came. But I
am sorry to relate what ensued. All that Mrs. Ferrars could say to
make him put an end to the engagement, assisted too as you may well
suppose by my arguments, and Fanny's entreaties, was of no avail.
Duty, affection, every thing was disregarded. I never thought Edward
so stubborn, so unfeeling before. His mother explained to him her
liberal designs, in case of his marrying Miss Morton; told him she
would settle on him the Norfolk estate, which, clear of land-tax,
brings in a good thousand a-year; offered even, when matters grew
desperate, to make it twelve hundred; and in opposition to this, if he
still persisted in this low connection, represented to him the certain
penury that must attend the match. His own two thousand pounds she
protested should be his all; she would never see him again; and so far
would she be from affording him the smallest assistance, that if he
were to enter into any profession with a view of better support, she
would do all in her power to prevent him advancing in it."
Here Marianne, in an ecstasy of indignation, clapped her hands
together, and cried, "Gracious God! can this be possible!"
"Well may you wonder, Marianne," replied her brother, "at the obstinacy
which could resist such arguments as these. Your exclamation is very
natural."
Marianne was going to retort, but she remembered her promises, and
forbore.
"All this, however," he continued, "was urged in vain. Edward said
very little; but what he did say, was in the most determined manner.
Nothing should prevail on him to give up his engagement. He would
stand to it, cost him what it might."
"Then," cried Mrs. Jennings with blunt sincerity, no longer able to be
silent, "he has acted like an honest man! I beg your pardon, Mr.
Dashwood, but if he had done otherwise, I should have thought him a
rascal. I have some little concern in the business, as well as
yourself, for Lucy Steele is my cousin, and I believe there is not a
better kind of girl in the world, nor one who more deserves a good
husband."
John Dashwood was greatly astonished; but his nature was calm, not open
to provocation, and he never wished to offend anybody, especially
anybody of good fortune. He therefore replied, without any resentment,
"I would by no means speak disrespectfully of any relation of yours,
madam. Miss Lucy Steele is, I dare say, a very deserving young woman,
but in the present case you know, the connection must be impossible.
And to have entered into a secret engagement with a young man under her
uncle's care, the son of a woman especially of such very large fortune
as Mrs. Ferrars, is perhaps, altogether a little extraordinary. In
short, I do not mean to reflect upon the behaviour of any person whom
you have a regard for, Mrs. Jennings. We all wish her extremely happy;
and Mrs. Ferrars's conduct throughout the whole, has been such as every
conscientious, good mother, in like circumstances, would adopt. It has
been dignified and liberal. Edward has drawn his own lot, and I fear
it will be a bad one."
Marianne sighed out her similar apprehension; and Elinor's heart wrung
for the feelings of Edward, while braving his mother's threats, for a
woman who could not reward him.
"Well, sir," said Mrs. Jennings, "and how did it end?"
"I am sorry to say, ma'am, in a most unhappy rupture:-- Edward is
dismissed for ever from his mother's notice. He left her house
yesterday, but where he is gone, or whether he is still in town, I do
not know; for WE of course can make no inquiry."
"Poor young man!--and what is to become of him?"
"What, indeed, ma'am! It is a melancholy consideration. Born to the
prospect of such affluence! I cannot conceive a situation more
deplorable. The interest of two thousand pounds--how can a man live on
it?--and when to that is added the recollection, that he might, but for
his own folly, within three months have been in the receipt of two
thousand, five hundred a-year (for Miss Morton has thirty thousand
pounds,) I cannot picture to myself a more wretched condition. We must
all feel for him; and the more so, because it is totally out of our
power to assist him."
"Poor young man!" cried Mrs. Jennings, "I am sure he should be very
welcome to bed and board at my house; and so I would tell him if I
could see him. It is not fit that he should be living about at his own
charge now, at lodgings and taverns."
Elinor's heart thanked her for such kindness towards Edward, though she
could not forbear smiling at the form of it.
"If he would only have done as well by himself," said John Dashwood,
"as all his friends were disposed to do by him, he might now have been
in his proper situation, and would have wanted for nothing. But as it
is, it must be out of anybody's power to assist him. And there is one
thing more preparing against him, which must be worse than all--his
mother has determined, with a very natural kind of spirit, to settle
THAT estate upon Robert immediately, which might have been Edward's, on
proper conditions. I left her this morning with her lawyer, talking
over the business."
"Well!" said Mrs. Jennings, "that is HER revenge. Everybody has a way
of their own. But I don't think mine would be, to make one son
independent, because another had plagued me."
Marianne got up and walked about the room.
"Can anything be more galling to the spirit of a man," continued John,
"than to see his younger brother in possession of an estate which might
have been his own? Poor Edward! I feel for him sincerely."
A few minutes more spent in the same kind of effusion, concluded his
visit; and with repeated assurances to his sisters that he really
believed there was no material danger in Fanny's indisposition, and
that they need not therefore be very uneasy about it, he went away;
leaving the three ladies unanimous in their sentiments on the present
occasion, as far at least as it regarded Mrs. Ferrars's conduct, the
Dashwoods', and Edward's.
Marianne's indignation burst forth as soon as he quitted the room; and
as her vehemence made reserve impossible in Elinor, and unnecessary in
Mrs. Jennings, they all joined in a very spirited critique upon the
party.
| 4,132 | Chapter 37 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapter-37 | While visiting her daughter Charlotte, Mrs. Jennings learned from Doctor Donovan that he had just left Mrs. John Dashwood, who was suffering from hysterics. Anne Steele had innocently revealed the news of Lucy Steele's engagement to Edward, and Fanny, aghast, had ordered Lucy out of her house. Elinor realized that she must tell Marianne about the whole affair before Marianne heard it from Mrs. Jennings. Her sister was heartbroken." What!" she said. "While attending me in all my misery, has this been on your heart?" Elinor, taking advantage of her sister's recriminations, made Marianne promise to show discretion when hearing or talking about the affair. On the following day, the sisters again heard the story, this time from John Dashwood. He told them that Fanny had told her mother about the engagement, and Mrs. Ferrars had sent for Edward, who refused to break it. He left the house in spite of his mother's declaration that she would disinherit him. Mrs. Ferrars' latest plan was to give Edward's inheritance to his brother Robert, immediately. | Mrs. Jennings continues to reveal herself as the kindly and sensible creature she is. Her tactless curiosity and gossip began by offending Elinor and Marianne, but the sisters have by now learned that she has a big heart, which is what really matters. She energetically sides with Lucy against the wealth and family connections of the Dashwoods and the Ferrarses. "I declare I have no patience with your sister," she says, indignant because Fanny Dashwood has thrown Lucy out of her house, "and I hope, with all my heart, it will be a match in spite of her. . . . I have no notion of people's making such a to-do about money and greatness." Ironically, her simple heart can see no contrivance in the devious Lucy. | 173 | 127 | [
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110 | false | pinkmonkey | all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/28.txt | finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_11_part_2.txt | Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 28 | chapter 28 | null | {"name": "CHAPTER 28", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820050202/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmTessD37.asp", "summary": "Angel continues to try and convince Tess to marry him. Believing her reticence is due to a lack of confidence in her status, Angel continually praises Tess and encourages her in her studies. She, however, continues to say she cannot marry him. Angel, on the other hand, is more convinced that ever that in time Tess is sure to accept his proposal. Tess, fearing that Angel's insistence will break her resolve, decides to tell Angel about herself. Her conscience will not let her continue to love him without telling him the truth.", "analysis": "Notes Angel continues his pursuit of Tess and spends time encouraging and teaching her. He is very impressed with her quickness and ability to learn. In fact, he is amazed to see Tess \"pick up his vocabulary, his accent, and fragments of his knowledge, to a surprising extent. He is obviously trying to change Tess into the image his parents want to see in her; he is trying to make her into a Christian lady, again suggesting that this relationship is not going to be a smooth one. As time passes, Tess realizes that her love for Angel cannot be easily checked. She longs to accept his proposal for marriage, but she knows her past prevents her from becoming his wife. As Hardy puts it, she is enduring both \"positive pain and positive pleasure. Because her resistance to Angel is breaking under her desire for him, Tess resolves to tell him about her past. Her conscience will not let her continue to live a lie, but she is worried about Angel's reaction. Tess hopes that love will reign over rationality"} |
Her refusal, though unexpected, did not permanently daunt Clare.
His experience of women was great enough for him to be aware that
the negative often meant nothing more than the preface to the
affirmative; and it was little enough for him not to know that in
the manner of the present negative there lay a great exception to
the dallyings of coyness. That she had already permitted him to
make love to her he read as an additional assurance, not fully
trowing that in the fields and pastures to "sigh gratis" is by no
means deemed waste; love-making being here more often accepted
inconsiderately and for its own sweet sake than in the carking,
anxious homes of the ambitious, where a girl's craving for an
establishment paralyzes her healthy thought of a passion as an end.
"Tess, why did you say 'no' in such a positive way?" he asked her in
the course of a few days.
She started.
"Don't ask me. I told you why--partly. I am not good enough--not
worthy enough."
"How? Not fine lady enough?"
"Yes--something like that," murmured she. "Your friends would scorn
me."
"Indeed, you mistake them--my father and mother. As for my brothers,
I don't care--" He clasped his fingers behind her back to keep her
from slipping away. "Now--you did not mean it, sweet?--I am sure you
did not! You have made me so restless that I cannot read, or play,
or do anything. I am in no hurry, Tess, but I want to know--to hear
from your own warm lips--that you will some day be mine--any time you
may choose; but some day?"
She could only shake her head and look away from him.
Clare regarded her attentively, conned the characters of her face as
if they had been hieroglyphics. The denial seemed real.
"Then I ought not to hold you in this way--ought I? I have no
right to you--no right to seek out where you are, or walk with you!
Honestly, Tess, do you love any other man?"
"How can you ask?" she said, with continued self-suppression.
"I almost know that you do not. But then, why do you repulse me?"
"I don't repulse you. I like you to--tell me you love me; and you
may always tell me so as you go about with me--and never offend me."
"But you will not accept me as a husband?"
"Ah--that's different--it is for your good, indeed, my dearest!
O, believe me, it is only for your sake! I don't like to give
myself the great happiness o' promising to be yours in that
way--because--because I am SURE I ought not to do it."
"But you will make me happy!"
"Ah--you think so, but you don't know!"
At such times as this, apprehending the grounds of her refusal to be
her modest sense of incompetence in matters social and polite, he
would say that she was wonderfully well-informed and versatile--which
was certainly true, her natural quickness and her admiration for him
having led her to pick up his vocabulary, his accent, and fragments
of his knowledge, to a surprising extent. After these tender
contests and her victory she would go away by herself under the
remotest cow, if at milking-time, or into the sedge or into her room,
if at a leisure interval, and mourn silently, not a minute after an
apparently phlegmatic negative.
The struggle was so fearful; her own heart was so strongly on the
side of his--two ardent hearts against one poor little conscience--
that she tried to fortify her resolution by every means in her power.
She had come to Talbothays with a made-up mind. On no account could
she agree to a step which might afterwards cause bitter rueing to her
husband for his blindness in wedding her. And she held that what her
conscience had decided for her when her mind was unbiassed ought not
to be overruled now.
"Why don't somebody tell him all about me?" she said. "It was only
forty miles off--why hasn't it reached here? Somebody must know!"
Yet nobody seemed to know; nobody told him.
For two or three days no more was said. She guessed from the sad
countenances of her chamber companions that they regarded her not
only as the favourite, but as the chosen; but they could see for
themselves that she did not put herself in his way.
Tess had never before known a time in which the thread of her life
was so distinctly twisted of two strands, positive pleasure and
positive pain. At the next cheese-making the pair were again left
alone together. The dairyman himself had been lending a hand; but
Mr Crick, as well as his wife, seemed latterly to have acquired a
suspicion of mutual interest between these two; though they walked
so circumspectly that suspicion was but of the faintest. Anyhow, the
dairyman left them to themselves.
They were breaking up the masses of curd before putting them into
the vats. The operation resembled the act of crumbling bread on a
large scale; and amid the immaculate whiteness of the curds Tess
Durbeyfield's hands showed themselves of the pinkness of the rose.
Angel, who was filling the vats with his handful, suddenly ceased,
and laid his hands flat upon hers. Her sleeves were rolled far above
the elbow, and bending lower he kissed the inside vein of her soft
arm.
Although the early September weather was sultry, her arm, from
her dabbling in the curds, was as cold and damp to his mouth as a
new-gathered mushroom, and tasted of the whey. But she was such
a sheaf of susceptibilities that her pulse was accelerated by the
touch, her blood driven to her finder-ends, and the cool arms
flushed hot. Then, as though her heart had said, "Is coyness longer
necessary? Truth is truth between man and woman, as between man and
man," she lifted her eyes and they beamed devotedly into his, as her
lip rose in a tender half-smile.
"Do you know why I did that, Tess?" he said.
"Because you love me very much!"
"Yes, and as a preliminary to a new entreaty."
"Not AGAIN!"
She looked a sudden fear that her resistance might break down under
her own desire.
"O, Tessy!" he went on, "I CANNOT think why you are so tantalizing.
Why do you disappoint me so? You seem almost like a coquette, upon
my life you do--a coquette of the first urban water! They blow
hot and blow cold, just as you do, and it is the very last sort of
thing to expect to find in a retreat like Talbothays. ... And yet,
dearest," he quickly added, observing now the remark had cut her, "I
know you to be the most honest, spotless creature that ever lived.
So how can I suppose you a flirt? Tess, why don't you like the idea
of being my wife, if you love me as you seem to do?"
"I have never said I don't like the idea, and I never could say it;
because--it isn't true!"
The stress now getting beyond endurance, her lip quivered, and she
was obliged to go away. Clare was so pained and perplexed that he
ran after and caught her in the passage.
"Tell me, tell me!" he said, passionately clasping her, in
forgetfulness of his curdy hands: "do tell me that you won't belong
to anybody but me!"
"I will, I will tell you!" she exclaimed. "And I will give you a
complete answer, if you will let me go now. I will tell you my
experiences--all about myself--all!"
"Your experiences, dear; yes, certainly; any number." He expressed
assent in loving satire, looking into her face. "My Tess, no doubt,
almost as many experiences as that wild convolvulus out there on the
garden hedge, that opened itself this morning for the first time.
Tell me anything, but don't use that wretched expression any more
about not being worthy of me."
"I will try--not! And I'll give you my reasons to-morrow--next
week."
"Say on Sunday?"
"Yes, on Sunday."
At last she got away, and did not stop in her retreat till she was in
the thicket of pollard willows at the lower side of the barton, where
she could be quite unseen. Here Tess flung herself down upon the
rustling undergrowth of spear-grass, as upon a bed, and remained
crouching in palpitating misery broken by momentary shoots of joy,
which her fears about the ending could not altogether suppress.
In reality, she was drifting into acquiescence. Every see-saw of her
breath, every wave of her blood, every pulse singing in her ears, was
a voice that joined with nature in revolt against her scrupulousness.
Reckless, inconsiderate acceptance of him; to close with him at the
altar, revealing nothing, and chancing discovery; to snatch ripe
pleasure before the iron teeth of pain could have time to shut upon
her: that was what love counselled; and in almost a terror of ecstasy
Tess divined that, despite her many months of lonely self-chastisement,
wrestlings, communings, schemes to lead a future of austere
isolation, love's counsel would prevail.
The afternoon advanced, and still she remained among the willows.
She heard the rattle of taking down the pails from the forked stands;
the "waow-waow!" which accompanied the getting together of the cows.
But she did not go to the milking. They would see her agitation;
and the dairyman, thinking the cause to be love alone, would
good-naturedly tease her; and that harassment could not be borne.
Her lover must have guessed her overwrought state, and invented some
excuse for her non-appearance, for no inquiries were made or calls
given. At half-past six the sun settled down upon the levels with
the aspect of a great forge in the heavens; and presently a monstrous
pumpkin-like moon arose on the other hand. The pollard willows,
tortured out of their natural shape by incessant choppings, became
spiny-haired monsters as they stood up against it. She went in and
upstairs without a light.
It was now Wednesday. Thursday came, and Angel looked thoughtfully
at her from a distance, but intruded in no way upon her. The indoor
milkmaids, Marian and the rest, seemed to guess that something
definite was afoot, for they did not force any remarks upon her in
the bedchamber. Friday passed; Saturday. To-morrow was the day.
"I shall give way--I shall say yes--I shall let myself marry
him--I cannot help it!" she jealously panted, with her hot face to
the pillow that night, on hearing one of the other girls sigh his
name in her sleep. "I can't bear to let anybody have him but me!
Yet it is a wrong to him, and may kill him when he knows! O my
heart--O--O--O!"
| 1,673 | CHAPTER 28 | https://web.archive.org/web/20180820050202/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmTessD37.asp | Angel continues to try and convince Tess to marry him. Believing her reticence is due to a lack of confidence in her status, Angel continually praises Tess and encourages her in her studies. She, however, continues to say she cannot marry him. Angel, on the other hand, is more convinced that ever that in time Tess is sure to accept his proposal. Tess, fearing that Angel's insistence will break her resolve, decides to tell Angel about herself. Her conscience will not let her continue to love him without telling him the truth. | Notes Angel continues his pursuit of Tess and spends time encouraging and teaching her. He is very impressed with her quickness and ability to learn. In fact, he is amazed to see Tess "pick up his vocabulary, his accent, and fragments of his knowledge, to a surprising extent. He is obviously trying to change Tess into the image his parents want to see in her; he is trying to make her into a Christian lady, again suggesting that this relationship is not going to be a smooth one. As time passes, Tess realizes that her love for Angel cannot be easily checked. She longs to accept his proposal for marriage, but she knows her past prevents her from becoming his wife. As Hardy puts it, she is enduring both "positive pain and positive pleasure. Because her resistance to Angel is breaking under her desire for him, Tess resolves to tell him about her past. Her conscience will not let her continue to live a lie, but she is worried about Angel's reaction. Tess hopes that love will reign over rationality | 92 | 180 | [
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44,747 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/56.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_55_part_0.txt | The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 26 | part 2, chapter 26 | null | {"name": "Part 2, Chapter 26", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-26", "summary": "Whenever Madame de Fervaques visits the de La Mole house, Julien always makes sure to seat himself in the place that makes Madame look most beautiful. Whenever he speaks to Madame, it is only to make Mathilde jealous. Julien then starts sending Madame letters, always hand-delivering them on horseback and looking sad like a doomed lover from a romance novel. At first, it looks like the letters have no effect. But the narrator tells us that Madame Fervaques has an improved opinion of Julien now that he's paying a lot of attention to her.", "analysis": ""} | CHAPTER LVI
MORAL LOVE
There also was of course in Adeline
That calm patrician polish in the address,
Which ne'er can pass the equinoctial line
Of anything which Nature would express;
Just as a Mandarin finds nothing fine.
At least his manner suffers not to guess
That anything he views can greatly please.
_Don Juan, c. xiii. st._ 84.
"There is an element of madness in all this family's way of looking at
things," thought the marechale; "they are infatuated with their young
abbe, whose only accomplishment is to be a good listener, though his
eyes are fine enough, it is true."
Julien, on his side, found in the marechale's manners an almost perfect
instance of that patrician calm which exhales a scrupulous politeness;
and, what is more, announces at the same time the impossibility of
any violent emotion. Madame de Fervaques would have been as much
scandalised by any unexpected movement or any lack of self-control, as
by a lack of dignity towards one's inferiors. She would have regarded
the slightest symptom of sensibility as a kind of moral drunkenness
which puts one to the blush and was extremely prejudicial to what a
person of high rank owed to herself. Her great happiness was to talk of
the king's last hunt; her favourite book, was the Memoirs of the Duke
de Saint Simon, especially the genealogical part.
Julien knew the place where the arrangement of the light suited madame
de Fervaques' particular style of beauty. He got there in advance, but
was careful to turn his chair in such a way as not to see Mathilde.
Astonished one day at this consistent policy of hiding himself from
her, she left the blue sofa and came to work by the little table near
the marechale's armchair. Julien had a fairly close view of her over
madame de Fervaques' hat.
Those eyes, which were the arbiters of his fate, frightened him, and
then hurled him violently out of his habitual apathy. He talked, and
talked very well.
He was speaking to the marechale, but his one aim was to produce an
impression upon Mathilde's soul. He became so animated that eventually
madame de Fervaques did not manage to understand a word he said.
This was a prime merit. If it had occurred to Julien to follow it up by
some phrases of German mysticism, lofty religion, and Jesuitism, the
marechale would have immediately given him a rank among the superior
men whose mission it was to regenerate the age.
"Since he has bad enough taste," said mademoiselle de la Mole, "to talk
so long and so ardently to madame de Fervaques, I shall not listen to
him any more." She kept her resolution during the whole latter part of
the evening, although she had difficulty in doing so.
At midnight, when she took her mother's candle to accompany her to
her room, madame de la Mole stopped on the staircase to enter into an
exhaustive eulogy of Julien. Mathilde ended by losing her temper. She
could not get to sleep. She felt calmed by this thought: "the very
things which I despise in a man may none the less constitute a great
merit in the eyes of the marechale."
As for Julien, he had done something, he was less unhappy; his eyes
chanced to fall on the Russian leather portfolio in which prince
Korasoff had placed the fifty-three love letters which he had presented
to him. Julien saw a note at the bottom of the first letter: No. 1 is
sent eight days after the first meeting.
"I am behind hand," exclaimed Julien. "It is quite a long time since I
met madame de Fervaques." He immediately began to copy out this first
love letter. It was a homily packed with moral platitudes and deadly
dull. Julien was fortunate enough to fall asleep at the second page.
Some hours afterwards he was surprised to see the broad daylight as he
lent on his desk. The most painful moments in his life were those when
he woke up every morning to realise his unhappiness. On this particular
day he finished copying out his letter in a state verging on laughter.
"Is it possible," he said to himself, "that there ever lived a young
man who actually wrote like that." He counted several sentences of nine
lines each. At the bottom of the original he noticed a pencilled note.
"These letters are delivered personally, on horseback, black cravat,
blue tail-coat. You give the letter to the porter with a contrite air;
expression of profound melancholy. If you notice any chambermaid, dry
your eyes furtively and speak to her."
All this was duly carried out.
"I am taking a very bold course!" thought Julien as he came out of the
Hotel de Fervaques, "but all the worse for Korasoff. To think of daring
to write to so virtuous a celebrity. I shall be treated with the utmost
contempt, and nothing will amuse me more. It is really the only comedy
that I can in any way appreciate. Yes, it will amuse me to load with
ridicule that odious creature whom I call myself. If I believed in
myself, I would commit some crime to distract myself."
The moment when Julien brought his horse back to the stable was the
happiest he had experienced for a whole month. Korasoff had expressly
forbidden him to look at the mistress who had left him, on any pretext
whatsoever. But the step of that horse, which she knew so well, and
Julien's way of knocking on the stable door with his riding-whip to
call a man, sometimes attracted Mathilde to behind the window-curtain.
The muslin was so light that Julien could see through it. By looking
under the brim of his hat in a certain way, he could get a view of
Mathilde's figure without seeing her eyes. "Consequently," he said to
himself, "she cannot see mine, and that is not really looking at her."
In the evening madame de Fervaques behaved towards him, exactly as
though she had never received the philosophic mystical and religious
dissertation which he had given to her porter in the morning with so
melancholy an air. Chance had shown Julien on the preceding day how
to be eloquent; he placed himself in such a position that he could
see Mathilde's eyes. She, on her side, left the blue sofa a minute
after the marechale's arrival; this involved abandoning her usual
associates. M. de Croisenois seemed overwhelmed by this new caprice:
his palpable grief alleviated the awfulness of Julien's agony.
This unexpected turn in his life made him talk like an angel, and
inasmuch as a certain element of self-appreciation will insinuate
itself even into those hearts which serve as a temple for the
most august virtue, the marechale said to herself as she got into
her carriage, "Madame de la Mole is right, this young priest has
distinction. My presence must have overawed him at first. As a matter
of fact, the whole tone of this house is very frivolous; I can see
nothing but instances of virtue helped by oldness, and standing in
great need of the chills of age. This young man must have managed to
appreciate the difference; he writes well, but I fear very much that
this request of his in his letter for me to enlighten him with my
advice, is really nothing less than an, as yet, unconscious sentiment.
"Nevertheless how many conversions have begun like that! What makes me
consider this a good omen is the difference between his style and that
of the young people whose letters I have had an opportunity of seeing.
One cannot avoid recognising unction, profound seriousness, and much
conviction in the prose of this young acolyte; he has no doubt the
sweet virtue of a Massillon."
| 1,247 | Part 2, Chapter 26 | https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-26 | Whenever Madame de Fervaques visits the de La Mole house, Julien always makes sure to seat himself in the place that makes Madame look most beautiful. Whenever he speaks to Madame, it is only to make Mathilde jealous. Julien then starts sending Madame letters, always hand-delivering them on horseback and looking sad like a doomed lover from a romance novel. At first, it looks like the letters have no effect. But the narrator tells us that Madame Fervaques has an improved opinion of Julien now that he's paying a lot of attention to her. | null | 94 | 1 | [
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1,232 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/1232-chapters/07.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/The Prince/section_5_part_0.txt | The Prince.chapter 7 | chapter 7 | null | {"name": "Chapter 7", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201108110625/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/p/the-prince/summary-and-analysis/chapter-7", "summary": "Citizens who become princes through luck or the favor of others find it easy to acquire their states, but difficult to keep them. They are not used to being in command, and they have no armies of their own. Francesco Sforza became a prince by his own strength and kept his state. Cesare Borgia became a prince by his father's influence, and, despite his best efforts, could not maintain his state after his father's influence failed. This was not his fault, but was caused by extraordinary bad luck. Alexander VI wanted to make his son great, but had no troops he could rely on. Alexander allowed the French into Italy in exchange for the use of their troops to conquer the Romagna region. Borgia succeeded and made more conquests, but worried about the French king and the loyalty of his Roman troops, led by the Orsini family. He lured the Orsini leaders with gifts and promises of friendship, then killed them all. He won the loyalty of the people in Romagna. He had at first found the Romagna to be lawless, so he put Remirro de Orco in charge of restoring order, which he did well. However, Remirro de Orco was so cruel that everyone hated him, so to deflect bad feeling from himself, Borgia had him publicly executed. At this point Borgia had laid good foundations for his power. But abruptly Alexander died, and Borgia himself was extremely ill. Borgia then made a mistake by not preventing the election of a Pope hostile to him. In short, Borgia was a model prince and did all things well, except for his poor judgment about Julius II, which caused his downfall.", "analysis": "Although Machiavelli offers an example of a prince who rose to power through his own ability in Francesco Sforza, he devotes most of this long chapter to the analysis of the career of Cesare Borgia, whose rise depended on the favor of others, namely his powerful father, Pope Alexander VI . Machiavelli's admiration for Borgia shines throughout the description. He sees in Borgia a model for all princely conquerors. Machiavelli had an opportunity to personally observe this dynamic Duke when he was sent by the Florentine council to negotiate with Borgia about relations with Florence. Machiavelli was on this mission when Borgia lured his enemies to the city of Senigallia and had them strangled, and Machiavelli spoke with Borgia about the incident. Borgia was by all accounts ruthless, ambitious, and boundlessly energetic, possessing a forceful personality that impressed those around him. It is no accident that these are the same qualities possessed by Machiavelli's ideal prince. Borgia radiates virtu, but in the end it is not enough to save him, because he remains dependent on the power and influence of his father. Pure bad luck--his father's sudden death and his own unexpected illness--puts him on the path to ruin. The dangers of dependency on others will become a key point in Machiavelli's arguments, one he emphasizes later in his discussion of armies. Machiavelli's endorsement of Borgia's tactics, including deceit, brutality, and betrayal of his own agents, is enthusiastic. One may be more inclined to judge Borgia as a heartless master manipulator, expertly playing factions against one another, using those around him as needed and disposing of them as they become inconvenient. But for a brief period, he was stunningly successful, on the verge of consolidating his hold over Italy--and success in controlling the state is all that matters in Machiavelli's analysis. He will be more explicit in Chapter 18 on how necessary it is for a prince to be deceitful when circumstances call for it, and in Chapter 17 how cruelty is often better than mercy to preserve the peace and order of the state. Glossary Duke Valentino Cesare Borgia was often referred to as Duke Valentino or Duke Valentinois, a title he was granted by Louis XII of France. Orsini and Colonna rival families of the Roman aristocracy, both enormously powerful in Italian politics. The Orsini family, in particular, was a bitter opponent of the Borgias, and Cesare Borgia ordered at least three of the leading Orsini family members to be killed. College of Cardinals an assembly that is responsible for electing a successor when a Pope dies. San Piero Machiavelli refers to a number of cardinals who were potential candidates for Pope, calling some of them by the names of their churches. \"San Piero\" was Giuliano della Rovere, who become Pope Julius II. \"Rouen,\" whom Machiavelli thinks Borgia should have contrived to elect, was Georges d'Amboise."} |
Those who solely by good fortune become princes from being private
citizens have little trouble in rising, but much in keeping atop; they
have not any difficulties on the way up, because they fly, but they have
many when they reach the summit. Such are those to whom some state
is given either for money or by the favour of him who bestows it;
as happened to many in Greece, in the cities of Ionia and of the
Hellespont, where princes were made by Darius, in order that they might
hold the cities both for his security and his glory; as also were those
emperors who, by the corruption of the soldiers, from being citizens
came to empire. Such stand simply elevated upon the goodwill and the
fortune of him who has elevated them--two most inconstant and unstable
things. Neither have they the knowledge requisite for the position;
because, unless they are men of great worth and ability, it is not
reasonable to expect that they should know how to command, having always
lived in a private condition; besides, they cannot hold it because they
have not forces which they can keep friendly and faithful.
States that rise unexpectedly, then, like all other things in nature
which are born and grow rapidly, cannot leave their foundations and
correspondencies(*) fixed in such a way that the first storm will
not overthrow them; unless, as is said, those who unexpectedly become
princes are men of so much ability that they know they have to be
prepared at once to hold that which fortune has thrown into their laps,
and that those foundations, which others have laid BEFORE they became
princes, they must lay AFTERWARDS.
(*) "Le radici e corrispondenze," their roots (i.e.
foundations) and correspondencies or relations with other
states--a common meaning of "correspondence" and
"correspondency" in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Concerning these two methods of rising to be a prince by ability or
fortune, I wish to adduce two examples within our own recollection, and
these are Francesco Sforza(*) and Cesare Borgia. Francesco, by proper
means and with great ability, from being a private person rose to be
Duke of Milan, and that which he had acquired with a thousand anxieties
he kept with little trouble. On the other hand, Cesare Borgia, called by
the people Duke Valentino, acquired his state during the ascendancy of
his father, and on its decline he lost it, notwithstanding that he had
taken every measure and done all that ought to be done by a wise and
able man to fix firmly his roots in the states which the arms and
fortunes of others had bestowed on him.
(*) Francesco Sforza, born 1401, died 1466. He married
Bianca Maria Visconti, a natural daughter of Filippo
Visconti, the Duke of Milan, on whose death he procured his
own elevation to the duchy. Machiavelli was the accredited
agent of the Florentine Republic to Cesare Borgia (1478-
1507) during the transactions which led up to the
assassinations of the Orsini and Vitelli at Sinigalia, and
along with his letters to his chiefs in Florence he has left
an account, written ten years before "The Prince," of the
proceedings of the duke in his "Descritione del modo tenuto
dal duca Valentino nello ammazzare Vitellozzo Vitelli,"
etc., a translation of which is appended to the present
work.
Because, as is stated above, he who has not first laid his foundations
may be able with great ability to lay them afterwards, but they will
be laid with trouble to the architect and danger to the building. If,
therefore, all the steps taken by the duke be considered, it will be
seen that he laid solid foundations for his future power, and I do not
consider it superfluous to discuss them, because I do not know what
better precepts to give a new prince than the example of his actions;
and if his dispositions were of no avail, that was not his fault, but
the extraordinary and extreme malignity of fortune.
Alexander the Sixth, in wishing to aggrandize the duke, his son, had
many immediate and prospective difficulties. Firstly, he did not see his
way to make him master of any state that was not a state of the Church;
and if he was willing to rob the Church he knew that the Duke of Milan
and the Venetians would not consent, because Faenza and Rimini were
already under the protection of the Venetians. Besides this, he saw the
arms of Italy, especially those by which he might have been assisted, in
hands that would fear the aggrandizement of the Pope, namely, the Orsini
and the Colonnesi and their following. It behoved him, therefore,
to upset this state of affairs and embroil the powers, so as to make
himself securely master of part of their states. This was easy for him
to do, because he found the Venetians, moved by other reasons, inclined
to bring back the French into Italy; he would not only not oppose this,
but he would render it more easy by dissolving the former marriage of
King Louis. Therefore the king came into Italy with the assistance of
the Venetians and the consent of Alexander. He was no sooner in Milan
than the Pope had soldiers from him for the attempt on the Romagna,
which yielded to him on the reputation of the king. The duke, therefore,
having acquired the Romagna and beaten the Colonnesi, while wishing to
hold that and to advance further, was hindered by two things: the one,
his forces did not appear loyal to him, the other, the goodwill of
France: that is to say, he feared that the forces of the Orsini, which
he was using, would not stand to him, that not only might they hinder
him from winning more, but might themselves seize what he had won, and
that the king might also do the same. Of the Orsini he had a warning
when, after taking Faenza and attacking Bologna, he saw them go very
unwillingly to that attack. And as to the king, he learned his mind when
he himself, after taking the Duchy of Urbino, attacked Tuscany, and the
king made him desist from that undertaking; hence the duke decided to
depend no more upon the arms and the luck of others.
For the first thing he weakened the Orsini and Colonnesi parties in
Rome, by gaining to himself all their adherents who were gentlemen,
making them his gentlemen, giving them good pay, and, according to their
rank, honouring them with office and command in such a way that in a few
months all attachment to the factions was destroyed and turned entirely
to the duke. After this he awaited an opportunity to crush the Orsini,
having scattered the adherents of the Colonna house. This came to him
soon and he used it well; for the Orsini, perceiving at length that the
aggrandizement of the duke and the Church was ruin to them, called a
meeting of the Magione in Perugia. From this sprung the rebellion at
Urbino and the tumults in the Romagna, with endless dangers to the duke,
all of which he overcame with the help of the French. Having restored
his authority, not to leave it at risk by trusting either to the French
or other outside forces, he had recourse to his wiles, and he knew
so well how to conceal his mind that, by the mediation of Signor
Pagolo--whom the duke did not fail to secure with all kinds of
attention, giving him money, apparel, and horses--the Orsini were
reconciled, so that their simplicity brought them into his power
at Sinigalia.(*) Having exterminated the leaders, and turned their
partisans into his friends, the duke laid sufficiently good foundations
to his power, having all the Romagna and the Duchy of Urbino; and the
people now beginning to appreciate their prosperity, he gained them
all over to himself. And as this point is worthy of notice, and to be
imitated by others, I am not willing to leave it out.
(*) Sinigalia, 31st December 1502.
When the duke occupied the Romagna he found it under the rule of weak
masters, who rather plundered their subjects than ruled them, and gave
them more cause for disunion than for union, so that the country was
full of robbery, quarrels, and every kind of violence; and so, wishing
to bring back peace and obedience to authority, he considered it
necessary to give it a good governor. Thereupon he promoted Messer
Ramiro d'Orco,(*) a swift and cruel man, to whom he gave the fullest
power. This man in a short time restored peace and unity with the
greatest success. Afterwards the duke considered that it was not
advisable to confer such excessive authority, for he had no doubt but
that he would become odious, so he set up a court of judgment in the
country, under a most excellent president, wherein all cities had their
advocates. And because he knew that the past severity had caused some
hatred against himself, so, to clear himself in the minds of the people,
and gain them entirely to himself, he desired to show that, if any
cruelty had been practised, it had not originated with him, but in the
natural sternness of the minister. Under this pretence he took Ramiro,
and one morning caused him to be executed and left on the piazza at
Cesena with the block and a bloody knife at his side. The barbarity of
this spectacle caused the people to be at once satisfied and dismayed.
(*) Ramiro d'Orco. Ramiro de Lorqua.
But let us return whence we started. I say that the duke, finding
himself now sufficiently powerful and partly secured from immediate
dangers by having armed himself in his own way, and having in a great
measure crushed those forces in his vicinity that could injure him if he
wished to proceed with his conquest, had next to consider France, for
he knew that the king, who too late was aware of his mistake, would not
support him. And from this time he began to seek new alliances and to
temporize with France in the expedition which she was making towards the
kingdom of Naples against the Spaniards who were besieging Gaeta. It
was his intention to secure himself against them, and this he would have
quickly accomplished had Alexander lived.
Such was his line of action as to present affairs. But as to the future
he had to fear, in the first place, that a new successor to the Church
might not be friendly to him and might seek to take from him that which
Alexander had given him, so he decided to act in four ways. Firstly, by
exterminating the families of those lords whom he had despoiled, so as
to take away that pretext from the Pope. Secondly, by winning to himself
all the gentlemen of Rome, so as to be able to curb the Pope with their
aid, as has been observed. Thirdly, by converting the college more to
himself. Fourthly, by acquiring so much power before the Pope should die
that he could by his own measures resist the first shock. Of these four
things, at the death of Alexander, he had accomplished three. For he had
killed as many of the dispossessed lords as he could lay hands on, and
few had escaped; he had won over the Roman gentlemen, and he had the
most numerous party in the college. And as to any fresh acquisition, he
intended to become master of Tuscany, for he already possessed Perugia
and Piombino, and Pisa was under his protection. And as he had no longer
to study France (for the French were already driven out of the kingdom
of Naples by the Spaniards, and in this way both were compelled to buy
his goodwill), he pounced down upon Pisa. After this, Lucca and Siena
yielded at once, partly through hatred and partly through fear of
the Florentines; and the Florentines would have had no remedy had he
continued to prosper, as he was prospering the year that Alexander died,
for he had acquired so much power and reputation that he would have
stood by himself, and no longer have depended on the luck and the forces
of others, but solely on his own power and ability.
But Alexander died five years after he had first drawn the sword. He
left the duke with the state of Romagna alone consolidated, with the
rest in the air, between two most powerful hostile armies, and sick unto
death. Yet there were in the duke such boldness and ability, and he knew
so well how men are to be won or lost, and so firm were the foundations
which in so short a time he had laid, that if he had not had those
armies on his back, or if he had been in good health, he would have
overcome all difficulties. And it is seen that his foundations were
good, for the Romagna awaited him for more than a month. In Rome,
although but half alive, he remained secure; and whilst the Baglioni,
the Vitelli, and the Orsini might come to Rome, they could not effect
anything against him. If he could not have made Pope him whom he wished,
at least the one whom he did not wish would not have been elected. But
if he had been in sound health at the death of Alexander,(*) everything
would have been different to him. On the day that Julius the Second(+)
was elected, he told me that he had thought of everything that might
occur at the death of his father, and had provided a remedy for all,
except that he had never anticipated that, when the death did happen, he
himself would be on the point to die.
(*) Alexander VI died of fever, 18th August 1503.
(+) Julius II was Giuliano della Rovere, Cardinal of San
Pietro ad Vincula, born 1443, died 1513.
When all the actions of the duke are recalled, I do not know how to
blame him, but rather it appears to be, as I have said, that I ought to
offer him for imitation to all those who, by the fortune or the arms of
others, are raised to government. Because he, having a lofty spirit and
far-reaching aims, could not have regulated his conduct otherwise,
and only the shortness of the life of Alexander and his own sickness
frustrated his designs. Therefore, he who considers it necessary to
secure himself in his new principality, to win friends, to overcome
either by force or fraud, to make himself beloved and feared by the
people, to be followed and revered by the soldiers, to exterminate those
who have power or reason to hurt him, to change the old order of things
for new, to be severe and gracious, magnanimous and liberal, to destroy
a disloyal soldiery and to create new, to maintain friendship with kings
and princes in such a way that they must help him with zeal and offend
with caution, cannot find a more lively example than the actions of this
man.
Only can he be blamed for the election of Julius the Second, in whom he
made a bad choice, because, as is said, not being able to elect a Pope
to his own mind, he could have hindered any other from being elected
Pope; and he ought never to have consented to the election of any
cardinal whom he had injured or who had cause to fear him if they became
pontiffs. For men injure either from fear or hatred. Those whom he
had injured, amongst others, were San Pietro ad Vincula, Colonna, San
Giorgio, and Ascanio.(*) The rest, in becoming Pope, had to fear him,
Rouen and the Spaniards excepted; the latter from their relationship and
obligations, the former from his influence, the kingdom of France having
relations with him. Therefore, above everything, the duke ought to have
created a Spaniard Pope, and, failing him, he ought to have consented to
Rouen and not San Pietro ad Vincula. He who believes that new benefits
will cause great personages to forget old injuries is deceived.
Therefore, the duke erred in his choice, and it was the cause of his
ultimate ruin.
(*) San Giorgio is Raffaello Riario. Ascanio is Ascanio
Sforza.
| 2,626 | Chapter 7 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201108110625/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/p/the-prince/summary-and-analysis/chapter-7 | Citizens who become princes through luck or the favor of others find it easy to acquire their states, but difficult to keep them. They are not used to being in command, and they have no armies of their own. Francesco Sforza became a prince by his own strength and kept his state. Cesare Borgia became a prince by his father's influence, and, despite his best efforts, could not maintain his state after his father's influence failed. This was not his fault, but was caused by extraordinary bad luck. Alexander VI wanted to make his son great, but had no troops he could rely on. Alexander allowed the French into Italy in exchange for the use of their troops to conquer the Romagna region. Borgia succeeded and made more conquests, but worried about the French king and the loyalty of his Roman troops, led by the Orsini family. He lured the Orsini leaders with gifts and promises of friendship, then killed them all. He won the loyalty of the people in Romagna. He had at first found the Romagna to be lawless, so he put Remirro de Orco in charge of restoring order, which he did well. However, Remirro de Orco was so cruel that everyone hated him, so to deflect bad feeling from himself, Borgia had him publicly executed. At this point Borgia had laid good foundations for his power. But abruptly Alexander died, and Borgia himself was extremely ill. Borgia then made a mistake by not preventing the election of a Pope hostile to him. In short, Borgia was a model prince and did all things well, except for his poor judgment about Julius II, which caused his downfall. | Although Machiavelli offers an example of a prince who rose to power through his own ability in Francesco Sforza, he devotes most of this long chapter to the analysis of the career of Cesare Borgia, whose rise depended on the favor of others, namely his powerful father, Pope Alexander VI . Machiavelli's admiration for Borgia shines throughout the description. He sees in Borgia a model for all princely conquerors. Machiavelli had an opportunity to personally observe this dynamic Duke when he was sent by the Florentine council to negotiate with Borgia about relations with Florence. Machiavelli was on this mission when Borgia lured his enemies to the city of Senigallia and had them strangled, and Machiavelli spoke with Borgia about the incident. Borgia was by all accounts ruthless, ambitious, and boundlessly energetic, possessing a forceful personality that impressed those around him. It is no accident that these are the same qualities possessed by Machiavelli's ideal prince. Borgia radiates virtu, but in the end it is not enough to save him, because he remains dependent on the power and influence of his father. Pure bad luck--his father's sudden death and his own unexpected illness--puts him on the path to ruin. The dangers of dependency on others will become a key point in Machiavelli's arguments, one he emphasizes later in his discussion of armies. Machiavelli's endorsement of Borgia's tactics, including deceit, brutality, and betrayal of his own agents, is enthusiastic. One may be more inclined to judge Borgia as a heartless master manipulator, expertly playing factions against one another, using those around him as needed and disposing of them as they become inconvenient. But for a brief period, he was stunningly successful, on the verge of consolidating his hold over Italy--and success in controlling the state is all that matters in Machiavelli's analysis. He will be more explicit in Chapter 18 on how necessary it is for a prince to be deceitful when circumstances call for it, and in Chapter 17 how cruelty is often better than mercy to preserve the peace and order of the state. Glossary Duke Valentino Cesare Borgia was often referred to as Duke Valentino or Duke Valentinois, a title he was granted by Louis XII of France. Orsini and Colonna rival families of the Roman aristocracy, both enormously powerful in Italian politics. The Orsini family, in particular, was a bitter opponent of the Borgias, and Cesare Borgia ordered at least three of the leading Orsini family members to be killed. College of Cardinals an assembly that is responsible for electing a successor when a Pope dies. San Piero Machiavelli refers to a number of cardinals who were potential candidates for Pope, calling some of them by the names of their churches. "San Piero" was Giuliano della Rovere, who become Pope Julius II. "Rouen," whom Machiavelli thinks Borgia should have contrived to elect, was Georges d'Amboise. | 280 | 479 | [
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161 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/03.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Sense and Sensibility/section_2_part_0.txt | Sense and Sensibility.chapter 3 | chapter 3 | null | {"name": "Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210421140324/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/sense-and-sensibility/summary/chapter-3", "summary": "Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters remain at Norland for a number of months while they're trying to figure out what to do. She's convinced that John means well, but grows increasingly unhappy about Fanny. However, mother and daughter-in-law continue to coexist in relative peace for a single, pressing reason - Mrs. Dashwood doesn't want to move away just yet. It turns out that Elinor is in love with Fanny's brother, the mild-mannered, perfectly pleasant Edward . While Edward's mother and sister want him to become a successful, important man, these worldly things aren't so important to him - rather, he just wants to have a happy, quiet life. Mrs. Dashwood gets to know Edward a little better, and jumps to the conclusion that he and Elinor will be married in no time. She tells Marianne to get used to the idea. Personally, Marianne is very fond of Edward - she just doesn't really understand how her sister can be in love with someone so prosaic. She claims to only be able to love a more, well, dramatic and romantic man. Mrs. Dashwood laughs this off - after all, Marianne is only seventeen, and shouldn't despair at this early point in her life.", "analysis": ""} |
Mrs. Dashwood remained at Norland several months; not from any
disinclination to move when the sight of every well known spot ceased
to raise the violent emotion which it produced for a while; for when
her spirits began to revive, and her mind became capable of some other
exertion than that of heightening its affliction by melancholy
remembrances, she was impatient to be gone, and indefatigable in her
inquiries for a suitable dwelling in the neighbourhood of Norland; for
to remove far from that beloved spot was impossible. But she could
hear of no situation that at once answered her notions of comfort and
ease, and suited the prudence of her eldest daughter, whose steadier
judgment rejected several houses as too large for their income, which
her mother would have approved.
Mrs. Dashwood had been informed by her husband of the solemn promise on
the part of his son in their favour, which gave comfort to his last
earthly reflections. She doubted the sincerity of this assurance no
more than he had doubted it himself, and she thought of it for her
daughters' sake with satisfaction, though as for herself she was
persuaded that a much smaller provision than 7000L would support her in
affluence. For their brother's sake, too, for the sake of his own
heart, she rejoiced; and she reproached herself for being unjust to his
merit before, in believing him incapable of generosity. His attentive
behaviour to herself and his sisters convinced her that their welfare
was dear to him, and, for a long time, she firmly relied on the
liberality of his intentions.
The contempt which she had, very early in their acquaintance, felt for
her daughter-in-law, was very much increased by the farther knowledge
of her character, which half a year's residence in her family afforded;
and perhaps in spite of every consideration of politeness or maternal
affection on the side of the former, the two ladies might have found it
impossible to have lived together so long, had not a particular
circumstance occurred to give still greater eligibility, according to
the opinions of Mrs. Dashwood, to her daughters' continuance at Norland.
This circumstance was a growing attachment between her eldest girl and
the brother of Mrs. John Dashwood, a gentleman-like and pleasing young
man, who was introduced to their acquaintance soon after his sister's
establishment at Norland, and who had since spent the greatest part of
his time there.
Some mothers might have encouraged the intimacy from motives of
interest, for Edward Ferrars was the eldest son of a man who had died
very rich; and some might have repressed it from motives of prudence,
for, except a trifling sum, the whole of his fortune depended on the
will of his mother. But Mrs. Dashwood was alike uninfluenced by either
consideration. It was enough for her that he appeared to be amiable,
that he loved her daughter, and that Elinor returned the partiality.
It was contrary to every doctrine of hers that difference of fortune
should keep any couple asunder who were attracted by resemblance of
disposition; and that Elinor's merit should not be acknowledged by
every one who knew her, was to her comprehension impossible.
Edward Ferrars was not recommended to their good opinion by any
peculiar graces of person or address. He was not handsome, and his
manners required intimacy to make them pleasing. He was too diffident
to do justice to himself; but when his natural shyness was overcome,
his behaviour gave every indication of an open, affectionate heart.
His understanding was good, and his education had given it solid
improvement. But he was neither fitted by abilities nor disposition to
answer the wishes of his mother and sister, who longed to see him
distinguished--as--they hardly knew what. They wanted him to make a
fine figure in the world in some manner or other. His mother wished to
interest him in political concerns, to get him into parliament, or to
see him connected with some of the great men of the day. Mrs. John
Dashwood wished it likewise; but in the mean while, till one of these
superior blessings could be attained, it would have quieted her
ambition to see him driving a barouche. But Edward had no turn for
great men or barouches. All his wishes centered in domestic comfort
and the quiet of private life. Fortunately he had a younger brother
who was more promising.
Edward had been staying several weeks in the house before he engaged
much of Mrs. Dashwood's attention; for she was, at that time, in such
affliction as rendered her careless of surrounding objects. She saw
only that he was quiet and unobtrusive, and she liked him for it. He
did not disturb the wretchedness of her mind by ill-timed conversation.
She was first called to observe and approve him farther, by a
reflection which Elinor chanced one day to make on the difference
between him and his sister. It was a contrast which recommended him
most forcibly to her mother.
"It is enough," said she; "to say that he is unlike Fanny is enough.
It implies everything amiable. I love him already."
"I think you will like him," said Elinor, "when you know more of him."
"Like him!" replied her mother with a smile. "I feel no sentiment of
approbation inferior to love."
"You may esteem him."
"I have never yet known what it was to separate esteem and love."
Mrs. Dashwood now took pains to get acquainted with him. Her manners
were attaching, and soon banished his reserve. She speedily
comprehended all his merits; the persuasion of his regard for Elinor
perhaps assisted her penetration; but she really felt assured of his
worth: and even that quietness of manner, which militated against all
her established ideas of what a young man's address ought to be, was no
longer uninteresting when she knew his heart to be warm and his temper
affectionate.
No sooner did she perceive any symptom of love in his behaviour to
Elinor, than she considered their serious attachment as certain, and
looked forward to their marriage as rapidly approaching.
"In a few months, my dear Marianne." said she, "Elinor will, in all
probability be settled for life. We shall miss her; but SHE will be
happy."
"Oh! Mama, how shall we do without her?"
"My love, it will be scarcely a separation. We shall live within a few
miles of each other, and shall meet every day of our lives. You will
gain a brother, a real, affectionate brother. I have the highest
opinion in the world of Edward's heart. But you look grave, Marianne;
do you disapprove your sister's choice?"
"Perhaps," said Marianne, "I may consider it with some surprise.
Edward is very amiable, and I love him tenderly. But yet--he is not
the kind of young man--there is something wanting--his figure is not
striking; it has none of that grace which I should expect in the man
who could seriously attach my sister. His eyes want all that spirit,
that fire, which at once announce virtue and intelligence. And besides
all this, I am afraid, Mama, he has no real taste. Music seems
scarcely to attract him, and though he admires Elinor's drawings very
much, it is not the admiration of a person who can understand their
worth. It is evident, in spite of his frequent attention to her while
she draws, that in fact he knows nothing of the matter. He admires as
a lover, not as a connoisseur. To satisfy me, those characters must be
united. I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every
point coincide with my own. He must enter into all my feelings; the
same books, the same music must charm us both. Oh! mama, how
spiritless, how tame was Edward's manner in reading to us last night!
I felt for my sister most severely. Yet she bore it with so much
composure, she seemed scarcely to notice it. I could hardly keep my
seat. To hear those beautiful lines which have frequently almost
driven me wild, pronounced with such impenetrable calmness, such
dreadful indifference!"
"He would certainly have done more justice to simple and elegant prose.
I thought so at the time; but you WOULD give him Cowper."
"Nay, Mama, if he is not to be animated by Cowper!--but we must allow
for difference of taste. Elinor has not my feelings, and therefore she
may overlook it, and be happy with him. But it would have broke MY
heart, had I loved him, to hear him read with so little sensibility.
Mama, the more I know of the world, the more am I convinced that I
shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much! He
must have all Edward's virtues, and his person and manners must
ornament his goodness with every possible charm."
"Remember, my love, that you are not seventeen. It is yet too early in
life to despair of such a happiness. Why should you be less fortunate
than your mother? In one circumstance only, my Marianne, may your
destiny be different from hers!"
| 1,437 | Chapter 3 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210421140324/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/sense-and-sensibility/summary/chapter-3 | Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters remain at Norland for a number of months while they're trying to figure out what to do. She's convinced that John means well, but grows increasingly unhappy about Fanny. However, mother and daughter-in-law continue to coexist in relative peace for a single, pressing reason - Mrs. Dashwood doesn't want to move away just yet. It turns out that Elinor is in love with Fanny's brother, the mild-mannered, perfectly pleasant Edward . While Edward's mother and sister want him to become a successful, important man, these worldly things aren't so important to him - rather, he just wants to have a happy, quiet life. Mrs. Dashwood gets to know Edward a little better, and jumps to the conclusion that he and Elinor will be married in no time. She tells Marianne to get used to the idea. Personally, Marianne is very fond of Edward - she just doesn't really understand how her sister can be in love with someone so prosaic. She claims to only be able to love a more, well, dramatic and romantic man. Mrs. Dashwood laughs this off - after all, Marianne is only seventeen, and shouldn't despair at this early point in her life. | null | 202 | 1 | [
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2,166 | false | gradesaver | all_chapterized_books/2166-chapters/06.txt | finished_summaries/gradesaver/King Solomon's Mines/section_3_part_2.txt | King Solomon's Mines.chapter 6 | chapter 6 | null | {"name": "Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200804024551/https://www.gradesaver.com/king-solomons-mines/study-guide/summary-chapters-5-and-6", "summary": "Quatermain awakens two hours after falling into his miserable sleep. His body slightly refreshed, his thirst returns to the forefront of his thoughts. He recounts a dream of bathing in a stream surrounded by greenery, only to awaken to his present harsh reality. Already becoming desiccated from the dryness, Quatermain attempts to take his mind off of his suffering by reading, but only manages to frustrate himself further as he reads a passage detailing pure water. The others awaken and as a group assess their situation, as not a drop of water remains among them. In the midst of their collective despair, Ventvogel arises and begins searching the ground with his eyes. He stoops and cries out, pointing at something he sees: \"Springbok spoor\" he explains. Springboks do not go far from water. Heartened by this evidence of nearby water, the party marches in the direction of the alleged oasis on Silvestra's old map. Ventvogel claims he can smell water, but the others put no stock in his senses. As the sun arises, the travelers are able to see for the first time the reality of the Sulemin Mountains, \"Sheba's Breasts\" as described by old Silvestre. Though far away, the sight of the two mountains encourages the party as to the accuracy of Silvestre's account; furthermore, they can see snow atop the mountains and, while it is too far away to do them good at present, it promises a fresh supply of water should they make their way to the peaks. Nonetheless, the members of the expedition return to their burning thirst and call Ventvogel a fool for claiming to smell water nearby. Sir Henry suggests they might find water atop a nearby hill; despite the scorn of the others, Quatermain despairingly suggests they follow up on Sir Henry's hunch. Umbopa leads the way and finds a dirty pool of water atop the hill. The men drink their fill and moisten their dried skin in the pool, then refill their canteens for the journey ahead. They eat some of their rations for the first time in twenty-four hours and relax for a while. After resting all day in the shade of the hill, the expedition continues its terrible trek through the desert. They reach \"Sheba's left breast\" and begin to ascend the mountain. By this time their water supply is again nonexistent, which only adds to their frustration as the walking has become more difficult over the dried lava that covers the base of the dormant volcano. Umbopa discovers a source of temporary relief: a crop of wild melons, ripe and ready to eat. The men feast on the melons, but find them more refreshing to their thirst than to their hungry stomachs. They soon begin to believe they have escaped death by thirst only to die of hunger. Ventvogel spots a flock of birds , and Quatermain expertly shoots one from the sky. The men start a fire with dried melon stems and cook the bird for dinner. The party awaits the rising of the moon to continue their ascent, and does so refreshed but still somewhat hopeless. They see no further game and fewer melons, so food shortage again becomes a concern. They are also unable to determine why, with the snow above them on the volcanic mountain, there are no streams flowing down. Quatermain remarks on his fear of starvation in his journal, dated May 21-23. He resumes his narration of events on the 23rd, when they espy a dark hole in the snow far above them. Heading toward it, they ascertain it is the opening to a cave--the very cave mentioned by Silvestre. The men make for the cave and arrive just as the sun sets and plunges the mountain into darkness. In the cold and dark, the men huddle together in the cave for warmth. During the night Quatermain hears Ventvogel, who is sitting back-to-back with the elephant hunter, give a dismal sigh. He thinks nothing of it until the morning, when he discovers that Ventvogel has died in his sleep. The remaining men are saddened, but wish to leave the company of the dead man. The sun rises, lighting the cave and giving the men a view which terrifies them: at the end of the cave sits another dead man--a dead white man. They flee the cave in fear", "analysis": "The conflict between Quatermain's expectations of Zulu assistants and Umbopa's self-assured nature develops further in this chapter. When Umbopa addresses Sir Henry familiarly as \"Incubu,\" Quatermain \"asked him sharply what he meant by addressing his master in that familiar way\" . Umbopa's laugh at Quatermain's rebuke only serves to anger the hunter; this anger is compounded when Umbopa tells Quatermain, \"He is of a royal house...so, mayhap, am I. At least I am as great a man\" . Nonetheless, Quatermain is impressed by Umbopa's demeanor and continues to translate his words to Sir Henry out of curiousity. Haggard here distances himself from Quatermain's racism by setting the character up to be wrong about Umbopa--his heritage will be revealed as royal indeed--thus calling into question Quatermain's prejudices. Nonetheless, even Haggard's expression of equanimity is tempered by the requirement that the African treated as equal to a white man be of noble heritage. The author also indulges in some humor at the expense of his protagonist. When the desert march has become harsh and wearying, all forms of wildlife are gone save for the occasional cobra and the numerous house flies. Quatermain says, \"They came, 'not as single spies, but in battalsions,' as I think the Old Testament says somewhere\" . Quatermain is clearly quoting Hamlet, but gets the citation wrong; thus Quatermain is revealed to be a man who has read more than his aforementioned two works, but who is also somewhat ignorant of his own Bible. The inadvertent placing of Shakespeare's greatest play on a par with Holy Scripture may also be a subtle dig at English attitudes toward their own culture. Haggard also engages in some convincing verisimilitude by listing the weapons and supplies the party gathers for their expedition--a list which spans several paragraphs . By giving such detail, and by further keeping account of the items which are used up, destroyed, or go missing, Haggard grounds his tale in solid reality. In her article \"'As Europe is to Africa, So is Man to Woman': Gendering Landscape in Rider Haggard's Nada the Lily,\" Lindy Steibel notes, \"It appears that unconsciously Haggard projected a good deal of his latent sexual desire and that of his age, which was one of determined public prudery, onto his feminized African landscapes\" . It is difficult to contradict Steibel with Haggard's description of the mountains known as Sheba's Breasts: \"Their bases swelled gently up from the plain, looking, at that distance, perfectly round and smooth; and on the top of each was a vast round hillock covered with snow, exactly corresponding to the nipple on the female breast\" . Unconscious or not, Haggard certainly means to evoke the feminine form in his description of this landscape; Sheba's Breasts become the destination for the immediate leg of the journey, and the gateway into the unknown land of the Kukuanas; this latter bespeaks a connection between the feminine and the mysterious and hidden, here positively in contrast to the negative feminine mystique of Gagool later in the novel. Quatermain's insistent pessimism is brought to the fore in this chapter, as he expects to die of exposure long before their journey nears its goal. When Ventvogel claims to smell water, Quatermain replies, \"No doubt it is in the coulds and about two months hence it will fall and wash our bones\" . Quatermain's pessimism, here as elsewhere, is misplaced--the men do indeed find water and survive to carry on their expedition. Haggard pares the traveling party down further with the death of Ventvogel. The Hottentot's death by freezing serves to highlight the dangers in the journey--and to signify that not all dangers come from wild animals--and to deprive the group of their best tracker, thus making their situation more dire. Compounding this sense of dread is their discovery of the other dead body in the cave, the sight of which frightens all the men into a panic. To see the remnants of another traveler only heightens the party's fear of failing in their quest."} | Two hours later, that is, about four o'clock, I woke up, for so soon as
the first heavy demand of bodily fatigue had been satisfied, the
torturing thirst from which I was suffering asserted itself. I could
sleep no more. I had been dreaming that I was bathing in a running
stream, with green banks and trees upon them, and I awoke to find
myself in this arid wilderness, and to remember, as Umbopa had said,
that if we did not find water this day we must perish miserably. No
human creature could live long without water in that heat. I sat up and
rubbed my grimy face with my dry and horny hands, as my lips and
eyelids were stuck together, and it was only after some friction and
with an effort that I was able to open them. It was not far from dawn,
but there was none of the bright feel of dawn in the air, which was
thick with a hot murkiness that I cannot describe. The others were
still sleeping.
Presently it began to grow light enough to read, so I drew out a little
pocket copy of the "Ingoldsby Legends" which I had brought with me, and
read "The Jackdaw of Rheims." When I got to where
"A nice little boy held a golden ewer,
Embossed, and filled with water as pure
As any that flows between Rheims and Namur,"
literally I smacked my cracking lips, or rather tried to smack them.
The mere thought of that pure water made me mad. If the Cardinal had
been there with his bell, book, and candle, I would have whipped in and
drunk his water up; yes, even if he had filled it already with the suds
of soap "worthy of washing the hands of the Pope," and I knew that the
whole consecrated curse of the Catholic Church should fall upon me for
so doing. I almost think that I must have been a little light-headed
with thirst, weariness and the want of food; for I fell to thinking how
astonished the Cardinal and his nice little boy and the jackdaw would
have looked to see a burnt up, brown-eyed, grizzly-haired little
elephant hunter suddenly bound between them, put his dirty face into
the basin, and swallow every drop of the precious water. The idea
amused me so much that I laughed or rather cackled aloud, which woke
the others, and they began to rub _their_ dirty faces and drag _their_
gummed-up lips and eyelids apart.
As soon as we were all well awake we began to discuss the situation,
which was serious enough. Not a drop of water was left. We turned the
bottles upside down, and licked their tops, but it was a failure; they
were dry as a bone. Good, who had charge of the flask of brandy, got it
out and looked at it longingly; but Sir Henry promptly took it away
from him, for to drink raw spirit would only have been to precipitate
the end.
"If we do not find water we shall die," he said.
"If we can trust to the old Dom's map there should be some about," I
said; but nobody seemed to derive much satisfaction from this remark.
It was so evident that no great faith could be put in the map. Now it
was gradually growing light, and as we sat staring blankly at each
other, I observed the Hottentot Ventvoegel rise and begin to walk about
with his eyes on the ground. Presently he stopped short, and uttering a
guttural exclamation, pointed to the earth.
"What is it?" we exclaimed; and rising simultaneously we went to where
he was standing staring at the sand.
"Well," I said, "it is fresh Springbok spoor; what of it?"
"Springbucks do not go far from water," he answered in Dutch.
"No," I answered, "I forgot; and thank God for it."
This little discovery put new life into us; for it is wonderful, when a
man is in a desperate position, how he catches at the slightest hope,
and feels almost happy. On a dark night a single star is better than
nothing.
Meanwhile Ventvoegel was lifting his snub nose, and sniffing the hot air
for all the world like an old Impala ram who scents danger. Presently
he spoke again.
"I _smell_ water," he said.
Then we felt quite jubilant, for we knew what a wonderful instinct
these wild-bred men possess.
Just at that moment the sun came up gloriously, and revealed so grand a
sight to our astonished eyes that for a moment or two we even forgot
our thirst.
There, not more than forty or fifty miles from us, glittering like
silver in the early rays of the morning sun, soared Sheba's Breasts;
and stretching away for hundreds of miles on either side of them ran
the great Suliman Berg. Now that, sitting here, I attempt to describe
the extraordinary grandeur and beauty of that sight, language seems to
fail me. I am impotent even before its memory. Straight before us, rose
two enormous mountains, the like of which are not, I believe, to be
seen in Africa, if indeed there are any other such in the world,
measuring each of them at least fifteen thousand feet in height,
standing not more than a dozen miles apart, linked together by a
precipitous cliff of rock, and towering in awful white solemnity
straight into the sky. These mountains placed thus, like the pillars of
a gigantic gateway, are shaped after the fashion of a woman's breasts,
and at times the mists and shadows beneath them take the form of a
recumbent woman, veiled mysteriously in sleep. Their bases swell gently
from the plain, looking at that distance perfectly round and smooth;
and upon the top of each is a vast hillock covered with snow, exactly
corresponding to the nipple on the female breast. The stretch of cliff
that connects them appears to be some thousands of feet in height, and
perfectly precipitous, and on each flank of them, so far as the eye can
reach, extent similar lines of cliff, broken only here and there by
flat table-topped mountains, something like the world-famed one at Cape
Town; a formation, by the way, that is very common in Africa.
To describe the comprehensive grandeur of that view is beyond my
powers. There was something so inexpressibly solemn and overpowering
about those huge volcanoes--for doubtless they are extinct
volcanoes--that it quite awed us. For a while the morning lights played
upon the snow and the brown and swelling masses beneath, and then, as
though to veil the majestic sight from our curious eyes, strange
vapours and clouds gathered and increased around the mountains, till
presently we could only trace their pure and gigantic outlines, showing
ghostlike through the fleecy envelope. Indeed, as we afterwards
discovered, usually they were wrapped in this gauze-like mist, which
doubtless accounted for our not having seen them more clearly before.
Sheba's Breasts had scarcely vanished into cloud-clad privacy, before
our thirst--literally a burning question--reasserted itself.
It was all very well for Ventvoegel to say that he smelt water, but we
could see no signs of it, look which way we would. So far as the eye
might reach there was nothing but arid sweltering sand and karoo scrub.
We walked round the hillock and gazed about anxiously on the other
side, but it was the same story, not a drop of water could be found;
there was no indication of a pan, a pool, or a spring.
"You are a fool," I said angrily to Ventvoegel; "there is no water."
But still he lifted his ugly snub nose and sniffed.
"I smell it, Baas," he answered; "it is somewhere in the air."
"Yes," I said, "no doubt it is in the clouds, and about two months
hence it will fall and wash our bones."
Sir Henry stroked his yellow beard thoughtfully. "Perhaps it is on the
top of the hill," he suggested.
"Rot," said Good; "whoever heard of water being found at the top of a
hill!"
"Let us go and look," I put in, and hopelessly enough we scrambled up
the sandy sides of the hillock, Umbopa leading. Presently he stopped as
though he was petrified.
"_Nanzia manzie_!" that is, "Here is water!" he cried with a loud voice.
We rushed up to him, and there, sure enough, in a deep cut or
indentation on the very top of the sand koppie, was an undoubted pool
of water. How it came to be in such a strange place we did not stop to
inquire, nor did we hesitate at its black and unpleasant appearance. It
was water, or a good imitation of it, and that was enough for us. We
gave a bound and a rush, and in another second we were all down on our
stomachs sucking up the uninviting fluid as though it were nectar fit
for the gods. Heavens, how we did drink! Then when we had done drinking
we tore off our clothes and sat down in the pool, absorbing the
moisture through our parched skins. You, Harry, my boy, who have only
to turn on a couple of taps to summon "hot" and "cold" from an unseen,
vasty cistern, can have little idea of the luxury of that muddy wallow
in brackish tepid water.
After a while we rose from it, refreshed indeed, and fell to on our
"biltong," of which we had scarcely been able to touch a mouthful for
twenty-four hours, and ate our fill. Then we smoked a pipe, and lay
down by the side of that blessed pool, under the overhanging shadow of
its bank, and slept till noon.
All that day we rested there by the water, thanking our stars that we
had been lucky enough to find it, bad as it was, and not forgetting to
render a due share of gratitude to the shade of the long-departed da
Silvestra, who had set its position down so accurately on the tail of
his shirt. The wonderful thing to us was that the pan should have
lasted so long, and the only way in which I can account for this is on
the supposition that it is fed by some spring deep down in the sand.
Having filled both ourselves and our water-bottles as full as possible,
in far better spirits we started off again with the moon. That night we
covered nearly five-and-twenty miles; but, needless to say, found no
more water, though we were lucky enough the following day to get a
little shade behind some ant-heaps. When the sun rose, and, for awhile,
cleared away the mysterious mists, Suliman's Berg with the two majestic
Breasts, now only about twenty miles off, seemed to be towering right
above us, and looked grander than ever. At the approach of evening we
marched again, and, to cut a long story short, by daylight next morning
found ourselves upon the lowest slopes of Sheba's left breast, for
which we had been steadily steering. By this time our water was
exhausted once more, and we were suffering severely from thirst, nor
indeed could we see any chance of relieving it till we reached the snow
line far, far above us. After resting an hour or two, driven to it by
our torturing thirst, we went on, toiling painfully in the burning heat
up the lava slopes, for we found that the huge base of the mountain was
composed entirely of lava beds belched from the bowels of the earth in
some far past age.
By eleven o'clock we were utterly exhausted, and, generally speaking,
in a very bad state indeed. The lava clinker, over which we must drag
ourselves, though smooth compared with some clinker I have heard of,
such as that on the Island of Ascension, for instance, was yet rough
enough to make our feet very sore, and this, together with our other
miseries, had pretty well finished us. A few hundred yards above us
were some large lumps of lava, and towards these we steered with the
intention of lying down beneath their shade. We reached them, and to
our surprise, so far as we had a capacity for surprise left in us, on a
little plateau or ridge close by we saw that the clinker was covered
with a dense green growth. Evidently soil formed of decomposed lava had
rested there, and in due course had become the receptacle of seeds
deposited by birds. But we did not take much further interest in the
green growth, for one cannot live on grass like Nebuchadnezzar. That
requires a special dispensation of Providence and peculiar digestive
organs.
So we sat down under the rocks and groaned, and for one I wished
heartily that we had never started on this fool's errand. As we were
sitting there I saw Umbopa get up and hobble towards the patch of
green, and a few minutes afterwards, to my great astonishment, I
perceived that usually very dignified individual dancing and shouting
like a maniac, and waving something green. Off we all scrambled towards
him as fast as our wearied limbs would carry us, hoping that he had
found water.
"What is it, Umbopa, son of a fool?" I shouted in Zulu.
"It is food and water, Macumazahn," and again he waved the green thing.
Then I saw what he had found. It was a melon. We had hit upon a patch
of wild melons, thousands of them, and dead ripe.
"Melons!" I yelled to Good, who was next me; and in another minute his
false teeth were fixed in one of them.
I think we ate about six each before we had done, and poor fruit as
they were, I doubt if I ever thought anything nicer.
But melons are not very nutritious, and when we had satisfied our
thirst with their pulpy substance, and put a stock to cool by the
simple process of cutting them in two and setting them end on in the
hot sun to grow cold by evaporation, we began to feel exceedingly
hungry. We had still some biltong left, but our stomachs turned from
biltong, and besides, we were obliged to be very sparing of it, for we
could not say when we should find more food. Just at this moment a
lucky thing chanced. Looking across the desert I saw a flock of about
ten large birds flying straight towards us.
"_Skit, Baas, skit!_" "Shoot, master, shoot!" whispered the Hottentot,
throwing himself on his face, an example which we all followed.
Then I saw that the birds were a flock of _pauw_ or bustards, and that
they would pass within fifty yards of my head. Taking one of the
repeating Winchesters, I waited till they were nearly over us, and then
jumped to my feet. On seeing me the _pauw_ bunched up together, as I
expected that they would, and I fired two shots straight into the thick
of them, and, as luck would have it, brought one down, a fine fellow,
that weighed about twenty pounds. In half an hour we had a fire made of
dry melon stalks, and he was toasting over it, and we made such a feed
as we had not tasted for a week. We ate that _pauw_; nothing was left
of him but his leg-bones and his beak, and we felt not a little the
better afterwards.
That night we went on again with the moon, carrying as many melons as
we could with us. As we ascended we found the air grew cooler and
cooler, which was a great relief to us, and at dawn, so far as we could
judge, we were not more than about a dozen miles from the snow line.
Here we discovered more melons, and so had no longer any anxiety about
water, for we knew that we should soon get plenty of snow. But the
ascent had now become very precipitous, and we made but slow progress,
not more than a mile an hour. Also that night we ate our last morsel of
biltong. As yet, with the exception of the _pauw_, we had seen no
living thing on the mountain, nor had we come across a single spring or
stream of water, which struck us as very odd, considering the expanse
of snow above us, which must, we thought, melt sometimes. But as we
afterwards discovered, owing to a cause which it is quite beyond my
power to explain, all the streams flowed down upon the north side of
the mountains.
Now we began to grow very anxious about food. We had escaped death by
thirst, but it seemed probable that it was only to die of hunger. The
events of the next three miserable days are best described by copying
the entries made at the time in my note-book.
"21st May.--Started 11 a.m., finding the atmosphere quite cold enough
to travel by day, and carrying some water-melons with us. Struggled on
all day, but found no more melons, having evidently passed out of their
district. Saw no game of any sort. Halted for the night at sundown,
having had no food for many hours. Suffered much during the night from
cold.
"22nd.--Started at sunrise again, feeling very faint and weak. Only
made about five miles all day; found some patches of snow, of which we
ate, but nothing else. Camped at night under the edge of a great
plateau. Cold bitter. Drank a little brandy each, and huddled ourselves
together, each wrapped up in his blanket, to keep ourselves alive. Are
now suffering frightfully from starvation and weariness. Thought that
Ventvoegel would have died during the night.
"23rd.--Struggled forward once more as soon as the sun was well up, and
had thawed our limbs a little. We are now in a dreadful plight, and I
fear that unless we get food this will be our last day's journey. But
little brandy left. Good, Sir Henry, and Umbopa bear up wonderfully,
but Ventvoegel is in a very bad way. Like most Hottentots, he cannot
stand cold. Pangs of hunger not so bad, but have a sort of numb feeling
about the stomach. Others say the same. We are now on a level with the
precipitous chain, or wall of lava, linking the two Breasts, and the
view is glorious. Behind us the glowing desert rolls away to the
horizon, and before us lie mile upon mile of smooth hard snow almost
level, but swelling gently upwards, out of the centre of which the
nipple of the mountain, that appears to be some miles in circumference,
rises about four thousand feet into the sky. Not a living thing is to
be seen. God help us; I fear that our time has come."
And now I will drop the journal, partly because it is not very
interesting reading; also what follows requires telling rather more
fully.
All that day--the 23rd May--we struggled slowly up the incline of snow,
lying down from time to time to rest. A strange gaunt crew we must have
looked, while, laden as we were, we dragged our weary feet over the
dazzling plain, glaring round us with hungry eyes. Not that there was
much use in glaring, for we could see nothing to eat. We did not
accomplish more than seven miles that day. Just before sunset we found
ourselves exactly under the nipple of Sheba's left Breast, which
towered thousands of feet into the air, a vast smooth hillock of frozen
snow. Weak as we were, we could not but appreciate the wonderful scene,
made even more splendid by the flying rays of light from the setting
sun, which here and there stained the snow blood-red, and crowned the
great dome above us with a diadem of glory.
"I say," gasped Good, presently, "we ought to be somewhere near that
cave the old gentleman wrote about."
"Yes," said I, "if there is a cave."
"Come, Quatermain," groaned Sir Henry, "don't talk like that; I have
every faith in the Dom; remember the water! We shall find the place
soon."
"If we don't find it before dark we are dead men, that is all about
it," was my consolatory reply.
For the next ten minutes we trudged in silence, when suddenly Umbopa,
who was marching along beside me, wrapped in his blanket, and with a
leather belt strapped so tightly round his stomach, to "make his hunger
small," as he said, that his waist looked like a girl's, caught me by
the arm.
"Look!" he said, pointing towards the springing slope of the nipple.
I followed his glance, and some two hundred yards from us perceived
what appeared to be a hole in the snow.
"It is the cave," said Umbopa.
We made the best of our way to the spot, and found sure enough that the
hole was the mouth of a cavern, no doubt the same as that of which da
Silvestra wrote. We were not too soon, for just as we reached shelter
the sun went down with startling rapidity, leaving the world nearly
dark, for in these latitudes there is but little twilight. So we crept
into the cave, which did not appear to be very big, and huddling
ourselves together for warmth, swallowed what remained of our
brandy--barely a mouthful each--and tried to forget our miseries in
sleep. But the cold was too intense to allow us to do so, for I am
convinced that at this great altitude the thermometer cannot have
marked less than fourteen or fifteen degrees below freezing point. What
such a temperature meant to us, enervated as we were by hardship, want
of food, and the great heat of the desert, the reader may imagine
better than I can describe. Suffice it to say that it was something as
near death from exposure as I have ever felt. There we sat hour after
hour through the still and bitter night, feeling the frost wander round
and nip us now in the finger, now in the foot, now in the face. In vain
did we huddle up closer and closer; there was no warmth in our
miserable starved carcases. Sometimes one of us would drop into an
uneasy slumber for a few minutes, but we could not sleep much, and
perhaps this was fortunate, for if we had I doubt if we should have
ever woke again. Indeed, I believe that it was only by force of will
that we kept ourselves alive at all.
Not very long before dawn I heard the Hottentot Ventvoegel, whose teeth
had been chattering all night like castanets, give a deep sigh. Then
his teeth stopped chattering. I did not think anything of it at the
time, concluding that he had gone to sleep. His back was resting
against mine, and it seemed to grow colder and colder, till at last it
felt like ice.
At length the air began to grow grey with light, then golden arrows
sped across the snow, and at last the glorious sun peeped above the
lava wall and looked in upon our half-frozen forms. Also it looked upon
Ventvoegel, sitting there amongst us, _stone dead_. No wonder his back
felt cold, poor fellow. He had died when I heard him sigh, and was now
frozen almost stiff. Shocked beyond measure, we dragged ourselves from
the corpse--how strange is that horror we mortals have of the
companionship of a dead body--and left it sitting there, its arms
clasped about its knees.
By this time the sunlight was pouring its cold rays, for here they were
cold, straight into the mouth of the cave. Suddenly I heard an
exclamation of fear from someone, and turned my head.
And this is what I saw: Sitting at the end of the cavern--it was not
more than twenty feet long--was another form, of which the head rested
on its chest and the long arms hung down. I stared at it, and saw that
this too was a _dead man_, and, what was more, a white man.
The others saw also, and the sight proved too much for our shattered
nerves. One and all we scrambled out of the cave as fast as our
half-frozen limbs would carry us.
| 3,724 | Chapter 6 | https://web.archive.org/web/20200804024551/https://www.gradesaver.com/king-solomons-mines/study-guide/summary-chapters-5-and-6 | Quatermain awakens two hours after falling into his miserable sleep. His body slightly refreshed, his thirst returns to the forefront of his thoughts. He recounts a dream of bathing in a stream surrounded by greenery, only to awaken to his present harsh reality. Already becoming desiccated from the dryness, Quatermain attempts to take his mind off of his suffering by reading, but only manages to frustrate himself further as he reads a passage detailing pure water. The others awaken and as a group assess their situation, as not a drop of water remains among them. In the midst of their collective despair, Ventvogel arises and begins searching the ground with his eyes. He stoops and cries out, pointing at something he sees: "Springbok spoor" he explains. Springboks do not go far from water. Heartened by this evidence of nearby water, the party marches in the direction of the alleged oasis on Silvestra's old map. Ventvogel claims he can smell water, but the others put no stock in his senses. As the sun arises, the travelers are able to see for the first time the reality of the Sulemin Mountains, "Sheba's Breasts" as described by old Silvestre. Though far away, the sight of the two mountains encourages the party as to the accuracy of Silvestre's account; furthermore, they can see snow atop the mountains and, while it is too far away to do them good at present, it promises a fresh supply of water should they make their way to the peaks. Nonetheless, the members of the expedition return to their burning thirst and call Ventvogel a fool for claiming to smell water nearby. Sir Henry suggests they might find water atop a nearby hill; despite the scorn of the others, Quatermain despairingly suggests they follow up on Sir Henry's hunch. Umbopa leads the way and finds a dirty pool of water atop the hill. The men drink their fill and moisten their dried skin in the pool, then refill their canteens for the journey ahead. They eat some of their rations for the first time in twenty-four hours and relax for a while. After resting all day in the shade of the hill, the expedition continues its terrible trek through the desert. They reach "Sheba's left breast" and begin to ascend the mountain. By this time their water supply is again nonexistent, which only adds to their frustration as the walking has become more difficult over the dried lava that covers the base of the dormant volcano. Umbopa discovers a source of temporary relief: a crop of wild melons, ripe and ready to eat. The men feast on the melons, but find them more refreshing to their thirst than to their hungry stomachs. They soon begin to believe they have escaped death by thirst only to die of hunger. Ventvogel spots a flock of birds , and Quatermain expertly shoots one from the sky. The men start a fire with dried melon stems and cook the bird for dinner. The party awaits the rising of the moon to continue their ascent, and does so refreshed but still somewhat hopeless. They see no further game and fewer melons, so food shortage again becomes a concern. They are also unable to determine why, with the snow above them on the volcanic mountain, there are no streams flowing down. Quatermain remarks on his fear of starvation in his journal, dated May 21-23. He resumes his narration of events on the 23rd, when they espy a dark hole in the snow far above them. Heading toward it, they ascertain it is the opening to a cave--the very cave mentioned by Silvestre. The men make for the cave and arrive just as the sun sets and plunges the mountain into darkness. In the cold and dark, the men huddle together in the cave for warmth. During the night Quatermain hears Ventvogel, who is sitting back-to-back with the elephant hunter, give a dismal sigh. He thinks nothing of it until the morning, when he discovers that Ventvogel has died in his sleep. The remaining men are saddened, but wish to leave the company of the dead man. The sun rises, lighting the cave and giving the men a view which terrifies them: at the end of the cave sits another dead man--a dead white man. They flee the cave in fear | The conflict between Quatermain's expectations of Zulu assistants and Umbopa's self-assured nature develops further in this chapter. When Umbopa addresses Sir Henry familiarly as "Incubu," Quatermain "asked him sharply what he meant by addressing his master in that familiar way" . Umbopa's laugh at Quatermain's rebuke only serves to anger the hunter; this anger is compounded when Umbopa tells Quatermain, "He is of a royal house...so, mayhap, am I. At least I am as great a man" . Nonetheless, Quatermain is impressed by Umbopa's demeanor and continues to translate his words to Sir Henry out of curiousity. Haggard here distances himself from Quatermain's racism by setting the character up to be wrong about Umbopa--his heritage will be revealed as royal indeed--thus calling into question Quatermain's prejudices. Nonetheless, even Haggard's expression of equanimity is tempered by the requirement that the African treated as equal to a white man be of noble heritage. The author also indulges in some humor at the expense of his protagonist. When the desert march has become harsh and wearying, all forms of wildlife are gone save for the occasional cobra and the numerous house flies. Quatermain says, "They came, 'not as single spies, but in battalsions,' as I think the Old Testament says somewhere" . Quatermain is clearly quoting Hamlet, but gets the citation wrong; thus Quatermain is revealed to be a man who has read more than his aforementioned two works, but who is also somewhat ignorant of his own Bible. The inadvertent placing of Shakespeare's greatest play on a par with Holy Scripture may also be a subtle dig at English attitudes toward their own culture. Haggard also engages in some convincing verisimilitude by listing the weapons and supplies the party gathers for their expedition--a list which spans several paragraphs . By giving such detail, and by further keeping account of the items which are used up, destroyed, or go missing, Haggard grounds his tale in solid reality. In her article "'As Europe is to Africa, So is Man to Woman': Gendering Landscape in Rider Haggard's Nada the Lily," Lindy Steibel notes, "It appears that unconsciously Haggard projected a good deal of his latent sexual desire and that of his age, which was one of determined public prudery, onto his feminized African landscapes" . It is difficult to contradict Steibel with Haggard's description of the mountains known as Sheba's Breasts: "Their bases swelled gently up from the plain, looking, at that distance, perfectly round and smooth; and on the top of each was a vast round hillock covered with snow, exactly corresponding to the nipple on the female breast" . Unconscious or not, Haggard certainly means to evoke the feminine form in his description of this landscape; Sheba's Breasts become the destination for the immediate leg of the journey, and the gateway into the unknown land of the Kukuanas; this latter bespeaks a connection between the feminine and the mysterious and hidden, here positively in contrast to the negative feminine mystique of Gagool later in the novel. Quatermain's insistent pessimism is brought to the fore in this chapter, as he expects to die of exposure long before their journey nears its goal. When Ventvogel claims to smell water, Quatermain replies, "No doubt it is in the coulds and about two months hence it will fall and wash our bones" . Quatermain's pessimism, here as elsewhere, is misplaced--the men do indeed find water and survive to carry on their expedition. Haggard pares the traveling party down further with the death of Ventvogel. The Hottentot's death by freezing serves to highlight the dangers in the journey--and to signify that not all dangers come from wild animals--and to deprive the group of their best tracker, thus making their situation more dire. Compounding this sense of dread is their discovery of the other dead body in the cave, the sight of which frightens all the men into a panic. To see the remnants of another traveler only heightens the party's fear of failing in their quest. | 725 | 688 | [
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28,054 | false | sparknotes | all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/43.txt | finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_9_part_2.txt | The Brothers Karamazov.book 7.chapter 2 | book 7, chapter 2 | null | {"name": "book 7, Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section10/", "summary": "An Opportune Moment Alyosha thinks bitterly about the degradation suffered by his beloved teacher after death. He struggles not to doubt God, but his faith in God's goodness is shaken. He simply cannot understand why a benevolent God would allow such a good man to come to such a vulgar end. Alyosha's snide friend, the seminary student Rakitin, sees Alyosha walking and teases him about his unhappiness. He offers Alyosha sausage and vodka, morsels that monks are forbidden to consume because it is Lent, and to his surprise, Alyosha accepts them. He then asks Alyosha if he would like to visit Grushenka, and Alyosha impulsively agrees", "analysis": ""} | Chapter II. A Critical Moment
Father Paissy, of course, was not wrong when he decided that his "dear
boy" would come back again. Perhaps indeed, to some extent, he penetrated
with insight into the true meaning of Alyosha's spiritual condition. Yet I
must frankly own that it would be very difficult for me to give a clear
account of that strange, vague moment in the life of the young hero I love
so much. To Father Paissy's sorrowful question, "Are you too with those of
little faith?" I could of course confidently answer for Alyosha, "No, he
is not with those of little faith. Quite the contrary." Indeed, all his
trouble came from the fact that he was of great faith. But still the
trouble was there and was so agonizing that even long afterwards Alyosha
thought of that sorrowful day as one of the bitterest and most fatal days
of his life. If the question is asked: "Could all his grief and
disturbance have been only due to the fact that his elder's body had shown
signs of premature decomposition instead of at once performing miracles?"
I must answer without beating about the bush, "Yes, it certainly was." I
would only beg the reader not to be in too great a hurry to laugh at my
young hero's pure heart. I am far from intending to apologize for him or
to justify his innocent faith on the ground of his youth, or the little
progress he had made in his studies, or any such reason. I must declare,
on the contrary, that I have genuine respect for the qualities of his
heart. No doubt a youth who received impressions cautiously, whose love
was lukewarm, and whose mind was too prudent for his age and so of little
value, such a young man might, I admit, have avoided what happened to my
hero. But in some cases it is really more creditable to be carried away by
an emotion, however unreasonable, which springs from a great love, than to
be unmoved. And this is even truer in youth, for a young man who is always
sensible is to be suspected and is of little worth--that's my opinion!
"But," reasonable people will exclaim perhaps, "every young man cannot
believe in such a superstition and your hero is no model for others."
To this I reply again, "Yes! my hero had faith, a faith holy and
steadfast, but still I am not going to apologize for him."
Though I declared above, and perhaps too hastily, that I should not
explain or justify my hero, I see that some explanation is necessary for
the understanding of the rest of my story. Let me say then, it was not a
question of miracles. There was no frivolous and impatient expectation of
miracles in his mind. And Alyosha needed no miracles at the time, for the
triumph of some preconceived idea--oh, no, not at all--what he saw before
all was one figure--the figure of his beloved elder, the figure of that
holy man whom he revered with such adoration. The fact is that all the
love that lay concealed in his pure young heart for every one and
everything had, for the past year, been concentrated--and perhaps wrongly
so--on one being, his beloved elder. It is true that being had for so long
been accepted by him as his ideal, that all his young strength and energy
could not but turn towards that ideal, even to the forgetting at the
moment "of every one and everything." He remembered afterwards how, on
that terrible day, he had entirely forgotten his brother Dmitri, about
whom he had been so anxious and troubled the day before; he had forgotten,
too, to take the two hundred roubles to Ilusha's father, though he had so
warmly intended to do so the preceding evening. But again it was not
miracles he needed but only "the higher justice" which had been in his
belief outraged by the blow that had so suddenly and cruelly wounded his
heart. And what does it signify that this "justice" looked for by Alyosha
inevitably took the shape of miracles to be wrought immediately by the
ashes of his adored teacher? Why, every one in the monastery cherished the
same thought and the same hope, even those whose intellects Alyosha
revered, Father Paissy himself, for instance. And so Alyosha, untroubled
by doubts, clothed his dreams too in the same form as all the rest. And a
whole year of life in the monastery had formed the habit of this
expectation in his heart. But it was justice, justice, he thirsted for,
not simply miracles.
And now the man who should, he believed, have been exalted above every one
in the whole world, that man, instead of receiving the glory that was his
due, was suddenly degraded and dishonored! What for? Who had judged him?
Who could have decreed this? Those were the questions that wrung his
inexperienced and virginal heart. He could not endure without
mortification, without resentment even, that the holiest of holy men
should have been exposed to the jeering and spiteful mockery of the
frivolous crowd so inferior to him. Even had there been no miracles, had
there been nothing marvelous to justify his hopes, why this indignity, why
this humiliation, why this premature decay, "in excess of nature," as the
spiteful monks said? Why this "sign from heaven," which they so
triumphantly acclaimed in company with Father Ferapont, and why did they
believe they had gained the right to acclaim it? Where is the finger of
Providence? Why did Providence hide its face "at the most critical moment"
(so Alyosha thought it), as though voluntarily submitting to the blind,
dumb, pitiless laws of nature?
That was why Alyosha's heart was bleeding, and, of course, as I have said
already, the sting of it all was that the man he loved above everything on
earth should be put to shame and humiliated! This murmuring may have been
shallow and unreasonable in my hero, but I repeat again for the third
time--and am prepared to admit that it might be difficult to defend my
feeling--I am glad that my hero showed himself not too reasonable at that
moment, for any man of sense will always come back to reason in time, but,
if love does not gain the upper hand in a boy's heart at such an
exceptional moment, when will it? I will not, however, omit to mention
something strange, which came for a time to the surface of Alyosha's mind
at this fatal and obscure moment. This new something was the harassing
impression left by the conversation with Ivan, which now persistently
haunted Alyosha's mind. At this moment it haunted him. Oh, it was not that
something of the fundamental, elemental, so to speak, faith of his soul
had been shaken. He loved his God and believed in Him steadfastly, though
he was suddenly murmuring against Him. Yet a vague but tormenting and evil
impression left by his conversation with Ivan the day before, suddenly
revived again now in his soul and seemed forcing its way to the surface of
his consciousness.
It had begun to get dusk when Rakitin, crossing the pine copse from the
hermitage to the monastery, suddenly noticed Alyosha, lying face downwards
on the ground under a tree, not moving and apparently asleep. He went up
and called him by his name.
"You here, Alexey? Can you have--" he began wondering but broke off. He had
meant to say, "Can you have come to this?"
Alyosha did not look at him, but from a slight movement Rakitin at once
saw that he heard and understood him.
"What's the matter?" he went on; but the surprise in his face gradually
passed into a smile that became more and more ironical.
"I say, I've been looking for you for the last two hours. You suddenly
disappeared. What are you about? What foolery is this? You might just look
at me..."
Alyosha raised his head, sat up and leaned his back against the tree. He
was not crying, but there was a look of suffering and irritability in his
face. He did not look at Rakitin, however, but looked away to one side of
him.
"Do you know your face is quite changed? There's none of your famous
mildness to be seen in it. Are you angry with some one? Have they been
ill-treating you?"
"Let me alone," said Alyosha suddenly, with a weary gesture of his hand,
still looking away from him.
"Oho! So that's how we are feeling! So you can shout at people like other
mortals. That is a come-down from the angels. I say, Alyosha, you have
surprised me, do you hear? I mean it. It's long since I've been surprised
at anything here. I always took you for an educated man...."
Alyosha at last looked at him, but vaguely, as though scarcely
understanding what he said.
"Can you really be so upset simply because your old man has begun to
stink? You don't mean to say you seriously believed that he was going to
work miracles?" exclaimed Rakitin, genuinely surprised again.
"I believed, I believe, I want to believe, and I will believe, what more
do you want?" cried Alyosha irritably.
"Nothing at all, my boy. Damn it all! why, no schoolboy of thirteen
believes in that now. But there.... So now you are in a temper with your
God, you are rebelling against Him; He hasn't given promotion, He hasn't
bestowed the order of merit! Eh, you are a set!"
Alyosha gazed a long while with his eyes half closed at Rakitin, and there
was a sudden gleam in his eyes ... but not of anger with Rakitin.
"I am not rebelling against my God; I simply 'don't accept His world.' "
Alyosha suddenly smiled a forced smile.
"How do you mean, you don't accept the world?" Rakitin thought a moment
over his answer. "What idiocy is this?"
Alyosha did not answer.
"Come, enough nonsense, now to business. Have you had anything to eat to-
day?"
"I don't remember.... I think I have."
"You need keeping up, to judge by your face. It makes one sorry to look at
you. You didn't sleep all night either, I hear, you had a meeting in
there. And then all this bobbery afterwards. Most likely you've had
nothing to eat but a mouthful of holy bread. I've got some sausage in my
pocket; I've brought it from the town in case of need, only you won't eat
sausage...."
"Give me some."
"I say! You are going it! Why, it's a regular mutiny, with barricades!
Well, my boy, we must make the most of it. Come to my place.... I
shouldn't mind a drop of vodka myself, I am tired to death. Vodka is going
too far for you, I suppose ... or would you like some?"
"Give me some vodka too."
"Hullo! You surprise me, brother!" Rakitin looked at him in amazement.
"Well, one way or another, vodka or sausage, this is a jolly fine chance
and mustn't be missed. Come along."
Alyosha got up in silence and followed Rakitin.
"If your little brother Ivan could see this--wouldn't he be surprised! By
the way, your brother Ivan set off to Moscow this morning, did you know?"
"Yes," answered Alyosha listlessly, and suddenly the image of his brother
Dmitri rose before his mind. But only for a minute, and though it reminded
him of something that must not be put off for a moment, some duty, some
terrible obligation, even that reminder made no impression on him, did not
reach his heart and instantly faded out of his mind and was forgotten.
But, a long while afterwards, Alyosha remembered this.
"Your brother Ivan declared once that I was a 'liberal booby with no
talents whatsoever.' Once you, too, could not resist letting me know I was
'dishonorable.' Well! I should like to see what your talents and sense of
honor will do for you now." This phrase Rakitin finished to himself in a
whisper.
"Listen!" he said aloud, "let's go by the path beyond the monastery
straight to the town. Hm! I ought to go to Madame Hohlakov's by the way.
Only fancy, I've written to tell her everything that happened, and would
you believe it, she answered me instantly in pencil (the lady has a
passion for writing notes) that 'she would never have expected _such
conduct_ from a man of such a reverend character as Father Zossima.' That
was her very word: 'conduct.' She is angry too. Eh, you are a set! Stay!"
he cried suddenly again. He suddenly stopped and taking Alyosha by the
shoulder made him stop too.
"Do you know, Alyosha," he peeped inquisitively into his eyes, absorbed in
a sudden new thought which had dawned on him, and though he was laughing
outwardly he was evidently afraid to utter that new idea aloud, so
difficult he still found it to believe in the strange and unexpected mood
in which he now saw Alyosha. "Alyosha, do you know where we had better
go?" he brought out at last timidly, and insinuatingly.
"I don't care ... where you like."
"Let's go to Grushenka, eh? Will you come?" pronounced Rakitin at last,
trembling with timid suspense.
"Let's go to Grushenka," Alyosha answered calmly, at once, and this prompt
and calm agreement was such a surprise to Rakitin that he almost started
back.
"Well! I say!" he cried in amazement, but seizing Alyosha firmly by the
arm he led him along the path, still dreading that he would change his
mind.
They walked along in silence, Rakitin was positively afraid to talk.
"And how glad she will be, how delighted!" he muttered, but lapsed into
silence again. And indeed it was not to please Grushenka he was taking
Alyosha to her. He was a practical person and never undertook anything
without a prospect of gain for himself. His object in this case was
twofold, first a revengeful desire to see "the downfall of the righteous,"
and Alyosha's fall "from the saints to the sinners," over which he was
already gloating in his imagination, and in the second place he had in
view a certain material gain for himself, of which more will be said
later.
"So the critical moment has come," he thought to himself with spiteful
glee, "and we shall catch it on the hop, for it's just what we want."
| 2,217 | book 7, Chapter 2 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section10/ | An Opportune Moment Alyosha thinks bitterly about the degradation suffered by his beloved teacher after death. He struggles not to doubt God, but his faith in God's goodness is shaken. He simply cannot understand why a benevolent God would allow such a good man to come to such a vulgar end. Alyosha's snide friend, the seminary student Rakitin, sees Alyosha walking and teases him about his unhappiness. He offers Alyosha sausage and vodka, morsels that monks are forbidden to consume because it is Lent, and to his surprise, Alyosha accepts them. He then asks Alyosha if he would like to visit Grushenka, and Alyosha impulsively agrees | null | 106 | 1 | [
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107 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/36.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Far from the Madding Crowd/section_35_part_0.txt | Far from the Madding Crowd.chapter 36 | chapter 36 | null | {"name": "Chapter 36", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-36", "summary": "Late August brought storm threats, and Oak worried for the eight exposed hayricks. Troy had designated the evening for the harvest supper and as Gabriel approached the barn, he heard music. The place was decorated with garlands, and fiddlers played for the dancing. The musicians asked Bathsheba to choose a tune. When she said it made no difference, they suggested \"The Soldier's joy.\" Flattered, Troy led the dance with her. He announced that he had left the army but would remain a soldier in spirit. Gabriel tried to warn Troy about the hay, but Troy brushed him aside, saying there would be no rain. Besides, this was the wedding feast. Everyone would be served an extra-strong drink, he said. Bathsheba protested that the men had had enough. Troy overruled her and dismissed the women. Furiously, Bathsheba left. For politeness's sake, Oak stayed a while. As he left, Troy cursed him for refusing a second round of grog. On the way home, Oak accidentally \"kicked something which felt and sounded soft, leathery, and distended, like a boxing-glove.\" It was a toad. \"Finding it uninjured, he placed it again among the grass.\" He knew this to be a warning of foul weather. Indoors, he found another warning: A garden slug had taken refuge in his home. He sat and thought for a while, finally deciding to rely on the instincts of the sheep. He found them \"crowded close together. . . . all grouped in such a way that their tails, without a single exception, were toward that half of the horizon from which the storm threatened.\" Gabriel, now certain there would be a storm, mentally calculated the potential loss of five wheat ricks and three of barley to be seven hundred and fifty pounds. Returning to the barn to get help to save Bathsheba such a great loss, he saw a peculiar spectacle. The entire male assemblage was sprawled grotesquely in every imaginable position. The central figure was the scarlet-coated sergeant. Oak realized he would have to work alone. He fetched the key to the granary from Tall's house; rushing back, he found sailcloth and tools. He covered all but two wheat ricks with the cloth, then thatched the barley.", "analysis": "Hardy's depiction of the portents of the approaching storm is yet another example of his closeness to nature. The contrasting pictures of the men before and after the revel are like a pair of companion canvases. Hardy uses his favorite motif of a red-clothed figure at the apex of the composition. In turn, these word paintings contrast with that of the struggling, solitary figure of Oak. Gabriel cannot be thought of as merely thrifty and practical: \"Such was the argument that Oak set outwardly before him. But man, even to himself is a palimpsest, having an ostensible writing, and another beneath the lines. It is possible that there was this golden legend under the utilitarian one: 'I will help to my last effort the woman I have loved so dearly.\"'"} |
WEALTH IN JEOPARDY--THE REVEL
One night, at the end of August, when Bathsheba's experiences as a
married woman were still new, and when the weather was yet dry and
sultry, a man stood motionless in the stockyard of Weatherbury Upper
Farm, looking at the moon and sky.
The night had a sinister aspect. A heated breeze from the south
slowly fanned the summits of lofty objects, and in the sky dashes
of buoyant cloud were sailing in a course at right angles to that
of another stratum, neither of them in the direction of the breeze
below. The moon, as seen through these films, had a lurid metallic
look. The fields were sallow with the impure light, and all were
tinged in monochrome, as if beheld through stained glass. The same
evening the sheep had trailed homeward head to tail, the behaviour of
the rooks had been confused, and the horses had moved with timidity
and caution.
Thunder was imminent, and, taking some secondary appearances into
consideration, it was likely to be followed by one of the lengthened
rains which mark the close of dry weather for the season. Before
twelve hours had passed a harvest atmosphere would be a bygone thing.
Oak gazed with misgiving at eight naked and unprotected ricks,
massive and heavy with the rich produce of one-half the farm for
that year. He went on to the barn.
This was the night which had been selected by Sergeant Troy--ruling
now in the room of his wife--for giving the harvest supper and dance.
As Oak approached the building the sound of violins and a tambourine,
and the regular jigging of many feet, grew more distinct. He came
close to the large doors, one of which stood slightly ajar, and
looked in.
The central space, together with the recess at one end, was emptied
of all incumbrances, and this area, covering about two-thirds of
the whole, was appropriated for the gathering, the remaining end,
which was piled to the ceiling with oats, being screened off with
sail-cloth. Tufts and garlands of green foliage decorated the walls,
beams, and extemporized chandeliers, and immediately opposite to Oak
a rostrum had been erected, bearing a table and chairs. Here sat
three fiddlers, and beside them stood a frantic man with his hair
on end, perspiration streaming down his cheeks, and a tambourine
quivering in his hand.
The dance ended, and on the black oak floor in the midst a new row of
couples formed for another.
"Now, ma'am, and no offence I hope, I ask what dance you would like
next?" said the first violin.
"Really, it makes no difference," said the clear voice of Bathsheba,
who stood at the inner end of the building, observing the scene from
behind a table covered with cups and viands. Troy was lolling beside
her.
"Then," said the fiddler, "I'll venture to name that the right and
proper thing is 'The Soldier's Joy'--there being a gallant soldier
married into the farm--hey, my sonnies, and gentlemen all?"
"It shall be 'The Soldier's Joy,'" exclaimed a chorus.
"Thanks for the compliment," said the sergeant gaily, taking
Bathsheba by the hand and leading her to the top of the dance. "For
though I have purchased my discharge from Her Most Gracious Majesty's
regiment of cavalry the 11th Dragoon Guards, to attend to the new
duties awaiting me here, I shall continue a soldier in spirit and
feeling as long as I live."
So the dance began. As to the merits of "The Soldier's Joy," there
cannot be, and never were, two opinions. It has been observed in the
musical circles of Weatherbury and its vicinity that this melody, at
the end of three-quarters of an hour of thunderous footing, still
possesses more stimulative properties for the heel and toe than the
majority of other dances at their first opening. "The Soldier's Joy"
has, too, an additional charm, in being so admirably adapted to the
tambourine aforesaid--no mean instrument in the hands of a performer
who understands the proper convulsions, spasms, St. Vitus's dances,
and fearful frenzies necessary when exhibiting its tones in their
highest perfection.
The immortal tune ended, a fine DD rolling forth from the bass-viol
with the sonorousness of a cannonade, and Gabriel delayed his entry
no longer. He avoided Bathsheba, and got as near as possible
to the platform, where Sergeant Troy was now seated, drinking
brandy-and-water, though the others drank without exception cider and
ale. Gabriel could not easily thrust himself within speaking distance
of the sergeant, and he sent a message, asking him to come down for a
moment. The sergeant said he could not attend.
"Will you tell him, then," said Gabriel, "that I only stepped ath'art
to say that a heavy rain is sure to fall soon, and that something
should be done to protect the ricks?"
"Mr. Troy says it will not rain," returned the messenger, "and he
cannot stop to talk to you about such fidgets."
In juxtaposition with Troy, Oak had a melancholy tendency to look
like a candle beside gas, and ill at ease, he went out again,
thinking he would go home; for, under the circumstances, he had no
heart for the scene in the barn. At the door he paused for a moment:
Troy was speaking.
"Friends, it is not only the harvest home that we are celebrating
to-night; but this is also a Wedding Feast. A short time ago I had
the happiness to lead to the altar this lady, your mistress, and not
until now have we been able to give any public flourish to the event
in Weatherbury. That it may be thoroughly well done, and that every
man may go happy to bed, I have ordered to be brought here some
bottles of brandy and kettles of hot water. A treble-strong goblet
will be handed round to each guest."
Bathsheba put her hand upon his arm, and, with upturned pale face,
said imploringly, "No--don't give it to them--pray don't, Frank! It
will only do them harm: they have had enough of everything."
"True--we don't wish for no more, thank ye," said one or two.
"Pooh!" said the sergeant contemptuously, and raised his voice as
if lighted up by a new idea. "Friends," he said, "we'll send the
women-folk home! 'Tis time they were in bed. Then we cockbirds will
have a jolly carouse to ourselves! If any of the men show the white
feather, let them look elsewhere for a winter's work."
Bathsheba indignantly left the barn, followed by all the women and
children. The musicians, not looking upon themselves as "company,"
slipped quietly away to their spring waggon and put in the horse.
Thus Troy and the men on the farm were left sole occupants of the
place. Oak, not to appear unnecessarily disagreeable, stayed a
little while; then he, too, arose and quietly took his departure,
followed by a friendly oath from the sergeant for not staying to a
second round of grog.
Gabriel proceeded towards his home. In approaching the door, his
toe kicked something which felt and sounded soft, leathery, and
distended, like a boxing-glove. It was a large toad humbly
travelling across the path. Oak took it up, thinking it might be
better to kill the creature to save it from pain; but finding it
uninjured, he placed it again among the grass. He knew what this
direct message from the Great Mother meant. And soon came another.
When he struck a light indoors there appeared upon the table a thin
glistening streak, as if a brush of varnish had been lightly dragged
across it. Oak's eyes followed the serpentine sheen to the other
side, where it led up to a huge brown garden-slug, which had come
indoors to-night for reasons of its own. It was Nature's second way
of hinting to him that he was to prepare for foul weather.
Oak sat down meditating for nearly an hour. During this time two
black spiders, of the kind common in thatched houses, promenaded the
ceiling, ultimately dropping to the floor. This reminded him that
if there was one class of manifestation on this matter that he
thoroughly understood, it was the instincts of sheep. He left the
room, ran across two or three fields towards the flock, got upon a
hedge, and looked over among them.
They were crowded close together on the other side around some furze
bushes, and the first peculiarity observable was that, on the sudden
appearance of Oak's head over the fence, they did not stir or run
away. They had now a terror of something greater than their terror
of man. But this was not the most noteworthy feature: they were all
grouped in such a way that their tails, without a single exception,
were towards that half of the horizon from which the storm
threatened. There was an inner circle closely huddled, and outside
these they radiated wider apart, the pattern formed by the flock as a
whole not being unlike a vandyked lace collar, to which the clump of
furze-bushes stood in the position of a wearer's neck.
This was enough to re-establish him in his original opinion. He knew
now that he was right, and that Troy was wrong. Every voice in nature
was unanimous in bespeaking change. But two distinct translations
attached to these dumb expressions. Apparently there was to be a
thunder-storm, and afterwards a cold continuous rain. The creeping
things seemed to know all about the later rain, but little of the
interpolated thunder-storm; whilst the sheep knew all about the
thunder-storm and nothing of the later rain.
This complication of weathers being uncommon, was all the more to be
feared. Oak returned to the stack-yard. All was silent here, and
the conical tips of the ricks jutted darkly into the sky. There were
five wheat-ricks in this yard, and three stacks of barley. The wheat
when threshed would average about thirty quarters to each stack; the
barley, at least forty. Their value to Bathsheba, and indeed to
anybody, Oak mentally estimated by the following simple
calculation:--
5 x 30 = 150 quarters = 500 L.
3 x 40 = 120 quarters = 250 L.
-------
Total . . 750 L.
Seven hundred and fifty pounds in the divinest form that money can
wear--that of necessary food for man and beast: should the risk be
run of deteriorating this bulk of corn to less than half its value,
because of the instability of a woman? "Never, if I can prevent it!"
said Gabriel.
Such was the argument that Oak set outwardly before him. But man,
even to himself, is a palimpsest, having an ostensible writing, and
another beneath the lines. It is possible that there was this golden
legend under the utilitarian one: "I will help to my last effort the
woman I have loved so dearly."
He went back to the barn to endeavour to obtain assistance for
covering the ricks that very night. All was silent within, and he
would have passed on in the belief that the party had broken up, had
not a dim light, yellow as saffron by contrast with the greenish
whiteness outside, streamed through a knot-hole in the folding doors.
Gabriel looked in. An unusual picture met his eye.
The candles suspended among the evergreens had burnt down to their
sockets, and in some cases the leaves tied about them were scorched.
Many of the lights had quite gone out, others smoked and stank,
grease dropping from them upon the floor. Here, under the table, and
leaning against forms and chairs in every conceivable attitude except
the perpendicular, were the wretched persons of all the work-folk,
the hair of their heads at such low levels being suggestive of mops
and brooms. In the midst of these shone red and distinct the figure
of Sergeant Troy, leaning back in a chair. Coggan was on his back,
with his mouth open, huzzing forth snores, as were several others;
the united breathings of the horizonal assemblage forming a subdued
roar like London from a distance. Joseph Poorgrass was curled round
in the fashion of a hedge-hog, apparently in attempts to present the
least possible portion of his surface to the air; and behind him
was dimly visible an unimportant remnant of William Smallbury.
The glasses and cups still stood upon the table, a water-jug being
overturned, from which a small rill, after tracing its course with
marvellous precision down the centre of the long table, fell into the
neck of the unconscious Mark Clark, in a steady, monotonous drip,
like the dripping of a stalactite in a cave.
Gabriel glanced hopelessly at the group, which, with one or two
exceptions, composed all the able-bodied men upon the farm. He saw
at once that if the ricks were to be saved that night, or even the
next morning, he must save them with his own hands.
A faint "ting-ting" resounded from under Coggan's waistcoat. It was
Coggan's watch striking the hour of two.
Oak went to the recumbent form of Matthew Moon, who usually undertook
the rough thatching of the home-stead, and shook him. The shaking
was without effect.
Gabriel shouted in his ear, "where's your thatching-beetle and
rick-stick and spars?"
"Under the staddles," said Moon, mechanically, with the unconscious
promptness of a medium.
Gabriel let go his head, and it dropped upon the floor like a bowl.
He then went to Susan Tall's husband.
"Where's the key of the granary?"
No answer. The question was repeated, with the same result. To be
shouted to at night was evidently less of a novelty to Susan Tall's
husband than to Matthew Moon. Oak flung down Tall's head into the
corner again and turned away.
To be just, the men were not greatly to blame for this painful and
demoralizing termination to the evening's entertainment. Sergeant
Troy had so strenuously insisted, glass in hand, that drinking should
be the bond of their union, that those who wished to refuse hardly
liked to be so unmannerly under the circumstances. Having from their
youth up been entirely unaccustomed to any liquor stronger than cider
or mild ale, it was no wonder that they had succumbed, one and all,
with extraordinary uniformity, after the lapse of about an hour.
Gabriel was greatly depressed. This debauch boded ill for that
wilful and fascinating mistress whom the faithful man even now felt
within him as the embodiment of all that was sweet and bright and
hopeless.
He put out the expiring lights, that the barn might not be
endangered, closed the door upon the men in their deep and oblivious
sleep, and went again into the lone night. A hot breeze, as if
breathed from the parted lips of some dragon about to swallow the
globe, fanned him from the south, while directly opposite in the
north rose a grim misshapen body of cloud, in the very teeth of the
wind. So unnaturally did it rise that one could fancy it to be
lifted by machinery from below. Meanwhile the faint cloudlets had
flown back into the south-east corner of the sky, as if in terror of
the large cloud, like a young brood gazed in upon by some monster.
Going on to the village, Oak flung a small stone against the window
of Laban Tall's bedroom, expecting Susan to open it; but nobody
stirred. He went round to the back door, which had been left
unfastened for Laban's entry, and passed in to the foot of the
staircase.
"Mrs. Tall, I've come for the key of the granary, to get at the
rick-cloths," said Oak, in a stentorian voice.
"Is that you?" said Mrs. Susan Tall, half awake.
"Yes," said Gabriel.
"Come along to bed, do, you drawlatching rogue--keeping a body awake
like this!"
"It isn't Laban--'tis Gabriel Oak. I want the key of the granary."
"Gabriel! What in the name of fortune did you pretend to be Laban
for?"
"I didn't. I thought you meant--"
"Yes you did! What do you want here?"
"The key of the granary."
"Take it then. 'Tis on the nail. People coming disturbing women at
this time of night ought--"
Gabriel took the key, without waiting to hear the conclusion of the
tirade. Ten minutes later his lonely figure might have been seen
dragging four large water-proof coverings across the yard, and soon
two of these heaps of treasure in grain were covered snug--two cloths
to each. Two hundred pounds were secured. Three wheat-stacks
remained open, and there were no more cloths. Oak looked under the
staddles and found a fork. He mounted the third pile of wealth and
began operating, adopting the plan of sloping the upper sheaves one
over the other; and, in addition, filling the interstices with the
material of some untied sheaves.
So far all was well. By this hurried contrivance Bathsheba's
property in wheat was safe for at any rate a week or two, provided
always that there was not much wind.
Next came the barley. This it was only possible to protect by
systematic thatching. Time went on, and the moon vanished not to
reappear. It was the farewell of the ambassador previous to war.
The night had a haggard look, like a sick thing; and there came
finally an utter expiration of air from the whole heaven in the form
of a slow breeze, which might have been likened to a death. And now
nothing was heard in the yard but the dull thuds of the beetle which
drove in the spars, and the rustle of thatch in the intervals.
| 2,805 | Chapter 36 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-36 | Late August brought storm threats, and Oak worried for the eight exposed hayricks. Troy had designated the evening for the harvest supper and as Gabriel approached the barn, he heard music. The place was decorated with garlands, and fiddlers played for the dancing. The musicians asked Bathsheba to choose a tune. When she said it made no difference, they suggested "The Soldier's joy." Flattered, Troy led the dance with her. He announced that he had left the army but would remain a soldier in spirit. Gabriel tried to warn Troy about the hay, but Troy brushed him aside, saying there would be no rain. Besides, this was the wedding feast. Everyone would be served an extra-strong drink, he said. Bathsheba protested that the men had had enough. Troy overruled her and dismissed the women. Furiously, Bathsheba left. For politeness's sake, Oak stayed a while. As he left, Troy cursed him for refusing a second round of grog. On the way home, Oak accidentally "kicked something which felt and sounded soft, leathery, and distended, like a boxing-glove." It was a toad. "Finding it uninjured, he placed it again among the grass." He knew this to be a warning of foul weather. Indoors, he found another warning: A garden slug had taken refuge in his home. He sat and thought for a while, finally deciding to rely on the instincts of the sheep. He found them "crowded close together. . . . all grouped in such a way that their tails, without a single exception, were toward that half of the horizon from which the storm threatened." Gabriel, now certain there would be a storm, mentally calculated the potential loss of five wheat ricks and three of barley to be seven hundred and fifty pounds. Returning to the barn to get help to save Bathsheba such a great loss, he saw a peculiar spectacle. The entire male assemblage was sprawled grotesquely in every imaginable position. The central figure was the scarlet-coated sergeant. Oak realized he would have to work alone. He fetched the key to the granary from Tall's house; rushing back, he found sailcloth and tools. He covered all but two wheat ricks with the cloth, then thatched the barley. | Hardy's depiction of the portents of the approaching storm is yet another example of his closeness to nature. The contrasting pictures of the men before and after the revel are like a pair of companion canvases. Hardy uses his favorite motif of a red-clothed figure at the apex of the composition. In turn, these word paintings contrast with that of the struggling, solitary figure of Oak. Gabriel cannot be thought of as merely thrifty and practical: "Such was the argument that Oak set outwardly before him. But man, even to himself is a palimpsest, having an ostensible writing, and another beneath the lines. It is possible that there was this golden legend under the utilitarian one: 'I will help to my last effort the woman I have loved so dearly."' | 369 | 130 | [
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23,046 | false | sparknotes | all_chapterized_books/23046-chapters/act_2_chapter_2_act_3_chapter_1.txt | finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Comedy of Errors/section_2_part_0.txt | The Comedy of Errors.act ii.scene i | act ii, scene ii; act iii, scene i | null | {"name": "Act II, scene ii; Act III, scene i", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210224233119/https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/errors/section3/", "summary": "Antipholus of Syracuse goes to the inn and finds that his slave did, in fact, bring his money and luggage safely there. Confused, he wanders the city until he encounters Dromio of Syracuse--his Dromio--who, of course, has no memory of telling him to come home to dinner or anything else from Antipholus' earlier conversation with Dromio of Ephesus. Antipholus grows angry with him, but the slave manages to defuse his anger through a long, involved joke about baldness. While the master and slave converse and jest, Adriana and Luciana come upon them, mistaking them for Antipholus of Ephesus and his Dromio. Adriana immediately accuses the man she believes to be her husband of infidelity and rebukes him for violating his own promise of love and their marriage bed. Antipholus, confused, says that he has never met her, which only makes Adriana more furious. She insists on dragging her perplexed \"husband\" home to dinner, bringing Dromio with them, and the confused Antipholus decides to play along until he understands the situation better. They go into Antipholus of Ephesus' house, and Dromio is left below to guard the door during dinner. /PARAGRAPH While his double is upstairs eating, Antipholus of Ephesus returns from the marketplace, accompanied by Dromio of Ephesus, Angelo the goldsmith, and Balthasar the merchant. He asks his fellow businessmen to give Adriana an excuse for his tardiness and then mentions that his slave is behaving oddly. When he knocks at the gate, however, Dromio of Syracuse refuses to let the company in. Antipholus pounds and shouts furiously, bringing Luce, his maid to the door, and then Adriana-- but since both believe that Antipholus is already inside, they refuse to admit him. In a rage, Antipholus is about to break down the door when Balthasar dissuades him, telling him that doing so will reflect badly on his wife's honor and that Adriana must have a good reason for keeping him out. Still seething, Antipholus leads his friends away, resolving to dine with a Courtesan at her house, the Porpentine. He asks Angelo to go fetch a gold chain, recently made, that he had promised to his wife; Antipholus now plans to present it to the Courtesan instead. Act II, scene ii; Act III,", "analysis": "Commentary The conversation between the Syracusan Antipholus and his Dromio is illustrative of their relationship--what begins with anger and threatened blows is quickly turned to laughter by Dromio's artful sense of humor. This will contrast sharply with the behavior of the other Antipholus, who comes across as a humorless, angry master, unlikely to joke around with his slave. , a new love , and a valuable gold chain, while the unlucky brother is locked out of his house, accused of being mad, and eventually imprisoned, none of which are conductive to a good humor.) The sympathy that the audience feels for Antipholus of Syracuse is further enhanced by his willingness to go along with what seems to him to be nonsense--namely, Adriana's demand that he return to \"their home\" for dinner. Despite his earlier, somewhat fearful reference to Ephesus' reputation for witchcraft, he willingly takes up the peculiar adventure offered by the women, declaring that \"I'll entertain the offered fallacy\", and later \"I'll say as they say, and persevere so, / and in this mist at all adventures go .\" This openness to adventure is characteristic of a comic hero, and it will be amply rewarded at the play's end. The exchange across the barred door between Antipholus of Ephesus and those inside his house is played for laughs, of course, but it can be argued that there is more going on than simple confusion. Antipholus of Syracuse may be only given dinner by his \"wife,\" but there are hints of a sexual element in the confusion--that Adriana may offer her \"husband\" more than food. Balthasar urges Antipholus of Ephesus not to break down the door because that would lead to gossip and ruin the reputation of his wife, but the Ephesian Antipholus seems to assume that there is something sexual going on inside, and his quick decision to dine at the house of the Courtesan suggests that he plans to revenge what he perceives as his wife's infidelity with infidelity of his own. Whether his jealousy is justified is a matter for interpretation--most critics see Adriana as innocent of adultery with her husband's twin, but others believe that Shakespeare is implying a strong sexual element in the dinner."} | SCENE II.
A public place._
_Enter _ANTIPHOLUS of Syracuse_._
_Ant. S._ The gold I gave to Dromio is laid up
Safe at the Centaur; and the heedful slave
Is wander'd forth, in care to seek me out
By computation and mine host's report.
I could not speak with Dromio since at first 5
I sent him from the mart. See, here he comes.
_Enter _DROMIO of Syracuse_._
How now, sir! is your merry humour alter'd?
As you love strokes, so jest with me again.
You know no Centaur? you receiv'd no gold?
Your mistress sent to have me home to dinner? 10
My house was at the Phoenix? Wast thou mad,
That thus so madly thou didst answer me?
_Dro. S._ What answer, sir? when spake I such a word?
_Ant. S._ Even now, even here, not half an hour since.
_Dro. S._ I did not see you since you sent me hence, 15
Home to the Centaur, with the gold you gave me.
_Ant. S._ Villain, thou didst deny the gold's receipt,
And told'st me of a mistress and a dinner;
For which, I hope, thou felt'st I was displeased.
_Dro. S._ I am glad to see you in this merry vein: 20
What means this jest? I pray you, master, tell me.
_Ant. S._ Yea, dost thou jeer and flout me in the teeth?
Think'st thou I jest? Hold, take thou that, and that.
[_Beating him._
_Dro. S._ Hold, sir, for God's sake! now your jest is earnest:
Upon what bargain do you give it me? 25
_Ant. S._ Because that I familiarly sometimes
Do use you for my fool, and chat with you,
Your sauciness will jest upon my love,
And make a common of my serious hours.
When the sun shines let foolish gnats make sport, 30
But creep in crannies when he hides his beams.
If you will jest with me, know my aspect,
And fashion your demeanour to my looks,
Or I will beat this method in your sconce.
_Dro. S._ Sconce call you it? so you would leave battering, 35
I had rather have it a head: an you use these blows
long, I must get a sconce for my head, and insconce it
too; or else I shall seek my wit in my shoulders. But,
I pray, sir, why am I beaten?
_Ant. S._ Dost thou not know? 40
_Dro. S._ Nothing, sir, but that I am beaten.
_Ant. S._ Shall I tell you why?
_Dro. S._ Ay, sir, and wherefore; for they say every
why hath a wherefore.
_Ant. S._ Why, first,--for flouting me; and then, wherefore,-- 45
For urging it the second time to me.
_Dro. S._ Was there ever any man thus beaten out of season,
When in the why and the wherefore is neither rhyme nor reason?
Well, sir, I thank you.
_Ant. S._ Thank me, sir! for what? 50
_Dro. S._ Marry, sir, for this something that you gave
me for nothing.
_Ant. S._ I'll make you amends next, to give you nothing
for something. But say, sir, is it dinner-time?
_Dro. S._ No, sir: I think the meat wants that I have. 55
_Ant. S._ In good time, sir; what's that?
_Dro. S._ Basting.
_Ant. S._ Well, sir, then 'twill be dry.
_Dro. S._ If it be, sir, I pray you, eat none of it.
_Ant. S._ Your reason? 60
_Dro. S._ Lest it make you choleric, and purchase me
another dry basting.
_Ant. S._ Well, sir, learn to jest in good time: there's a
time for all things.
_Dro. S._ I durst have denied that, before you were so 65
choleric.
_Ant. S._ By what rule, sir?
_Dro. S._ Marry, sir, by a rule as plain as the plain bald
pate of father Time himself.
_Ant. S._ Let's hear it. 70
_Dro. S._ There's no time for a man to recover his hair
that grows bald by nature.
_Ant. S._ May he not do it by fine and recovery?
_Dro. S._ Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig, and recover
the lost hair of another man. 75
_Ant. S._ Why is Time such a niggard of hair, being, as
it is, so plentiful an excrement?
_Dro. S._ Because it is a blessing that he bestows on
beasts: and what he hath scanted men in hair, he hath
given them in wit. 80
_Ant. S._ Why, but there's many a man hath more hair
than wit.
_Dro. S._ Not a man of those but he hath the wit to
lose his hair.
_Ant. S._ Why, thou didst conclude hairy men plain 85
dealers without wit.
_Dro. S._ The plainer dealer, the sooner lost: yet he
loseth it in a kind of jollity.
_Ant. S._ For what reason?
_Dro. S._ For two; and sound ones too. 90
_Ant. S._ Nay, not sound, I pray you.
_Dro. S._ Sure ones, then.
_Ant. S._ Nay, not sure, in a thing falsing.
_Dro. S._ Certain ones, then.
_Ant. S._ Name them. 95
_Dro. S._ The one, to save the money that he spends in
trimming; the other, that at dinner they should not drop
in his porridge.
_Ant. S._ You would all this time have proved there is
no time for all things. 100
_Dro. S._ Marry, and did, sir; namely, no time to recover
hair lost by nature.
_Ant. S._ But your reason was not substantial, why
there is no time to recover.
_Dro. S._ Thus I mend it: Time himself is bald, and 105
therefore to the world's end will have bald followers.
_Ant. S._ I knew 'twould be a bald conclusion:
But, soft! who wafts us yonder?
_Enter ADRIANA and LUCIANA._
_Adr._ Ay, ay, Antipholus, look strange and frown:
Some other mistress hath thy sweet aspects; 110
I am not Adriana nor thy wife.
The time was once when thou unurged wouldst vow
That never words were music to thine ear,
That never object pleasing in thine eye,
That never touch well welcome to thy hand, 115
That never meat sweet-savour'd in thy taste,
Unless I spake, or look'd, or touch'd, or carved to thee.
How comes it now, my husband, O, how comes it,
That thou art then estranged from thyself?
Thyself I call it, being strange to me, 120
That, undividable, incorporate,
Am better than thy dear self's better part.
Ah, do not tear away thyself from me!
For know, my love, as easy mayst thou fall
A drop of water in the breaking gulf, 125
And take unmingled thence that drop again,
Without addition or diminishing,
As take from me thyself, and not me too.
How dearly would it touch thee to the quick,
Shouldst thou but hear I were licentious, 130
And that this body, consecrate to thee,
By ruffian lust should be contaminate!
Wouldst thou not spit at me and spurn at me,
And hurl the name of husband in my face,
And tear the stain'd skin off my harlot-brow, 135
And from my false hand cut the wedding-ring,
And break it with a deep-divorcing vow?
I know thou canst; and therefore see thou do it.
I am possess'd with an adulterate blot;
My blood is mingled with the crime of lust: 140
For if we two be one, and thou play false,
I do digest the poison of thy flesh,
Being strumpeted by thy contagion.
Keep, then, fair league and truce with thy true bed;
I live distain'd, thou undishonoured. 145
_Ant. S._ Plead you to me, fair dame? I know you not:
In Ephesus I am but two hours old,
As strange unto your town as to your talk;
Who, every word by all my wit being scann'd,
Wants wit in all one word to understand. 150
_Luc._ Fie, brother! how the world is changed with you!
When were you wont to use my sister thus?
She sent for you by Dromio home to dinner.
_Ant. S._ By Dromio?
_Dro. S._ By me? 155
_Adr._ By thee; and this thou didst return from him,
That he did buffet thee, and, in his blows,
Denied my house for his, me for his wife.
_Ant. S._ Did you converse, sir, with this gentlewoman?
What is the course and drift of your compact? 160
_Dro. S._ I, sir? I never saw her till this time.
_Ant. S._ Villain, thou liest; for even her very words
Didst thou deliver to me on the mart.
_Dro. S._ I never spake with her in all my life.
_Ant. S._ How can she thus, then, call us by our names, 165
Unless it be by inspiration.
_Adr._ How ill agrees it with your gravity
To counterfeit thus grossly with your slave,
Abetting him to thwart me in my mood!
Be it my wrong you are from me exempt, 170
But wrong not that wrong with a more contempt.
Come, I will fasten on this sleeve of thine:
Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine,
Whose weakness, married to thy stronger state,
Makes me with thy strength to communicate: 175
If aught possess thee from me, it is dross,
Usurping ivy, brier, or idle moss;
Who, all for want of pruning, with intrusion
Infect thy sap, and live on thy confusion.
_Ant. S._ To me she speaks; she moves me for her theme: 180
What, was I married to her in my dream?
Or sleep I now, and think I hear all this?
What error drives our eyes and ears amiss?
Until I know this sure uncertainty,
I'll entertain the offer'd fallacy. 185
_Luc._ Dromio, go bid the servants spread for dinner.
_Dro. S._ O, for my beads! I cross me for a sinner.
This is the fairy land;--O spite of spites!
We talk with goblins, owls, and sprites:
If we obey them not, this will ensue, 190
They'll suck our breath, or pinch us black and blue.
_Luc._ Why pratest thou to thyself, and answer'st not?
Dromio, thou drone, thou snail, thou slug, thou sot!
_Dro. S._ I am transformed, master, am I not?
_Ant. S._ I think thou art in mind, and so am I. 195
_Dro. S._ Nay, master, both in mind and in my shape.
_Ant. S._ Thou hast thine own form.
_Dro. S._ No, I am an ape.
_Luc._ If thou art chang'd to aught, 'tis to an ass.
_Dro. S._ 'Tis true; she rides me, and I long for grass.
'Tis so, I am an ass; else it could never be 200
But I should know her as well as she knows me.
_Adr._ Come, come, no longer will I be a fool,
To put the finger in the eye and weep,
Whilst man and master laughs my woes to scorn.
Come, sir, to dinner. Dromio, keep the gate. 205
Husband, I'll dine above with you to-day,
And shrive you of a thousand idle pranks.
Sirrah, if any ask you for your master,
Say he dines forth, and let no creature enter.
Come, sister. Dromio, play the porter well. 210
_Ant. S._ Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell?
Sleeping or waking? mad or well-advised?
Known unto these, and to myself disguised!
I'll say as they say, and persever so,
And in this mist at all adventures go. 215
_Dro. S._ Master, shall I be porter at the gate?
_Adr._ Ay; and let none enter, lest I break your pate.
_Luc._ Come, come, Antipholus, we dine too late.
[_Exeunt._
NOTES: II, 2.
SCENE II.] Capell. SCENE IV. Pope.
A public place.] Capell. A street. Pope.
3, 4, 5: _out By ... report. I_] F1 F2 F3. _out By ... report, I_ F4.
_out. By ... report, I_ Rowe.
12: _didst_] _did didst_ F1.
23: Beating him] Beats Dro. Ff.
28: _jest_] _jet_ Dyce.
29: _common_] _comedy_ Hanmer.
35-107: Pope marks as spurious.
38: _else_] om. Capell.
45: _Why, first_] _First, why_ Capell.
53: _next, to_] _next time,_ Capell conj.
_to_] _and_ Collier MS.
59: _none_] F1. _not_ F2 F3 F4.
76: _hair_] _hair to men_ Capell.
79: _men_] Pope, ed. 2 (Theobald). _them_ Ff.
91: _sound_] F1. _sound ones_ F2 F3 F4.
93: _falsing_] _falling_ Heath conj.
97: _trimming_] Rowe. _trying_ Ff. _tyring_ Pope. _'tiring_ Collier.
101: _no time_] F2 F3 F4. _in no time_ F1. _e'en no time_ Collier
(Malone conj.).
110: _thy_] F1. _some_ F2 F3 F4.
111: _not ... nor_] _but ... and_ Capell conj.
112: _unurged_] _unurg'dst_ Pope.
117: _or look'd, or_] _look'd,_ Steevens.
_to thee_] om. Pope. _thee_ S. Walker conj.
119: _then_] _thus_ Rowe.
130: _but_] F1. om. F2 F3 F4.
135: _off_] Hanmer. _of_ Ff.
138: _canst_] _wouldst_ Hanmer.
140: _crime_] _grime_ Warburton.
142: _thy_] F1. _my_ F2 F3 F4.
143: _contagion_] _catagion_ F4.
145: _distain'd_] _unstain'd_ Hanmer (Theobald conj.).
_dis-stain'd_ Theobald. _distained_ Heath conj.
_undishonoured_] _dishonoured_ Heath conj.
149, 150: Marked as spurious by Pope.
_Who, ... Wants_] _Whose every ..., Want_ Becket conj.
150: _Wants_] Ff. _Want_ Johnson.
155: _By me?_] Pope. _By me._ Ff.
156: _this_] F1, Capell. _thus_ F2 F3 F4.
167: _your_] _you_ F2.
174: _stronger_] F4. _stranger_ F1 F2 F3.
180-185: Marked 'aside' by Capell.
180: _moves_] _means_ Collier MS.
183: _drives_] _draws_ Collier MS.
184: _sure uncertainty_] _sure: uncertainly_ Becket conj.
185: _offer'd_] Capell. _free'd_ Ff. _favour'd_ Pope.
_proffered_ Collier MS.
187-201: Marked as spurious by Pope.
189: _talk_] _walk and talk_ Anon. conj.
_goblins_] _ghosts and goblins_ Lettsom conj.
_owls_] _ouphs_ Theobald.
_sprites_] F1. _elves sprites_ F2 F3 F4. _elvish sprites_
Rowe (ed. 2). _elves and sprites_ Collier MS.
191: _or_] _and_ Theobald.
192: _and answer'st not?_] F1. om. F2 F3 F4.
193: _Dromio, thou drone, thou snail_] Theobald.
_Dromio, thou Dromio, thou snaile_ F1.
_Dromio, thou Dromio, snaile_ F2 F3 F4.
194: _am I not?_] Ff. _am not I?_ Theobald.
203: _the eye_] _thy eye_ F2 F3.
204: _laughs_] Ff. _laugh_ Pope.
211-215: Marked as 'aside' by Capell.
ACT III. _SCENE I.
Before the house of _ANTIPHOLUS of Ephesus_._
_Enter _ANTIPHOLUS of Ephesus_, _DROMIO of Ephesus_, ANGELO,
and BALTHAZAR._
_Ant. E._ Good Signior Angelo, you must excuse us all;
My wife is shrewish when I keep not hours:
Say that I linger'd with you at your shop
To see the making of her carcanet,
And that to-morrow you will bring it home. 5
But here's a villain that would face me down
He met me on the mart, and that I beat him,
And charged him with a thousand marks in gold,
And that I did deny my wife and house.
Thou drunkard, thou, what didst thou mean by this? 10
_Dro. E._ Say what you will, sir, but I know what I know;
That you beat me at the mart, I have your hand to show:
If the skin were parchment, and the blows you gave were ink,
Your own handwriting would tell you what I think.
_Ant. E._ I think thou art an ass.
_Dro. E._ Marry, so it doth appear 15
By the wrongs I suffer, and the blows I bear.
I should kick, being kick'd; and, being at that pass,
You would keep from my heels, and beware of an ass.
_Ant. E._ You're sad, Signior Balthazar: pray God our cheer
May answer my good will and your good welcome here. 20
_Bal._ I hold your dainties cheap, sir, and your welcome dear.
_Ant. E._ O, Signior Balthazar, either at flesh or fish,
A table full of welcome makes scarce one dainty dish.
_Bal._ Good meat, sir, is common; that every churl affords.
_Ant. E._ And welcome more common; for that's nothing but words. 25
_Bal._ Small cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast.
_Ant. E._ Ay to a niggardly host and more sparing guest:
But though my cates be mean, take them in good part;
Better cheer may you have, but not with better heart.
But, soft! my door is lock'd.--Go bid them let us in. 30
_Dro. E._ Maud, Bridget, Marian, Cicely, Gillian, Ginn!
_Dro. S._ [_Within_] Mome, malt-horse, capon, coxcomb,
idiot, patch!
Either get thee from the door, or sit down at the hatch.
Dost thou conjure for wenches, that thou call'st for such store,
When one is one too many? Go get thee from the door, 35
_Dro. E._ What patch is made our porter? My master stays
in the street.
_Dro. S._ [_Within_] Let him walk from whence he came, lest he
catch cold on's feet.
_Ant. E._ Who talks within there? ho, open the door!
_Dro. S._ [_Within_] Right, sir; I'll tell you when, an you'll
tell me wherefore.
_Ant. E._ Wherefore? for my dinner: I have not dined to-day. 40
_Dro. S._ [_Within_] Nor to-day here you must not; come again
when you may.
_Ant. E._ What art thou that keepest me out from the house I owe?
_Dro. S._ [_Within_] The porter for this time, sir, and
my name is Dromio.
_Dro. E._ O villain, thou hast stolen both mine office
and my name!
The one ne'er got me credit, the other mickle blame. 45
If thou hadst been Dromio to-day in my place,
Thou wouldst have changed thy face for a name, or thy name
for an ass.
_Luce._ [_Within_] What a coil is there, Dromio? who are
those at the gate?
_Dro. E._ Let my master in, Luce.
_Luce._ [_Within_] Faith, no; he comes too late;
And so tell your master.
_Dro. E._ O Lord, I must laugh! 50
Have at you with a proverb;--Shall I set in my staff?
_Luce._ [_Within_] Have at you with another; that's,
--When? can you tell?
_Dro. S._ [_Within_] If thy name be call'd Luce, --Luce,
thou hast answer'd him well.
_Ant. E._ Do you hear, you minion? you'll let us in, I hope?
_Luce._ [_Within_] I thought to have ask'd you.
_Dro. S._ [_Within_] And you said no. 55
_Dro. E._ So, come, help:--well struck! there was blow for blow.
_Ant. E._ Thou baggage, let me in.
_Luce._ [_Within_] Can you tell for whose sake?
_Dro. E._ Master, knock the door hard.
_Luce._ [_Within_] Let him knock till it ache.
_Ant. E._ You'll cry for this, minion, if I beat the door down.
_Luce._ [_Within_] What needs all that, and a pair of stocks
in the town? 60
_Adr._ [_Within_] Who is that at the door that keeps
all this noise?
_Dro. S._ [_Within_] By my troth, your town is troubled
with unruly boys.
_Ant. E._ Are you, there, wife? you might have come before.
_Adr._ [_Within_] Your wife, sir knave! go get you from the door.
_Dro. E._ If you went in pain, master, this 'knave'
would go sore. 65
_Aug._ Here is neither cheer, sir, nor welcome: we would
fain have either.
_Bal._ In debating which was best, we shall part with neither.
_Dro. E._ They stand at the door, master; bid them welcome
hither.
_Ant. E._ There is something in the wind, that we cannot get in.
_Dro. E._ You would say so, master, if your garments were thin. 70
Your cake here is warm within; you stand here in the cold:
It would make a man mad as a buck, to be so bought and sold.
_Ant. E._ Go fetch me something: I'll break ope the gate.
_Dro. S._ [_Within_] Break any breaking here, and I'll break
your knave's pate.
_Dro. E._ A man may break a word with you, sir; and words
are but wind; 75
Ay, and break it in your face, so he break it not behind.
_Dro. S._ [_Within_] It seems thou want'st breaking: out
upon thee, hind!
_Dro. E._ Here's too much 'out upon thee!' I pray thee,
let me in.
_Dro. S._ [_Within_] Ay, when fowls have no feathers, and
fish have no fin.
_Ant. E._ Well, I'll break in:--go borrow me a crow. 80
_Dro. E._ A crow without feather? Master, mean you so?
For a fish without a fin, there's a fowl without a feather:
If a crow help us in, sirrah, we'll pluck a crow together.
_Ant. E._ Go get thee gone; fetch me an iron crow.
_Bal._ Have patience, sir; O, let it not be so! 85
Herein you war against your reputation,
And draw within the compass of suspect
Th' unviolated honour of your wife.
Once this,--your long experience of her wisdom,
Her sober virtue, years, and modesty, 90
Plead on her part some cause to you unknown;
And doubt not, sir, but she will well excuse
Why at this time the doors are made against you.
Be ruled by me: depart in patience,
And let us to the Tiger all to dinner; 95
And about evening come yourself alone
To know the reason of this strange restraint.
If by strong hand you offer to break in
Now in the stirring passage of the day,
A vulgar comment will be made of it, 100
And that supposed by the common rout
Against your yet ungalled estimation,
That may with foul intrusion enter in,
And dwell upon your grave when you are dead;
For slander lives upon succession, 105
For ever housed where it gets possession.
_Ant. E._ You have prevail'd: I will depart in quiet,
And, in despite of mirth, mean to be merry.
I know a wench of excellent discourse,
Pretty and witty; wild, and yet, too, gentle: 110
There will we dine. This woman that I mean,
My wife--but, I protest, without desert--
Hath oftentimes upbraided me withal:
To her will we to dinner. [_To Ang._] Get you home,
And fetch the chain; by this I know 'tis made: 115
Bring it, I pray you, to the Porpentine;
For there's the house: that chain will I bestow--
Be it for nothing but to spite my wife--
Upon mine hostess there: good sir, make haste.
Since mine own doors refuse to entertain me, 120
I'll knock elsewhere, to see if they'll disdain me.
_Ang._ I'll meet you at that place some hour hence.
_Ant. E._ Do so. This jest shall cost me some expense.
[_Exeunt._
NOTES: III, 1.
SCENE I. ANGELO and BALTHAZAR.] Angelo the Goldsmith and Balthasar
the Merchant. Ff.
1: _all_] om. Pope.
11-14: Put in the margin as spurious by Pope.
11: _Say_] _you must say_ Capell.
13: _the skin_] _my skin_ Collier MS.
14: _own_] F1. om. F2 F3 F4.
_you_] _you for certain_ Collier MS.
15: _doth_] _dont_ Theobald.
19: _You're_] _Y'are_ Ff. _you are_ Capell.
20: _here_] om. Pope.
21-29: Put in the margin as spurious by Pope.
31: _Ginn_] om. Pope. _Jen'_ Malone. _Gin'_ Collier. _Jin_ Dyce.
36-60: Put in the margin as spurious by Pope.
32, sqq.: [Within] Rowe.
46: _been_] F1. _bid_ F2 F3 F4.
47: _an ass_] _a face_ Collier MS.
48: Luce. [Within] Rowe. Enter Luce. Ff.
_there, Dromio? who_] _there! Dromio, who_ Capell.
54: _hope_] _trow_ Theobald. Malone supposes a line omitted
ending _rope_.
61: Adr. [Within]. Rowe. Enter Adriana. Ff.
65-83: Put in the margin as spurious by Pope.
67: _part_] _have part_ Warburton.
71: _cake here_] _cake_ Capell. _cake there_ Anon. conj.
72: _mad_] F1. _as mad_ F2 F3 F4.
_as a buck_] om. Capell.
75: _you,_] _your_ F1.
85: _so_] _thus_ Pope.
89: _Once this_] _Own this_ Malone conj. _This once_ Anon. conj.
_her_] Rowe. _your_ Ff.
91: _her_] Rowe. _your_ Ff.
93: _made_] _barr'd_ Pope.
105: _slander_] _lasting slander_ Johnson conj.
_upon_] _upon its own_ Capell conj.
106: _housed ... gets_] Collier. _hous'd ... gets_ F1.
_hous'd ... once gets_ F2 F3 F4. _hous'd where 't gets_ Steevens.
108: _mirth_] _wrath_ Theobald.
116: _Porpentine_] Ff. _Porcupine_ Rowe (and passim).
117: _will I_] F1. _I will_ F2 F3 F4.
119: _mine_] F1. _my_ F2 F3 F4.
122: _hour_] F1. _hour, sir_ F2 F3 F4.
| 5,623 | Act II, scene ii; Act III, scene i | https://web.archive.org/web/20210224233119/https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/errors/section3/ | Antipholus of Syracuse goes to the inn and finds that his slave did, in fact, bring his money and luggage safely there. Confused, he wanders the city until he encounters Dromio of Syracuse--his Dromio--who, of course, has no memory of telling him to come home to dinner or anything else from Antipholus' earlier conversation with Dromio of Ephesus. Antipholus grows angry with him, but the slave manages to defuse his anger through a long, involved joke about baldness. While the master and slave converse and jest, Adriana and Luciana come upon them, mistaking them for Antipholus of Ephesus and his Dromio. Adriana immediately accuses the man she believes to be her husband of infidelity and rebukes him for violating his own promise of love and their marriage bed. Antipholus, confused, says that he has never met her, which only makes Adriana more furious. She insists on dragging her perplexed "husband" home to dinner, bringing Dromio with them, and the confused Antipholus decides to play along until he understands the situation better. They go into Antipholus of Ephesus' house, and Dromio is left below to guard the door during dinner. /PARAGRAPH While his double is upstairs eating, Antipholus of Ephesus returns from the marketplace, accompanied by Dromio of Ephesus, Angelo the goldsmith, and Balthasar the merchant. He asks his fellow businessmen to give Adriana an excuse for his tardiness and then mentions that his slave is behaving oddly. When he knocks at the gate, however, Dromio of Syracuse refuses to let the company in. Antipholus pounds and shouts furiously, bringing Luce, his maid to the door, and then Adriana-- but since both believe that Antipholus is already inside, they refuse to admit him. In a rage, Antipholus is about to break down the door when Balthasar dissuades him, telling him that doing so will reflect badly on his wife's honor and that Adriana must have a good reason for keeping him out. Still seething, Antipholus leads his friends away, resolving to dine with a Courtesan at her house, the Porpentine. He asks Angelo to go fetch a gold chain, recently made, that he had promised to his wife; Antipholus now plans to present it to the Courtesan instead. Act II, scene ii; Act III, | Commentary The conversation between the Syracusan Antipholus and his Dromio is illustrative of their relationship--what begins with anger and threatened blows is quickly turned to laughter by Dromio's artful sense of humor. This will contrast sharply with the behavior of the other Antipholus, who comes across as a humorless, angry master, unlikely to joke around with his slave. , a new love , and a valuable gold chain, while the unlucky brother is locked out of his house, accused of being mad, and eventually imprisoned, none of which are conductive to a good humor.) The sympathy that the audience feels for Antipholus of Syracuse is further enhanced by his willingness to go along with what seems to him to be nonsense--namely, Adriana's demand that he return to "their home" for dinner. Despite his earlier, somewhat fearful reference to Ephesus' reputation for witchcraft, he willingly takes up the peculiar adventure offered by the women, declaring that "I'll entertain the offered fallacy", and later "I'll say as they say, and persevere so, / and in this mist at all adventures go ." This openness to adventure is characteristic of a comic hero, and it will be amply rewarded at the play's end. The exchange across the barred door between Antipholus of Ephesus and those inside his house is played for laughs, of course, but it can be argued that there is more going on than simple confusion. Antipholus of Syracuse may be only given dinner by his "wife," but there are hints of a sexual element in the confusion--that Adriana may offer her "husband" more than food. Balthasar urges Antipholus of Ephesus not to break down the door because that would lead to gossip and ruin the reputation of his wife, but the Ephesian Antipholus seems to assume that there is something sexual going on inside, and his quick decision to dine at the house of the Courtesan suggests that he plans to revenge what he perceives as his wife's infidelity with infidelity of his own. Whether his jealousy is justified is a matter for interpretation--most critics see Adriana as innocent of adultery with her husband's twin, but others believe that Shakespeare is implying a strong sexual element in the dinner. | 380 | 370 | [
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174 | false | gradesaver | all_chapterized_books/174-chapters/11.txt | finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Picture of Dorian Gray/section_7_part_0.txt | The Picture of Dorian Gray.chapter 11 | chapter 11 | null | {"name": "Chapter 11", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210421171214/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-picture-of-dorian-gray/study-guide/summary-chapter-11", "summary": "Over the next several years, Dorian becomes obsessed with the book given to him by Lord Henry. He buys multiple copies of the \"first edition, and them bound in different colors so that they might suit his moods.\" To Dorian, \"the whole book...seemed to contain the story of his own life, written before he had lived it.\" Like the book's young hero, Dorian begins immersing himself in varied interests, including religion, mysticism, music, jewels, ancient tapestries, and the study of his own ancestors. Dorian is, however, quick to change obsessions once they no longer interest him, following the whims of his desire with the passion of an artist. He clings to each current obsession fervently, studying it and acquiring as many fanciful examples of it as he can find. He buys extravagent gowns covered in hundreds of pearls to feed his interest in jewels, and ancient, golden-threaded tapestries to nourish his curiosity about embroidery. As soon as a given subject has exhausted itself in his mind, however, he drops it in favor of his next interest. For the next 18 years, capriciousness is a way of life for Dorian. In fact, Dorian's attitude recalls Lord Henry's own: \"certainly, to him, Life itself was the first, the greatest, of the arts.\" No matter how intensely Dorian embraces a subject, \"no theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance compared with life itself. He felt keenly conscious of how barren all intellectual speculation is when separated from action and experiment.\" Dorian's \"experiments\" are often social in nature. He becomes notorious among London's aristocratic circles as a trend-setter, wearing the latest fashions and looked to as a judge of tastefulness. Young men emulate him, and young women are drawn to him. Those whom he befriends, however, are often ruined, and Dorian is eventually disdained as much as he is admired. Lord Henry seems to be the only close friend who sticks by Dorian over the years. Gossip begins following Dorian wherever he goes, and he becomes infamous, even despicable, in some social circles. He does, however, remain as attractive and fashionable as ever, and continues to be admired for his exquisite taste. No matter how poorly people speak of him, his youthful beauty and the boyish innocence of his face never fail to win him new friends. Dorian also takes to making periodic visits to the attic to watch the painting transform, \"wondering sometimes which were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age.\" At first, as the painting grows uglier, Dorian becomes \"more and more enamored of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his soul.\" He even begins to mock the portrait. Over time, however, his various obsessions and social excursions become ways for him to escape what he knows to be the truth of his soul.", "analysis": "This chapter initiates the second half of the novel, in which Lord Henry's influence has fully bloomed and Dorian has become his own person, with his own interests, convictions, and notoreity amongst London's aristocracy. After this chapter, the protagonist is no longer a corruptable youth, and is rather a full-fledged corruptor in his own right. We learn that Dorian's personality, charming as it may be, is defined by capriciousness, and a passion for new pleasures. Dorian's obsession with Lord Henry's book may be interpreted in a number of different ways. The plot reminds him of his own life; the hero reminds him of himself. The narrator mentions \"the latter part of the book, with its really tragic...account of the sorrow and despair of one who had himself lost what in others, and in the world, he most dearly valued.\" This is a fitting description for the end of Dorian Gray, as well. The question remains, however, of whether the book happens to describe Dorian's character, or whether Dorian is changing to mimic the book's protagonist. Once again, Wilde is blurring the distinction between life and art. Indeed, we learn in this chapter that for Dorian, life and art are interchangeable. Like Lord Henry, he considers pleasure and aesthetic value more important than anything else. To him, any new and pleasurable experience is worth having, even if that experience is hurtful to others. The chapter closes with the statement that \"There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.\" In these moments, Dorian is the most degraded, and his soul suffers the most disfiguration. Dorian reaches a point where he can only be happy when he forgets about the picture in his attic. He manages to avoid facing it for weeks at a time, but like any addict, he can't force himself to stay away from it for very long. The corruption of his soul torments him, and he escapes that torment by indulging in vices that aggravate his corruption and torment him further. This vicious cycle consciously mimics the patterns of withdrawal and greater dependence commonly faced by drug addicts, an analogy that becomes much more explicit in later chapters, when we learn of Dorian's dependence on opium. The struggle to deny the nagging guilt he feels when faced with the portrait lies beneath all of Dorian's actions, which brings the nature of his fervent passion for his capricious endeavors into question. Is he naturally such a passionate person, or does his passion spring from a desperate need to occupy his mind with anything other than the undeniable and monstrous corruption of his soul?"} |
For years, Dorian Gray could not free himself from the influence of
this book. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he never
sought to free himself from it. He procured from Paris no less than
nine large-paper copies of the first edition, and had them bound in
different colours, so that they might suit his various moods and the
changing fancies of a nature over which he seemed, at times, to have
almost entirely lost control. The hero, the wonderful young Parisian
in whom the romantic and the scientific temperaments were so strangely
blended, became to him a kind of prefiguring type of himself. And,
indeed, the whole book seemed to him to contain the story of his own
life, written before he had lived it.
In one point he was more fortunate than the novel's fantastic hero. He
never knew--never, indeed, had any cause to know--that somewhat
grotesque dread of mirrors, and polished metal surfaces, and still
water which came upon the young Parisian so early in his life, and was
occasioned by the sudden decay of a beau that had once, apparently,
been so remarkable. It was with an almost cruel joy--and perhaps in
nearly every joy, as certainly in every pleasure, cruelty has its
place--that he used to read the latter part of the book, with its
really tragic, if somewhat overemphasized, account of the sorrow and
despair of one who had himself lost what in others, and the world, he
had most dearly valued.
For the wonderful beauty that had so fascinated Basil Hallward, and
many others besides him, seemed never to leave him. Even those who had
heard the most evil things against him--and from time to time strange
rumours about his mode of life crept through London and became the
chatter of the clubs--could not believe anything to his dishonour when
they saw him. He had always the look of one who had kept himself
unspotted from the world. Men who talked grossly became silent when
Dorian Gray entered the room. There was something in the purity of his
face that rebuked them. His mere presence seemed to recall to them the
memory of the innocence that they had tarnished. They wondered how one
so charming and graceful as he was could have escaped the stain of an
age that was at once sordid and sensual.
Often, on returning home from one of those mysterious and prolonged
absences that gave rise to such strange conjecture among those who were
his friends, or thought that they were so, he himself would creep
upstairs to the locked room, open the door with the key that never left
him now, and stand, with a mirror, in front of the portrait that Basil
Hallward had painted of him, looking now at the evil and aging face on
the canvas, and now at the fair young face that laughed back at him
from the polished glass. The very sharpness of the contrast used to
quicken his sense of pleasure. He grew more and more enamoured of his
own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul.
He would examine with minute care, and sometimes with a monstrous and
terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead
or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which
were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age. He would
place his white hands beside the coarse bloated hands of the picture,
and smile. He mocked the misshapen body and the failing limbs.
There were moments, indeed, at night, when, lying sleepless in his own
delicately scented chamber, or in the sordid room of the little
ill-famed tavern near the docks which, under an assumed name and in
disguise, it was his habit to frequent, he would think of the ruin he
had brought upon his soul with a pity that was all the more poignant
because it was purely selfish. But moments such as these were rare.
That curiosity about life which Lord Henry had first stirred in him, as
they sat together in the garden of their friend, seemed to increase
with gratification. The more he knew, the more he desired to know. He
had mad hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed them.
Yet he was not really reckless, at any rate in his relations to
society. Once or twice every month during the winter, and on each
Wednesday evening while the season lasted, he would throw open to the
world his beautiful house and have the most celebrated musicians of the
day to charm his guests with the wonders of their art. His little
dinners, in the settling of which Lord Henry always assisted him, were
noted as much for the careful selection and placing of those invited,
as for the exquisite taste shown in the decoration of the table, with
its subtle symphonic arrangements of exotic flowers, and embroidered
cloths, and antique plate of gold and silver. Indeed, there were many,
especially among the very young men, who saw, or fancied that they saw,
in Dorian Gray the true realization of a type of which they had often
dreamed in Eton or Oxford days, a type that was to combine something of
the real culture of the scholar with all the grace and distinction and
perfect manner of a citizen of the world. To them he seemed to be of
the company of those whom Dante describes as having sought to "make
themselves perfect by the worship of beauty." Like Gautier, he was one
for whom "the visible world existed."
And, certainly, to him life itself was the first, the greatest, of the
arts, and for it all the other arts seemed to be but a preparation.
Fashion, by which what is really fantastic becomes for a moment
universal, and dandyism, which, in its own way, is an attempt to assert
the absolute modernity of beauty, had, of course, their fascination for
him. His mode of dressing, and the particular styles that from time to
time he affected, had their marked influence on the young exquisites of
the Mayfair balls and Pall Mall club windows, who copied him in
everything that he did, and tried to reproduce the accidental charm of
his graceful, though to him only half-serious, fopperies.
For, while he was but too ready to accept the position that was almost
immediately offered to him on his coming of age, and found, indeed, a
subtle pleasure in the thought that he might really become to the
London of his own day what to imperial Neronian Rome the author of the
Satyricon once had been, yet in his inmost heart he desired to be
something more than a mere _arbiter elegantiarum_, to be consulted on the
wearing of a jewel, or the knotting of a necktie, or the conduct of a
cane. He sought to elaborate some new scheme of life that would have
its reasoned philosophy and its ordered principles, and find in the
spiritualizing of the senses its highest realization.
The worship of the senses has often, and with much justice, been
decried, men feeling a natural instinct of terror about passions and
sensations that seem stronger than themselves, and that they are
conscious of sharing with the less highly organized forms of existence.
But it appeared to Dorian Gray that the true nature of the senses had
never been understood, and that they had remained savage and animal
merely because the world had sought to starve them into submission or
to kill them by pain, instead of aiming at making them elements of a
new spirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty was to be the
dominant characteristic. As he looked back upon man moving through
history, he was haunted by a feeling of loss. So much had been
surrendered! and to such little purpose! There had been mad wilful
rejections, monstrous forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose
origin was fear and whose result was a degradation infinitely more
terrible than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance,
they had sought to escape; Nature, in her wonderful irony, driving out
the anchorite to feed with the wild animals of the desert and giving to
the hermit the beasts of the field as his companions.
Yes: there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophesied, a new Hedonism
that was to recreate life and to save it from that harsh uncomely
puritanism that is having, in our own day, its curious revival. It was
to have its service of the intellect, certainly, yet it was never to
accept any theory or system that would involve the sacrifice of any
mode of passionate experience. Its aim, indeed, was to be experience
itself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might
be. Of the asceticism that deadens the senses, as of the vulgar
profligacy that dulls them, it was to know nothing. But it was to
teach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is
itself but a moment.
There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either
after one of those dreamless nights that make us almost enamoured of
death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through
the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality
itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques,
and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one
might fancy, especially the art of those whose minds have been troubled
with the malady of reverie. Gradually white fingers creep through the
curtains, and they appear to tremble. In black fantastic shapes, dumb
shadows crawl into the corners of the room and crouch there. Outside,
there is the stirring of birds among the leaves, or the sound of men
going forth to their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down
from the hills and wandering round the silent house, as though it
feared to wake the sleepers and yet must needs call forth sleep from
her purple cave. Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by
degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we
watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern. The wan
mirrors get back their mimic life. The flameless tapers stand where we
had left them, and beside them lies the half-cut book that we had been
studying, or the wired flower that we had worn at the ball, or the
letter that we had been afraid to read, or that we had read too often.
Nothing seems to us changed. Out of the unreal shadows of the night
comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where
we had left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of the
necessity for the continuance of energy in the same wearisome round of
stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids
might open some morning upon a world that had been refashioned anew in
the darkness for our pleasure, a world in which things would have fresh
shapes and colours, and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in
which the past would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate,
in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even of
joy having its bitterness and the memories of pleasure their pain.
It was the creation of such worlds as these that seemed to Dorian Gray
to be the true object, or amongst the true objects, of life; and in his
search for sensations that would be at once new and delightful, and
possess that element of strangeness that is so essential to romance, he
would often adopt certain modes of thought that he knew to be really
alien to his nature, abandon himself to their subtle influences, and
then, having, as it were, caught their colour and satisfied his
intellectual curiosity, leave them with that curious indifference that
is not incompatible with a real ardour of temperament, and that,
indeed, according to certain modern psychologists, is often a condition
of it.
It was rumoured of him once that he was about to join the Roman
Catholic communion, and certainly the Roman ritual had always a great
attraction for him. The daily sacrifice, more awful really than all
the sacrifices of the antique world, stirred him as much by its superb
rejection of the evidence of the senses as by the primitive simplicity
of its elements and the eternal pathos of the human tragedy that it
sought to symbolize. He loved to kneel down on the cold marble
pavement and watch the priest, in his stiff flowered dalmatic, slowly
and with white hands moving aside the veil of the tabernacle, or
raising aloft the jewelled, lantern-shaped monstrance with that pallid
wafer that at times, one would fain think, is indeed the "_panis
caelestis_," the bread of angels, or, robed in the garments of the
Passion of Christ, breaking the Host into the chalice and smiting his
breast for his sins. The fuming censers that the grave boys, in their
lace and scarlet, tossed into the air like great gilt flowers had their
subtle fascination for him. As he passed out, he used to look with
wonder at the black confessionals and long to sit in the dim shadow of
one of them and listen to men and women whispering through the worn
grating the true story of their lives.
But he never fell into the error of arresting his intellectual
development by any formal acceptance of creed or system, or of
mistaking, for a house in which to live, an inn that is but suitable
for the sojourn of a night, or for a few hours of a night in which
there are no stars and the moon is in travail. Mysticism, with its
marvellous power of making common things strange to us, and the subtle
antinomianism that always seems to accompany it, moved him for a
season; and for a season he inclined to the materialistic doctrines of
the _Darwinismus_ movement in Germany, and found a curious pleasure in
tracing the thoughts and passions of men to some pearly cell in the
brain, or some white nerve in the body, delighting in the conception of
the absolute dependence of the spirit on certain physical conditions,
morbid or healthy, normal or diseased. Yet, as has been said of him
before, no theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance
compared with life itself. He felt keenly conscious of how barren all
intellectual speculation is when separated from action and experiment.
He knew that the senses, no less than the soul, have their spiritual
mysteries to reveal.
And so he would now study perfumes and the secrets of their
manufacture, distilling heavily scented oils and burning odorous gums
from the East. He saw that there was no mood of the mind that had not
its counterpart in the sensuous life, and set himself to discover their
true relations, wondering what there was in frankincense that made one
mystical, and in ambergris that stirred one's passions, and in violets
that woke the memory of dead romances, and in musk that troubled the
brain, and in champak that stained the imagination; and seeking often
to elaborate a real psychology of perfumes, and to estimate the several
influences of sweet-smelling roots and scented, pollen-laden flowers;
of aromatic balms and of dark and fragrant woods; of spikenard, that
sickens; of hovenia, that makes men mad; and of aloes, that are said to
be able to expel melancholy from the soul.
At another time he devoted himself entirely to music, and in a long
latticed room, with a vermilion-and-gold ceiling and walls of
olive-green lacquer, he used to give curious concerts in which mad
gipsies tore wild music from little zithers, or grave, yellow-shawled
Tunisians plucked at the strained strings of monstrous lutes, while
grinning Negroes beat monotonously upon copper drums and, crouching
upon scarlet mats, slim turbaned Indians blew through long pipes of
reed or brass and charmed--or feigned to charm--great hooded snakes and
horrible horned adders. The harsh intervals and shrill discords of
barbaric music stirred him at times when Schubert's grace, and Chopin's
beautiful sorrows, and the mighty harmonies of Beethoven himself, fell
unheeded on his ear. He collected together from all parts of the world
the strangest instruments that could be found, either in the tombs of
dead nations or among the few savage tribes that have survived contact
with Western civilizations, and loved to touch and try them. He had
the mysterious _juruparis_ of the Rio Negro Indians, that women are not
allowed to look at and that even youths may not see till they have been
subjected to fasting and scourging, and the earthen jars of the
Peruvians that have the shrill cries of birds, and flutes of human
bones such as Alfonso de Ovalle heard in Chile, and the sonorous green
jaspers that are found near Cuzco and give forth a note of singular
sweetness. He had painted gourds filled with pebbles that rattled when
they were shaken; the long _clarin_ of the Mexicans, into which the
performer does not blow, but through which he inhales the air; the
harsh _ture_ of the Amazon tribes, that is sounded by the sentinels who
sit all day long in high trees, and can be heard, it is said, at a
distance of three leagues; the _teponaztli_, that has two vibrating
tongues of wood and is beaten with sticks that are smeared with an
elastic gum obtained from the milky juice of plants; the _yotl_-bells of
the Aztecs, that are hung in clusters like grapes; and a huge
cylindrical drum, covered with the skins of great serpents, like the
one that Bernal Diaz saw when he went with Cortes into the Mexican
temple, and of whose doleful sound he has left us so vivid a
description. The fantastic character of these instruments fascinated
him, and he felt a curious delight in the thought that art, like
Nature, has her monsters, things of bestial shape and with hideous
voices. Yet, after some time, he wearied of them, and would sit in his
box at the opera, either alone or with Lord Henry, listening in rapt
pleasure to "Tannhauser" and seeing in the prelude to that great work
of art a presentation of the tragedy of his own soul.
On one occasion he took up the study of jewels, and appeared at a
costume ball as Anne de Joyeuse, Admiral of France, in a dress covered
with five hundred and sixty pearls. This taste enthralled him for
years, and, indeed, may be said never to have left him. He would often
spend a whole day settling and resettling in their cases the various
stones that he had collected, such as the olive-green chrysoberyl that
turns red by lamplight, the cymophane with its wirelike line of silver,
the pistachio-coloured peridot, rose-pink and wine-yellow topazes,
carbuncles of fiery scarlet with tremulous, four-rayed stars, flame-red
cinnamon-stones, orange and violet spinels, and amethysts with their
alternate layers of ruby and sapphire. He loved the red gold of the
sunstone, and the moonstone's pearly whiteness, and the broken rainbow
of the milky opal. He procured from Amsterdam three emeralds of
extraordinary size and richness of colour, and had a turquoise _de la
vieille roche_ that was the envy of all the connoisseurs.
He discovered wonderful stories, also, about jewels. In Alphonso's
Clericalis Disciplina a serpent was mentioned with eyes of real
jacinth, and in the romantic history of Alexander, the Conqueror of
Emathia was said to have found in the vale of Jordan snakes "with
collars of real emeralds growing on their backs." There was a gem in
the brain of the dragon, Philostratus told us, and "by the exhibition
of golden letters and a scarlet robe" the monster could be thrown into
a magical sleep and slain. According to the great alchemist, Pierre de
Boniface, the diamond rendered a man invisible, and the agate of India
made him eloquent. The cornelian appeased anger, and the hyacinth
provoked sleep, and the amethyst drove away the fumes of wine. The
garnet cast out demons, and the hydropicus deprived the moon of her
colour. The selenite waxed and waned with the moon, and the meloceus,
that discovers thieves, could be affected only by the blood of kids.
Leonardus Camillus had seen a white stone taken from the brain of a
newly killed toad, that was a certain antidote against poison. The
bezoar, that was found in the heart of the Arabian deer, was a charm
that could cure the plague. In the nests of Arabian birds was the
aspilates, that, according to Democritus, kept the wearer from any
danger by fire.
The King of Ceilan rode through his city with a large ruby in his hand,
as the ceremony of his coronation. The gates of the palace of John the
Priest were "made of sardius, with the horn of the horned snake
inwrought, so that no man might bring poison within." Over the gable
were "two golden apples, in which were two carbuncles," so that the
gold might shine by day and the carbuncles by night. In Lodge's
strange romance 'A Margarite of America', it was stated that in the
chamber of the queen one could behold "all the chaste ladies of the
world, inchased out of silver, looking through fair mirrours of
chrysolites, carbuncles, sapphires, and greene emeraults." Marco Polo
had seen the inhabitants of Zipangu place rose-coloured pearls in the
mouths of the dead. A sea-monster had been enamoured of the pearl that
the diver brought to King Perozes, and had slain the thief, and mourned
for seven moons over its loss. When the Huns lured the king into the
great pit, he flung it away--Procopius tells the story--nor was it ever
found again, though the Emperor Anastasius offered five hundred-weight
of gold pieces for it. The King of Malabar had shown to a certain
Venetian a rosary of three hundred and four pearls, one for every god
that he worshipped.
When the Duke de Valentinois, son of Alexander VI, visited Louis XII of
France, his horse was loaded with gold leaves, according to Brantome,
and his cap had double rows of rubies that threw out a great light.
Charles of England had ridden in stirrups hung with four hundred and
twenty-one diamonds. Richard II had a coat, valued at thirty thousand
marks, which was covered with balas rubies. Hall described Henry VIII,
on his way to the Tower previous to his coronation, as wearing "a
jacket of raised gold, the placard embroidered with diamonds and other
rich stones, and a great bauderike about his neck of large balasses."
The favourites of James I wore ear-rings of emeralds set in gold
filigrane. Edward II gave to Piers Gaveston a suit of red-gold armour
studded with jacinths, a collar of gold roses set with
turquoise-stones, and a skull-cap _parseme_ with pearls. Henry II wore
jewelled gloves reaching to the elbow, and had a hawk-glove sewn with
twelve rubies and fifty-two great orients. The ducal hat of Charles
the Rash, the last Duke of Burgundy of his race, was hung with
pear-shaped pearls and studded with sapphires.
How exquisite life had once been! How gorgeous in its pomp and
decoration! Even to read of the luxury of the dead was wonderful.
Then he turned his attention to embroideries and to the tapestries that
performed the office of frescoes in the chill rooms of the northern
nations of Europe. As he investigated the subject--and he always had
an extraordinary faculty of becoming absolutely absorbed for the moment
in whatever he took up--he was almost saddened by the reflection of the
ruin that time brought on beautiful and wonderful things. He, at any
rate, had escaped that. Summer followed summer, and the yellow
jonquils bloomed and died many times, and nights of horror repeated the
story of their shame, but he was unchanged. No winter marred his face
or stained his flowerlike bloom. How different it was with material
things! Where had they passed to? Where was the great crocus-coloured
robe, on which the gods fought against the giants, that had been worked
by brown girls for the pleasure of Athena? Where the huge velarium
that Nero had stretched across the Colosseum at Rome, that Titan sail
of purple on which was represented the starry sky, and Apollo driving a
chariot drawn by white, gilt-reined steeds? He longed to see the
curious table-napkins wrought for the Priest of the Sun, on which were
displayed all the dainties and viands that could be wanted for a feast;
the mortuary cloth of King Chilperic, with its three hundred golden
bees; the fantastic robes that excited the indignation of the Bishop of
Pontus and were figured with "lions, panthers, bears, dogs, forests,
rocks, hunters--all, in fact, that a painter can copy from nature"; and
the coat that Charles of Orleans once wore, on the sleeves of which
were embroidered the verses of a song beginning "_Madame, je suis tout
joyeux_," the musical accompaniment of the words being wrought in gold
thread, and each note, of square shape in those days, formed with four
pearls. He read of the room that was prepared at the palace at Rheims
for the use of Queen Joan of Burgundy and was decorated with "thirteen
hundred and twenty-one parrots, made in broidery, and blazoned with the
king's arms, and five hundred and sixty-one butterflies, whose wings
were similarly ornamented with the arms of the queen, the whole worked
in gold." Catherine de Medicis had a mourning-bed made for her of
black velvet powdered with crescents and suns. Its curtains were of
damask, with leafy wreaths and garlands, figured upon a gold and silver
ground, and fringed along the edges with broideries of pearls, and it
stood in a room hung with rows of the queen's devices in cut black
velvet upon cloth of silver. Louis XIV had gold embroidered caryatides
fifteen feet high in his apartment. The state bed of Sobieski, King of
Poland, was made of Smyrna gold brocade embroidered in turquoises with
verses from the Koran. Its supports were of silver gilt, beautifully
chased, and profusely set with enamelled and jewelled medallions. It
had been taken from the Turkish camp before Vienna, and the standard of
Mohammed had stood beneath the tremulous gilt of its canopy.
And so, for a whole year, he sought to accumulate the most exquisite
specimens that he could find of textile and embroidered work, getting
the dainty Delhi muslins, finely wrought with gold-thread palmates and
stitched over with iridescent beetles' wings; the Dacca gauzes, that
from their transparency are known in the East as "woven air," and
"running water," and "evening dew"; strange figured cloths from Java;
elaborate yellow Chinese hangings; books bound in tawny satins or fair
blue silks and wrought with _fleurs-de-lis_, birds and images; veils of
_lacis_ worked in Hungary point; Sicilian brocades and stiff Spanish
velvets; Georgian work, with its gilt coins, and Japanese _Foukousas_,
with their green-toned golds and their marvellously plumaged birds.
He had a special passion, also, for ecclesiastical vestments, as indeed
he had for everything connected with the service of the Church. In the
long cedar chests that lined the west gallery of his house, he had
stored away many rare and beautiful specimens of what is really the
raiment of the Bride of Christ, who must wear purple and jewels and
fine linen that she may hide the pallid macerated body that is worn by
the suffering that she seeks for and wounded by self-inflicted pain.
He possessed a gorgeous cope of crimson silk and gold-thread damask,
figured with a repeating pattern of golden pomegranates set in
six-petalled formal blossoms, beyond which on either side was the
pine-apple device wrought in seed-pearls. The orphreys were divided
into panels representing scenes from the life of the Virgin, and the
coronation of the Virgin was figured in coloured silks upon the hood.
This was Italian work of the fifteenth century. Another cope was of
green velvet, embroidered with heart-shaped groups of acanthus-leaves,
from which spread long-stemmed white blossoms, the details of which
were picked out with silver thread and coloured crystals. The morse
bore a seraph's head in gold-thread raised work. The orphreys were
woven in a diaper of red and gold silk, and were starred with
medallions of many saints and martyrs, among whom was St. Sebastian.
He had chasubles, also, of amber-coloured silk, and blue silk and gold
brocade, and yellow silk damask and cloth of gold, figured with
representations of the Passion and Crucifixion of Christ, and
embroidered with lions and peacocks and other emblems; dalmatics of
white satin and pink silk damask, decorated with tulips and dolphins
and _fleurs-de-lis_; altar frontals of crimson velvet and blue linen; and
many corporals, chalice-veils, and sudaria. In the mystic offices to
which such things were put, there was something that quickened his
imagination.
For these treasures, and everything that he collected in his lovely
house, were to be to him means of forgetfulness, modes by which he
could escape, for a season, from the fear that seemed to him at times
to be almost too great to be borne. Upon the walls of the lonely
locked room where he had spent so much of his boyhood, he had hung with
his own hands the terrible portrait whose changing features showed him
the real degradation of his life, and in front of it had draped the
purple-and-gold pall as a curtain. For weeks he would not go there,
would forget the hideous painted thing, and get back his light heart,
his wonderful joyousness, his passionate absorption in mere existence.
Then, suddenly, some night he would creep out of the house, go down to
dreadful places near Blue Gate Fields, and stay there, day after day,
until he was driven away. On his return he would sit in front of the
picture, sometimes loathing it and himself, but filled, at other
times, with that pride of individualism that is half the
fascination of sin, and smiling with secret pleasure at the misshapen
shadow that had to bear the burden that should have been his own.
After a few years he could not endure to be long out of England, and
gave up the villa that he had shared at Trouville with Lord Henry, as
well as the little white walled-in house at Algiers where they had more
than once spent the winter. He hated to be separated from the picture
that was such a part of his life, and was also afraid that during his
absence some one might gain access to the room, in spite of the
elaborate bars that he had caused to be placed upon the door.
He was quite conscious that this would tell them nothing. It was true
that the portrait still preserved, under all the foulness and ugliness
of the face, its marked likeness to himself; but what could they learn
from that? He would laugh at any one who tried to taunt him. He had
not painted it. What was it to him how vile and full of shame it
looked? Even if he told them, would they believe it?
Yet he was afraid. Sometimes when he was down at his great house in
Nottinghamshire, entertaining the fashionable young men of his own rank
who were his chief companions, and astounding the county by the wanton
luxury and gorgeous splendour of his mode of life, he would suddenly
leave his guests and rush back to town to see that the door had not
been tampered with and that the picture was still there. What if it
should be stolen? The mere thought made him cold with horror. Surely
the world would know his secret then. Perhaps the world already
suspected it.
For, while he fascinated many, there were not a few who distrusted him.
He was very nearly blackballed at a West End club of which his birth
and social position fully entitled him to become a member, and it was
said that on one occasion, when he was brought by a friend into the
smoking-room of the Churchill, the Duke of Berwick and another
gentleman got up in a marked manner and went out. Curious stories
became current about him after he had passed his twenty-fifth year. It
was rumoured that he had been seen brawling with foreign sailors in a
low den in the distant parts of Whitechapel, and that he consorted with
thieves and coiners and knew the mysteries of their trade. His
extraordinary absences became notorious, and, when he used to reappear
again in society, men would whisper to each other in corners, or pass
him with a sneer, or look at him with cold searching eyes, as though
they were determined to discover his secret.
Of such insolences and attempted slights he, of course, took no notice,
and in the opinion of most people his frank debonair manner, his
charming boyish smile, and the infinite grace of that wonderful youth
that seemed never to leave him, were in themselves a sufficient answer
to the calumnies, for so they termed them, that were circulated about
him. It was remarked, however, that some of those who had been most
intimate with him appeared, after a time, to shun him. Women who had
wildly adored him, and for his sake had braved all social censure and
set convention at defiance, were seen to grow pallid with shame or
horror if Dorian Gray entered the room.
Yet these whispered scandals only increased in the eyes of many his
strange and dangerous charm. His great wealth was a certain element of
security. Society--civilized society, at least--is never very ready to
believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and
fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are of more
importance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability
is of much less value than the possession of a good _chef_. And, after
all, it is a very poor consolation to be told that the man who has
given one a bad dinner, or poor wine, is irreproachable in his private
life. Even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold _entrees_, as
Lord Henry remarked once, in a discussion on the subject, and there is
possibly a good deal to be said for his view. For the canons of good
society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is
absolutely essential to it. It should have the dignity of a ceremony,
as well as its unreality, and should combine the insincere character of
a romantic play with the wit and beauty that make such plays delightful
to us. Is insincerity such a terrible thing? I think not. It is
merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.
Such, at any rate, was Dorian Gray's opinion. He used to wonder at the
shallow psychology of those who conceive the ego in man as a thing
simple, permanent, reliable, and of one essence. To him, man was a
being with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex multiform
creature that bore within itself strange legacies of thought and
passion, and whose very flesh was tainted with the monstrous maladies
of the dead. He loved to stroll through the gaunt cold picture-gallery
of his country house and look at the various portraits of those whose
blood flowed in his veins. Here was Philip Herbert, described by
Francis Osborne, in his Memoires on the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and
King James, as one who was "caressed by the Court for his handsome
face, which kept him not long company." Was it young Herbert's life
that he sometimes led? Had some strange poisonous germ crept from body
to body till it had reached his own? Was it some dim sense of that
ruined grace that had made him so suddenly, and almost without cause,
give utterance, in Basil Hallward's studio, to the mad prayer that had
so changed his life? Here, in gold-embroidered red doublet, jewelled
surcoat, and gilt-edged ruff and wristbands, stood Sir Anthony Sherard,
with his silver-and-black armour piled at his feet. What had this
man's legacy been? Had the lover of Giovanna of Naples bequeathed him
some inheritance of sin and shame? Were his own actions merely the
dreams that the dead man had not dared to realize? Here, from the
fading canvas, smiled Lady Elizabeth Devereux, in her gauze hood, pearl
stomacher, and pink slashed sleeves. A flower was in her right hand,
and her left clasped an enamelled collar of white and damask roses. On
a table by her side lay a mandolin and an apple. There were large
green rosettes upon her little pointed shoes. He knew her life, and
the strange stories that were told about her lovers. Had he something
of her temperament in him? These oval, heavy-lidded eyes seemed to
look curiously at him. What of George Willoughby, with his powdered
hair and fantastic patches? How evil he looked! The face was
saturnine and swarthy, and the sensual lips seemed to be twisted with
disdain. Delicate lace ruffles fell over the lean yellow hands that
were so overladen with rings. He had been a macaroni of the eighteenth
century, and the friend, in his youth, of Lord Ferrars. What of the
second Lord Beckenham, the companion of the Prince Regent in his
wildest days, and one of the witnesses at the secret marriage with Mrs.
Fitzherbert? How proud and handsome he was, with his chestnut curls
and insolent pose! What passions had he bequeathed? The world had
looked upon him as infamous. He had led the orgies at Carlton House.
The star of the Garter glittered upon his breast. Beside him hung the
portrait of his wife, a pallid, thin-lipped woman in black. Her blood,
also, stirred within him. How curious it all seemed! And his mother
with her Lady Hamilton face and her moist, wine-dashed lips--he knew
what he had got from her. He had got from her his beauty, and his
passion for the beauty of others. She laughed at him in her loose
Bacchante dress. There were vine leaves in her hair. The purple
spilled from the cup she was holding. The carnations of the painting
had withered, but the eyes were still wonderful in their depth and
brilliancy of colour. They seemed to follow him wherever he went.
Yet one had ancestors in literature as well as in one's own race,
nearer perhaps in type and temperament, many of them, and certainly
with an influence of which one was more absolutely conscious. There
were times when it appeared to Dorian Gray that the whole of history
was merely the record of his own life, not as he had lived it in act
and circumstance, but as his imagination had created it for him, as it
had been in his brain and in his passions. He felt that he had known
them all, those strange terrible figures that had passed across the
stage of the world and made sin so marvellous and evil so full of
subtlety. It seemed to him that in some mysterious way their lives had
been his own.
The hero of the wonderful novel that had so influenced his life had
himself known this curious fancy. In the seventh chapter he tells how,
crowned with laurel, lest lightning might strike him, he had sat, as
Tiberius, in a garden at Capri, reading the shameful books of
Elephantis, while dwarfs and peacocks strutted round him and the
flute-player mocked the swinger of the censer; and, as Caligula, had
caroused with the green-shirted jockeys in their stables and supped in
an ivory manger with a jewel-frontleted horse; and, as Domitian, had
wandered through a corridor lined with marble mirrors, looking round
with haggard eyes for the reflection of the dagger that was to end his
days, and sick with that ennui, that terrible _taedium vitae_, that comes
on those to whom life denies nothing; and had peered through a clear
emerald at the red shambles of the circus and then, in a litter of
pearl and purple drawn by silver-shod mules, been carried through the
Street of Pomegranates to a House of Gold and heard men cry on Nero
Caesar as he passed by; and, as Elagabalus, had painted his face with
colours, and plied the distaff among the women, and brought the Moon
from Carthage and given her in mystic marriage to the Sun.
Over and over again Dorian used to read this fantastic chapter, and the
two chapters immediately following, in which, as in some curious
tapestries or cunningly wrought enamels, were pictured the awful and
beautiful forms of those whom vice and blood and weariness had made
monstrous or mad: Filippo, Duke of Milan, who slew his wife and
painted her lips with a scarlet poison that her lover might suck death
from the dead thing he fondled; Pietro Barbi, the Venetian, known as
Paul the Second, who sought in his vanity to assume the title of
Formosus, and whose tiara, valued at two hundred thousand florins, was
bought at the price of a terrible sin; Gian Maria Visconti, who used
hounds to chase living men and whose murdered body was covered with
roses by a harlot who had loved him; the Borgia on his white horse,
with Fratricide riding beside him and his mantle stained with the blood
of Perotto; Pietro Riario, the young Cardinal Archbishop of Florence,
child and minion of Sixtus IV, whose beauty was equalled only by his
debauchery, and who received Leonora of Aragon in a pavilion of white
and crimson silk, filled with nymphs and centaurs, and gilded a boy
that he might serve at the feast as Ganymede or Hylas; Ezzelin, whose
melancholy could be cured only by the spectacle of death, and who had a
passion for red blood, as other men have for red wine--the son of the
Fiend, as was reported, and one who had cheated his father at dice when
gambling with him for his own soul; Giambattista Cibo, who in mockery
took the name of Innocent and into whose torpid veins the blood of
three lads was infused by a Jewish doctor; Sigismondo Malatesta, the
lover of Isotta and the lord of Rimini, whose effigy was burned at Rome
as the enemy of God and man, who strangled Polyssena with a napkin, and
gave poison to Ginevra d'Este in a cup of emerald, and in honour of a
shameful passion built a pagan church for Christian worship; Charles
VI, who had so wildly adored his brother's wife that a leper had warned
him of the insanity that was coming on him, and who, when his brain had
sickened and grown strange, could only be soothed by Saracen cards
painted with the images of love and death and madness; and, in his
trimmed jerkin and jewelled cap and acanthuslike curls, Grifonetto
Baglioni, who slew Astorre with his bride, and Simonetto with his page,
and whose comeliness was such that, as he lay dying in the yellow
piazza of Perugia, those who had hated him could not choose but weep,
and Atalanta, who had cursed him, blessed him.
There was a horrible fascination in them all. He saw them at night,
and they troubled his imagination in the day. The Renaissance knew of
strange manners of poisoning--poisoning by a helmet and a lighted
torch, by an embroidered glove and a jewelled fan, by a gilded pomander
and by an amber chain. Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book. There
were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he
could realize his conception of the beautiful.
| 6,908 | Chapter 11 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210421171214/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-picture-of-dorian-gray/study-guide/summary-chapter-11 | Over the next several years, Dorian becomes obsessed with the book given to him by Lord Henry. He buys multiple copies of the "first edition, and them bound in different colors so that they might suit his moods." To Dorian, "the whole book...seemed to contain the story of his own life, written before he had lived it." Like the book's young hero, Dorian begins immersing himself in varied interests, including religion, mysticism, music, jewels, ancient tapestries, and the study of his own ancestors. Dorian is, however, quick to change obsessions once they no longer interest him, following the whims of his desire with the passion of an artist. He clings to each current obsession fervently, studying it and acquiring as many fanciful examples of it as he can find. He buys extravagent gowns covered in hundreds of pearls to feed his interest in jewels, and ancient, golden-threaded tapestries to nourish his curiosity about embroidery. As soon as a given subject has exhausted itself in his mind, however, he drops it in favor of his next interest. For the next 18 years, capriciousness is a way of life for Dorian. In fact, Dorian's attitude recalls Lord Henry's own: "certainly, to him, Life itself was the first, the greatest, of the arts." No matter how intensely Dorian embraces a subject, "no theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance compared with life itself. He felt keenly conscious of how barren all intellectual speculation is when separated from action and experiment." Dorian's "experiments" are often social in nature. He becomes notorious among London's aristocratic circles as a trend-setter, wearing the latest fashions and looked to as a judge of tastefulness. Young men emulate him, and young women are drawn to him. Those whom he befriends, however, are often ruined, and Dorian is eventually disdained as much as he is admired. Lord Henry seems to be the only close friend who sticks by Dorian over the years. Gossip begins following Dorian wherever he goes, and he becomes infamous, even despicable, in some social circles. He does, however, remain as attractive and fashionable as ever, and continues to be admired for his exquisite taste. No matter how poorly people speak of him, his youthful beauty and the boyish innocence of his face never fail to win him new friends. Dorian also takes to making periodic visits to the attic to watch the painting transform, "wondering sometimes which were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age." At first, as the painting grows uglier, Dorian becomes "more and more enamored of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his soul." He even begins to mock the portrait. Over time, however, his various obsessions and social excursions become ways for him to escape what he knows to be the truth of his soul. | This chapter initiates the second half of the novel, in which Lord Henry's influence has fully bloomed and Dorian has become his own person, with his own interests, convictions, and notoreity amongst London's aristocracy. After this chapter, the protagonist is no longer a corruptable youth, and is rather a full-fledged corruptor in his own right. We learn that Dorian's personality, charming as it may be, is defined by capriciousness, and a passion for new pleasures. Dorian's obsession with Lord Henry's book may be interpreted in a number of different ways. The plot reminds him of his own life; the hero reminds him of himself. The narrator mentions "the latter part of the book, with its really tragic...account of the sorrow and despair of one who had himself lost what in others, and in the world, he most dearly valued." This is a fitting description for the end of Dorian Gray, as well. The question remains, however, of whether the book happens to describe Dorian's character, or whether Dorian is changing to mimic the book's protagonist. Once again, Wilde is blurring the distinction between life and art. Indeed, we learn in this chapter that for Dorian, life and art are interchangeable. Like Lord Henry, he considers pleasure and aesthetic value more important than anything else. To him, any new and pleasurable experience is worth having, even if that experience is hurtful to others. The chapter closes with the statement that "There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful." In these moments, Dorian is the most degraded, and his soul suffers the most disfiguration. Dorian reaches a point where he can only be happy when he forgets about the picture in his attic. He manages to avoid facing it for weeks at a time, but like any addict, he can't force himself to stay away from it for very long. The corruption of his soul torments him, and he escapes that torment by indulging in vices that aggravate his corruption and torment him further. This vicious cycle consciously mimics the patterns of withdrawal and greater dependence commonly faced by drug addicts, an analogy that becomes much more explicit in later chapters, when we learn of Dorian's dependence on opium. The struggle to deny the nagging guilt he feels when faced with the portrait lies beneath all of Dorian's actions, which brings the nature of his fervent passion for his capricious endeavors into question. Is he naturally such a passionate person, or does his passion spring from a desperate need to occupy his mind with anything other than the undeniable and monstrous corruption of his soul? | 477 | 457 | [
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161 | true | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/chapters_23_to_24.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Sense and Sensibility/section_16_part_0.txt | Sense and Sensibility.chapters 23-24 | chapters 23-24 | null | {"name": "Chapters 23-24", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapters-2324", "summary": "Reflecting on Edward's behavior towards herself, Elinor decided that \"his affection was all her own.\" She attributed his and Lucy's engagement to a youthful infatuation and felt that he would never be satisfied with a wife like her -- \"illiterate, artful, and selfish.\" Grieving \"for him more than for herself,\" Elinor concealed both the secret and her deep distress from her mother and Marianne. Much though the conversation with Lucy had upset her, she was eager to \"hear many particulars of their engagement repeated again.\" She wanted to judge the sincerity of Lucy's feelings for Edward. And above all, she wanted to convince Lucy that she wasn't hurt by Lucy's revelation. So, during a visit to Barton Hall, she offered to help Lucy finish a basket which she was making for Annamaria. She and Lucy discussed Edward's dependence on his mother, and Lucy asked Elinor to use her influence with John Dashwood to persuade him to give the Norland living to Edward. Elinor coolly pointed out that since Mrs. John Dashwood was Edward's sister, \"that must be recommendation enough to her husband\" But Lucy reminded her that \"Mrs. John Dashwood would not much approve of Edward's going into orders.\" Conversation between the two became very stilted when Elinor refused to give her opinion of Lucy's situation, and finally, Lucy asked Elinor if she would be staying in London that winter. She was obviously pleased by Elinor's \"Certainly not.\" The conversation ended, and Elinor decided \"that Edward was not only without affection for the person who was to be his wife, but that he had not even the chance of being tolerably happy in marriage.\" After that day, Elinor never mentioned the subject of Edward again. But Lucy \"seldom missed an opportunity of introducing it, and was particularly careful to inform her confidante of her happiness whenever she received a letter from Edward.\"", "analysis": "Elinor, in this chapter, shows herself to be of flesh and blood. She is hurt by Lucy's revelation of the engagement and wishes to assure herself that Edward could not be in love with a woman such as Lucy seems to be. She also doesn't want Lucy to have any advantage over her by suspecting Elinor's anguish. So, Elinor too is capable of insincerity in order to discover all she wants to know."} |
However small Elinor's general dependence on Lucy's veracity might be,
it was impossible for her on serious reflection to suspect it in the
present case, where no temptation could be answerable to the folly of
inventing a falsehood of such a description. What Lucy had asserted to
be true, therefore, Elinor could not, dared not longer doubt; supported
as it was too on every side by such probabilities and proofs, and
contradicted by nothing but her own wishes. Their opportunity of
acquaintance in the house of Mr. Pratt was a foundation for the rest,
at once indisputable and alarming; and Edward's visit near Plymouth,
his melancholy state of mind, his dissatisfaction at his own prospects,
his uncertain behaviour towards herself, the intimate knowledge of the
Miss Steeles as to Norland and their family connections, which had
often surprised her, the picture, the letter, the ring, formed
altogether such a body of evidence, as overcame every fear of
condemning him unfairly, and established as a fact, which no partiality
could set aside, his ill-treatment of herself.--Her resentment of such
behaviour, her indignation at having been its dupe, for a short time
made her feel only for herself; but other ideas, other considerations,
soon arose. Had Edward been intentionally deceiving her? Had he
feigned a regard for her which he did not feel? Was his engagement to
Lucy an engagement of the heart? No; whatever it might once have been,
she could not believe it such at present. His affection was all her
own. She could not be deceived in that. Her mother, sisters, Fanny,
all had been conscious of his regard for her at Norland; it was not an
illusion of her own vanity. He certainly loved her. What a softener
of the heart was this persuasion! How much could it not tempt her to
forgive! He had been blamable, highly blamable, in remaining at
Norland after he first felt her influence over him to be more than it
ought to be. In that, he could not be defended; but if he had injured
her, how much more had he injured himself; if her case were pitiable,
his was hopeless. His imprudence had made her miserable for a while;
but it seemed to have deprived himself of all chance of ever being
otherwise. She might in time regain tranquillity; but HE, what had he
to look forward to? Could he ever be tolerably happy with Lucy Steele;
could he, were his affection for herself out of the question, with his
integrity, his delicacy, and well-informed mind, be satisfied with a
wife like her--illiterate, artful, and selfish?
The youthful infatuation of nineteen would naturally blind him to every
thing but her beauty and good nature; but the four succeeding
years--years, which if rationally spent, give such improvement to the
understanding, must have opened his eyes to her defects of education,
while the same period of time, spent on her side in inferior society
and more frivolous pursuits, had perhaps robbed her of that simplicity
which might once have given an interesting character to her beauty.
If in the supposition of his seeking to marry herself, his difficulties
from his mother had seemed great, how much greater were they now likely
to be, when the object of his engagement was undoubtedly inferior in
connections, and probably inferior in fortune to herself. These
difficulties, indeed, with a heart so alienated from Lucy, might not
press very hard upon his patience; but melancholy was the state of the
person by whom the expectation of family opposition and unkindness,
could be felt as a relief!
As these considerations occurred to her in painful succession, she wept
for him, more than for herself. Supported by the conviction of having
done nothing to merit her present unhappiness, and consoled by the
belief that Edward had done nothing to forfeit her esteem, she thought
she could even now, under the first smart of the heavy blow, command
herself enough to guard every suspicion of the truth from her mother
and sisters. And so well was she able to answer her own expectations,
that when she joined them at dinner only two hours after she had first
suffered the extinction of all her dearest hopes, no one would have
supposed from the appearance of the sisters, that Elinor was mourning
in secret over obstacles which must divide her for ever from the object
of her love, and that Marianne was internally dwelling on the
perfections of a man, of whose whole heart she felt thoroughly
possessed, and whom she expected to see in every carriage which drove
near their house.
The necessity of concealing from her mother and Marianne, what had been
entrusted in confidence to herself, though it obliged her to unceasing
exertion, was no aggravation of Elinor's distress. On the contrary it
was a relief to her, to be spared the communication of what would give
such affliction to them, and to be saved likewise from hearing that
condemnation of Edward, which would probably flow from the excess of
their partial affection for herself, and which was more than she felt
equal to support.
From their counsel, or their conversation, she knew she could receive
no assistance, their tenderness and sorrow must add to her distress,
while her self-command would neither receive encouragement from their
example nor from their praise. She was stronger alone, and her own
good sense so well supported her, that her firmness was as unshaken,
her appearance of cheerfulness as invariable, as with regrets so
poignant and so fresh, it was possible for them to be.
Much as she had suffered from her first conversation with Lucy on the
subject, she soon felt an earnest wish of renewing it; and this for
more reasons than one. She wanted to hear many particulars of their
engagement repeated again, she wanted more clearly to understand what
Lucy really felt for Edward, whether there were any sincerity in her
declaration of tender regard for him, and she particularly wanted to
convince Lucy, by her readiness to enter on the matter again, and her
calmness in conversing on it, that she was no otherwise interested in
it than as a friend, which she very much feared her involuntary
agitation, in their morning discourse, must have left at least
doubtful. That Lucy was disposed to be jealous of her appeared very
probable: it was plain that Edward had always spoken highly in her
praise, not merely from Lucy's assertion, but from her venturing to
trust her on so short a personal acquaintance, with a secret so
confessedly and evidently important. And even Sir John's joking
intelligence must have had some weight. But indeed, while Elinor
remained so well assured within herself of being really beloved by
Edward, it required no other consideration of probabilities to make it
natural that Lucy should be jealous; and that she was so, her very
confidence was a proof. What other reason for the disclosure of the
affair could there be, but that Elinor might be informed by it of
Lucy's superior claims on Edward, and be taught to avoid him in future?
She had little difficulty in understanding thus much of her rival's
intentions, and while she was firmly resolved to act by her as every
principle of honour and honesty directed, to combat her own affection
for Edward and to see him as little as possible; she could not deny
herself the comfort of endeavouring to convince Lucy that her heart was
unwounded. And as she could now have nothing more painful to hear on
the subject than had already been told, she did not mistrust her own
ability of going through a repetition of particulars with composure.
But it was not immediately that an opportunity of doing so could be
commanded, though Lucy was as well disposed as herself to take
advantage of any that occurred; for the weather was not often fine
enough to allow of their joining in a walk, where they might most
easily separate themselves from the others; and though they met at
least every other evening either at the park or cottage, and chiefly at
the former, they could not be supposed to meet for the sake of
conversation. Such a thought would never enter either Sir John or Lady
Middleton's head; and therefore very little leisure was ever given for
a general chat, and none at all for particular discourse. They met for
the sake of eating, drinking, and laughing together, playing at cards,
or consequences, or any other game that was sufficiently noisy.
One or two meetings of this kind had taken place, without affording
Elinor any chance of engaging Lucy in private, when Sir John called at
the cottage one morning, to beg, in the name of charity, that they
would all dine with Lady Middleton that day, as he was obliged to
attend the club at Exeter, and she would otherwise be quite alone,
except her mother and the two Miss Steeles. Elinor, who foresaw a
fairer opening for the point she had in view, in such a party as this
was likely to be, more at liberty among themselves under the tranquil
and well-bred direction of Lady Middleton than when her husband united
them together in one noisy purpose, immediately accepted the
invitation; Margaret, with her mother's permission, was equally
compliant, and Marianne, though always unwilling to join any of their
parties, was persuaded by her mother, who could not bear to have her
seclude herself from any chance of amusement, to go likewise.
The young ladies went, and Lady Middleton was happily preserved from
the frightful solitude which had threatened her. The insipidity of the
meeting was exactly such as Elinor had expected; it produced not one
novelty of thought or expression, and nothing could be less interesting
than the whole of their discourse both in the dining parlour and
drawing room: to the latter, the children accompanied them, and while
they remained there, she was too well convinced of the impossibility of
engaging Lucy's attention to attempt it. They quitted it only with the
removal of the tea-things. The card-table was then placed, and Elinor
began to wonder at herself for having ever entertained a hope of
finding time for conversation at the park. They all rose up in
preparation for a round game.
"I am glad," said Lady Middleton to Lucy, "you are not going to finish
poor little Annamaria's basket this evening; for I am sure it must hurt
your eyes to work filigree by candlelight. And we will make the dear
little love some amends for her disappointment to-morrow, and then I
hope she will not much mind it."
This hint was enough, Lucy recollected herself instantly and replied,
"Indeed you are very much mistaken, Lady Middleton; I am only waiting
to know whether you can make your party without me, or I should have
been at my filigree already. I would not disappoint the little angel
for all the world: and if you want me at the card-table now, I am
resolved to finish the basket after supper."
"You are very good, I hope it won't hurt your eyes--will you ring the
bell for some working candles? My poor little girl would be sadly
disappointed, I know, if the basket was not finished tomorrow, for
though I told her it certainly would not, I am sure she depends upon
having it done."
Lucy directly drew her work table near her and reseated herself with an
alacrity and cheerfulness which seemed to infer that she could taste no
greater delight than in making a filigree basket for a spoilt child.
Lady Middleton proposed a rubber of Casino to the others. No one made
any objection but Marianne, who with her usual inattention to the forms
of general civility, exclaimed, "Your Ladyship will have the goodness
to excuse ME--you know I detest cards. I shall go to the piano-forte;
I have not touched it since it was tuned." And without farther
ceremony, she turned away and walked to the instrument.
Lady Middleton looked as if she thanked heaven that SHE had never made
so rude a speech.
"Marianne can never keep long from that instrument you know, ma'am,"
said Elinor, endeavouring to smooth away the offence; "and I do not
much wonder at it; for it is the very best toned piano-forte I ever
heard."
The remaining five were now to draw their cards.
"Perhaps," continued Elinor, "if I should happen to cut out, I may be
of some use to Miss Lucy Steele, in rolling her papers for her; and
there is so much still to be done to the basket, that it must be
impossible I think for her labour singly, to finish it this evening. I
should like the work exceedingly, if she would allow me a share in it."
"Indeed I shall be very much obliged to you for your help," cried Lucy,
"for I find there is more to be done to it than I thought there was;
and it would be a shocking thing to disappoint dear Annamaria after
all."
"Oh! that would be terrible, indeed," said Miss Steele-- "Dear little
soul, how I do love her!"
"You are very kind," said Lady Middleton to Elinor; "and as you really
like the work, perhaps you will be as well pleased not to cut in till
another rubber, or will you take your chance now?"
Elinor joyfully profited by the first of these proposals, and thus by a
little of that address which Marianne could never condescend to
practise, gained her own end, and pleased Lady Middleton at the same
time. Lucy made room for her with ready attention, and the two fair
rivals were thus seated side by side at the same table, and, with the
utmost harmony, engaged in forwarding the same work. The pianoforte at
which Marianne, wrapped up in her own music and her own thoughts, had
by this time forgotten that any body was in the room besides herself,
was luckily so near them that Miss Dashwood now judged she might
safely, under the shelter of its noise, introduce the interesting
subject, without any risk of being heard at the card-table.
In a firm, though cautious tone, Elinor thus began.
"I should be undeserving of the confidence you have honoured me with,
if I felt no desire for its continuance, or no farther curiosity on its
subject. I will not apologize therefore for bringing it forward again."
"Thank you," cried Lucy warmly, "for breaking the ice; you have set my
heart at ease by it; for I was somehow or other afraid I had offended
you by what I told you that Monday."
"Offended me! How could you suppose so? Believe me," and Elinor spoke
it with the truest sincerity, "nothing could be farther from my
intention than to give you such an idea. Could you have a motive for
the trust, that was not honourable and flattering to me?"
"And yet I do assure you," replied Lucy, her little sharp eyes full of
meaning, "there seemed to me to be a coldness and displeasure in your
manner that made me quite uncomfortable. I felt sure that you was
angry with me; and have been quarrelling with myself ever since, for
having took such a liberty as to trouble you with my affairs. But I am
very glad to find it was only my own fancy, and that you really do not
blame me. If you knew what a consolation it was to me to relieve my
heart speaking to you of what I am always thinking of every moment of
my life, your compassion would make you overlook every thing else I am
sure."
"Indeed, I can easily believe that it was a very great relief to you,
to acknowledge your situation to me, and be assured that you shall
never have reason to repent it. Your case is a very unfortunate one;
you seem to me to be surrounded with difficulties, and you will have
need of all your mutual affection to support you under them. Mr.
Ferrars, I believe, is entirely dependent on his mother."
"He has only two thousand pounds of his own; it would be madness to
marry upon that, though for my own part, I could give up every prospect
of more without a sigh. I have been always used to a very small
income, and could struggle with any poverty for him; but I love him too
well to be the selfish means of robbing him, perhaps, of all that his
mother might give him if he married to please her. We must wait, it
may be for many years. With almost every other man in the world, it
would be an alarming prospect; but Edward's affection and constancy
nothing can deprive me of I know."
"That conviction must be every thing to you; and he is undoubtedly
supported by the same trust in your's. If the strength of your
reciprocal attachment had failed, as between many people, and under
many circumstances it naturally would during a four years' engagement,
your situation would have been pitiable, indeed."
Lucy here looked up; but Elinor was careful in guarding her countenance
from every expression that could give her words a suspicious tendency.
"Edward's love for me," said Lucy, "has been pretty well put to the
test, by our long, very long absence since we were first engaged, and
it has stood the trial so well, that I should be unpardonable to doubt
it now. I can safely say that he has never gave me one moment's alarm
on that account from the first."
Elinor hardly knew whether to smile or sigh at this assertion.
Lucy went on. "I am rather of a jealous temper too by nature, and from
our different situations in life, from his being so much more in the
world than me, and our continual separation, I was enough inclined for
suspicion, to have found out the truth in an instant, if there had been
the slightest alteration in his behaviour to me when we met, or any
lowness of spirits that I could not account for, or if he had talked
more of one lady than another, or seemed in any respect less happy at
Longstaple than he used to be. I do not mean to say that I am
particularly observant or quick-sighted in general, but in such a case
I am sure I could not be deceived."
"All this," thought Elinor, "is very pretty; but it can impose upon
neither of us."
"But what," said she after a short silence, "are your views? or have
you none but that of waiting for Mrs. Ferrars's death, which is a
melancholy and shocking extremity?--Is her son determined to submit to
this, and to all the tediousness of the many years of suspense in which
it may involve you, rather than run the risk of her displeasure for a
while by owning the truth?"
"If we could be certain that it would be only for a while! But Mrs.
Ferrars is a very headstrong proud woman, and in her first fit of anger
upon hearing it, would very likely secure every thing to Robert, and
the idea of that, for Edward's sake, frightens away all my inclination
for hasty measures."
"And for your own sake too, or you are carrying your disinterestedness
beyond reason."
Lucy looked at Elinor again, and was silent.
"Do you know Mr. Robert Ferrars?" asked Elinor.
"Not at all--I never saw him; but I fancy he is very unlike his
brother--silly and a great coxcomb."
"A great coxcomb!" repeated Miss Steele, whose ear had caught those
words by a sudden pause in Marianne's music.-- "Oh, they are talking of
their favourite beaux, I dare say."
"No sister," cried Lucy, "you are mistaken there, our favourite beaux
are NOT great coxcombs."
"I can answer for it that Miss Dashwood's is not," said Mrs. Jennings,
laughing heartily; "for he is one of the modestest, prettiest behaved
young men I ever saw; but as for Lucy, she is such a sly little
creature, there is no finding out who SHE likes."
"Oh," cried Miss Steele, looking significantly round at them, "I dare
say Lucy's beau is quite as modest and pretty behaved as Miss
Dashwood's."
Elinor blushed in spite of herself. Lucy bit her lip, and looked
angrily at her sister. A mutual silence took place for some time.
Lucy first put an end to it by saying in a lower tone, though Marianne
was then giving them the powerful protection of a very magnificent
concerto--
"I will honestly tell you of one scheme which has lately come into my
head, for bringing matters to bear; indeed I am bound to let you into
the secret, for you are a party concerned. I dare say you have seen
enough of Edward to know that he would prefer the church to every other
profession; now my plan is that he should take orders as soon as he
can, and then through your interest, which I am sure you would be kind
enough to use out of friendship for him, and I hope out of some regard
to me, your brother might be persuaded to give him Norland living;
which I understand is a very good one, and the present incumbent not
likely to live a great while. That would be enough for us to marry
upon, and we might trust to time and chance for the rest."
"I should always be happy," replied Elinor, "to show any mark of my
esteem and friendship for Mr. Ferrars; but do you not perceive that my
interest on such an occasion would be perfectly unnecessary? He is
brother to Mrs. John Dashwood--THAT must be recommendation enough to
her husband."
"But Mrs. John Dashwood would not much approve of Edward's going into
orders."
"Then I rather suspect that my interest would do very little."
They were again silent for many minutes. At length Lucy exclaimed with
a deep sigh,
"I believe it would be the wisest way to put an end to the business at
once by dissolving the engagement. We seem so beset with difficulties
on every side, that though it would make us miserable for a time, we
should be happier perhaps in the end. But you will not give me your
advice, Miss Dashwood?"
"No," answered Elinor, with a smile, which concealed very agitated
feelings, "on such a subject I certainly will not. You know very well
that my opinion would have no weight with you, unless it were on the
side of your wishes."
"Indeed you wrong me," replied Lucy, with great solemnity; "I know
nobody of whose judgment I think so highly as I do of yours; and I do
really believe, that if you was to say to me, 'I advise you by all
means to put an end to your engagement with Edward Ferrars, it will be
more for the happiness of both of you,' I should resolve upon doing it
immediately."
Elinor blushed for the insincerity of Edward's future wife, and
replied, "This compliment would effectually frighten me from giving any
opinion on the subject had I formed one. It raises my influence much
too high; the power of dividing two people so tenderly attached is too
much for an indifferent person."
"'Tis because you are an indifferent person," said Lucy, with some
pique, and laying a particular stress on those words, "that your
judgment might justly have such weight with me. If you could be
supposed to be biased in any respect by your own feelings, your opinion
would not be worth having."
Elinor thought it wisest to make no answer to this, lest they might
provoke each other to an unsuitable increase of ease and unreserve; and
was even partly determined never to mention the subject again. Another
pause therefore of many minutes' duration, succeeded this speech, and
Lucy was still the first to end it.
"Shall you be in town this winter, Miss Dashwood?" said she with all
her accustomary complacency.
"Certainly not."
"I am sorry for that," returned the other, while her eyes brightened at
the information, "it would have gave me such pleasure to meet you
there! But I dare say you will go for all that. To be sure, your
brother and sister will ask you to come to them."
"It will not be in my power to accept their invitation if they do."
"How unlucky that is! I had quite depended upon meeting you there.
Anne and me are to go the latter end of January to some relations who
have been wanting us to visit them these several years! But I only go
for the sake of seeing Edward. He will be there in February, otherwise
London would have no charms for me; I have not spirits for it."
Elinor was soon called to the card-table by the conclusion of the first
rubber, and the confidential discourse of the two ladies was therefore
at an end, to which both of them submitted without any reluctance, for
nothing had been said on either side to make them dislike each other
less than they had done before; and Elinor sat down to the card table
with the melancholy persuasion that Edward was not only without
affection for the person who was to be his wife; but that he had not
even the chance of being tolerably happy in marriage, which sincere
affection on HER side would have given, for self-interest alone could
induce a woman to keep a man to an engagement, of which she seemed so
thoroughly aware that he was weary.
From this time the subject was never revived by Elinor, and when
entered on by Lucy, who seldom missed an opportunity of introducing it,
and was particularly careful to inform her confidante, of her happiness
whenever she received a letter from Edward, it was treated by the
former with calmness and caution, and dismissed as soon as civility
would allow; for she felt such conversations to be an indulgence which
Lucy did not deserve, and which were dangerous to herself.
The visit of the Miss Steeles at Barton Park was lengthened far beyond
what the first invitation implied. Their favour increased; they could
not be spared; Sir John would not hear of their going; and in spite of
their numerous and long arranged engagements in Exeter, in spite of the
absolute necessity of returning to fulfill them immediately, which was
in full force at the end of every week, they were prevailed on to stay
nearly two months at the park, and to assist in the due celebration of
that festival which requires a more than ordinary share of private
balls and large dinners to proclaim its importance.
| 4,166 | Chapters 23-24 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapters-2324 | Reflecting on Edward's behavior towards herself, Elinor decided that "his affection was all her own." She attributed his and Lucy's engagement to a youthful infatuation and felt that he would never be satisfied with a wife like her -- "illiterate, artful, and selfish." Grieving "for him more than for herself," Elinor concealed both the secret and her deep distress from her mother and Marianne. Much though the conversation with Lucy had upset her, she was eager to "hear many particulars of their engagement repeated again." She wanted to judge the sincerity of Lucy's feelings for Edward. And above all, she wanted to convince Lucy that she wasn't hurt by Lucy's revelation. So, during a visit to Barton Hall, she offered to help Lucy finish a basket which she was making for Annamaria. She and Lucy discussed Edward's dependence on his mother, and Lucy asked Elinor to use her influence with John Dashwood to persuade him to give the Norland living to Edward. Elinor coolly pointed out that since Mrs. John Dashwood was Edward's sister, "that must be recommendation enough to her husband" But Lucy reminded her that "Mrs. John Dashwood would not much approve of Edward's going into orders." Conversation between the two became very stilted when Elinor refused to give her opinion of Lucy's situation, and finally, Lucy asked Elinor if she would be staying in London that winter. She was obviously pleased by Elinor's "Certainly not." The conversation ended, and Elinor decided "that Edward was not only without affection for the person who was to be his wife, but that he had not even the chance of being tolerably happy in marriage." After that day, Elinor never mentioned the subject of Edward again. But Lucy "seldom missed an opportunity of introducing it, and was particularly careful to inform her confidante of her happiness whenever she received a letter from Edward." | Elinor, in this chapter, shows herself to be of flesh and blood. She is hurt by Lucy's revelation of the engagement and wishes to assure herself that Edward could not be in love with a woman such as Lucy seems to be. She also doesn't want Lucy to have any advantage over her by suspecting Elinor's anguish. So, Elinor too is capable of insincerity in order to discover all she wants to know. | 312 | 73 | [
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110 | false | gradesaver | all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/45.txt | finished_summaries/gradesaver/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_4_part_10.txt | Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 44 | chapter 44 | null | {"name": "Chapter 44", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-5-chapters-35-44", "summary": "Tess wonders why her husband has not written to her, for he had distinctly implied that he would at least let her know of the locality to which he journeyed. She wonders whether he is indifferent or ill. On a Sunday morning, the only morning in which Tess may leave, Tess leaves for Emminster. When Tess reaches the home of the Clares at Emminster, nobody answers, for they are all at church. Tess sees Felix and Cuthbert, but fears that they should find her before she is prepared to confront them. Tess also sees Mercy Chant, whom one of the brothers identifies; Tess remembers the name from Talbothays, and listens as the brothers discuss how Angel threw himself away upon a dairymaid. When the Clares reach their home once more, they find Tess's boots which she has left there and appropriate them as charity. Tess views this scene as evidence of her condemnation, and feels that she cannot return to the vicarage. Tess leaves Emminster and reaches the village of Evershead, where she learns that a fiery, Christian man is preaching. Tess finds this preacher giving a sermon on justification by faith. She recognizes the voice of the preacher as that of Alec d'Urberville.", "analysis": "Tess continues to suffer indignities during her husband's absence, as shown when she overhears the discussion between Felix and Cuthbert about Angel's seemingly disreputable wife. Hardy even includes unmotivated embarrassments for Tess such as the loss of her shoes as evidence of her dejected state. However, the seeming evidence that Tess has concerning the Clares' opinion of her remains idle gossip, for Angel's brothers merely speculate on Tess without the concrete evidence that she believes they must have. The reappearance of Alec d'Urberville is the culmination of recent chapters' foreshadowing. Having found herself confronted with nearly all of the characters who have been a threat to her since departing from Angel, Tess now finds the person most responsible for her tragic fate. There is a certain irony concerning Alec's fate, particular in comparison with Angel; the rigidly moral son of a minister finds himself a businessman, while the unscrupulous hedonist becomes a fundamentalist preacher. Nevertheless, the amount to which Alec has changed since Tess has left Trantridge remains doubtful"} |
By the disclosure in the barn her thoughts were led anew in the
direction which they had taken more than once of late--to the distant
Emminster Vicarage. It was through her husband's parents that she
had been charged to send a letter to Clare if she desired; and to
write to them direct if in difficulty. But that sense of her having
morally no claim upon him had always led Tess to suspend her impulse
to send these notes; and to the family at the Vicarage, therefore,
as to her own parents since her marriage, she was virtually
non-existent. This self-effacement in both directions had been quite
in consonance with her independent character of desiring nothing
by way of favour or pity to which she was not entitled on a fair
consideration of her deserts. She had set herself to stand or fall
by her qualities, and to waive such merely technical claims upon a
strange family as had been established for her by the flimsy fact of
a member of that family, in a season of impulse, writing his name in
a church-book beside hers.
But now that she was stung to a fever by Izz's tale, there was a
limit to her powers of renunciation. Why had her husband not written
to her? He had distinctly implied that he would at least let her
know of the locality to which he had journeyed; but he had not sent a
line to notify his address. Was he really indifferent? But was he
ill? Was it for her to make some advance? Surely she might summon
the courage of solicitude, call at the Vicarage for intelligence, and
express her grief at his silence. If Angel's father were the good
man she had heard him represented to be, he would be able to enter
into her heart-starved situation. Her social hardships she could
conceal.
To leave the farm on a week-day was not in her power; Sunday was
the only possible opportunity. Flintcomb-Ash being in the middle
of the cretaceous tableland over which no railway had climbed as
yet, it would be necessary to walk. And the distance being fifteen
miles each way she would have to allow herself a long day for the
undertaking by rising early.
A fortnight later, when the snow had gone, and had been followed by
a hard black frost, she took advantage of the state of the roads to
try the experiment. At four o'clock that Sunday morning she came
downstairs and stepped out into the starlight. The weather was still
favourable, the ground ringing under her feet like an anvil.
Marian and Izz were much interested in her excursion, knowing that
the journey concerned her husband. Their lodgings were in a cottage
a little further along the lane, but they came and assisted Tess
in her departure, and argued that she should dress up in her very
prettiest guise to captivate the hearts of her parents-in-law; though
she, knowing of the austere and Calvinistic tenets of old Mr Clare,
was indifferent, and even doubtful. A year had now elapsed since
her sad marriage, but she had preserved sufficient draperies from
the wreck of her then full wardrobe to clothe her very charmingly as
a simple country girl with no pretensions to recent fashion; a soft
gray woollen gown, with white crape quilling against the pink skin of
her face and neck, and a black velvet jacket and hat.
"'Tis a thousand pities your husband can't see 'ee now--you do look
a real beauty!" said Izz Huett, regarding Tess as she stood on
the threshold between the steely starlight without and the yellow
candlelight within. Izz spoke with a magnanimous abandonment of
herself to the situation; she could not be--no woman with a heart
bigger than a hazel-nut could be--antagonistic to Tess in her
presence, the influence which she exercised over those of her own sex
being of a warmth and strength quite unusual, curiously overpowering
the less worthy feminine feelings of spite and rivalry.
With a final tug and touch here, and a slight brush there, they let
her go; and she was absorbed into the pearly air of the fore-dawn.
They heard her footsteps tap along the hard road as she stepped out
to her full pace. Even Izz hoped she would win, and, though without
any particular respect for her own virtue, felt glad that she had
been prevented wronging her friend when momentarily tempted by Clare.
It was a year ago, all but a day, that Clare had married Tess, and
only a few days less than a year that he had been absent from her.
Still, to start on a brisk walk, and on such an errand as hers, on a
dry clear wintry morning, through the rarefied air of these chalky
hogs'-backs, was not depressing; and there is no doubt that her dream
at starting was to win the heart of her mother-in-law, tell her whole
history to that lady, enlist her on her side, and so gain back the
truant.
In time she reached the edge of the vast escarpment below which
stretched the loamy Vale of Blackmoor, now lying misty and still
in the dawn. Instead of the colourless air of the uplands, the
atmosphere down there was a deep blue. Instead of the great
enclosures of a hundred acres in which she was now accustomed to
toil, there were little fields below her of less than half-a-dozen
acres, so numerous that they looked from this height like the meshes
of a net. Here the landscape was whitey-brown; down there, as in
Froom Valley, it was always green. Yet it was in that vale that her
sorrow had taken shape, and she did not love it as formerly. Beauty
to her, as to all who have felt, lay not in the thing, but in what
the thing symbolized.
Keeping the Vale on her right, she steered steadily westward; passing
above the Hintocks, crossing at right-angles the high-road from
Sherton-Abbas to Casterbridge, and skirting Dogbury Hill and
High-Stoy, with the dell between them called "The Devil's Kitchen".
Still following the elevated way she reached Cross-in-Hand, where
the stone pillar stands desolate and silent, to mark the site of a
miracle, or murder, or both. Three miles further she cut across the
straight and deserted Roman road called Long-Ash Lane; leaving which
as soon as she reached it she dipped down a hill by a transverse lane
into the small town or village of Evershead, being now about halfway
over the distance. She made a halt here, and breakfasted a second
time, heartily enough--not at the Sow-and-Acorn, for she avoided
inns, but at a cottage by the church.
The second half of her journey was through a more gentle country, by
way of Benvill Lane. But as the mileage lessened between her and the
spot of her pilgrimage, so did Tess's confidence decrease, and her
enterprise loom out more formidably. She saw her purpose in such
staring lines, and the landscape so faintly, that she was sometimes
in danger of losing her way. However, about noon she paused by a
gate on the edge of the basin in which Emminster and its Vicarage
lay.
The square tower, beneath which she knew that at that moment the
Vicar and his congregation were gathered, had a severe look in
her eyes. She wished that she had somehow contrived to come on a
week-day. Such a good man might be prejudiced against a woman who
had chosen Sunday, never realizing the necessities of her case.
But it was incumbent upon her to go on now. She took off the thick
boots in which she had walked thus far, put on her pretty thin ones
of patent leather, and, stuffing the former into the hedge by the
gatepost where she might readily find them again, descended the hill;
the freshness of colour she had derived from the keen air thinning
away in spite of her as she drew near the parsonage.
Tess hoped for some accident that might favour her, but nothing
favoured her. The shrubs on the Vicarage lawn rustled uncomfortably
in the frosty breeze; she could not feel by any stretch of
imagination, dressed to her highest as she was, that the house was
the residence of near relations; and yet nothing essential, in nature
or emotion, divided her from them: in pains, pleasures, thoughts,
birth, death, and after-death, they were the same.
She nerved herself by an effort, entered the swing-gate, and rang
the door-bell. The thing was done; there could be no retreat. No;
the thing was not done. Nobody answered to her ringing. The effort
had to be risen to and made again. She rang a second time, and the
agitation of the act, coupled with her weariness after the fifteen
miles' walk, led her to support herself while she waited by resting
her hand on her hip and her elbow against the wall of the porch. The
wind was so nipping that the ivy-leaves had become wizened and gray,
each tapping incessantly upon its neighbour with a disquieting stir
of her nerves. A piece of blood-stained paper, caught up from some
meat-buyer's dust-heap, beat up and down the road without the gate;
too flimsy to rest, too heavy to fly away; and a few straws kept it
company.
The second peal had been louder, and still nobody came. Then she
walked out of the porch, opened the gate, and passed through. And
though she looked dubiously at the house-front as if inclined to
return, it was with a breath of relied that she closed the gate. A
feeling haunted her that she might have been recognized (though how
she could not tell), and orders been given not to admit her.
Tess went as far as the corner. She had done all she could do; but
determined not to escape present trepidation at the expense of future
distress, she walked back again quite past the house, looking up at
all the windows.
Ah--the explanation was that they were all at church, every one. She
remembered her husband saying that his father always insisted upon
the household, servants included, going to morning-service, and,
as a consequence, eating cold food when they came home. It was,
therefore, only necessary to wait till the service was over. She
would not make herself conspicuous by waiting on the spot, and she
started to get past the church into the lane. But as she reached the
churchyard-gate the people began pouring out, and Tess found herself
in the midst of them.
The Emminster congregation looked at her as only a congregation of
small country-townsfolk walking home at its leisure can look at a
woman out of the common whom it perceives to be a stranger. She
quickened her pace, and ascended the road by which she had come,
to find a retreat between its hedges till the Vicar's family should
have lunched, and it might be convenient for them to receive her.
She soon distanced the churchgoers, except two youngish men, who,
linked arm-in-arm, were beating up behind her at a quick step.
As they drew nearer she could hear their voices engaged in earnest
discourse, and, with the natural quickness of a woman in her
situation, did not fail to recognize in those noises the quality
of her husband's tones. The pedestrians were his two brothers.
Forgetting all her plans, Tess's one dread was lest they should
overtake her now, in her disorganized condition, before she was
prepared to confront them; for though she felt that they could not
identify her, she instinctively dreaded their scrutiny. The more
briskly they walked, the more briskly walked she. They were plainly
bent upon taking a short quick stroll before going indoors to lunch
or dinner, to restore warmth to limbs chilled with sitting through a
long service.
Only one person had preceded Tess up the hill--a ladylike young
woman, somewhat interesting, though, perhaps, a trifle _guindee_
and prudish. Tess had nearly overtaken her when the speed of her
brothers-in-law brought them so nearly behind her back that she could
hear every word of their conversation. They said nothing, however,
which particularly interested her till, observing the young lady
still further in front, one of them remarked, "There is Mercy Chant.
Let us overtake her."
Tess knew the name. It was the woman who had been destined for
Angel's life-companion by his and her parents, and whom he probably
would have married but for her intrusive self. She would have known
as much without previous information if she had waited a moment, for
one of the brothers proceeded to say: "Ah! poor Angel, poor Angel!
I never see that nice girl without more and more regretting his
precipitancy in throwing himself away upon a dairymaid, or whatever
she may be. It is a queer business, apparently. Whether she has
joined him yet or not I don't know; but she had not done so some
months ago when I heard from him."
"I can't say. He never tells me anything nowadays. His
ill-considered marriage seems to have completed that estrangement
from me which was begun by his extraordinary opinions."
Tess beat up the long hill still faster; but she could not outwalk
them without exciting notice. At last they outsped her altogether,
and passed her by. The young lady still further ahead heard their
footsteps and turned. Then there was a greeting and a shaking of
hands, and the three went on together.
They soon reached the summit of the hill, and, evidently intending
this point to be the limit of their promenade, slackened pace and
turned all three aside to the gate whereat Tess had paused an hour
before that time to reconnoitre the town before descending into it.
During their discourse one of the clerical brothers probed the hedge
carefully with his umbrella, and dragged something to light.
"Here's a pair of old boots," he said. "Thrown away, I suppose, by
some tramp or other."
"Some imposter who wished to come into the town barefoot, perhaps,
and so excite our sympathies," said Miss Chant. "Yes, it must have
been, for they are excellent walking-boots--by no means worn out.
What a wicked thing to do! I'll carry them home for some poor
person."
Cuthbert Clare, who had been the one to find them, picked them up for
her with the crook of his stick; and Tess's boots were appropriated.
She, who had heard this, walked past under the screen of her woollen
veil till, presently looking back, she perceived that the church
party had left the gate with her boots and retreated down the hill.
Thereupon our heroine resumed her walk. Tears, blinding tears, were
running down her face. She knew that it was all sentiment, all
baseless impressibility, which had caused her to read the scene as
her own condemnation; nevertheless she could not get over it; she
could not contravene in her own defenceless person all those untoward
omens. It was impossible to think of returning to the Vicarage.
Angel's wife felt almost as if she had been hounded up that hill like
a scorned thing by those--to her--superfine clerics. Innocently
as the slight had been inflicted, it was somewhat unfortunate that
she had encountered the sons and not the father, who, despite his
narrowness, was far less starched and ironed than they, and had to
the full the gift of charity. As she again thought of her dusty
boots she almost pitied those habiliments for the quizzing to which
they had been subjected, and felt how hopeless life was for their
owner.
"Ah!" she said, still sighing in pity of herself, "THEY didn't know
that I wore those over the roughest part of the road to save these
pretty ones HE bought for me--no--they did not know it! And they
didn't think that HE chose the colour o' my pretty frock--no--how
could they? If they had known perhaps they would not have cared,
for they don't care much for him, poor thing!"
Then she grieved for the beloved man whose conventional standard of
judgement had caused her all these latter sorrows; and she went her
way without knowing that the greatest misfortune of her life was this
feminine loss of courage at the last and critical moment through her
estimating her father-in-law by his sons. Her present condition was
precisely one which would have enlisted the sympathies of old Mr and
Mrs Clare. Their hearts went out of them at a bound towards extreme
cases, when the subtle mental troubles of the less desperate among
mankind failed to win their interest or regard. In jumping at
Publicans and Sinners they would forget that a word might be said for
the worries of Scribes and Pharisees; and this defect or limitation
might have recommended their own daughter-in-law to them at this
moment as a fairly choice sort of lost person for their love.
Thereupon she began to plod back along the road by which she had come
not altogether full of hope, but full of a conviction that a crisis
in her life was approaching. No crisis, apparently, had supervened;
and there was nothing left for her to do but to continue upon that
starve-acre farm till she could again summon courage to face the
Vicarage. She did, indeed, take sufficient interest in herself to
throw up her veil on this return journey, as if to let the world see
that she could at least exhibit a face such as Mercy Chant could
not show. But it was done with a sorry shake of the head. "It is
nothing--it is nothing!" she said. "Nobody loves it; nobody sees it.
Who cares about the looks of a castaway like me!"
Her journey back was rather a meander than a march. It had no
sprightliness, no purpose; only a tendency. Along the tedious length
of Benvill Lane she began to grow tired, and she leant upon gates and
paused by milestones.
She did not enter any house till, at the seventh or eighth mile, she
descended the steep long hill below which lay the village or townlet
of Evershead, where in the morning she had breakfasted with such
contrasting expectations. The cottage by the church, in which she
again sat down, was almost the first at that end of the village, and
while the woman fetched her some milk from the pantry, Tess, looking
down the street, perceived that the place seemed quite deserted.
"The people are gone to afternoon service, I suppose?" she said.
"No, my dear," said the old woman. "'Tis too soon for that; the
bells hain't strook out yet. They be all gone to hear the preaching
in yonder barn. A ranter preaches there between the services--an
excellent, fiery, Christian man, they say. But, Lord, I don't go to
hear'n! What comes in the regular way over the pulpit is hot enough
for I."
Tess soon went onward into the village, her footsteps echoing against
the houses as though it were a place of the dead. Nearing the
central part, her echoes were intruded on by other sounds; and seeing
the barn not far off the road, she guessed these to be the utterances
of the preacher.
His voice became so distinct in the still clear air that she could
soon catch his sentences, though she was on the closed side of
the barn. The sermon, as might be expected, was of the extremest
antinomian type; on justification by faith, as expounded in the
theology of St Paul. This fixed idea of the rhapsodist was delivered
with animated enthusiasm, in a manner entirely declamatory, for he
had plainly no skill as a dialectician. Although Tess had not heard
the beginning of the address, she learnt what the text had been from
its constant iteration--
"O foolish galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye
should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ
hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?"
Tess was all the more interested, as she stood listening behind, in
finding that the preacher's doctrine was a vehement form of the view
of Angel's father, and her interest intensified when the speaker
began to detail his own spiritual experiences of how he had come by
those views. He had, he said, been the greatest of sinners. He had
scoffed; he had wantonly associated with the reckless and the lewd.
But a day of awakening had come, and, in a human sense, it had been
brought about mainly by the influence of a certain clergyman, whom he
had at first grossly insulted; but whose parting words had sunk into
his heart, and had remained there, till by the grace of Heaven they
had worked this change in him, and made him what they saw him.
But more startling to Tess than the doctrine had been the voice,
which, impossible as it seemed, was precisely that of Alec
d'Urberville. Her face fixed in painful suspense, she came round
to the front of the barn, and passed before it. The low winter sun
beamed directly upon the great double-doored entrance on this side;
one of the doors being open, so that the rays stretched far in over
the threshing-floor to the preacher and his audience, all snugly
sheltered from the northern breeze. The listeners were entirely
villagers, among them being the man whom she had seen carrying the
red paint-pot on a former memorable occasion. But her attention
was given to the central figure, who stood upon some sacks of corn,
facing the people and the door. The three o'clock sun shone full
upon him, and the strange enervating conviction that her seducer
confronted her, which had been gaining ground in Tess ever since she
had heard his words distinctly, was at last established as a fact
indeed.
END OF PHASE THE FIFTH
Phase the Sixth: The Convert
| 3,437 | Chapter 44 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-5-chapters-35-44 | Tess wonders why her husband has not written to her, for he had distinctly implied that he would at least let her know of the locality to which he journeyed. She wonders whether he is indifferent or ill. On a Sunday morning, the only morning in which Tess may leave, Tess leaves for Emminster. When Tess reaches the home of the Clares at Emminster, nobody answers, for they are all at church. Tess sees Felix and Cuthbert, but fears that they should find her before she is prepared to confront them. Tess also sees Mercy Chant, whom one of the brothers identifies; Tess remembers the name from Talbothays, and listens as the brothers discuss how Angel threw himself away upon a dairymaid. When the Clares reach their home once more, they find Tess's boots which she has left there and appropriate them as charity. Tess views this scene as evidence of her condemnation, and feels that she cannot return to the vicarage. Tess leaves Emminster and reaches the village of Evershead, where she learns that a fiery, Christian man is preaching. Tess finds this preacher giving a sermon on justification by faith. She recognizes the voice of the preacher as that of Alec d'Urberville. | Tess continues to suffer indignities during her husband's absence, as shown when she overhears the discussion between Felix and Cuthbert about Angel's seemingly disreputable wife. Hardy even includes unmotivated embarrassments for Tess such as the loss of her shoes as evidence of her dejected state. However, the seeming evidence that Tess has concerning the Clares' opinion of her remains idle gossip, for Angel's brothers merely speculate on Tess without the concrete evidence that she believes they must have. The reappearance of Alec d'Urberville is the culmination of recent chapters' foreshadowing. Having found herself confronted with nearly all of the characters who have been a threat to her since departing from Angel, Tess now finds the person most responsible for her tragic fate. There is a certain irony concerning Alec's fate, particular in comparison with Angel; the rigidly moral son of a minister finds himself a businessman, while the unscrupulous hedonist becomes a fundamentalist preacher. Nevertheless, the amount to which Alec has changed since Tess has left Trantridge remains doubtful | 204 | 169 | [
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110 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/54.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_52_part_0.txt | Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 53 | chapter 53 | null | {"name": "Phase VII: \"Fulfillment,\" Chapter Fifty-Three", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-53", "summary": "Angel arrives at his parents' house after his long trip. Mrs. Clare is shocked to see how frail and scrawny he is after his illness. The first thing he asks is whether any letters have come from Tess. They've held her most recent letter, the angry one, and he reads it and almost despairs of ever making things up with her. He tells his parents about her being a D'Urberville, and then goes to bed. He writes to Mrs. Durbeyfield at Marlott to tell them of his return, but Mrs. Durbeyfield writes back saying that they no longer live in Marlott, that Tess isn't living with her, and that she doesn't want to say where Tess is now living. Angel figures they're all just mad at him, and doesn't worry too much about it. Angel waits to hear again from Mrs. Durbeyfield, figuring that she'd write again once she'd had a chance to tell Tess that he was back. But no note comes. Then a letter that had been forwarded to him in Brazil, but which was returned, reaches him. It's the one in which Tess begs him to hurry back, because she's being pressed to do what she doesn't want to. Angel immediately sets out to find her, especially when he sees the note sent by Marian and Izz.", "analysis": ""} |
It was evening at Emminster Vicarage. The two customary candles were
burning under their green shades in the Vicar's study, but he had not
been sitting there. Occasionally he came in, stirred the small fire
which sufficed for the increasing mildness of the spring, and went
out again; sometimes pausing at the front door, going on to the
drawing-room, then returning again to the front door.
It faced westward, and though gloom prevailed inside, there was still
light enough without to see with distinctness. Mrs Clare, who had
been sitting in the drawing-room, followed him hither.
"Plenty of time yet," said the Vicar. "He doesn't reach Chalk-Newton
till six, even if the train should be punctual, and ten miles of
country-road, five of them in Crimmercrock Lane, are not jogged over
in a hurry by our old horse."
"But he has done it in an hour with us, my dear."
"Years ago."
Thus they passed the minutes, each well knowing that this was only
waste of breath, the one essential being simply to wait.
At length there was a slight noise in the lane, and the old
pony-chaise appeared indeed outside the railings. They saw alight
therefrom a form which they affected to recognize, but would actually
have passed by in the street without identifying had he not got out
of their carriage at the particular moment when a particular person
was due.
Mrs Clare rushed through the dark passage to the door, and her
husband came more slowly after her.
The new arrival, who was just about to enter, saw their anxious faces
in the doorway and the gleam of the west in their spectacles because
they confronted the last rays of day; but they could only see his
shape against the light.
"O, my boy, my boy--home again at last!" cried Mrs Clare, who cared
no more at that moment for the stains of heterodoxy which had caused
all this separation than for the dust upon his clothes. What woman,
indeed, among the most faithful adherents of the truth, believes the
promises and threats of the Word in the sense in which she believes
in her own children, or would not throw her theology to the wind if
weighed against their happiness? As soon as they reached the room
where the candles were lighted she looked at his face.
"O, it is not Angel--not my son--the Angel who went away!" she cried
in all the irony of sorrow, as she turned herself aside.
His father, too, was shocked to see him, so reduced was that figure
from its former contours by worry and the bad season that Clare had
experienced, in the climate to which he had so rashly hurried in his
first aversion to the mockery of events at home. You could see the
skeleton behind the man, and almost the ghost behind the skeleton.
He matched Crivelli's dead _Christus_. His sunken eye-pits were of
morbid hue, and the light in his eyes had waned. The angular hollows
and lines of his aged ancestors had succeeded to their reign in his
face twenty years before their time.
"I was ill over there, you know," he said. "I am all right now."
As if, however, to falsify this assertion, his legs seemed to give
way, and he suddenly sat down to save himself from falling. It was
only a slight attack of faintness, resulting from the tedious day's
journey, and the excitement of arrival.
"Has any letter come for me lately?" he asked. "I received the
last you sent on by the merest chance, and after considerable delay
through being inland; or I might have come sooner."
"It was from your wife, we supposed?"
"It was."
Only one other had recently come. They had not sent it on to him,
knowing he would start for home so soon.
He hastily opened the letter produced, and was much disturbed to read
in Tess's handwriting the sentiments expressed in her last hurried
scrawl to him.
O why have you treated me so monstrously, Angel! I do
not deserve it. I have thought it all over carefully,
and I can never, never forgive you! You know that I
did not intend to wrong you--why have you so wronged
me? You are cruel, cruel indeed! I will try to forget
you. It is all injustice I have received at your
hands!
T.
"It is quite true!" said Angel, throwing down the letter. "Perhaps
she will never be reconciled to me!"
"Don't, Angel, be so anxious about a mere child of the soil!" said
his mother.
"Child of the soil! Well, we all are children of the soil. I wish
she were so in the sense you mean; but let me now explain to you what
I have never explained before, that her father is a descendant in the
male line of one of the oldest Norman houses, like a good many others
who lead obscure agricultural lives in our villages, and are dubbed
'sons of the soil.'"
He soon retired to bed; and the next morning, feeling exceedingly
unwell, he remained in his room pondering. The circumstances amid
which he had left Tess were such that though, while on the south of
the Equator and just in receipt of her loving epistle, it had seemed
the easiest thing in the world to rush back into her arms the moment
he chose to forgive her, now that he had arrived it was not so easy
as it had seemed. She was passionate, and her present letter,
showing that her estimate of him had changed under his delay--too
justly changed, he sadly owned,--made him ask himself if it would
be wise to confront her unannounced in the presence of her parents.
Supposing that her love had indeed turned to dislike during the last
weeks of separation, a sudden meeting might lead to bitter words.
Clare therefore thought it would be best to prepare Tess and her
family by sending a line to Marlott announcing his return, and his
hope that she was still living with them there, as he had arranged
for her to do when he left England. He despatched the inquiry that
very day, and before the week was out there came a short reply from
Mrs Durbeyfield which did not remove his embarrassment, for it bore
no address, though to his surprise it was not written from Marlott.
SIR,
J write these few lines to say that my Daughter is away
from me at present, and J am not sure when she will
return, but J will let you know as Soon as she do.
J do not feel at liberty to tell you Where she is
temperly biding. J should say that me and my Family
have left Marlott for some Time.--
Yours,
J. DURBEYFIELD
It was such a relief to Clare to learn that Tess was at least
apparently well that her mother's stiff reticence as to her
whereabouts did not long distress him. They were all angry with him,
evidently. He would wait till Mrs Durbeyfield could inform him of
Tess's return, which her letter implied to be soon. He deserved no
more. His had been a love "which alters when it alteration finds".
He had undergone some strange experiences in his absence; he had seen
the virtual Faustina in the literal Cornelia, a spiritual Lucretia in
a corporeal Phryne; he had thought of the woman taken and set in the
midst as one deserving to be stoned, and of the wife of Uriah being
made a queen; and he had asked himself why he had not judged Tess
constructively rather than biographically, by the will rather than
by the deed?
A day or two passed while he waited at his father's house for the
promised second note from Joan Durbeyfield, and indirectly to recover
a little more strength. The strength showed signs of coming back,
but there was no sign of Joan's letter. Then he hunted up the
old letter sent on to him in Brazil, which Tess had written from
Flintcomb-Ash, and re-read it. The sentences touched him now as
much as when he had first perused them.
... I must cry to you in my trouble--I have no one
else! ... I think I must die if you do not come
soon, or tell me to come to you... please, please,
not to be just--only a little kind to me ... If
you would come, I could die in your arms! I would
be well content to do that if so be you had forgiven
me! ... if you will send me one little line, and say,
"I am coming soon," I will bide on, Angel--O, so
cheerfully! ... think how it do hurt my heart not to
see you ever--ever! Ah, if I could only make your
dear heart ache one little minute of each day as mine
does every day and all day long, it might lead you to
show pity to your poor lonely one. ... I would be
content, ay, glad, to live with you as your servant,
if I may not as your wife; so that I could only be
near you, and get glimpses of you, and think of you
as mine. ... I long for only one thing in heaven
or earth or under the earth, to meet you, my own
dear! Come to me--come to me, and save me from what
threatens me!
Clare determined that he would no longer believe in her more recent
and severer regard of him, but would go and find her immediately. He
asked his father if she had applied for any money during his absence.
His father returned a negative, and then for the first time it
occurred to Angel that her pride had stood in her way, and that she
had suffered privation. From his remarks his parents now gathered
the real reason of the separation; and their Christianity was such
that, reprobates being their especial care, the tenderness towards
Tess which her blood, her simplicity, even her poverty, had not
engendered, was instantly excited by her sin.
Whilst he was hastily packing together a few articles for his journey
he glanced over a poor plain missive also lately come to hand--the
one from Marian and Izz Huett, beginning--
"Honour'd Sir, Look to your Wife if you do love her as much as she do
love you," and signed, "From Two Well-Wishers."
| 1,763 | Phase VII: "Fulfillment," Chapter Fifty-Three | https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-53 | Angel arrives at his parents' house after his long trip. Mrs. Clare is shocked to see how frail and scrawny he is after his illness. The first thing he asks is whether any letters have come from Tess. They've held her most recent letter, the angry one, and he reads it and almost despairs of ever making things up with her. He tells his parents about her being a D'Urberville, and then goes to bed. He writes to Mrs. Durbeyfield at Marlott to tell them of his return, but Mrs. Durbeyfield writes back saying that they no longer live in Marlott, that Tess isn't living with her, and that she doesn't want to say where Tess is now living. Angel figures they're all just mad at him, and doesn't worry too much about it. Angel waits to hear again from Mrs. Durbeyfield, figuring that she'd write again once she'd had a chance to tell Tess that he was back. But no note comes. Then a letter that had been forwarded to him in Brazil, but which was returned, reaches him. It's the one in which Tess begs him to hurry back, because she's being pressed to do what she doesn't want to. Angel immediately sets out to find her, especially when he sees the note sent by Marian and Izz. | null | 220 | 1 | [
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110 | false | pinkmonkey | all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/18.txt | finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_7_part_1.txt | Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 18 | chapter 18 | null | {"name": "CHAPTER 18", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820050202/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmTessD28.asp", "summary": "In this chapter, Angel Clare is developed in much more detail, especially in the aspects that will affect Tess. He is the youngest son of Mr. Clare, who is a Vicar in Emminster and respected throughout Wessex. He is the only one of the three sons not to choose a vocation in the ministry; as a result, his father has not sent him to Cambridge, and for several years Angel is at loose ends. He goes to London for a while, unsuccessfully seeking a profession; while there he is involved with an older woman. He realizes he is more suited for country living, and at age twenty-six has decided to learn the farming business, which he feels will allow him to have \"intellectual liberty. He is currently a trainee on the Talbothay farm, but he is not treated as an ordinary farmhand. Instead, he is treated as a gentleman who is learning the farming business. At the dairy, Angel at first remains aloof, eating by himself. Soon, however, he finds his fellow farm workers interesting and begins to eat with them, enjoying their company. He also begins to notice the beauty of nature and to enjoy outdoor life. After Tess arrives, Angel also notices her innocent beauty. He is deeply attracted towards her freshness and assumes she is a virgin. Angel judges her to be more than an ordinary milkmaid and is eager to get to know her. Tess, however, maintains a distance with Angel, because the ghosts of her stained past haunt her.", "analysis": "Notes Several aspects of Angel Clare should be noted, for they will figure in his future relationship with Tess. His father, the Vicar in Emminster, has denied Angel an education at Cambridge because he has not chosen to go into the ministry; Mr. Clare is obviously a conservative person with fixed ideas. He, however, is respected as a special parson throughout Wessex, and some of his traits have been passed on to Angel. Everyone on the farm also recognizes Angel as someone different and special; even Mrs. Crick believes he should not eat with the other farmhands, for she perceives him as much better than her regular employees. Like Tess, he has had an adventure away from home, spending some time in London and having an affair with an older woman. In the end, however, he realizes he is best suited for country living. Angel Clare immediately recognizes that Tess is not an ordinary girl. Her pretty and delicate looks compensate for any sophistication that she lacks. Her mild manner and pure nature are reflected on her face. Her charming and attractive personality cannot easily be hidden. As a result, this beautiful young lady captivates Angel. It is important to notice the great irony in this chapter. From the moment Angel sets his eyes on Tess, he presumes her to be a virgin because of her loveliness. It never occurs to him that this delicate female could carry the stigma of a sordid past"} |
Angel Clare rises out of the past not altogether as a distinct
figure, but as an appreciative voice, a long regard of fixed,
abstracted eyes, and a mobility of mouth somewhat too small and
delicately lined for a man's, though with an unexpectedly firm close
of the lower lip now and then; enough to do away with any inference
of indecision. Nevertheless, something nebulous, preoccupied, vague,
in his bearing and regard, marked him as one who probably had no very
definite aim or concern about his material future. Yet as a lad
people had said of him that he was one who might do anything if he
tried.
He was the youngest son of his father, a poor parson at the other end
of the county, and had arrived at Talbothays Dairy as a six months'
pupil, after going the round of some other farms, his object being
to acquire a practical skill in the various processes of farming,
with a view either to the Colonies or the tenure of a home-farm, as
circumstances might decide.
His entry into the ranks of the agriculturists and breeders was a
step in the young man's career which had been anticipated neither
by himself nor by others.
Mr Clare the elder, whose first wife had died and left him a
daughter, married a second late in life. This lady had somewhat
unexpectedly brought him three sons, so that between Angel, the
youngest, and his father the Vicar there seemed to be almost a
missing generation. Of these boys the aforesaid Angel, the child of
his old age, was the only son who had not taken a University degree,
though he was the single one of them whose early promise might have
done full justice to an academical training.
Some two or three years before Angel's appearance at the Marlott
dance, on a day when he had left school and was pursuing his studies
at home, a parcel came to the Vicarage from the local bookseller's,
directed to the Reverend James Clare. The Vicar having opened it and
found it to contain a book, read a few pages; whereupon he jumped up
from his seat and went straight to the shop with the book under his
arm.
"Why has this been sent to my house?" he asked peremptorily, holding
up the volume.
"It was ordered, sir."
"Not by me, or any one belonging to me, I am happy to say."
The shopkeeper looked into his order-book.
"Oh, it has been misdirected, sir," he said. "It was ordered by Mr
Angel Clare, and should have been sent to him."
Mr Clare winced as if he had been struck. He went home pale and
dejected, and called Angel into his study.
"Look into this book, my boy," he said. "What do you know about it?"
"I ordered it," said Angel simply.
"What for?"
"To read."
"How can you think of reading it?"
"How can I? Why--it is a system of philosophy. There is no more
moral, or even religious, work published."
"Yes--moral enough; I don't deny that. But religious!--and for YOU,
who intend to be a minister of the Gospel!"
"Since you have alluded to the matter, father," said the son, with
anxious thought upon his face, "I should like to say, once for
all, that I should prefer not to take Orders. I fear I could not
conscientiously do so. I love the Church as one loves a parent.
I shall always have the warmest affection for her. There is no
institution for whose history I have a deeper admiration; but I
cannot honestly be ordained her minister, as my brothers are, while
she refuses to liberate her mind from an untenable redemptive
theolatry."
It had never occurred to the straightforward and simple-minded Vicar
that one of his own flesh and blood could come to this! He was
stultified, shocked, paralysed. And if Angel were not going to
enter the Church, what was the use of sending him to Cambridge? The
University as a step to anything but ordination seemed, to this man
of fixed ideas, a preface without a volume. He was a man not merely
religious, but devout; a firm believer--not as the phrase is now
elusively construed by theological thimble-riggers in the Church and
out of it, but in the old and ardent sense of the Evangelical school:
one who could
Indeed opine
That the Eternal and Divine
Did, eighteen centuries ago
In very truth...
Angel's father tried argument, persuasion, entreaty.
"No, father; I cannot underwrite Article Four (leave alone the rest),
taking it 'in the literal and grammatical sense' as required by the
Declaration; and, therefore, I can't be a parson in the present state
of affairs," said Angel. "My whole instinct in matters of religion
is towards reconstruction; to quote your favorite Epistle to the
Hebrews, 'the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things
that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.'"
His father grieved so deeply that it made Angel quite ill to see him.
"What is the good of your mother and me economizing and stinting
ourselves to give you a University education, if it is not to be used
for the honour and glory of God?" his father repeated.
"Why, that it may be used for the honour and glory of man, father."
Perhaps if Angel had persevered he might have gone to Cambridge like
his brothers. But the Vicar's view of that seat of learning as a
stepping-stone to Orders alone was quite a family tradition; and so
rooted was the idea in his mind that perseverance began to appear to
the sensitive son akin to an intent to misappropriate a trust, and
wrong the pious heads of the household, who had been and were, as his
father had hinted, compelled to exercise much thrift to carry out
this uniform plan of education for the three young men.
"I will do without Cambridge," said Angel at last. "I feel that I
have no right to go there in the circumstances."
The effects of this decisive debate were not long in showing
themselves. He spent years and years in desultory studies,
undertakings, and meditations; he began to evince considerable
indifference to social forms and observances. The material
distinctions of rank and wealth he increasingly despised. Even the
"good old family" (to use a favourite phrase of a late local worthy)
had no aroma for him unless there were good new resolutions in its
representatives. As a balance to these austerities, when he went to
live in London to see what the world was like, and with a view to
practising a profession or business there, he was carried off his
head, and nearly entrapped by a woman much older than himself, though
luckily he escaped not greatly the worse for the experience.
Early association with country solitudes had bred in him an
unconquerable, and almost unreasonable, aversion to modern town life,
and shut him out from such success as he might have aspired to by
following a mundane calling in the impracticability of the spiritual
one. But something had to be done; he had wasted many valuable
years; and having an acquaintance who was starting on a thriving life
as a Colonial farmer, it occurred to Angel that this might be a lead
in the right direction. Farming, either in the Colonies, America, or
at home--farming, at any rate, after becoming well qualified for the
business by a careful apprenticeship--that was a vocation which would
probably afford an independence without the sacrifice of what he
valued even more than a competency--intellectual liberty.
So we find Angel Clare at six-and-twenty here at Talbothays as a
student of kine, and, as there were no houses near at hand in which
he could get a comfortable lodging, a boarder at the dairyman's.
His room was an immense attic which ran the whole length of the
dairy-house. It could only be reached by a ladder from the
cheese-loft, and had been closed up for a long time till he arrived
and selected it as his retreat. Here Clare had plenty of space, and
could often be heard by the dairy-folk pacing up and down when the
household had gone to rest. A portion was divided off at one end by
a curtain, behind which was his bed, the outer part being furnished
as a homely sitting-room.
At first he lived up above entirely, reading a good deal, and
strumming upon an old harp which he had bought at a sale, saying when
in a bitter humour that he might have to get his living by it in the
streets some day. But he soon preferred to read human nature by
taking his meals downstairs in the general dining-kitchen, with the
dairyman and his wife, and the maids and men, who all together formed
a lively assembly; for though but few milking hands slept in the
house, several joined the family at meals. The longer Clare resided
here the less objection had he to his company, and the more did he
like to share quarters with them in common.
Much to his surprise he took, indeed, a real delight in their
companionship. The conventional farm-folk of his imagination--
personified in the newspaper-press by the pitiable dummy known as
Hodge--were obliterated after a few days' residence. At close
quarters no Hodge was to be seen. At first, it is true, when Clare's
intelligence was fresh from a contrasting society, these friends with
whom he now hobnobbed seemed a little strange. Sitting down as a
level member of the dairyman's household seemed at the outset an
undignified proceeding. The ideas, the modes, the surroundings,
appeared retrogressive and unmeaning. But with living on there,
day after day, the acute sojourner became conscious of a new aspect
in the spectacle. Without any objective change whatever, variety
had taken the place of monotonousness. His host and his host's
household, his men and his maids, as they became intimately known to
Clare, began to differentiate themselves as in a chemical process.
The thought of Pascal's was brought home to him: "_A mesure qu'on a
plus d'esprit, on trouve qu'il y a plus d'hommes originaux. Les
gens du commun ne trouvent pas de difference entre les hommes._"
The typical and unvarying Hodge ceased to exist. He had been
disintegrated into a number of varied fellow-creatures--beings of
many minds, beings infinite in difference; some happy, many serene, a
few depressed, one here and there bright even to genius, some stupid,
others wanton, others austere; some mutely Miltonic, some potentially
Cromwellian--into men who had private views of each other, as he had
of his friends; who could applaud or condemn each other, amuse or
sadden themselves by the contemplation of each other's foibles or
vices; men every one of whom walked in his own individual way the
road to dusty death.
Unexpectedly he began to like the outdoor life for its own sake,
and for what it brought, apart from its bearing on his own proposed
career. Considering his position he became wonderfully free from the
chronic melancholy which is taking hold of the civilized races with
the decline of belief in a beneficent Power. For the first time of
late years he could read as his musings inclined him, without any eye
to cramming for a profession, since the few farming handbooks which
he deemed it desirable to master occupied him but little time.
He grew away from old associations, and saw something new in life and
humanity. Secondarily, he made close acquaintance with phenomena
which he had before known but darkly--the seasons in their moods,
morning and evening, night and noon, winds in their different
tempers, trees, waters and mists, shades and silences, and the voices
of inanimate things.
The early mornings were still sufficiently cool to render a fire
acceptable in the large room wherein they breakfasted; and, by
Mrs Crick's orders, who held that he was too genteel to mess at
their table, it was Angel Clare's custom to sit in the yawning
chimney-corner during the meal, his cup-and-saucer and plate being
placed on a hinged flap at his elbow. The light from the long, wide,
mullioned window opposite shone in upon his nook, and, assisted by a
secondary light of cold blue quality which shone down the chimney,
enabled him to read there easily whenever disposed to do so. Between
Clare and the window was the table at which his companions sat, their
munching profiles rising sharp against the panes; while to the side
was the milk-house door, through which were visible the rectangular
leads in rows, full to the brim with the morning's milk. At the
further end the great churn could be seen revolving, and its
slip-slopping heard--the moving power being discernible through the
window in the form of a spiritless horse walking in a circle and
driven by a boy.
For several days after Tess's arrival Clare, sitting abstractedly
reading from some book, periodical, or piece of music just come by
post, hardly noticed that she was present at table. She talked so
little, and the other maids talked so much, that the babble did not
strike him as possessing a new note, and he was ever in the habit
of neglecting the particulars of an outward scene for the general
impression. One day, however, when he had been conning one of his
music-scores, and by force of imagination was hearing the tune in
his head, he lapsed into listlessness, and the music-sheet rolled
to the hearth. He looked at the fire of logs, with its one flame
pirouetting on the top in a dying dance after the breakfast-cooking
and boiling, and it seemed to jig to his inward tune; also at the two
chimney crooks dangling down from the cotterel, or cross-bar, plumed
with soot, which quivered to the same melody; also at the half-empty
kettle whining an accompaniment. The conversation at the table mixed
in with his phantasmal orchestra till he thought: "What a fluty voice
one of those milkmaids has! I suppose it is the new one."
Clare looked round upon her, seated with the others.
She was not looking towards him. Indeed, owing to his long silence,
his presence in the room was almost forgotten.
"I don't know about ghosts," she was saying; "but I do know that our
souls can be made to go outside our bodies when we are alive."
The dairyman turned to her with his mouth full, his eyes charged
with serious inquiry, and his great knife and fork (breakfasts were
breakfasts here) planted erect on the table, like the beginning of
a gallows.
"What--really now? And is it so, maidy?" he said.
"A very easy way to feel 'em go," continued Tess, "is to lie on the
grass at night and look straight up at some big bright star; and, by
fixing your mind upon it, you will soon find that you are hundreds
and hundreds o' miles away from your body, which you don't seem to
want at all."
The dairyman removed his hard gaze from Tess, and fixed it on his
wife.
"Now that's a rum thing, Christianer--hey? To think o' the miles
I've vamped o' starlight nights these last thirty year, courting, or
trading, or for doctor, or for nurse, and yet never had the least
notion o' that till now, or feeled my soul rise so much as an inch
above my shirt-collar."
The general attention being drawn to her, including that of the
dairyman's pupil, Tess flushed, and remarking evasively that it was
only a fancy, resumed her breakfast.
Clare continued to observe her. She soon finished her eating, and
having a consciousness that Clare was regarding her, began to trace
imaginary patterns on the tablecloth with her forefinger with the
constraint of a domestic animal that perceives itself to be watched.
"What a fresh and virginal daughter of Nature that milkmaid is!" he
said to himself.
And then he seemed to discern in her something that was familiar,
something which carried him back into a joyous and unforeseeing past,
before the necessity of taking thought had made the heavens gray. He
concluded that he had beheld her before; where he could not tell. A
casual encounter during some country ramble it certainly had been,
and he was not greatly curious about it. But the circumstance was
sufficient to lead him to select Tess in preference to the other
pretty milkmaids when he wished to contemplate contiguous womankind.
| 2,597 | CHAPTER 18 | https://web.archive.org/web/20180820050202/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmTessD28.asp | In this chapter, Angel Clare is developed in much more detail, especially in the aspects that will affect Tess. He is the youngest son of Mr. Clare, who is a Vicar in Emminster and respected throughout Wessex. He is the only one of the three sons not to choose a vocation in the ministry; as a result, his father has not sent him to Cambridge, and for several years Angel is at loose ends. He goes to London for a while, unsuccessfully seeking a profession; while there he is involved with an older woman. He realizes he is more suited for country living, and at age twenty-six has decided to learn the farming business, which he feels will allow him to have "intellectual liberty. He is currently a trainee on the Talbothay farm, but he is not treated as an ordinary farmhand. Instead, he is treated as a gentleman who is learning the farming business. At the dairy, Angel at first remains aloof, eating by himself. Soon, however, he finds his fellow farm workers interesting and begins to eat with them, enjoying their company. He also begins to notice the beauty of nature and to enjoy outdoor life. After Tess arrives, Angel also notices her innocent beauty. He is deeply attracted towards her freshness and assumes she is a virgin. Angel judges her to be more than an ordinary milkmaid and is eager to get to know her. Tess, however, maintains a distance with Angel, because the ghosts of her stained past haunt her. | Notes Several aspects of Angel Clare should be noted, for they will figure in his future relationship with Tess. His father, the Vicar in Emminster, has denied Angel an education at Cambridge because he has not chosen to go into the ministry; Mr. Clare is obviously a conservative person with fixed ideas. He, however, is respected as a special parson throughout Wessex, and some of his traits have been passed on to Angel. Everyone on the farm also recognizes Angel as someone different and special; even Mrs. Crick believes he should not eat with the other farmhands, for she perceives him as much better than her regular employees. Like Tess, he has had an adventure away from home, spending some time in London and having an affair with an older woman. In the end, however, he realizes he is best suited for country living. Angel Clare immediately recognizes that Tess is not an ordinary girl. Her pretty and delicate looks compensate for any sophistication that she lacks. Her mild manner and pure nature are reflected on her face. Her charming and attractive personality cannot easily be hidden. As a result, this beautiful young lady captivates Angel. It is important to notice the great irony in this chapter. From the moment Angel sets his eyes on Tess, he presumes her to be a virgin because of her loveliness. It never occurs to him that this delicate female could carry the stigma of a sordid past | 254 | 244 | [
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3,755 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/3755-chapters/03.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Common Sense/section_4_part_0.txt | Common Sense.chapter 3 | chapter 3 | null | {"name": "Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220739/https://www.novelguide.com/common-sense/summaries/chap3", "summary": "on Thoughts on the Present State of American Affairs Again the author claims to offer \"simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense\" . He will give facts and let the reason of the reader judge for itself. He mentions that volumes have been written already on the pros and cons of separation from England, but now, \"the period of debate is closed. Arms, as the last resource, decide the contest\" . Paine claims that the king has chosen this route by his action. Parliament was prepared to make some slight concessions to Americans but only for a time. Now, the larger view must be taken. The author claims Americans must act for posterity: \"The sun never shone on a cause of greater worth\" . Everything has changed since the 19th of April with the British troops attacking American colonists at Lexington and Concord. This is a new era, and reconciliation is no longer a possibility. Now the injuries of Americans will be discussed. First, he considers the argument that Americans flourished under British protection, and it must therefore continue to be good for them. No, says, Paine, the child has to grow up and leave the parent country . Second, some say Britain protects us from our enemies. Actually, British troops are in America to protect British property, for America is their rich subservient colony. Next, he considers the argument that Britain is the only unifying factor in the colonies that are actually unrelated to one another. Paine says that many colonists did not come from England but from other European countries. Europe is thus the parent of Americans, not England. At any rate, England has made itself the enemy of Americans through its behavior of attack and plunder. Americans do not need Britain. They are rich and dedicated to trade with all of Europe. It is in Europe's interest to have a free America. There is no advantage to remaining with Britain but there are many disadvantages, such as being dragged into European wars. There is the great distance between the two countries that makes it ridiculous for one to rule the other. Separation is inevitable, and this is the right time. Americans are in a precarious situation not knowing if their property is secure while Britain rules. He gives as example the prosperous city of Boston, now under siege. How can we go back and trust a government that has put fire and sword to our citizens? He is not exaggerating, he says, but appealing to \"those feelings and affections which nature justifies\" . Americans have already exhausted every peaceful means. To think the British will change is foolish. They repealed the Stamp Act, but a year or two later there were other taxes and tariffs. The British government cannot do justice in the ruling of America, for it is already too large and complicated. How can a continent be governed by an island? The King is an enemy of liberty and insists on being America's lawgiver. America can never be first in the thoughts of the British government. It cannot attract emigrants when its government is insecure. Finally, it is only continental independence that can keep the land free of civil war. As a republic it can foster equality that will bring peace to the land. In this historical moment, Americans have the chance to invent a better human government. The author gives a few of his ideas of what the new government should be like, such as fostering freedom of religion, and proposes a Continental Congress or Conference to come up with a Charter of the United Colonies. There will be equality and no king, for in America \"THE LAW IS KING\" . There are injuries that cannot be forgiven, so Britain and America must part.", "analysis": "Commentary on Thoughts on the Present State of American Affairs Paine wants to make it clear that Americans have no recourse but war with and separation from England. He shows that things have gone too far with all the incidents that have taken place, such as the closing of ports, the siege of Boston, the clash of troops with citizens, and so forth. He gives practical ideas why America has to be free in terms of being able to rule itself and take care of its business. It can be in a better position with trade and internal governance, able to avoid entanglement in European affairs. He mentions that America is profitable for Britain, and the unspoken argument is that America can make more money and successful trade agreements on its own. On a loftier note, he continues the idea of a moral reason to separate for the sake of posterity and freedom. A lot of the argument builds on the fact that subjugation to a king is immoral. A king is in an abusive position, and he is only one person. A hereditary position makes no sense in the commercial scientific world that is arising at this time. Paine looks ahead to new possibilities of life with economic and political freedom and equality for all. Hereditary privilege is a thing of the past, he announces. Self-governance is a natural right, a doctrine that will be spelled out in Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. It is interesting that Paine thinks self-governance will help America avoid civil war, when history showed this idea to be wrong. Paine thought that there would be one unifying government instead of individual state governments that would be tempted to war with each other. The regional differences, however, were one of the sticking points at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The South wanted to retain slavery, while the North wanted to abolish it. Paine, Jefferson, and other revolutionaries used the new ideas of Enlightenment thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke to make this move of gaining freedom and self-governance seem \"natural\" rather than violent or rebellious. The British king can call it treason, but the colonists justify revolution as their natural right, and they have many liberal philosophers of the time to back them up."} | IN the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain
arguments, and common sense; and have no other preliminaries to
settle with the reader, than that he will divest himself of prejudice
and prepossession, and suffer his reason and his feelings to
determine for themselves; that he will put ON, or rather that he
will not put OFF, the true character of a man, and generously
enlarge his views beyond the present day.
Volumes have been written on the subject of the struggle between
England and America. Men of all ranks have embarked in the
controversy, from different motives, and with various designs; but
all have been ineffectual, and the period of debate is closed. Arms,
as the last resource, decide the contest; the appeal was the choice
of the king, and the continent hath accepted the challenge.
It hath been reported of the late Mr Pelham (who tho' an able
minister was not without his faults) that on his being attacked in
the house of commons, on the score, that his measures were only of a
temporary kind, replied, "THEY WILL LAST MY TIME." Should a thought
so fatal and unmanly possess the colonies in the present contest, the
name of ancestors will be remembered by future generations with
detestation.
The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. 'Tis not the
affair of a city, a country, a province, or a kingdom, but of a
continent--of at least one eighth part of the habitable globe. 'Tis
not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually
involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected, even to
the end of time, by the proceedings now. Now is the seed time of
continental union, faith and honor. The least fracture now will be
like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a
young oak; The wound will enlarge with the tree, and posterity read
it in full grown characters.
By referring the matter from argument to arms, a new era for
politics is struck; a new method of thinking hath arisen. All plans,
proposals, &c. prior to the nineteenth of April, I. E. to the
commencement of hostilities, are like the almanacks of the last year;
which, though proper then, are superceded and useless now. Whatever
was advanced by the advocates on either side of the question then,
terminated in one and the same point, viz. a union with
Great Britain; the only difference between the parties was the method
of effecting it; the one proposing force, the other friendship; but
it hath so far happened that the first hath failed, and the second
hath withdrawn her influence.
As much hath been said of the advantages of reconciliation, which,
like an agreeable dream, hath passed away and left us as we were, it
is but right, that we should examine the contrary side of the
argument, and inquire into some of the many material injuries which
these colonies sustain, and always will sustain, by being connected
with, and dependant on Great Britain. To examine that connexion and
dependance, on the principles of nature and common sense, to see what
we have to trust to, if separated, and what we are to expect, if
dependant.
I have heard it asserted by some, that as America hath flourished
under her former connexion with Great Britain, that the same
connexion is necessary towards her future happiness, and will always
have the same effect. Nothing can be more fallacious than this kind
of argument. We may as well assert that because a child has thrived
upon milk, that it is never to have meat, or that the first twenty
years of our lives is to become a precedent for the next twenty. But
even this is admitting more than is true, for I answer roundly, that
America would have flourished as much, and probably much more, had no
European power had any thing to do with her. The commerce, by which
she hath enriched herself are the necessaries of life, and will
always have a market while eating is the custom of Europe.
But she has protected us, say some. That she hath engrossed us is
true, and defended the continent at our expence as well as her own is
admitted, and she would have defended Turkey from the same motive,
viz. the sake of trade and dominion.
Alas, we have been long led away by ancient prejudices, and made
large sacrifices to superstition. We have boasted the protection of
Great Britain, without considering, that her motive was INTEREST
not ATTACHMENT; that she did not protect us from OUR ENEMIES on
OUR ACCOUNT, but from HER ENEMIES on HER OWN ACCOUNT, from
those who had no quarrel with us on any OTHER ACCOUNT, and who will
always be our enemies on the SAME ACCOUNT. Let Britain wave her
pretensions to the continent, or the continent throw off the
dependance, and we should be at peace with France and Spain were they
at war with Britain. The miseries of Hanover last war ought to warn
us against connexions.
It hath lately been asserted in parliament, that the colonies have
no relation to each other but through the parent country, I. E.
that Pennsylvania and the Jerseys, and so on for the rest, are sister
colonies by the way of England; this is certainly a very round-about
way of proving relationship, but it is the nearest and only true way
of proving enemyship, if I may so call it. France and Spain never
were, nor perhaps ever will be our enemies as AMERICANS, but as our
being the SUBJECTS OF GREAT BRITAIN.
But Britain is the parent country, say some. Then the more shame
upon her conduct. Even brutes do not devour their young, nor savages
make war upon their families; wherefore the assertion, if true, turns
to her reproach; but it happens not to be true, or only partly so,
and the phrase PARENT or MOTHER COUNTRY hath been jesuitically
adopted by the king and his parasites, with a low papistical design
of gaining an unfair bias on the credulous weakness of our minds.
Europe, and not England, is the parent country of America. This new
world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and
religious liberty from EVERY PART of Europe. Hither have they fled,
not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of
the monster; and it is so far true of England, that the same tyranny
which drove the first emigrants from home, pursues their descendants
still.
In this extensive quarter of the globe, we forget the narrow limits
of three hundred and sixty miles (the extent of England) and carry
our friendship on a larger scale; we claim brotherhood with every
European christian, and triumph in the generosity of the sentiment.
It is pleasant to observe by what regular gradations we surmount
the force of local prejudice, as we enlarge our acquaintance with the
world. A man born in any town in England divided into parishes, will
naturally associate most with his fellow parishioners (because their
interests in many cases will be common) and distinguish him by the
name of NEIGHBOUR; if he meet him but a few miles from home, he
drops the narrow idea of a street, and salutes him by the name of
TOWNSMAN; if he travel out of the county, and meet him in any
other, he forgets the minor divisions of street and town, and calls
him COUNTRYMAN; i. e. COUNTY-MAN; but if in their foreign
excursions they should associate in France or any other part of
EUROPE, their local remembrance would be enlarged into that of
ENGLISHMEN. And by a just parity of reasoning, all Europeans
meeting in America, or any other quarter of the globe, are
COUNTRYMEN; for England, Holland, Germany, or Sweden, when compared
with the whole, stand in the same places on the larger scale, which
the divisions of street, town, and county do on the smaller ones;
distinctions too limited for continental minds. Not one third of the
inhabitants, even of this province, are of English descent. Wherefore
I reprobate the phrase of parent or mother country applied to England
only, as being false, selfish, narrow and ungenerous.
But admitting, that we were all of English descent, what does it
amount to? Nothing. Britain, being now an open enemy, extinguishes
every other name and title: And to say that reconciliation is our
duty, is truly farcical. The first king of England, of the present
line (William the Conqueror) was a Frenchman, and half the Peers of
England are descendants from the same country; wherefore, by the same
method of reasoning, England ought to be governed by France.
Much hath been said of the united strength of Britain and the
colonies, that in conjunction they might bid defiance to the world.
But this is mere presumption; the fate of war is uncertain, neither
do the expressions mean any thing; for this continent would never
suffer itself to be drained of inhabitants, to support the British
arms in either Asia, Africa, or Europe.
Besides, what have we to do with setting the world at defiance? Our
plan is commerce, and that, well attended to, will secure us the
peace and friendship of all Europe; because, it is the interest of
all Europe to have America a FREE PORT. Her trade will always be a
protection, and her barrenness of gold and silver secure her from
invaders.
I challenge the warmest advocate for reconciliation, to shew, a
single advantage that this continent can reap, by being connected
with Great Britain. I repeat the challenge, not a single advantage is
derived. Our corn will fetch its price in any market in Europe, and
our imported goods must be paid for buy them where we will.
But the injuries and disadvantages we sustain by that connection,
are without number; and our duty to mankind at large, as well as to
ourselves, instruct us to renounce the alliance: Because, any
submission to, or dependance on Great Britain, tends directly to
involve this continent in European wars and quarrels; and sets us at
variance with nations, who would otherwise seek our friendship, and
against whom, we have neither anger nor complaint. As Europe is our
market for trade, we ought to form no partial connection with any
part of it. It is the true interest of America to steer clear of
European contentions, which she never can do, while by her dependance
on Britain, she is made the make-weight in the scale on British
politics.
Europe is too thickly planted with kingdoms to be long at peace,
and whenever a war breaks out between England and any foreign power,
the trade of America goes to ruin, BECAUSE OF HER CONNECTION WITH
BRITAIN. The next war may not turn out like the last, and should it
not, the advocates for reconciliation now will be wishing for
separation then, because, neutrality in that case, would be a safer
convoy than a man of war. Every thing that is right or natural pleads
for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature
cries, 'TIS TIME TO PART. Even the distance at which the Almighty
hath placed England and America, is a strong and natural proof, that
the authority of the one, over the other, was never the design of
Heaven. The time likewise at which the continent was discovered, adds
weight to the argument, and the manner in which it was peopled
encreases the force of it. The reformation was preceded by the
discovery of America, as if the Almighty graciously meant to open a
sanctuary to the persecuted in future years, when home should afford
neither friendship nor safety.
The authority of Great Britain over this continent, is a form of
government, which sooner or later must have an end: And a serious
mind can draw no true pleasure by looking forward, under the painful
and positive conviction, that what he calls "the present
constitution" is merely temporary. As parents, we can have no joy,
knowing that THIS GOVERNMENT is not sufficiently lasting to ensure
any thing which we may bequeath to posterity: And by a plain method
of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we
ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and
pitifully. In order to discover the line of our duty rightly, we
should take our children in our hand, and fix our station a few years
farther into life; that eminence will present a prospect, which a few
present fears and prejudices conceal from our sight.
Though I would carefully avoid giving unnecessary offence, yet I am
inclined to believe, that all those who espouse the doctrine of
reconciliation, may be included within the following descriptions.
Interested men, who are not to be trusted; weak men, who CANNOT
see; prejudiced men, who WILL NOT see; and a certain set of
moderate men, who think better of the European world than it
deserves; and this last class, by an ill-judged deliberation, will be
the cause of more calamities to this continent, than all the other
three.
It is the good fortune of many to live distant from the scene of
sorrow; the evil is not sufficiently brought to THEIR doors to make
THEM feel the precariousness with which all American property is
possessed. But let our imaginations transport us for a few moments to
Boston, that seat of wretchedness will teach us wisdom, and instruct
us for ever to renounce a power in whom we can have no trust. The
inhabitants of that unfortunate city, who but a few months ago were
in ease and affluence, have now, no other alternative than to stay
and starve, or turn out to beg. Endangered by the fire of their
friends if they continue within the city, and plundered by the
soldiery if they leave it. In their present condition they are
prisoners without the hope of redemption, and in a general attack for
their relief, they would be exposed to the fury of both armies.
Men of passive tempers look somewhat lightly over the offences of
Britain, and, still hoping for the best, are apt to call out, "COME,
COME, WE SHALL BE FRIENDS AGAIN, FOR ALL THIS." But examine the
passions and feelings of mankind, Bring the doctrine of
reconciliation to the touchstone of nature, and then tell me, whether
you can hereafter love, honour, and faithfully serve the power that
hath carried fire and sword into your land? If you cannot do all
these, then are you only deceiving yourselves, and by your delay
bringing ruin upon posterity. Your future connection with Britain,
whom you can neither love nor honour, will be forced and unnatural,
and being formed only on the plan of present convenience, will in a
little time fall into a relapse more wretched than the first. But if
you say, you can still pass the violations over, then I ask, Hath
your house been burnt? Hath your property been destroyed before your
face? Are your wife and children destitute of a bed to lie on, or
bread to live on? Have you lost a parent or a child by their hands,
and yourself the ruined and wretched survivor? If you have not, then
are you not a judge of those who have. But if you have, and still can
shake hands with the murderers, then you are unworthy of the name of
husband, father, friend, or lover, and whatever may be your rank or
title in life, you have the heart of a coward, and the spirit of a
sycophant.
This is not inflaming or exaggerating matters, but trying them by
those feelings and affections which nature justifies, and without
which, we should be incapable of discharging the social duties of
life, or enjoying the felicities of it. I mean not to exhibit horror
for the purpose of provoking revenge, but to awaken us from fatal and
unmanly slumbers, that we may pursue determinately some fixed object.
It is not in the power of Britain or of Europe to conquer America, if
she do not conquer herself by DELAY and TIMIDITY. The present
winter is worth an age if rightly employed, but if lost or neglected,
the whole continent will partake of the misfortune; and there is no
punishment which that man will not deserve, be he who, or what, or
where he will, that may be the means of sacrificing a season so
precious and useful.
It is repugnant to reason, to the universal order of things to all
examples from former ages, to suppose, that this continent can longer
remain subject to any external power. The most sanguine in Britain
does not think so. The utmost stretch of human wisdom cannot, at this
time, compass a plan short of separation, which can promise the
continent even a year's security. Reconciliation is NOW a falacious
dream. Nature hath deserted the connexion, and Art cannot supply her
place. For, as Milton wisely expresses, "never can true reconcilement
grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep."
Every quiet method for peace hath been ineffectual. Our prayers
have been rejected with disdain; and only tended to convince us, that
nothing flatters vanity, or confirms obstinacy in Kings more than
repeated petitioning--and noting hath contributed more than that very
measure to make the Kings of Europe absolute: Witness Denmark and
Sweden. Wherefore, since nothing but blows will do, for God's sake,
let us come to a final separation, and not leave the next generation
to be cutting throats, under the violated unmeaning names of parent
and child.
To say, they will never attempt it again is idle and visionary, we
thought so at the repeal of the stamp act, yet a year or two
undeceived us; as well may we suppose that nations, which have been
once defeated, will never renew the quarrel.
As to government matters, it is not in the power of Britain to do
this continent justice: The business of it will soon be too weighty,
and intricate, to be managed with any tolerable degree of
convenience, by a power, so distant from us, and so very ignorant of
us; for if they cannot conquer us, they cannot govern us. To be
always running three or four thousand miles with a tale or a
petition, waiting four or five months for an answer, which when
obtained requires five or six more to explain it in, will in a few
years be looked upon as folly and childishness--There was a time when
it was proper, and there is a proper time for it to cease.
Small islands not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper
objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something
very absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by
an island. In no instance hath nature made the satellite larger than
its primary planet, and as England and America, with respect to each
other, reverses the common order of nature, it is evident they belong
to different systems: England to Europe, America to itself.
I am not induced by motives of pride, party, or resentment to
espouse the doctrine of separation and independance; I am clearly,
positively, and conscientiously persuaded that it is the true
interest of this continent to be so; that every thing short of THAT
is mere patchwork, that it can afford no lasting felicity,--that it is
leaving the sword to our children, and shrinking back at a time,
when, a little more, a little farther, would have rendered this
continent the glory of the earth.
As Britain hath not manifested the least inclination towards a
compromise, we may be assured that no terms can be obtained worthy
the acceptance of the continent, or any ways equal to the expense of
blood and treasure we have been already put to.
The object, contended for, ought always to bear some just
proportion to the expense. The removal of North, or the whole
detestable junto, is a matter unworthy the millions we have expended.
A temporary stoppage of trade, was an inconvenience, which would have
sufficiently ballanced the repeal of all the acts complained of, had
such repeals been obtained; but if the whole continent must take up
arms, if every man must be a soldier, it is scarcely worth our while
to fight against a contemptible ministry only. Dearly, dearly, do we
pay for the repeal of the acts, if that is all we fight for; for in a
just estimation, it is as great a folly to pay a Bunker-hill price
for law, as for land. As I have always considered the independancy of
this continent, as an event, which sooner or later must arrive, so
from the late rapid progress of the continent to maturity, the event
could not be far off. Wherefore, on the breaking out of hostilities,
it was not worth the while to have disputed a matter, which time
would have finally redressed, unless we meant to be in earnest;
otherwise, it is like wasting an estate on a suit at law, to regulate
the trespasses of a tenant, whose lease is just expiring. No man was
a warmer wisher for reconciliation than myself, before the fatal
nineteenth of April 1775, but the moment the event of that day was
made known, I rejected the hardened, sullen tempered Pharaoh of
England for ever; and disdain the wretch, that with the pretended
title of FATHER OF HIS PEOPLE, can unfeelingly hear of their
slaughter, and composedly sleep with their blood upon his soul.
But admitting that matters were now made up, what would be the
event? I answer, the ruin of the continent. And that for several
reasons.
FIRST. The powers of governing still remaining in the hands of
the king, he will have a negative over the whole legislation of this
continent. And as he hath shewn himself such an inveterate enemy to
liberty, and discovered such a thirst for arbitrary power; is he, or
is he not, a proper man to say to these colonies, "YOU SHALL MAKE NO
LAWS BUT WHAT I PLEASE." And is there any inhabitant in America so
ignorant, as not to know, that according to what is called the
PRESENT CONSTITUTION, that this continent can make no laws but what
the king gives it leave to; and is there any man so unwise, as not to
see, that (considering what has happened) he will suffer no law to be
made here, but such as suit HIS purpose. We may be as effectually
enslaved by the want of laws in America, as by submitting to laws
made for us in England. After matters are made up (as it is called)
can there be any doubt, but the whole power of the crown will be
exerted, to keep this continent as low and humble as possible?
Instead of going forward we shall go backward, or be perpetually
quarrelling or ridiculously petitioning. We are already greater than
the king wishes us to be, and will he not hereafter endeavour to make
us less? To bring the matter to one point. Is the power who is
jealous of our prosperity, a proper power to govern us? Whoever says
NO to this question is an INDEPENDANT, for independancy means no
more, than, whether we shall make our own laws, or, whether the king,
the greatest enemy this continent hath, or can have, shall tell us,
"THERE SHALL BE NO LAWS BUT SUCH AS I LIKE."
But the king you will say has a negative in England; the people
there can make no laws without his consent. In point of right and
good order, there is something very ridiculous, that a youth of
twenty-one (which hath often happened) shall say to several millions
of people, older and wiser than himself, I forbid this or that act of
yours to be law. But in this place I decline this sort of reply,
though I will never cease to expose the absurdity of it, and only
answer, that England being the King's residence, and America not so,
make quite another case. The king's negative HERE is ten times more
dangerous and fatal than it can be in England, for THERE he will
scarcely refuse his consent to a bill for putting England into as
strong a state of defence as possible, and in America he would never
suffer such a bill to be passed.
America is only a secondary object in the system of British
politics, England consults the good of THIS country, no farther
than it answers her OWN purpose. Wherefore, her own interest leads
her to suppress the growth of OURS in every case which doth not
promote her advantage, or in the least interferes with it. A pretty
state we should soon be in under such a second-hand government,
considering what has happened! Men do not change from enemies to
friends by the alteration of a name: And in order to shew that
reconciliation NOW is a dangerous doctrine, I affirm, THAT IT
WOULD BE POLICY IN THE KING AT THIS TIME, TO REPEAL THE ACTS FOR THE
SAKE OF REINSTATING HIMSELF IN THE GOVERNMENT OF THE PROVINCES; in
order that HE MAY ACCOMPLISH BY CRAFT AND SUBTILITY, IN THE LONG RUN,
WHAT HE CANNOT DO BY FORCE AND VIOLENCE IN THE SHORT ONE.
Reconciliation and ruin are nearly related.
SECONDLY. That as even the best terms, which we can expect to
obtain, can amount to no more than a temporary expedient, or a kind
of government by guardianship, which can last no longer than till the
colonies come of age, so the general face and state of things, in the
interim, will be unsettled and unpromising. Emigrants of property
will not choose to come to a country whose form of government hangs
but by a thread, and who is every day tottering on the brink of
commotion and disturbance; and numbers of the present inhabitants
would lay hold of the interval, to dispose of their effects, and quit
the continent.
But the most powerful of all arguments, is, that nothing but
independance, i. e. a continental form of government, can keep the
peace of the continent and preserve it inviolate from civil wars. I
dread the event of a reconciliation with Britain now, as it is more
than probable, that it will followed by a revolt somewhere or other,
the consequences of which may be far more fatal than all the malice
of Britain.
Thousands are already ruined by British barbarity; (thousands more
will probably suffer the same fate.) Those men have other feelings
than us who have nothing suffered. All they NOW possess is liberty,
what they before enjoyed is sacrificed to its service, and having
nothing more to lose, they disdain submission. Besides, the general
temper of the colonies, towards a British government, will be like
that of a youth, who is nearly out of his time; they will care very
little about her. And a government which cannot preserve the peace,
is no government at all, and in that case we pay our money for
nothing; and pray what is it that Britain can do, whose power will be
wholly on paper, should a civil tumult break out the very day after
reconciliation? I have heard some men say, many of whom I believe
spoke without thinking, that they dreaded an independance, fearing
that it would produce civil wars. It is but seldom that our first
thoughts are truly correct, and that is the case here; for there are
ten times more to dread from a patched up connexion than from
independance. I make the sufferers case my own, and I protest, that
were I driven from house and home, my property destroyed, and my
circumstances ruined, that as a man, sensible of injuries, I could
never relish the doctrine of reconciliation, or consider myself bound
thereby.
The colonies have manifested such a spirit of good order and
obedience to continental government, as is sufficient to make every
reasonable person easy and happy on that head. No man can assign the
least pretence for his fears, on any other grounds, that such as are
truly childish and ridiculous, viz. that one colony will be striving
for superiority over another.
Where there are no distinctions there can be no superiority,
perfect equality affords no temptation. The republics of Europe are
all (and we may say always) in peace. Holland and Swisserland are
without wars, foreign or domestic: Monarchical governments, it is
true, are never long at rest; the crown itself is a temptation to
enterprizing ruffians at HOME; and that degree of pride and
insolence ever attendant on regal authority, swells into a rupture
with foreign powers, in instances, where a republican government, by
being formed on more natural principles, would negotiate the mistake.
If there is any true cause of fear respecting independance, it is
because no plan is yet laid down. Men do not see their way
out--Wherefore, as an opening into that business, I offer the
following hints; at the same time modestly affirming, that I have no
other opinion of them myself, than that they may be the means of
giving rise to something better. Could the straggling thoughts of
individuals be collected, they would frequently form materials for
wise and able men to improve into useful matter.
Let the assemblies be annual, with a President only. The
representation more equal. Their business wholly domestic, and
subject to the authority of a Continental Congress.
Let each colony be divided into six, eight, or ten, convenient
districts, each district to send a proper number of delegates to
Congress, so that each colony send at least thirty. The whole number
in Congress will be least 390. Each Congress to sit and to choose
a president by the following method. When the delegates are met, let
a colony be taken from the whole thirteen colonies by lot, after
which, let the whole Congress choose (by ballot) a president from out
of the delegates of THAT province. In the next Congress, let a
colony be taken by lot from twelve only, omitting that colony from
which the president was taken in the former Congress, and so
proceeding on till the whole thirteen shall have had their proper
rotation. And in order that nothing may pass into a law but what is
satisfactorily just, not less than three fifths of the Congress to be
called a majority. He that will promote discord, under a government
so equally formed as this, would have joined Lucifer in his revolt.
But as there is a peculiar delicacy, from whom, or in what manner,
this business must first arise, and as it seems most agreeable and
consistent that it should come from some intermediate body between
the governed and the governors, that is, between the Congress and the
people, let a CONTINENTAL CONFERENCE be held, in the following
manner, and for the following purpose.
A committee of twenty-six members of Congress, viz. two for each
colony. Two members for each House of Assembly, or Provincial
Convention; and five representatives of the people at large, to be
chosen in the capital city or town of each province, for, and in
behalf of the whole province, by as many qualified voters as shall
think proper to attend from all parts of the province for that
purpose; or, if more convenient, the representatives may be chosen in
two or three of the most populous parts thereof. In this conference,
thus assembled, will be united, the two grand principles of business,
KNOWLEDGE and POWER. The members of Congress, Assemblies, or
Conventions, by having had experience in national concerns, will be
able and useful counsellors, and the whole, being impowered by the
people, will have a truly legal authority.
The conferring members being met, let their business be to frame a
CONTINENTAL CHARTER, or Charter of the United Colonies; (answering to
what is called the Magna Charta of England) fixing the number and
manner of choosing members of Congress, members of Assembly, with
their date of sitting, and drawing the line of business and
jurisdiction between them: (Always remembering, that our strength is
continental, not provincial:) Securing freedom and property to all
men, and above all things, the free exercise of religion, according
to the dictates of conscience; with such other matter as is necessary
for a charter to contain. Immediately after which, the said
Conference to dissolve, and the bodies which shall be chosen
comformable to the said charter, to be the legislators and governors
of this continent for the time being: Whose peace and happiness, may
God preserve, Amen.
Should any body of men be hereafter delegated for this or some
similar purpose, I offer them the following extracts from that wise
observer on governments DRAGONETTI. "The science" says he "of the
politician consists in fixing the true point of happiness and
freedom. Those men would deserve the gratitude of ages, who should
discover a mode of government that contained the greatest sum of
individual happiness, with the least national expense." "DRAGONETTI
ON VIRTUE AND REWARDS."
But where says some is the King of America? I'll tell you Friend,
he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal
Brute of Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in
earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the
charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word
of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know,
that so far as we approve as monarchy, that in America THE LAW IS
KING. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free
countries the law OUGHT to be King; and there ought to be no other.
But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the crown at the
conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the
people whose right it is.
A government of our own is our natural right: And when a man
seriously reflects on the precariousness of human affairs, he will
become convinced, that it is infinitely wiser and safer, to form a
constitution of our own in a cool deliberate manner, while we have it
in our power, than to trust such an interesting event to time and
chance. If we omit it now, some, [*1] Massanello may hereafter arise,
who laying hold of popular disquietudes, may collect together the
desperate and discontented, and by assuming to themselves the powers
of government, may sweep away the liberties of the continent like a
deluge. Should the government of America return again into the hands
of Britain, the tottering situation of things, will be a temptation
for some desperate adventurer to try his fortune; and in such a case,
what relief can Britain give? Ere she could hear the news, the fatal
business might be done; and ourselves suffering like the wretched
Britons under the oppression of the Conqueror. Ye that oppose
independance now, ye know not what ye do; ye are opening a door to
eternal tyranny, by keeping vacant the seat of government. There are
thousands, and tens of thousands, who would think it glorious to
expel from the continent, that barbarous and hellish power, which
hath stirred up the Indians and Negroes to destroy us, the cruelty
hath a double guilt, it is dealing brutally by us, and treacherously
by them.
To talk of friendship with those in whom our reason forbids us to
have faith, and our affections wounded through a thousand pores
instruct us to detest, is madness and folly. Every day wears out the
little remains of kindred between us and them, and can there be any
reason to hope, that as the relationship expires, the affection will
increase, or that we shall agree better, when we have ten times more
and greater concerns to quarrel over than ever?
Ye that tell us of harmony and reconciliation, can ye restore to us
the time that is past? Can ye give to prostitution its former
innocence? Neither can ye reconcile Britain and America. The last
cord now is broken, the people of England are presenting addresses
against us. There are injuries which nature cannot forgive; she would
cease to be nature if she did. As well can the lover forgive the
ravisher of his mistress, as the continent forgive the murders of
Britain. The Almighty hath implanted in us these unextinguishable
feelings for good and wise purposes. They are the guardians of his
image in our hearts. They distinguish us from the herd of common
animals. The social compact would dissolve, and justice be extirpated
from the earth, or have only a casual existence were we callous to
the touches of affection. The robber, and the murderer, would often
escape unpunished, did not the injuries which our tempers sustain,
provoke us into justice.
O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny,
but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun
with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and
Africa, have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger,
and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the
fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.
Note 1 Thomas Anello, otherwise Massanello, a fisherman of Naples,
who after spiriting up his countrymen in the public market place,
against the oppression of the Spaniards, to whom the place was then
subject, prompted them to revolt, and in the space of a day became
king. | 5,753 | Chapter 3 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220739/https://www.novelguide.com/common-sense/summaries/chap3 | on Thoughts on the Present State of American Affairs Again the author claims to offer "simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense" . He will give facts and let the reason of the reader judge for itself. He mentions that volumes have been written already on the pros and cons of separation from England, but now, "the period of debate is closed. Arms, as the last resource, decide the contest" . Paine claims that the king has chosen this route by his action. Parliament was prepared to make some slight concessions to Americans but only for a time. Now, the larger view must be taken. The author claims Americans must act for posterity: "The sun never shone on a cause of greater worth" . Everything has changed since the 19th of April with the British troops attacking American colonists at Lexington and Concord. This is a new era, and reconciliation is no longer a possibility. Now the injuries of Americans will be discussed. First, he considers the argument that Americans flourished under British protection, and it must therefore continue to be good for them. No, says, Paine, the child has to grow up and leave the parent country . Second, some say Britain protects us from our enemies. Actually, British troops are in America to protect British property, for America is their rich subservient colony. Next, he considers the argument that Britain is the only unifying factor in the colonies that are actually unrelated to one another. Paine says that many colonists did not come from England but from other European countries. Europe is thus the parent of Americans, not England. At any rate, England has made itself the enemy of Americans through its behavior of attack and plunder. Americans do not need Britain. They are rich and dedicated to trade with all of Europe. It is in Europe's interest to have a free America. There is no advantage to remaining with Britain but there are many disadvantages, such as being dragged into European wars. There is the great distance between the two countries that makes it ridiculous for one to rule the other. Separation is inevitable, and this is the right time. Americans are in a precarious situation not knowing if their property is secure while Britain rules. He gives as example the prosperous city of Boston, now under siege. How can we go back and trust a government that has put fire and sword to our citizens? He is not exaggerating, he says, but appealing to "those feelings and affections which nature justifies" . Americans have already exhausted every peaceful means. To think the British will change is foolish. They repealed the Stamp Act, but a year or two later there were other taxes and tariffs. The British government cannot do justice in the ruling of America, for it is already too large and complicated. How can a continent be governed by an island? The King is an enemy of liberty and insists on being America's lawgiver. America can never be first in the thoughts of the British government. It cannot attract emigrants when its government is insecure. Finally, it is only continental independence that can keep the land free of civil war. As a republic it can foster equality that will bring peace to the land. In this historical moment, Americans have the chance to invent a better human government. The author gives a few of his ideas of what the new government should be like, such as fostering freedom of religion, and proposes a Continental Congress or Conference to come up with a Charter of the United Colonies. There will be equality and no king, for in America "THE LAW IS KING" . There are injuries that cannot be forgiven, so Britain and America must part. | Commentary on Thoughts on the Present State of American Affairs Paine wants to make it clear that Americans have no recourse but war with and separation from England. He shows that things have gone too far with all the incidents that have taken place, such as the closing of ports, the siege of Boston, the clash of troops with citizens, and so forth. He gives practical ideas why America has to be free in terms of being able to rule itself and take care of its business. It can be in a better position with trade and internal governance, able to avoid entanglement in European affairs. He mentions that America is profitable for Britain, and the unspoken argument is that America can make more money and successful trade agreements on its own. On a loftier note, he continues the idea of a moral reason to separate for the sake of posterity and freedom. A lot of the argument builds on the fact that subjugation to a king is immoral. A king is in an abusive position, and he is only one person. A hereditary position makes no sense in the commercial scientific world that is arising at this time. Paine looks ahead to new possibilities of life with economic and political freedom and equality for all. Hereditary privilege is a thing of the past, he announces. Self-governance is a natural right, a doctrine that will be spelled out in Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. It is interesting that Paine thinks self-governance will help America avoid civil war, when history showed this idea to be wrong. Paine thought that there would be one unifying government instead of individual state governments that would be tempted to war with each other. The regional differences, however, were one of the sticking points at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The South wanted to retain slavery, while the North wanted to abolish it. Paine, Jefferson, and other revolutionaries used the new ideas of Enlightenment thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke to make this move of gaining freedom and self-governance seem "natural" rather than violent or rebellious. The British king can call it treason, but the colonists justify revolution as their natural right, and they have many liberal philosophers of the time to back them up. | 630 | 380 | [
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174 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/174-chapters/01.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/The Picture of Dorian Gray/section_1_part_0.txt | The Picture of Dorian Gray.chapter 1 | chapter 1 | null | {"name": "Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219150422/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/p/the-picture-of-dorian-gray/summary-and-analysis/chapter-1", "summary": "The Picture of Dorian Gray opens in the London studio of Basil Hallward, an artist. With him, reclining and smoking a cigarette, is Lord Henry \"Harry\" Wotton. Basil is finishing painting a portrait of \"a young man of extraordinary personal beauty.\" Lord Henry praises the portrait as the best work that Basil has done and insists that it must be shown at a suitable gallery. To Lord Henry's surprise, Basil states that he will not show it anywhere: \"I have put too much of myself in it.\" Basil tries to keep the painting's subject's identity a secret from Lord Henry, then accidentally discloses that the beautiful young man's name is Dorian Gray. Basil admits that he prefers to keep favorite people to himself, not even telling others their names because he feels he might lose a part of them. In fact, he has \"grown to love secrecy.\" Even when he takes a trip, he keeps the destination private, a revelation that becomes important later in the story. Lord Henry answers that he understands, but he is more interested in Basil's reason for not exhibiting the portrait. Basil responds that any painting done with true feeling reveals more of the artist than it does the subject. He fears that the painting will reveal the secret of his soul. Basil explains how he met Dorian at Lady Brandon's home. He felt terror upon first seeing Dorian because he sensed that the young man's personality was so powerful that it could absorb him. More important, Dorian inspires a fresh approach to art in Basil, allowing him to produce the best work of his professional life. Because Basil worries that the public will detect his personal and artistic idolatry of Gray, he will not exhibit the portrait. Echoing a basic tenet of Aestheticism, he suggests that an artist should create beautiful work for its own sake; art shouldn't mean anything. He dismisses artists and critics who see art as a means for biographical expression, and he refuses to have his work thought of in that way. When Lord Henry expresses his desire to meet Gray, Basil explains that he wants to keep Dorian and the painting hidden away so that neither Dorian nor the world will ever know about his \"curious artistic idolatry.\" Lord Henry suggests that Basil's feeling may pass and that he will eventually become indifferent to Dorian, but Basil disagrees. At that moment, the butler enters, announcing the arrival of Dorian, and Lord Henry laughs that they must meet now. Before entering the studio where Dorian is waiting, Basil asks Lord Henry not to influence or take away the person who inspires him as an artist.", "analysis": "Chapter 1 introduces two of the major characters of the book, and the reader learns a good deal about them. Basil is an artist of apparently independent means. He is secretive, and Wilde even mentions that Basil has disappeared without notice in the past. In addition, the distinctive toss of his head, the one that \"used to make his friends laugh at him at Oxford,\" characterizes Basil as someone who is thought of as an odd, yet endearing, fellow. Although Basil claims to be independent, he is instantly overpowered by Dorian upon meeting him, becoming dependent on Dorian immediately as his muse, spirit, art, and life. Basil's attraction to Dorian seems to be both professional and personal. Dorian inspires Basil to a new vision of art, combining Greek perfection with Romantic passion. However, there is every implication of something more personal in the attraction. Basil is also a jealous person, wanting to keep Dorian from Lord Henry so that he can have Dorian all to himself. The other main character introduced in Chapter 1 is Lord Henry Wotton, a very intelligent, confident, manipulative man. He decadently smokes opium-tainted cigarettes and has a commanding presence no matter where he is or whom he socializes with. He is very judgmental and enjoys sounding profound. Like Wilde himself, Lord Henry often speaks in aphorisms. As he speaks with Basil, Lord Henry picks a daisy from the grass to examine it, later pulling the daisy apart, an act that symbolizes his role throughout the novel as a manipulator and destroyer of beauty for his own amusement. Although it may seem strange to categorize a painting as a character, Basil's portrait of Dorian plays such an important role in the book that the reader is actually introduced to the painting as if it were a character before meeting Dorian himself. Perhaps Wilde is indicating that Dorian's reputation for physical beauty precedes him and is more important to his character than any other attribute. In any case, the presence of the portrait in Chapter 1 allows the reader to hear something about Dorian before his character appears in the novel. Basil speaks at length about Dorian, stating that he is charming, but also that \"Now and then, however, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me pain.\" This characterization links Dorian with Lord Henry as a manipulator and foreshadows their close relationship later in the story. Chapter 1 also introduces some of the major themes of the novel: the importance and power of beauty in relation to the intellect and the soul, and the fleeting nature of beauty. While discussing the merits of beauty as opposed to intellect, Basil states that there is \"a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings.\" Basil's statement indicates that physical and intellectual excellence are often the downfall of those who possess them. The reader should note how Basil's statement rings true throughout the novel. Wilde claimed that Lord Henry represented his public image but that the author actually was more like Basil and yearned to be more like Dorian. While the reader must always take care in accepting Wilde's comments at face value, he was like Basil in that he was a creative artist and privately perhaps less secure than his public image. He certainly did admire youth and beauty, which Dorian possesses. Still, Lord Henry is the Wildean character in this novel: bright, witty, and controlling. Glossary Persian saddle-bags enormous leather bags laid across the backs of camels, behind the saddle; here, a number of them are stuffed and arranged together so that a person can lounge or recline on them. blossoms of a laburnum a small, spreading tree with golden flowers and highly poisonous seeds. the long tussore-silk curtains brown silk from India, usually stronger but more coarsely woven than Chinese silk. straggling woodbine In the United States, woodbine is called wild honeysuckle and is sometimes referred to as Virginia creeper. the bourdon note of a distant organ a bourdon note is an extremely low, droning note. the Grosvenor For thirteen years, from 1877 to 1890, the Grosvenor Gallery was one of London's most prestigious galleries. During its heyday it often featured works from the Aesthetic movement, mentioned in Wilde's novel. stars and garters a reference to various public decorations such as the Order of the Garter, England's highest order of knighthood. precis French, meaning \"brief summary.\" salon French, meaning \"living room\" or \"parlor\"; here, it means a weekly or monthly gathering of artists and intellectuals. tremulous vibrating or quivering. ensconced settled securely or comfortably. pallid abnormally pale. truculent savage, belligerent. skeins lengths of thread or yarn wound into long, loose coils. languid lacking energy or spirit. proletariat the poorest class of working people. dowagers rich widows. the Academy The Royal Academy of Arts in London, founded in 1768. Its annual exhibition, which has been held every summer without a break since 1769, features the best 1,500 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and engravings from those submitted for judging. Oxford one of the two most revered British universities; the other is Cambridge. He is a Narcissus a self-centered person who is exceedingly fond of his appearance. I went to a crush a cocktail party. She brought me up to royalties Here, the reference is to frequent dinners and parties with the titled upper class. the East End the industrial or working class area of London, east of the banking and commercial section of London, referred to as \"the City.\""} |
The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light
summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through
the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate
perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.
From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was
lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry
Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured
blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to
bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then
the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long
tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window,
producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of
those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of
an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of
swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their
way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous
insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine,
seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London
was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.
In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the
full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty,
and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist
himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago
caused, at the time, such public excitement and gave rise to so many
strange conjectures.
As the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so
skilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his
face, and seemed about to linger there. But he suddenly started up,
and closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he
sought to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he
feared he might awake.
"It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done," said
Lord Henry languidly. "You must certainly send it next year to the
Grosvenor. The Academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever I have
gone there, there have been either so many people that I have not been
able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that
I have not been able to see the people, which was worse. The Grosvenor
is really the only place."
"I don't think I shall send it anywhere," he answered, tossing his head
back in that odd way that used to make his friends laugh at him at
Oxford. "No, I won't send it anywhere."
Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows and looked at him in amazement through
the thin blue wreaths of smoke that curled up in such fanciful whorls
from his heavy, opium-tainted cigarette. "Not send it anywhere? My
dear fellow, why? Have you any reason? What odd chaps you painters
are! You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as
you have one, you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you,
for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about,
and that is not being talked about. A portrait like this would set you
far above all the young men in England, and make the old men quite
jealous, if old men are ever capable of any emotion."
"I know you will laugh at me," he replied, "but I really can't exhibit
it. I have put too much of myself into it."
Lord Henry stretched himself out on the divan and laughed.
"Yes, I knew you would; but it is quite true, all the same."
"Too much of yourself in it! Upon my word, Basil, I didn't know you
were so vain; and I really can't see any resemblance between you, with
your rugged strong face and your coal-black hair, and this young
Adonis, who looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose-leaves. Why,
my dear Basil, he is a Narcissus, and you--well, of course you have an
intellectual expression and all that. But beauty, real beauty, ends
where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode
of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one
sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something
horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions.
How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But
then in the Church they don't think. A bishop keeps on saying at the
age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen,
and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful.
Your mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but
whose picture really fascinates me, never thinks. I feel quite sure of
that. He is some brainless beautiful creature who should be always
here in winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in
summer when we want something to chill our intelligence. Don't flatter
yourself, Basil: you are not in the least like him."
"You don't understand me, Harry," answered the artist. "Of course I am
not like him. I know that perfectly well. Indeed, I should be sorry
to look like him. You shrug your shoulders? I am telling you the
truth. There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual
distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the
faltering steps of kings. It is better not to be different from one's
fellows. The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world.
They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing
of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They
live as we all should live--undisturbed, indifferent, and without
disquiet. They neither bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it
from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Harry; my brains, such as they
are--my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks--we
shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly."
"Dorian Gray? Is that his name?" asked Lord Henry, walking across the
studio towards Basil Hallward.
"Yes, that is his name. I didn't intend to tell it to you."
"But why not?"
"Oh, I can't explain. When I like people immensely, I never tell their
names to any one. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have
grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make
modern life mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is
delightful if one only hides it. When I leave town now I never tell my
people where I am going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It
is a silly habit, I dare say, but somehow it seems to bring a great
deal of romance into one's life. I suppose you think me awfully
foolish about it?"
"Not at all," answered Lord Henry, "not at all, my dear Basil. You
seem to forget that I am married, and the one charm of marriage is that
it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties. I
never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what I am doing.
When we meet--we do meet occasionally, when we dine out together, or go
down to the Duke's--we tell each other the most absurd stories with the
most serious faces. My wife is very good at it--much better, in fact,
than I am. She never gets confused over her dates, and I always do.
But when she does find me out, she makes no row at all. I sometimes
wish she would; but she merely laughs at me."
"I hate the way you talk about your married life, Harry," said Basil
Hallward, strolling towards the door that led into the garden. "I
believe that you are really a very good husband, but that you are
thoroughly ashamed of your own virtues. You are an extraordinary
fellow. You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing.
Your cynicism is simply a pose."
"Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know,"
cried Lord Henry, laughing; and the two young men went out into the
garden together and ensconced themselves on a long bamboo seat that
stood in the shade of a tall laurel bush. The sunlight slipped over
the polished leaves. In the grass, white daisies were tremulous.
After a pause, Lord Henry pulled out his watch. "I am afraid I must be
going, Basil," he murmured, "and before I go, I insist on your
answering a question I put to you some time ago."
"What is that?" said the painter, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground.
"You know quite well."
"I do not, Harry."
"Well, I will tell you what it is. I want you to explain to me why you
won't exhibit Dorian Gray's picture. I want the real reason."
"I told you the real reason."
"No, you did not. You said it was because there was too much of
yourself in it. Now, that is childish."
"Harry," said Basil Hallward, looking him straight in the face, "every
portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not
of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is
not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on
the coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit
this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of
my own soul."
Lord Henry laughed. "And what is that?" he asked.
"I will tell you," said Hallward; but an expression of perplexity came
over his face.
"I am all expectation, Basil," continued his companion, glancing at him.
"Oh, there is really very little to tell, Harry," answered the painter;
"and I am afraid you will hardly understand it. Perhaps you will
hardly believe it."
Lord Henry smiled, and leaning down, plucked a pink-petalled daisy from
the grass and examined it. "I am quite sure I shall understand it," he
replied, gazing intently at the little golden, white-feathered disk,
"and as for believing things, I can believe anything, provided that it
is quite incredible."
The wind shook some blossoms from the trees, and the heavy
lilac-blooms, with their clustering stars, moved to and fro in the
languid air. A grasshopper began to chirrup by the wall, and like a
blue thread a long thin dragon-fly floated past on its brown gauze
wings. Lord Henry felt as if he could hear Basil Hallward's heart
beating, and wondered what was coming.
"The story is simply this," said the painter after some time. "Two
months ago I went to a crush at Lady Brandon's. You know we poor
artists have to show ourselves in society from time to time, just to
remind the public that we are not savages. With an evening coat and a
white tie, as you told me once, anybody, even a stock-broker, can gain
a reputation for being civilized. Well, after I had been in the room
about ten minutes, talking to huge overdressed dowagers and tedious
academicians, I suddenly became conscious that some one was looking at
me. I turned half-way round and saw Dorian Gray for the first time.
When our eyes met, I felt that I was growing pale. A curious sensation
of terror came over me. I knew that I had come face to face with some
one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to
do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art
itself. I did not want any external influence in my life. You know
yourself, Harry, how independent I am by nature. I have always been my
own master; had at least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray.
Then--but I don't know how to explain it to you. Something seemed to
tell me that I was on the verge of a terrible crisis in my life. I had
a strange feeling that fate had in store for me exquisite joys and
exquisite sorrows. I grew afraid and turned to quit the room. It was
not conscience that made me do so: it was a sort of cowardice. I take
no credit to myself for trying to escape."
"Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil.
Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all."
"I don't believe that, Harry, and I don't believe you do either.
However, whatever was my motive--and it may have been pride, for I used
to be very proud--I certainly struggled to the door. There, of course,
I stumbled against Lady Brandon. 'You are not going to run away so
soon, Mr. Hallward?' she screamed out. You know her curiously shrill
voice?"
"Yes; she is a peacock in everything but beauty," said Lord Henry,
pulling the daisy to bits with his long nervous fingers.
"I could not get rid of her. She brought me up to royalties, and
people with stars and garters, and elderly ladies with gigantic tiaras
and parrot noses. She spoke of me as her dearest friend. I had only
met her once before, but she took it into her head to lionize me. I
believe some picture of mine had made a great success at the time, at
least had been chattered about in the penny newspapers, which is the
nineteenth-century standard of immortality. Suddenly I found myself
face to face with the young man whose personality had so strangely
stirred me. We were quite close, almost touching. Our eyes met again.
It was reckless of me, but I asked Lady Brandon to introduce me to him.
Perhaps it was not so reckless, after all. It was simply inevitable.
We would have spoken to each other without any introduction. I am sure
of that. Dorian told me so afterwards. He, too, felt that we were
destined to know each other."
"And how did Lady Brandon describe this wonderful young man?" asked his
companion. "I know she goes in for giving a rapid _precis_ of all her
guests. I remember her bringing me up to a truculent and red-faced old
gentleman covered all over with orders and ribbons, and hissing into my
ear, in a tragic whisper which must have been perfectly audible to
everybody in the room, the most astounding details. I simply fled. I
like to find out people for myself. But Lady Brandon treats her guests
exactly as an auctioneer treats his goods. She either explains them
entirely away, or tells one everything about them except what one wants
to know."
"Poor Lady Brandon! You are hard on her, Harry!" said Hallward
listlessly.
"My dear fellow, she tried to found a _salon_, and only succeeded in
opening a restaurant. How could I admire her? But tell me, what did
she say about Mr. Dorian Gray?"
"Oh, something like, 'Charming boy--poor dear mother and I absolutely
inseparable. Quite forget what he does--afraid he--doesn't do
anything--oh, yes, plays the piano--or is it the violin, dear Mr.
Gray?' Neither of us could help laughing, and we became friends at
once."
"Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far
the best ending for one," said the young lord, plucking another daisy.
Hallward shook his head. "You don't understand what friendship is,
Harry," he murmured--"or what enmity is, for that matter. You like
every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to every one."
"How horribly unjust of you!" cried Lord Henry, tilting his hat back
and looking up at the little clouds that, like ravelled skeins of
glossy white silk, were drifting across the hollowed turquoise of the
summer sky. "Yes; horribly unjust of you. I make a great difference
between people. I choose my friends for their good looks, my
acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good
intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some
intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me. Is that
very vain of me? I think it is rather vain."
"I should think it was, Harry. But according to your category I must
be merely an acquaintance."
"My dear old Basil, you are much more than an acquaintance."
"And much less than a friend. A sort of brother, I suppose?"
"Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die,
and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else."
"Harry!" exclaimed Hallward, frowning.
"My dear fellow, I am not quite serious. But I can't help detesting my
relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand
other people having the same faults as ourselves. I quite sympathize
with the rage of the English democracy against what they call the vices
of the upper orders. The masses feel that drunkenness, stupidity, and
immorality should be their own special property, and that if any one of
us makes an ass of himself, he is poaching on their preserves. When
poor Southwark got into the divorce court, their indignation was quite
magnificent. And yet I don't suppose that ten per cent of the
proletariat live correctly."
"I don't agree with a single word that you have said, and, what is
more, Harry, I feel sure you don't either."
Lord Henry stroked his pointed brown beard and tapped the toe of his
patent-leather boot with a tasselled ebony cane. "How English you are
Basil! That is the second time you have made that observation. If one
puts forward an idea to a true Englishman--always a rash thing to
do--he never dreams of considering whether the idea is right or wrong.
The only thing he considers of any importance is whether one believes
it oneself. Now, the value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do
with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the
probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely
intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured
by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices. However, I don't
propose to discuss politics, sociology, or metaphysics with you. I
like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no
principles better than anything else in the world. Tell me more about
Mr. Dorian Gray. How often do you see him?"
"Every day. I couldn't be happy if I didn't see him every day. He is
absolutely necessary to me."
"How extraordinary! I thought you would never care for anything but
your art."
"He is all my art to me now," said the painter gravely. "I sometimes
think, Harry, that there are only two eras of any importance in the
world's history. The first is the appearance of a new medium for art,
and the second is the appearance of a new personality for art also.
What the invention of oil-painting was to the Venetians, the face of
Antinous was to late Greek sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will
some day be to me. It is not merely that I paint from him, draw from
him, sketch from him. Of course, I have done all that. But he is much
more to me than a model or a sitter. I won't tell you that I am
dissatisfied with what I have done of him, or that his beauty is such
that art cannot express it. There is nothing that art cannot express,
and I know that the work I have done, since I met Dorian Gray, is good
work, is the best work of my life. But in some curious way--I wonder
will you understand me?--his personality has suggested to me an
entirely new manner in art, an entirely new mode of style. I see
things differently, I think of them differently. I can now recreate
life in a way that was hidden from me before. 'A dream of form in days
of thought'--who is it who says that? I forget; but it is what Dorian
Gray has been to me. The merely visible presence of this lad--for he
seems to me little more than a lad, though he is really over
twenty--his merely visible presence--ah! I wonder can you realize all
that that means? Unconsciously he defines for me the lines of a fresh
school, a school that is to have in it all the passion of the romantic
spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is Greek. The harmony of
soul and body--how much that is! We in our madness have separated the
two, and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an ideality that is
void. Harry! if you only knew what Dorian Gray is to me! You remember
that landscape of mine, for which Agnew offered me such a huge price
but which I would not part with? It is one of the best things I have
ever done. And why is it so? Because, while I was painting it, Dorian
Gray sat beside me. Some subtle influence passed from him to me, and
for the first time in my life I saw in the plain woodland the wonder I
had always looked for and always missed."
"Basil, this is extraordinary! I must see Dorian Gray."
Hallward got up from the seat and walked up and down the garden. After
some time he came back. "Harry," he said, "Dorian Gray is to me simply
a motive in art. You might see nothing in him. I see everything in
him. He is never more present in my work than when no image of him is
there. He is a suggestion, as I have said, of a new manner. I find
him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of
certain colours. That is all."
"Then why won't you exhibit his portrait?" asked Lord Henry.
"Because, without intending it, I have put into it some expression of
all this curious artistic idolatry, of which, of course, I have never
cared to speak to him. He knows nothing about it. He shall never know
anything about it. But the world might guess it, and I will not bare
my soul to their shallow prying eyes. My heart shall never be put
under their microscope. There is too much of myself in the thing,
Harry--too much of myself!"
"Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion
is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions."
"I hate them for it," cried Hallward. "An artist should create
beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We
live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of
autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. Some day I
will show the world what it is; and for that reason the world shall
never see my portrait of Dorian Gray."
"I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won't argue with you. It is only
the intellectually lost who ever argue. Tell me, is Dorian Gray very
fond of you?"
The painter considered for a few moments. "He likes me," he answered
after a pause; "I know he likes me. Of course I flatter him
dreadfully. I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I
know I shall be sorry for having said. As a rule, he is charming to
me, and we sit in the studio and talk of a thousand things. Now and
then, however, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real
delight in giving me pain. Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away
my whole soul to some one who treats it as if it were a flower to put
in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a
summer's day."
"Days in summer, Basil, are apt to linger," murmured Lord Henry.
"Perhaps you will tire sooner than he will. It is a sad thing to think
of, but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty. That
accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate
ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have
something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and
facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly
well-informed man--that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the
thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a
_bric-a-brac_ shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above
its proper value. I think you will tire first, all the same. Some day
you will look at your friend, and he will seem to you to be a little
out of drawing, or you won't like his tone of colour, or something.
You will bitterly reproach him in your own heart, and seriously think
that he has behaved very badly to you. The next time he calls, you
will be perfectly cold and indifferent. It will be a great pity, for
it will alter you. What you have told me is quite a romance, a romance
of art one might call it, and the worst of having a romance of any kind
is that it leaves one so unromantic."
"Harry, don't talk like that. As long as I live, the personality of
Dorian Gray will dominate me. You can't feel what I feel. You change
too often."
"Ah, my dear Basil, that is exactly why I can feel it. Those who are
faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who
know love's tragedies." And Lord Henry struck a light on a dainty
silver case and began to smoke a cigarette with a self-conscious and
satisfied air, as if he had summed up the world in a phrase. There was
a rustle of chirruping sparrows in the green lacquer leaves of the ivy,
and the blue cloud-shadows chased themselves across the grass like
swallows. How pleasant it was in the garden! And how delightful other
people's emotions were!--much more delightful than their ideas, it
seemed to him. One's own soul, and the passions of one's
friends--those were the fascinating things in life. He pictured to
himself with silent amusement the tedious luncheon that he had missed
by staying so long with Basil Hallward. Had he gone to his aunt's, he
would have been sure to have met Lord Goodbody there, and the whole
conversation would have been about the feeding of the poor and the
necessity for model lodging-houses. Each class would have preached the
importance of those virtues, for whose exercise there was no necessity
in their own lives. The rich would have spoken on the value of thrift,
and the idle grown eloquent over the dignity of labour. It was
charming to have escaped all that! As he thought of his aunt, an idea
seemed to strike him. He turned to Hallward and said, "My dear fellow,
I have just remembered."
"Remembered what, Harry?"
"Where I heard the name of Dorian Gray."
"Where was it?" asked Hallward, with a slight frown.
"Don't look so angry, Basil. It was at my aunt, Lady Agatha's. She
told me she had discovered a wonderful young man who was going to help
her in the East End, and that his name was Dorian Gray. I am bound to
state that she never told me he was good-looking. Women have no
appreciation of good looks; at least, good women have not. She said
that he was very earnest and had a beautiful nature. I at once
pictured to myself a creature with spectacles and lank hair, horribly
freckled, and tramping about on huge feet. I wish I had known it was
your friend."
"I am very glad you didn't, Harry."
"Why?"
"I don't want you to meet him."
"You don't want me to meet him?"
"No."
"Mr. Dorian Gray is in the studio, sir," said the butler, coming into
the garden.
"You must introduce me now," cried Lord Henry, laughing.
The painter turned to his servant, who stood blinking in the sunlight.
"Ask Mr. Gray to wait, Parker: I shall be in in a few moments." The
man bowed and went up the walk.
Then he looked at Lord Henry. "Dorian Gray is my dearest friend," he
said. "He has a simple and a beautiful nature. Your aunt was quite
right in what she said of him. Don't spoil him. Don't try to
influence him. Your influence would be bad. The world is wide, and
has many marvellous people in it. Don't take away from me the one
person who gives to my art whatever charm it possesses: my life as an
artist depends on him. Mind, Harry, I trust you." He spoke very
slowly, and the words seemed wrung out of him almost against his will.
"What nonsense you talk!" said Lord Henry, smiling, and taking Hallward
by the arm, he almost led him into the house.
| 4,736 | Chapter 1 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201219150422/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/p/the-picture-of-dorian-gray/summary-and-analysis/chapter-1 | The Picture of Dorian Gray opens in the London studio of Basil Hallward, an artist. With him, reclining and smoking a cigarette, is Lord Henry "Harry" Wotton. Basil is finishing painting a portrait of "a young man of extraordinary personal beauty." Lord Henry praises the portrait as the best work that Basil has done and insists that it must be shown at a suitable gallery. To Lord Henry's surprise, Basil states that he will not show it anywhere: "I have put too much of myself in it." Basil tries to keep the painting's subject's identity a secret from Lord Henry, then accidentally discloses that the beautiful young man's name is Dorian Gray. Basil admits that he prefers to keep favorite people to himself, not even telling others their names because he feels he might lose a part of them. In fact, he has "grown to love secrecy." Even when he takes a trip, he keeps the destination private, a revelation that becomes important later in the story. Lord Henry answers that he understands, but he is more interested in Basil's reason for not exhibiting the portrait. Basil responds that any painting done with true feeling reveals more of the artist than it does the subject. He fears that the painting will reveal the secret of his soul. Basil explains how he met Dorian at Lady Brandon's home. He felt terror upon first seeing Dorian because he sensed that the young man's personality was so powerful that it could absorb him. More important, Dorian inspires a fresh approach to art in Basil, allowing him to produce the best work of his professional life. Because Basil worries that the public will detect his personal and artistic idolatry of Gray, he will not exhibit the portrait. Echoing a basic tenet of Aestheticism, he suggests that an artist should create beautiful work for its own sake; art shouldn't mean anything. He dismisses artists and critics who see art as a means for biographical expression, and he refuses to have his work thought of in that way. When Lord Henry expresses his desire to meet Gray, Basil explains that he wants to keep Dorian and the painting hidden away so that neither Dorian nor the world will ever know about his "curious artistic idolatry." Lord Henry suggests that Basil's feeling may pass and that he will eventually become indifferent to Dorian, but Basil disagrees. At that moment, the butler enters, announcing the arrival of Dorian, and Lord Henry laughs that they must meet now. Before entering the studio where Dorian is waiting, Basil asks Lord Henry not to influence or take away the person who inspires him as an artist. | Chapter 1 introduces two of the major characters of the book, and the reader learns a good deal about them. Basil is an artist of apparently independent means. He is secretive, and Wilde even mentions that Basil has disappeared without notice in the past. In addition, the distinctive toss of his head, the one that "used to make his friends laugh at him at Oxford," characterizes Basil as someone who is thought of as an odd, yet endearing, fellow. Although Basil claims to be independent, he is instantly overpowered by Dorian upon meeting him, becoming dependent on Dorian immediately as his muse, spirit, art, and life. Basil's attraction to Dorian seems to be both professional and personal. Dorian inspires Basil to a new vision of art, combining Greek perfection with Romantic passion. However, there is every implication of something more personal in the attraction. Basil is also a jealous person, wanting to keep Dorian from Lord Henry so that he can have Dorian all to himself. The other main character introduced in Chapter 1 is Lord Henry Wotton, a very intelligent, confident, manipulative man. He decadently smokes opium-tainted cigarettes and has a commanding presence no matter where he is or whom he socializes with. He is very judgmental and enjoys sounding profound. Like Wilde himself, Lord Henry often speaks in aphorisms. As he speaks with Basil, Lord Henry picks a daisy from the grass to examine it, later pulling the daisy apart, an act that symbolizes his role throughout the novel as a manipulator and destroyer of beauty for his own amusement. Although it may seem strange to categorize a painting as a character, Basil's portrait of Dorian plays such an important role in the book that the reader is actually introduced to the painting as if it were a character before meeting Dorian himself. Perhaps Wilde is indicating that Dorian's reputation for physical beauty precedes him and is more important to his character than any other attribute. In any case, the presence of the portrait in Chapter 1 allows the reader to hear something about Dorian before his character appears in the novel. Basil speaks at length about Dorian, stating that he is charming, but also that "Now and then, however, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me pain." This characterization links Dorian with Lord Henry as a manipulator and foreshadows their close relationship later in the story. Chapter 1 also introduces some of the major themes of the novel: the importance and power of beauty in relation to the intellect and the soul, and the fleeting nature of beauty. While discussing the merits of beauty as opposed to intellect, Basil states that there is "a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings." Basil's statement indicates that physical and intellectual excellence are often the downfall of those who possess them. The reader should note how Basil's statement rings true throughout the novel. Wilde claimed that Lord Henry represented his public image but that the author actually was more like Basil and yearned to be more like Dorian. While the reader must always take care in accepting Wilde's comments at face value, he was like Basil in that he was a creative artist and privately perhaps less secure than his public image. He certainly did admire youth and beauty, which Dorian possesses. Still, Lord Henry is the Wildean character in this novel: bright, witty, and controlling. Glossary Persian saddle-bags enormous leather bags laid across the backs of camels, behind the saddle; here, a number of them are stuffed and arranged together so that a person can lounge or recline on them. blossoms of a laburnum a small, spreading tree with golden flowers and highly poisonous seeds. the long tussore-silk curtains brown silk from India, usually stronger but more coarsely woven than Chinese silk. straggling woodbine In the United States, woodbine is called wild honeysuckle and is sometimes referred to as Virginia creeper. the bourdon note of a distant organ a bourdon note is an extremely low, droning note. the Grosvenor For thirteen years, from 1877 to 1890, the Grosvenor Gallery was one of London's most prestigious galleries. During its heyday it often featured works from the Aesthetic movement, mentioned in Wilde's novel. stars and garters a reference to various public decorations such as the Order of the Garter, England's highest order of knighthood. precis French, meaning "brief summary." salon French, meaning "living room" or "parlor"; here, it means a weekly or monthly gathering of artists and intellectuals. tremulous vibrating or quivering. ensconced settled securely or comfortably. pallid abnormally pale. truculent savage, belligerent. skeins lengths of thread or yarn wound into long, loose coils. languid lacking energy or spirit. proletariat the poorest class of working people. dowagers rich widows. the Academy The Royal Academy of Arts in London, founded in 1768. Its annual exhibition, which has been held every summer without a break since 1769, features the best 1,500 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and engravings from those submitted for judging. Oxford one of the two most revered British universities; the other is Cambridge. He is a Narcissus a self-centered person who is exceedingly fond of his appearance. I went to a crush a cocktail party. She brought me up to royalties Here, the reference is to frequent dinners and parties with the titled upper class. the East End the industrial or working class area of London, east of the banking and commercial section of London, referred to as "the City." | 445 | 930 | [
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23,042 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/23042-chapters/2.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/The Tempest/section_1_part_0.txt | The Tempest.act 1.scene 2 | scene 2 | null | {"name": "Scene 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219151049/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/the-tempest/summary-and-analysis/act-i-scene-2", "summary": "Scene 2 opens on the island, with Prospero and Miranda watching the ship as it is tossed by the storm. Miranda knows that her father is creating the storm, and she begs him to end the ship's torment and her own, since she suffers as she watches the ship's inhabitants suffer. Prospero reassures his daughter that his actions have been to protect her. He also tells Miranda that she is ignorant of her heritage; he then explains the story of her birthright and of their lives before they came to be on the island. Prospero begins his story with the news that he is the duke of Milan and Miranda is a princess. He also relates that he had abdicated day-to-day rule of his kingdom to his brother, Antonio. Prospero admits that books held more attraction than duties, and he willingly allowed his brother the opportunity to grasp control. But Antonio used his position to undermine Prospero and to plot against him. Prospero's trust in his brother proved unwise, when Antonio formed an alliance with the king of Naples to oust Prospero and seize his heritage. Prospero and his daughter were placed in a small, rickety boat and put out to sea. A sympathetic Neapolitan, Gonzalo, provided them with rich garments, linens, and other necessities. Gonzalo also provided Prospero with books from his library. Eventually, Prospero and Miranda arrived on the island, where they have remained since that time. When he finishes the tale, Prospero uses his magic to put Miranda to sleep. The sprite, Ariel, appears as soon as Miranda is sleeping and reports on the storm, the ship, and the passengers. Ariel relates everyone, except the crew, was forced to abandon ship. Ariel tells Prospero that the passengers have been separated into smaller groups and are on different parts of the island; that the ship, with its sleeping crew, is safely hidden in the harbor; and that the remainder of the fleet, thinking that the king is drowned, has sailed home. Ariel then asks that Prospero free him, as had been promised. But Prospero has more need of his sprite and declares that Ariel's freedom must be delayed a few more days. When Ariel leaves, Prospero awakens Miranda and beckons Caliban, the son of the witch, Sycorax. Caliban has been Prospero's slave, but he is insolent and rebellious and is only controlled through the use of magic. Caliban claims the island as his own and says that Prospero has tricked him in the past. Prospero is unmoved, claiming that Caliban is corrupt, having tried to rape Miranda. Prospero threatens and cajoles Caliban's obedience, but Caliban's presence makes Miranda uneasy. After Caliban leaves, Ariel enters with Ferdinand, who sees Miranda, and the two fall instantly in love. Although this is what Prospero intended to have happen, he does not want it to appear too easy for Ferdinand, and so he accuses Ferdinand of being a spy. When Prospero uses magic to control Ferdinand, Miranda begs him to stop.", "analysis": "Prospero tells Miranda their history as a way to inform the audience of this important information. In addition, the audience needs to know what events motivate Prospero's decision to stir up the storm and why the men onboard the ship are his enemies -- several share responsibility for Prospero's isolation. By sharing this information, Miranda -- and the audience -- can conclude that Prospero is justified in seeking retribution. At the very least, Prospero must make Miranda sympathetic to this choice. It is also important that Prospero gain the audience's sympathy because his early treatment of both Ariel and Caliban depict him in a less than sympathetic light. Ariel and Caliban are both little more than slaves to Prospero's wishes, and, in the initial interactions between Prospero and Ariel and Prospero and Caliban, the audience may think Prospero callous and cruel. He has clearly promised Ariel freedom and then denied it, and he treats Caliban as little more than an animal. The audience needs to understand that cruel circumstance and the machinations of men have turned Prospero into a different man than he might otherwise have been. But Prospero's character is more complex than this scene reveals, and the relationship between these characters more intricate also. During the course of the story, Prospero repeatedly asks Miranda if she is listening. This questioning may reveal her distraction as she worries about the well-being of the ship's passengers. Miranda is loving toward her father, but at the same time, she does not lose sight of the human lives he is placing at risk. However, his questioning is equally directed toward the audience. Prospero also wants to make sure that the audience is listening to his story, since he will return to the audience in the Epilogue and seek their judgment. It is clear from Prospero's story that he had been a poor ruler, more interested in his books than in his responsibilities. Prospero, therefore, is not entirely blameless in the events that occurred in Milan. Antonio could not so easily seize power from an involved and attentive ruler. This information mitigates Antonio's actions in seizing his brother's place and is important because this play is not a tragedy. In order for the comedic or romantic ending to succeed, none of the villains can be beyond redemption or reconciliation. It is equally important that Prospero not be beyond redemption. Prospero must be heroic, and this he cannot be if he is perceived as vengeful. Ariel reassures the audience that the ship and its crew have been saved and the passengers are safely on the island. No one has been hurt or lost at sea. In addition to relating the past, this act also helps define the main characters and anticipate the future. Prospero has been injured, and he intends to serve justice on his captives. He delves in magic and has developed powers beyond those of his enemies. He is also intelligent enough and strong enough to control the spirits on the island; for example, he can control Caliban, who is not without power of his own. Prospero uses the magic of nature, a white, beneficent magic that does no harm. He does not use the black magic of evil. Prospero has learned of this magic, not through the use of witches or evil spells , but through his studies. Prospero's white magic has supplanted the black, evil magic of Caliban's mother, Sycorax, because Prospero, himself, is good. Any initial concern that the audience might have because of Caliban's enslavement evaporates at the news that he attempted to rape Miranda. His subsequent behavior will further prove his character, but he can be redeemed, and his redemption is necessary if the play is to succeed. Furthermore, Caliban, who is initially bad and represents the black magic of his mother, serves as a contrast to the goodness of Ferdinand and Miranda. The young lovers are instantly attracted to one another, each one a mirror image of the other's goodness. It is their goodness that facilitates the reconciliation between Prospero and his enemies. In this reconciliation lies Ariel's freedom and Caliban's redemption. Glossary betid happened or befell; here, it means that nothing has happened to the boat's inhabitants. teen injury or harm. Prospero worries about the trouble that he has created for Miranda. Signories domains or city-states in Northern Italy, subject to the rule of a lord or signior. inveterate firmly established over a long period. extirpate to pull up by the roots. The reference here is to Prospero and Miranda's being forced from their home and country. bark any boat, but especially a small sailing ship. trident a three-pronged spear used by a gladiator in ancient Roman gladiatorial combats and by the Greek god of the sea, Neptune. Bermoothes refer to the Bermudas, a common word to describe tempests and enchantments. twain two. Ferdinand refers to himself and his father as but two of the victims of the storm. surety a person who takes responsibility for another. Miranda will be Ferdinand's guarantee."} | SCENE II.
_The island.
Before PROSPERO'S cell._
_Enter PROSPERO and MIRANDA._
_Mir._ If by your art, my dearest father, you have
Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.
The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,
But that the sea, mounting to the welkin's cheek,
Dashes the fire out. O, I have suffer'd 5
With those that I saw suffer! a brave vessel,
Who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her,
Dash'd all to pieces. O, the cry did knock
Against my very heart! Poor souls, they perish'd!
Had I been any god of power, I would 10
Have sunk the sea within the earth, or ere
It should the good ship so have swallow'd and
The fraughting souls within her.
_Pros._ Be collected:
No more amazement: tell your piteous heart
There's no harm done.
_Mir._ O, woe the day!
_Pros._ No harm. 15
I have done nothing but in care of thee,
Of thee, my dear one, thee, my daughter, who
Art ignorant of what thou art, nought knowing
Of whence I am, nor that I am more better
Than Prospero, master of a full poor cell, 20
And thy no greater father.
_Mir._ More to know
Did never meddle with my thoughts.
_Pros._ 'Tis time
I should inform thee farther. Lend thy hand,
And pluck my magic garment from me. --So:
[_Lays down his mantle._
Lie there, my art. Wipe thou thine eyes; have comfort. 25
The direful spectacle of the wreck, which touch'd
The very virtue of compassion in thee,
I have with such provision in mine art
So safely order'd, that there is no soul,
No, not so much perdition as an hair 30
Betid to any creature in the vessel
Which thou heard'st cry, which thou saw'st sink. Sit down;
For thou must now know farther.
_Mir._ You have often
Begun to tell me what I am; but stopp'd,
And left me to a bootless inquisition, 35
Concluding "Stay: not yet."
_Pros._ The hour's now come;
The very minute bids thee ope thine ear;
Obey, and be attentive. Canst thou remember
A time before we came unto this cell?
I do not think thou canst, for then thou wast not 40
Out three years old.
_Mir._ Certainly, sir, I can.
_Pros._ By what? by any other house or person?
Of any thing the image tell me that
Hath kept with thy remembrance.
_Mir._ 'Tis far off,
And rather like a dream than an assurance 45
That my remembrance warrants. Had I not
Four or five women once that tended me?
_Pros._ Thou hadst, and more, Miranda. But how is it
That this lives in thy mind? What seest thou else
In the dark backward and abysm of time? 50
If thou remember'st ought ere thou camest here,
How thou camest here thou mayst.
_Mir._ But that I do not.
_Pros._ Twelve year since, Miranda, twelve year since,
Thy father was the Duke of Milan, and
A prince of power.
_Mir._ Sir, are not you my father? 55
_Pros._ Thy mother was a piece of virtue, and
She said thou wast my daughter; and thy father
Was Duke of Milan; and his only heir
And princess, no worse issued.
_Mir._ O the heavens!
What foul play had we, that we came from thence? 60
Or blessed was't we did?
_Pros._ Both, both, my girl:
By foul play, as thou say'st, were we heaved thence;
But blessedly holp hither.
_Mir._ O, my heart bleeds
To think o' the teen that I have turn'd you to.
Which is from my remembrance! Please you, farther. 65
_Pros._ My brother, and thy uncle, call'd Antonio,--
I pray thee, mark me,--that a brother should
Be so perfidious!--he whom, next thyself,
Of all the world I loved, and to him put
The manage of my state; as, at that time, 70
Through all the signories it was the first,
And Prospero the prime duke, being so reputed
In dignity, and for the liberal arts
Without a parallel; those being all my study,
The government I cast upon my brother, 75
And to my state grew stranger, being transported
And rapt in secret studies. Thy false uncle--
Dost thou attend me?
_Mir._ Sir, most heedfully.
_Pros._ Being once perfected how to grant suits,
How to deny them, whom to advance, and whom 80
To trash for over-topping, new created
The creatures that were mine, I say, or changed 'em,
Or else new form'd 'em; having both the key
Of officer and office, set all hearts i' the state
To what tune pleased his ear; that now he was 85
The ivy which had hid my princely trunk,
And suck'd my verdure out on't. Thou attend'st not.
_Mir._ O, good sir, I do.
_Pros._ I pray thee, mark me.
I, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated
To closeness and the bettering of my mind 90
With that which, but by being so retired,
O'er-prized all popular rate, in my false brother
Awaked an evil nature; and my trust,
Like a good parent, did beget of him
A falsehood in its contrary, as great 95
As my trust was; which had indeed no limit,
A confidence sans bound. He being thus lorded,
Not only with what my revenue yielded,
But what my power might else exact, like one
Who having into truth, by telling of it, 100
Made such a sinner of his memory,
To credit his own lie, he did believe
He was indeed the duke; out o' the substitution,
And executing the outward face of royalty,
With all prerogative:--hence his ambition growing,-- 105
Dost thou hear?
_Mir._ Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.
_Pros._ To have no screen between this part he play'd
And him he play'd it for, he needs will be
Absolute Milan. Me, poor man, my library
Was dukedom large enough: of temporal royalties 110
He thinks me now incapable; confederates,
So dry he was for sway, wi' the King of Naples
To give him annual tribute, do him homage,
Subject his coronet to his crown, and bend
The dukedom, yet unbow'd,--alas, poor Milan!-- 115
To most ignoble stooping.
_Mir._ O the heavens!
_Pros._ Mark his condition, and th' event; then tell me
If this might be a brother.
_Mir._ I should sin
To think but nobly of my grandmother:
Good wombs have borne bad sons.
_Pros._ Now the condition. 120
This King of Naples, being an enemy
To me inveterate, hearkens my brother's suit;
Which was, that he, in lieu o' the premises,
Of homage and I know not how much tribute,
Should presently extirpate me and mine 125
Out of the dukedom, and confer fair Milan,
With all the honours, on my brother: whereon,
A treacherous army levied, one midnight
Fated to the purpose, did Antonio open
The gates of Milan; and, i' the dead of darkness, 130
The ministers for the purpose hurried thence
Me and thy crying self.
_Mir._ Alack, for pity!
I, not remembering how I cried out then,
Will cry it o'er again: it is a hint
That wrings mine eyes to't.
_Pros._ Hear a little further, 135
And then I'll bring thee to the present business
Which now's upon 's; without the which, this story
Were most impertinent.
_Mir._ Wherefore did they not
That hour destroy us?
_Pros._ Well demanded, wench:
My tale provokes that question. Dear, they durst not, 140
So dear the love my people bore me; nor set
A mark so bloody on the business; but
With colours fairer painted their foul ends.
In few, they hurried us aboard a bark,
Bore us some leagues to sea; where they prepared 145
A rotten carcass of a boat, not rigg'd,
Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats
Instinctively have quit it: there they hoist us,
To cry to the sea that roar'd to us; to sigh
To the winds, whose pity, sighing back again, 150
Did us but loving wrong.
_Mir._ Alack, what trouble
Was I then to you!
_Pros._ O, a cherubin
Thou wast that did preserve me. Thou didst smile,
Infused with a fortitude from heaven,
When I have deck'd the sea with drops full salt, 155
Under my burthen groan'd; which raised in me
An undergoing stomach, to bear up
Against what should ensue.
_Mir._ How came we ashore?
_Pros._ By Providence divine.
Some food we had, and some fresh water, that 160
A noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo,
Out of his charity, who being then appointed
Master of this design, did give us, with
Rich garments, linens, stuffs and necessaries,
Which since have steaded much; so, of his gentleness, 165
Knowing I loved my books, he furnish'd me
From mine own library with volumes that
I prize above my dukedom.
_Mir._ Would I might
But ever see that man!
_Pros._ Now I arise: [_Resumes his mantle._
Sit still, and hear the last of our sea-sorrow. 170
Here in this island we arrived; and here
Have I, thy schoolmaster, made thee more profit
Than other princesses can, that have more time
For vainer hours, and tutors not so careful.
_Mir._ Heavens thank you for't! And now, I pray you, sir, 175
For still 'tis beating in my mind, your reason
For raising this sea-storm?
_Pros._ Know thus far forth.
By accident most strange, bountiful Fortune,
Now my dear lady, hath mine enemies
Brought to this shore; and by my prescience 180
I find my zenith doth depend upon
A most auspicious star, whose influence
If now I court not, but omit, my fortunes
Will ever after droop. Here cease more questions:
Thou art inclined to sleep; 'tis a good dulness, 185
And give it way: I know thou canst not choose.
[_Miranda sleeps._
Come away, servant, come. I am ready now.
Approach, my Ariel, come.
_Enter _ARIEL_._
_Ari._ All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I come
To answer thy best pleasure; be't to fly, 190
To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride
On the curl'd clouds, to thy strong bidding task
Ariel and all his quality.
_Pros._ Hast thou, spirit,
Perform'd to point the tempest that I bade thee?
_Ari._ To every article. 195
I boarded the king's ship; now on the beak,
Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,
I flamed amazement: sometime I'ld divide,
And burn in many places; on the topmast,
The yards and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly, 200
Then meet and join. Jove's lightnings, the precursors
O' the dreadful thunder-claps, more momentary
And sight-outrunning were not: the fire and cracks
Of sulphurous roaring the most mighty Neptune
Seem to besiege, and make his bold waves tremble, 205
Yea, his dread trident shake.
_Pros._ My brave spirit!
Who was so firm, so constant, that this coil
Would not infect his reason?
_Ari._ Not a soul
But felt a fever of the mad, and play'd
Some tricks of desperation. All but mariners 210
Plunged in the foaming brine, and quit the vessel,
Then all afire with me: the king's son, Ferdinand,
With hair up-staring,--then like reeds, not hair,--
Was the first man that leap'd; cried, "Hell is empty,
And all the devils are here."
_Pros._ Why, that's my spirit! 215
But was not this nigh shore?
_Ari._ Close by, my master.
_Pros._ But are they, Ariel, safe?
_Ari._ Not a hair perish'd;
On their sustaining garments not a blemish,
But fresher than before: and, as thou badest me,
In troops I have dispersed them 'bout the isle. 220
The king's son have I landed by himself;
Whom I left cooling of the air with sighs
In an odd angle of the isle, and sitting,
His arms in this sad knot.
_Pros._ Of the king's ship
The mariners, say how thou hast disposed, 225
And all the rest o' the fleet.
_Ari._ Safely in harbour
Is the king's ship; in the deep nook, where once
Thou call'dst me up at midnight to fetch dew
From the still-vex'd Bermoothes, there she's hid:
The mariners all under hatches stow'd; 230
Who, with a charm join'd to their suffer'd labour,
I have left asleep: and for the rest o' the fleet,
Which I dispersed, they all have met again,
And are upon the Mediterranean flote,
Bound sadly home for Naples; 235
Supposing that they saw the king's ship wreck'd,
And his great person perish.
_Pros._ Ariel, thy charge
Exactly is perform'd: but there's more work.
What is the time o' the day?
_Ari._ Past the mid season.
_Pros._ At least two glasses. The time 'twixt six and now 240
Must by us both be spent most preciously.
_Ari._ Is there more toil? Since thou dost give me pains,
Let me remember thee what thou hast promised,
Which is not yet perform'd me.
_Pros._ How now? moody?
What is't thou canst demand?
_Ari._ My liberty. 245
_Pros._ Before the time be out? no more!
_Ari._ I prithee,
Remember I have done thee worthy service;
Told thee no lies, made thee no mistakings, served
Without or grudge or grumblings: thou didst promise
To bate me a full year.
_Pros._ Dost thou forget 250
From what a torment I did free thee?
_Ari._ No.
_Pros._ Thou dost; and think'st it much to tread the ooze
Of the salt deep,
To run upon the sharp wind of the north,
To do me business in the veins o' the earth 255
When it is baked with frost.
_Ari._ I do not, sir.
_Pros._ Thou liest, malignant thing! Hast thou forgot
The foul witch Sycorax, who with age and envy
Was grown into a hoop? hast thou forgot her?
_Ari._ No, sir.
_Pros._ Thou hast. Where was she born? speak; tell me. 260
_Ari._ Sir, in Argier.
_Pros._ O, was she so? I must
Once in a month recount what thou hast been,
Which thou forget'st. This damn'd witch Sycorax,
For mischiefs manifold, and sorceries terrible
To enter human hearing, from Argier, 265
Thou know'st, was banish'd: for one thing she did
They would not take her life. Is not this true?
_Ari._ Ay, sir.
_Pros._ This blue-eyed hag was hither brought with child,
And here was left by the sailors. Thou, my slave, 270
As thou report'st thyself, wast then her servant;
And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate
To act her earthy and abhorr'd commands,
Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee,
By help of her more potent ministers, 275
And in her most unmitigable rage,
Into a cloven pine; within which rift
Imprison'd thou didst painfully remain
A dozen years; within which space she died,
And left thee there; where thou didst vent thy groans 280
As fast as mill-wheels strike. Then was this island--
Save for the son that she did litter here,
A freckled whelp hag-born--not honour'd with
A human shape.
_Ari._ Yes, Caliban her son.
_Pros._ Dull thing, I say so; he, that Caliban, 285
Whom now I keep in service. Thou best know'st
What torment I did find thee in; thy groans
Did make wolves howl, and penetrate the breasts
Of ever-angry bears: it was a torment
To lay upon the damn'd, which Sycorax 290
Could not again undo: it was mine art,
When I arrived and heard thee, that made gape
The pine, and let thee out.
_Ari._ I thank thee, master.
_Pros._ If thou more murmur'st, I will rend an oak,
And peg thee in his knotty entrails, till 295
Thou hast howl'd away twelve winters.
_Ari._ Pardon, master:
I will be correspondent to command,
And do my spiriting gently.
_Pros._ Do so; and after two days
I will discharge thee.
_Ari._ That's my noble master!
What shall I do? say what; what shall I do? 300
_Pros._ Go make thyself like a nymph o' the sea:
Be subject to no sight but thine and mine; invisible
To every eyeball else. Go take this shape,
And hither come in't: go, hence with diligence!
[_Exit Ariel._
Awake, dear heart, awake! thou hast slept well; 305
Awake!
_Mir._ The strangeness of your story put
Heaviness in me.
_Pros._ Shake it off. Come on;
We'll visit Caliban my slave, who never
Yields us kind answer.
_Mir._ 'Tis a villain, sir,
I do not love to look on.
_Pros._ But, as 'tis, 310
We cannot miss him: he does make our fire,
Fetch in our wood, and serves in offices
That profit us. What, ho! slave! Caliban!
Thou earth, thou! speak.
_Cal._ [_within_] There's wood enough within.
_Pros._ Come forth, I say! there's other business for thee: 315
Come, thou tortoise! when?
_Re-enter ARIEL like a water-nymph._
Fine apparition! My quaint Ariel,
Hark in thine ear.
_Ari._ My lord, it shall be done. [_Exit._
_Pros._ Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself
Upon thy wicked dam, come forth! 320
_Enter CALIBAN._
_Cal._ As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd
With raven's feather from unwholesome fen
Drop on you both! a south-west blow on ye
And blister you all o'er!
_Pros._ For this, be sure, to-night thou shalt have cramps, 325
Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up; urchins
Shall, for that vast of night that they may work,
All exercise on thee; thou shalt be pinch'd
As thick as honeycomb, each pinch more stinging
Than bees that made 'em.
_Cal._ I must eat my dinner. 330
This island's mine, by Sycorax my mother,
Which thou takest from me. When thou camest first,
Thou strokedst me, and madest much of me; wouldst give me
Water with berries in't; and teach me how
To name the bigger light, and how the less, 335
That burn by day and night: and then I loved thee,
And show'd thee all the qualities o' th' isle,
The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile:
Curs'd be I that did so! All the charms
Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you! 340
For I am all the subjects that you have,
Which first was mine own king: and here you sty me
In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me
The rest o' th' island.
_Pros._ Thou most lying slave,
Whom stripes may move, not kindness! I have used thee, 345
Filth as thou art, with human care; and lodged thee
In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate
The honour of my child.
_Cal._ O ho, O ho! would 't had been done!
Thou didst prevent me; I had peopled else 350
This isle with Calibans.
_Pros._ Abhorred slave,
Which any print of goodness wilt not take,
Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee,
Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour
One thing or other: when thou didst not, savage, 355
Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like
A thing most brutish, I endow'd thy purposes
With words that made them known. But thy vile race,
Though thou didst learn, had that in't which good natures
Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou 360
Deservedly confined into this rock,
Who hadst deserved more than a prison.
_Cal._ You taught me language; and my profit on't
Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you
For learning me your language!
_Pros._ Hag-seed, hence! 365
Fetch us in fuel; and be quick, thou'rt best,
To answer other business. Shrug'st thou, malice?
If thou neglect'st, or dost unwillingly
What I command, I'll rack thee with old cramps,
Fill all thy bones with aches, make thee roar, 370
That beasts shall tremble at thy din.
_Cal._ No, pray thee.
[_Aside_] I must obey: his art is of such power,
It would control my dam's god, Setebos,
And make a vassal of him.
_Pros._ So, slave; hence! [_Exit Caliban._
_Re-enter ARIEL, invisible, playing and singing; FERDINAND
following._
_ARIEL'S song._
Come unto these yellow sands, 375
And then take hands:
Courtsied when you have and kiss'd
The wild waves whist:
Foot it featly here and there;
And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear. 380
_Burthen_ [_dispersedly_]. Hark, hark!
Bow-wow.
The watch-dogs bark:
Bow-wow.
_Ari._ Hark, hark! I hear
The strain of strutting chanticleer 385
Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow.
_Fer._ Where should this music be? i' th' air or th' earth?
It sounds no more: and, sure, it waits upon
Some god o' th' island. Sitting on a bank,
Weeping again the king my father's wreck, 390
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion
With its sweet air: thence I have follow'd it.
Or it hath drawn me rather. But 'tis gone.
No, it begins again. 395
_ARIEL sings._
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change 400
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
_Burthen:_ Ding-dong.
_Ari._ Hark! now I hear them,--Ding-dong, bell.
_Fer._ The ditty does remember my drown'd father. 405
This is no mortal business, nor no sound
That the earth owes:--I hear it now above me.
_Pros._ The fringed curtains of thine eye advance,
And say what thou seest yond.
_Mir._ What is't? a spirit?
Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir, 410
It carries a brave form. But 'tis a spirit.
_Pros._ No, wench; it eats and sleeps and hath such senses
As we have, such. This gallant which thou seest
Was in the wreck; and, but he's something stain'd
With grief, that's beauty's canker, thou mightst call him 415
A goodly person: he hath lost his fellows,
And strays about to find 'em.
_Mir._ I might call him
A thing divine; for nothing natural
I ever saw so noble.
_Pros._ [_Aside_] It goes on, I see,
As my soul prompts it. Spirit, fine spirit! I'll free thee 420
Within two days for this.
_Fer._ Most sure, the goddess
On whom these airs attend! Vouchsafe my prayer
May know if you remain upon this island;
And that you will some good instruction give
How I may bear me here: my prime request, 425
Which I do last pronounce, is, O you wonder!
If you be maid or no?
_Mir._ No wonder, sir;
But certainly a maid.
_Fer._ My language! heavens!
I am the best of them that speak this speech,
Were I but where 'tis spoken.
_Pros._ How? the best? 430
What wert thou, if the King of Naples heard thee?
_Fer._ A single thing, as I am now, that wonders
To hear thee speak of Naples. He does hear me;
And that he does I weep: myself am Naples,
Who with mine eyes, never since at ebb, beheld 435
The king my father wreck'd.
_Mir._ Alack, for mercy!
_Fer._ Yes, faith, and all his lords; the Duke of Milan
And his brave son being twain.
_Pros._ [_Aside_] The Duke of Milan
And his more braver daughter could control thee,
If now 'twere fit to do't. At the first sight 440
They have changed eyes. Delicate Ariel,
I'll set thee free for this. [_To Fer._] A word, good sir;
I fear you have done yourself some wrong: a word.
_Mir._ Why speaks my father so ungently? This
Is the third man that e'er I saw; the first 445
That e'er I sigh'd for: pity move my father
To be inclined my way!
_Fer._ O, if a virgin,
And your affection not gone forth, I'll make you
The queen of Naples.
_Pros._ Soft, sir! one word more.
[_Aside_] They are both in either's powers:
but this swift business 450
I must uneasy make, lest too light winning
Make the prize light. [_To Fer._] One word more; I charge thee
That thou attend me: thou dost here usurp
The name thou owest not; and hast put thyself
Upon this island as a spy, to win it 455
From me, the lord on't.
_Fer._ No, as I am a man.
_Mir._ There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple:
If the ill spirit have so fair a house,
Good things will strive to dwell with't.
_Pros._ Follow me.
Speak not you for him; he's a traitor. Come; 460
I'll manacle thy neck and feet together:
Sea-water shalt thou drink; thy food shall be
The fresh-brook muscles, wither'd roots, and husks
Wherein the acorn cradled. Follow.
_Fer._ No;
I will resist such entertainment till 465
Mine enemy has more power.
[_Draws, and is charmed from moving._
_Mir._ O dear father,
Make not too rash a trial of him, for
He's gentle, and not fearful.
_Pros._ What! I say,
My foot my tutor? Put thy sword up, traitor;
Who makest a show, but darest not strike, thy conscience 470
Is so possess'd with guilt: come from thy ward;
For I can here disarm thee with this stick
And make thy weapon drop.
_Mir._ Beseech you, father.
_Pros._ Hence! hang not on my garments.
_Mir._ Sir, have pity;
I'll be his surety.
_Pros._ Silence! one word more 475
Shall make me chide thee, if not hate thee. What!
An advocate for an impostor! hush!
Thou think'st there is no more such shapes as he,
Having seen but him and Caliban: foolish wench!
To the most of men this is a Caliban, 480
And they to him are angels.
_Mir._ My affections
Are, then, most humble; I have no ambition
To see a goodlier man.
_Pros._ Come on; obey:
Thy nerves are in their infancy again,
And have no vigour in them.
_Fer._ So they are: 485
My spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up.
My father's loss, the weakness which I feel,
The wreck of all my friends, nor this man's threats,
To whom I am subdued, are but light to me,
Might I but through my prison once a day 490
Behold this maid: all corners else o' th' earth
Let liberty make use of; space enough
Have I in such a prison.
_Pros._ [_Aside_] It works. [_To Fer._] Come on.
Thou hast done well, fine Ariel! [_To Fer._] Follow me.
[_To Ari._] Hark what thou else shalt do me.
_Mir._ Be of comfort; 495
My father's of a better nature, sir,
Than he appears by speech: this is unwonted
Which now came from him.
_Pros._ Thou shalt be as free
As mountain winds: but then exactly do
All points of my command.
_Ari._ To the syllable. 500
_Pros._ Come, follow. Speak not for him. [_Exeunt._
Notes: I, 2.
3: _stinking_] _flaming_ Singer conj. _kindling_ S. Verges conj.
4: _cheek_] _heat_ Collier MS. _crack_ Staunton conj.
7: _creature_] _creatures_ Theobald.
13: _fraughting_] Ff. _fraighted_ Pope. _fraighting_ Theobald.
_freighting_ Steevens.
15: Mir. _O, woe the day!_ Pros. _No harm._] Mir. _O woe the day!
no harm?_ Johnson conj.
19: _I am more better_] _I'm more or better_ Pope.
24: [Lays ... mantle] Pope.
28: _provision_] F1. _compassion_ F2 F3 F4. _prevision_ Hunter conj.
29: _soul_] _soul lost_ Rowe. _foyle_ Theobald. _soil_ Johnson conj.
_loss_ Capell. _foul_ Wright conj.
31: _betid_] F1. _betide_ F2 F3 F4.
35: _a_] F1. _the_ F2 F3 F4.
38: _thou_] om. Pope.
41: _Out_] _Full_ Pope (after Dryden). _Quite_ Collier MS.
44: _with_] _in_ Pope (after Dryden).
53: _Twelve year ... year_] _Tis twelve years ... years_ Pope.
58, 59: _and his only heir And princess_] _and his only heir
A princess_ Pope. _thou his only heir And princess_ Steevens.
_and though his only heir A princess_] Johnson conj.
63: _holp_] _help'd_ Pope.
_O, my heart_] _My heart_ Pope.
78: _me_] om. F3 F4.
80: _whom ... whom_] F2 F3 F4. _who ... who_ F1.
81: _trash_] _plash_ Hanmer.
82, 83: _'em ... 'em_] _them ... them_ Capell.
84: _i' the state_] _i'th state_ F1. _e'th state_ F2.
_o'th state_ F3 F4. om. Pope.
88: _O, good sir ... mark me._] _Good sir ... mark me then._ Pope.
_O yes, good sir ... mark me._ Capell.
Mir. _O, ... do._ Pros. _I ... me_] _I ... me._ Mir. _O ... do._
Steevens.
89: _dedicated_] _dedicate_ Steevens (Ritson conj.).
91: _so_] F1. om. F2 F3 F4.
97: _lorded_] _loaded_ Collier MS.
99: _exact, like_] _exact. Like_ Ff.
100: _having into truth ... of it_] _loving an untruth, and telling
't oft_ Hanmer. _having unto truth ... oft_ Warburton. _having to
untruth ... of it_ Collier MS. _having sinn'd to truth ... oft_
Musgrave conj.
_telling_] _quelling_ S. Verges conj.
101: _Made ... memory_] _Makes ... memory_ Hanmer. _Makes ...
memory too_ Musgrave conj.
103: _indeed the duke_] _the duke_ Steevens. _indeed duke_ S. Walker
conj.
_out o' the_] _from_ Pope.
105: _his_] _is_ F2.
105, 106: _ambition growing_] _ambition Growing_ Steevens.
106: _hear?_] _hear, child?_ Hanmer.
109: _Milan_] _Millanie_ F1 (Capell's copy).
112: _wi' the_] Capell. _with_ Ff. _wi' th'_ Rowe. _with the_
Steevens.
116: _most_] F1. _much_ F2 F3 F4.
119: _but_] _not_ Pope.
120: _Good ... sons_] Theobald suggested that these words should be
given to Prospero. Hanmer prints them so.
122: _hearkens_] _hears_ Pope. _hearks_ Theobald.
129: _Fated_] _Mated_ Dryden's version.
_purpose_] _practise_ Collier MS.
131: _ministers_] _minister_ Rowe.
133: _out_] _on't_ Steevens conj.
135: _to 't_] om. Steevens (Farmer conj.).
138: _Wherefore_] _Why_ Pope.
141: _me_] om. Pope.
146: _boat_] Rowe (after Dryden). _butt_ F1 F2 F3. _but_ F4.
_busse_ Black conj.
147: _sail_] F1. _nor sail_ F2 F3 F4.
148: _have_] _had_ Rowe (after Dryden).
150: _the winds_] _winds_ Pope.
155: _deck'd_] _brack'd_ Hanmer. _mock'd_ Warburton. _fleck'd_
Johnson conj. _degg'd_ anon. ap. Reed conj.
162: _who_] om. Pope. _he_ Steevens conj.
169: _Now I arise_] Continued to Miranda. Blackstone conj.
[Resumes his mantle] om. Ff. [Put on robe again. Collier MS.
173: _princesses_] _princesse_ F1 F2 F3. _princess_ F4.
_princes_ Rowe. _princess'_ Dyce (S. Walker conj.). See note (III).
186: [M. sleeps] Theobald.
189: SCENE III. Pope.
190: _be't_] F1. _be it_ F2 F3 F4.
193: _quality_] _qualities_ Pope (after Dryden).
198: _sometime_] F1. _sometimes_ F2 F3 F4.
200: _bowsprit_] _bore-sprit_ Ff. _bolt-sprit_ Rowe.
201: _lightnings_] Theobald. _lightning_ Ff.
202: _o' the_] _of_ Pope.
_thunder-claps_] _thunder-clap_ Johnson.
205: _Seem_] _Seem'd_ Theobald.
206: _dread_] F1. _dead_ F2 F3 F4.
_My brave_] _My brave, brave_ Theobald. _That's my brave_ Hanmer.
209: _mad_] _mind_ Pope (after Dryden).
211, 212: _vessel, ... son_] _vessell; Then all a fire with me
the King's sonne_ Ff.
218: _sustaining_] _sea-stained_ Edwards conj. _unstaining_ or
_sea-staining_ Spedding conj.
229: _Bermoothes_] _Bermudas_ Theobald.
231: _Who_] _Whom_ Hanmer.
234: _are_] _all_ Collier MS.
_upon_] _on_ Pope.
239-240: Ari. _Past the mid season._ Pros. _At least two glasses_]
Ari. _Past the mid season at least two glasses._ Warburton.
Pros. _... Past the mid season?_ Ari. _At least two glasses_
Johnson conj.
244: _How now? moody?_] _How now, moody!_ Dyce (so Dryden, ed. 1808).
245: _What_] F1. _Which_ F2 F3 F4.
248: _made thee_] Ff. _made_ Pope.
249: _didst_] F3 F4. _did_ F1 F2.
264: _and sorceries_] _sorceries too_ Hanmer.
267: _Is not this true?_] _Is this not true?_ Pope.
271: _wast then_] Rowe (after Dryden). _was then_ Ff.
273: _earthy_] _earthly_ Pope.
282: _son_] F1. _sunne_ F2. _sun_ F3 F4.
_she_] Rowe (after Dryden). _he_ Ff.
298: See note (IV).
301: _like_] F1. _like to_ F2 F3 F4.
302: _Be subject to_] _be subject To_ Malone.
_but thine and mine_] _but mine_ Pope.
304: _in't_] _in it_ Pope.
_go, hence_] _goe: hence_ Ff. _go hence_ Pope. _hence_ Hanmer.
307: _Heaviness_] _Strange heaviness_ Edd. conj.
312: _serves in offices_] F1. _serves offices_ F2 F3 F4.
_serveth offices_ Collier MS.
316: _Come, thou tortoise! when?_] om. Pope.
_Come_] _Come forth_ Steevens.]
320: _come forth!_] _come forth, thou tortoise!_ Pope.
321: SCENE IV. Pope.
332: _camest_] Rowe. _cam'st_ Ff. _cam'st here_ Ritson conj.
333: _madest_] Rowe (after Dryden). _made_ Ff.
339: _Curs'd be I that_] F1. _Curs'd be I that I_ F2 F3 F4.
_cursed be I that_ Steevens.
342: _Which_] _Who_ Pope, and at line 351.
346: _thee_] om. F4.
349: _would 't_] Ff. _I wou'd it_ Pope.
351: Pros.] Theobald (after Dryden). Mira. Ff.
352: _wilt_] F1. _will_ F2 F3 F4.
355, 356: _didst not ... Know_] _couldst not ... Shew_ Hanmer.
356: _wouldst_] _didst_ Hanmer.
361, 362: _Deservedly ... deserved_] _Justly ... who hadst Deserv'd_
S. Walker conj. _Confin'd ... deserv'd_ id. conj.
362: _Who ... prison_] om. Pope (after Dryden).
366: _thou'rt_] F1 F2 F3. _thou art_ F4. _thou wer't_ Rowe.
375: SCENE V. Pope.
following.] Malone.
378: _The wild waves whist_] Printed as a parenthesis by Steevens.
See note (V).
380: _the burthen bear_] Pope. _bear the burthen_ Ff.
381-383: Steevens gives _Hark, hark! The watch-dogs bark_ to Ariel.
387: _i' th' air or th' earth?_] _in air or earth?_ Pope.
390: _again_] _against_ Rowe (after Dryden).
407: _owes_] _owns_ Pope (after Dryden), but leaves _ow'st_ 454.
408: SCENE VI. Pope.
419: _It goes on, I see,_] _It goes, I see_ Capell. _It goes on_
Steevens.
420: _fine spirit!_] om. Hanmer.
427: _maid_] F3. _mayd_ F1 F2. _made_ F4.
443: See note (VI).
444: _ungently_] F1. _urgently_ F2 F3 F4.
451: _lest_] F4. _least_ F1 F2 F3.
452: _One_] _Sir, one_ Pope.
_I charge thee_] _I charge thee_ [to Ariel. Pope.
460: Pros. prefixed again to this line in Ff.
468: _and_] _tho'_ Hanmer.
469: _foot_] _fool_ S. Walker conj. _child_ Dryden's version.
470: _makest_] _mak'st_ F1. _makes_ F2 F3 F4.
471: _so_] F1. om. F2 F3 F4. _all_ Pope.
478: _is_] _are_ Rowe.
488: _nor_] _and_ Rowe (after Dryden). _or_ Capell.
489: _are_] _were_ Malone conj.
| 9,261 | Scene 2 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201219151049/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/the-tempest/summary-and-analysis/act-i-scene-2 | Scene 2 opens on the island, with Prospero and Miranda watching the ship as it is tossed by the storm. Miranda knows that her father is creating the storm, and she begs him to end the ship's torment and her own, since she suffers as she watches the ship's inhabitants suffer. Prospero reassures his daughter that his actions have been to protect her. He also tells Miranda that she is ignorant of her heritage; he then explains the story of her birthright and of their lives before they came to be on the island. Prospero begins his story with the news that he is the duke of Milan and Miranda is a princess. He also relates that he had abdicated day-to-day rule of his kingdom to his brother, Antonio. Prospero admits that books held more attraction than duties, and he willingly allowed his brother the opportunity to grasp control. But Antonio used his position to undermine Prospero and to plot against him. Prospero's trust in his brother proved unwise, when Antonio formed an alliance with the king of Naples to oust Prospero and seize his heritage. Prospero and his daughter were placed in a small, rickety boat and put out to sea. A sympathetic Neapolitan, Gonzalo, provided them with rich garments, linens, and other necessities. Gonzalo also provided Prospero with books from his library. Eventually, Prospero and Miranda arrived on the island, where they have remained since that time. When he finishes the tale, Prospero uses his magic to put Miranda to sleep. The sprite, Ariel, appears as soon as Miranda is sleeping and reports on the storm, the ship, and the passengers. Ariel relates everyone, except the crew, was forced to abandon ship. Ariel tells Prospero that the passengers have been separated into smaller groups and are on different parts of the island; that the ship, with its sleeping crew, is safely hidden in the harbor; and that the remainder of the fleet, thinking that the king is drowned, has sailed home. Ariel then asks that Prospero free him, as had been promised. But Prospero has more need of his sprite and declares that Ariel's freedom must be delayed a few more days. When Ariel leaves, Prospero awakens Miranda and beckons Caliban, the son of the witch, Sycorax. Caliban has been Prospero's slave, but he is insolent and rebellious and is only controlled through the use of magic. Caliban claims the island as his own and says that Prospero has tricked him in the past. Prospero is unmoved, claiming that Caliban is corrupt, having tried to rape Miranda. Prospero threatens and cajoles Caliban's obedience, but Caliban's presence makes Miranda uneasy. After Caliban leaves, Ariel enters with Ferdinand, who sees Miranda, and the two fall instantly in love. Although this is what Prospero intended to have happen, he does not want it to appear too easy for Ferdinand, and so he accuses Ferdinand of being a spy. When Prospero uses magic to control Ferdinand, Miranda begs him to stop. | Prospero tells Miranda their history as a way to inform the audience of this important information. In addition, the audience needs to know what events motivate Prospero's decision to stir up the storm and why the men onboard the ship are his enemies -- several share responsibility for Prospero's isolation. By sharing this information, Miranda -- and the audience -- can conclude that Prospero is justified in seeking retribution. At the very least, Prospero must make Miranda sympathetic to this choice. It is also important that Prospero gain the audience's sympathy because his early treatment of both Ariel and Caliban depict him in a less than sympathetic light. Ariel and Caliban are both little more than slaves to Prospero's wishes, and, in the initial interactions between Prospero and Ariel and Prospero and Caliban, the audience may think Prospero callous and cruel. He has clearly promised Ariel freedom and then denied it, and he treats Caliban as little more than an animal. The audience needs to understand that cruel circumstance and the machinations of men have turned Prospero into a different man than he might otherwise have been. But Prospero's character is more complex than this scene reveals, and the relationship between these characters more intricate also. During the course of the story, Prospero repeatedly asks Miranda if she is listening. This questioning may reveal her distraction as she worries about the well-being of the ship's passengers. Miranda is loving toward her father, but at the same time, she does not lose sight of the human lives he is placing at risk. However, his questioning is equally directed toward the audience. Prospero also wants to make sure that the audience is listening to his story, since he will return to the audience in the Epilogue and seek their judgment. It is clear from Prospero's story that he had been a poor ruler, more interested in his books than in his responsibilities. Prospero, therefore, is not entirely blameless in the events that occurred in Milan. Antonio could not so easily seize power from an involved and attentive ruler. This information mitigates Antonio's actions in seizing his brother's place and is important because this play is not a tragedy. In order for the comedic or romantic ending to succeed, none of the villains can be beyond redemption or reconciliation. It is equally important that Prospero not be beyond redemption. Prospero must be heroic, and this he cannot be if he is perceived as vengeful. Ariel reassures the audience that the ship and its crew have been saved and the passengers are safely on the island. No one has been hurt or lost at sea. In addition to relating the past, this act also helps define the main characters and anticipate the future. Prospero has been injured, and he intends to serve justice on his captives. He delves in magic and has developed powers beyond those of his enemies. He is also intelligent enough and strong enough to control the spirits on the island; for example, he can control Caliban, who is not without power of his own. Prospero uses the magic of nature, a white, beneficent magic that does no harm. He does not use the black magic of evil. Prospero has learned of this magic, not through the use of witches or evil spells , but through his studies. Prospero's white magic has supplanted the black, evil magic of Caliban's mother, Sycorax, because Prospero, himself, is good. Any initial concern that the audience might have because of Caliban's enslavement evaporates at the news that he attempted to rape Miranda. His subsequent behavior will further prove his character, but he can be redeemed, and his redemption is necessary if the play is to succeed. Furthermore, Caliban, who is initially bad and represents the black magic of his mother, serves as a contrast to the goodness of Ferdinand and Miranda. The young lovers are instantly attracted to one another, each one a mirror image of the other's goodness. It is their goodness that facilitates the reconciliation between Prospero and his enemies. In this reconciliation lies Ariel's freedom and Caliban's redemption. Glossary betid happened or befell; here, it means that nothing has happened to the boat's inhabitants. teen injury or harm. Prospero worries about the trouble that he has created for Miranda. Signories domains or city-states in Northern Italy, subject to the rule of a lord or signior. inveterate firmly established over a long period. extirpate to pull up by the roots. The reference here is to Prospero and Miranda's being forced from their home and country. bark any boat, but especially a small sailing ship. trident a three-pronged spear used by a gladiator in ancient Roman gladiatorial combats and by the Greek god of the sea, Neptune. Bermoothes refer to the Bermudas, a common word to describe tempests and enchantments. twain two. Ferdinand refers to himself and his father as but two of the victims of the storm. surety a person who takes responsibility for another. Miranda will be Ferdinand's guarantee. | 499 | 838 | [
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161 | false | gradesaver | all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/46.txt | finished_summaries/gradesaver/Sense and Sensibility/section_4_part_6.txt | Sense and Sensibility.chapter 46 | chapter 46 | null | {"name": "Chapter 46", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210419170735/https://www.gradesaver.com/sense-and-sensibility/study-guide/summary-chapters-41-50", "summary": "Marianne makes a quick recovery, and Colonel Brandon is invited to see her, so that she can thank him for bringing her mother. They finally resolve to leave, as Marianne is much improved; Mrs. Jennings is sincerely thanked for her kindness, as is the Colonel. Marianne certainly acts more kind to the Colonel, and he leaves when the Dashwoods do, promising to visit them soon. Marianne has become calm, and seems happy, which Elinor observes with particular satisfaction, and with hope that Marianne is finally recovered from Willoughby's rejection. Although Marianne shows signs of sadness at being reminded of Willoughby by being at Barton, she is far more mature about it, keeping herself busy and refusing to let herself languish in her grief. Marianne finally speaks of Willoughby, and says she wishes she knew that he felt something for her; Elinor decides she must take the opportunity to tell her what Willoughby had said, and Marianne takes it very well. Marianne also laments at her selfishness toward Elinor, above all people, and her lack of civility and compassion toward most of their acquaintance; she is determined to amend her ways, and to act with much greater delicacy from this point onward.", "analysis": "Marianne has finally seen her errors of being selfish and unjust toward many; her repentance is sincere, and she also laments her impropriety with Willoughby. Marianne seems to have truly learned from her behavior and experience, and though she is still of a passionate, emotional nature, it is a distinctly positive sign that she is turning these to her own advantage, in educating herself and seeking her own improvement. Even Marianne's tone and language has changed; she no longer speaks in impassioned outbursts, with dramatic overstatements, or simply of herself and her own feelings. She considers Elinor above all, and how her conduct affected her sister, and evenly appraises recent events in her past. Marianne sounds levelheaded, and solid in her judgments, as hopefully she will continue to be. At last, Marianne has learned moderation; this is a theme which will be of great importance to Marianne's future, as it will make her conduct and her judgments more just than they once were. That Marianne also seems to have gotten over Willoughby is a very positive sign; along with the change in her conduct, it is hopeful that this will lead to her beginning to think well of the Colonel"} |
Marianne's illness, though weakening in its kind, had not been long
enough to make her recovery slow; and with youth, natural strength, and
her mother's presence in aid, it proceeded so smoothly as to enable her
to remove, within four days after the arrival of the latter, into Mrs.
Palmer's dressing-room. When there, at her own particular request, for
she was impatient to pour forth her thanks to him for fetching her
mother, Colonel Brandon was invited to visit her.
His emotion on entering the room, in seeing her altered looks, and in
receiving the pale hand which she immediately held out to him, was
such, as, in Elinor's conjecture, must arise from something more than
his affection for Marianne, or the consciousness of its being known to
others; and she soon discovered in his melancholy eye and varying
complexion as he looked at her sister, the probable recurrence of many
past scenes of misery to his mind, brought back by that resemblance
between Marianne and Eliza already acknowledged, and now strengthened
by the hollow eye, the sickly skin, the posture of reclining weakness,
and the warm acknowledgment of peculiar obligation.
Mrs. Dashwood, not less watchful of what passed than her daughter, but
with a mind very differently influenced, and therefore watching to very
different effect, saw nothing in the Colonel's behaviour but what arose
from the most simple and self-evident sensations, while in the actions
and words of Marianne she persuaded herself to think that something
more than gratitude already dawned.
At the end of another day or two, Marianne growing visibly stronger
every twelve hours, Mrs. Dashwood, urged equally by her own and her
daughter's wishes, began to talk of removing to Barton. On HER
measures depended those of her two friends; Mrs. Jennings could not
quit Cleveland during the Dashwoods' stay; and Colonel Brandon was soon
brought, by their united request, to consider his own abode there as
equally determinate, if not equally indispensable. At his and Mrs.
Jennings's united request in return, Mrs. Dashwood was prevailed on to
accept the use of his carriage on her journey back, for the better
accommodation of her sick child; and the Colonel, at the joint
invitation of Mrs. Dashwood and Mrs. Jennings, whose active good-nature
made her friendly and hospitable for other people as well as herself,
engaged with pleasure to redeem it by a visit at the cottage, in the
course of a few weeks.
The day of separation and departure arrived; and Marianne, after taking
so particular and lengthened a leave of Mrs. Jennings, one so earnestly
grateful, so full of respect and kind wishes as seemed due to her own
heart from a secret acknowledgment of past inattention, and bidding
Colonel Brandon farewell with a cordiality of a friend, was carefully
assisted by him into the carriage, of which he seemed anxious that she
should engross at least half. Mrs. Dashwood and Elinor then followed,
and the others were left by themselves, to talk of the travellers, and
feel their own dullness, till Mrs. Jennings was summoned to her chaise
to take comfort in the gossip of her maid for the loss of her two young
companions; and Colonel Brandon immediately afterwards took his
solitary way to Delaford.
The Dashwoods were two days on the road, and Marianne bore her journey
on both, without essential fatigue. Every thing that the most zealous
affection, the most solicitous care could do to render her comfortable,
was the office of each watchful companion, and each found their reward
in her bodily ease, and her calmness of spirits. To Elinor, the
observation of the latter was particularly grateful. She, who had seen
her week after week so constantly suffering, oppressed by anguish of
heart which she had neither courage to speak of, nor fortitude to
conceal, now saw with a joy, which no other could equally share, an
apparent composure of mind, which, in being the result as she trusted
of serious reflection, must eventually lead her to contentment and
cheerfulness.
As they approached Barton, indeed, and entered on scenes of which every
field and every tree brought some peculiar, some painful recollection,
she grew silent and thoughtful, and turning away her face from their
notice, sat earnestly gazing through the window. But here, Elinor
could neither wonder nor blame; and when she saw, as she assisted
Marianne from the carriage, that she had been crying, she saw only an
emotion too natural in itself to raise any thing less tender than pity,
and in its unobtrusiveness entitled to praise. In the whole of her
subsequent manner, she traced the direction of a mind awakened to
reasonable exertion; for no sooner had they entered their common
sitting-room, than Marianne turned her eyes around it with a look of
resolute firmness, as if determined at once to accustom herself to the
sight of every object with which the remembrance of Willoughby could be
connected.--She said little, but every sentence aimed at cheerfulness,
and though a sigh sometimes escaped her, it never passed away without
the atonement of a smile. After dinner she would try her piano-forte.
She went to it; but the music on which her eye first rested was an
opera, procured for her by Willoughby, containing some of their
favourite duets, and bearing on its outward leaf her own name in his
hand-writing.--That would not do.--She shook her head, put the music
aside, and after running over the keys for a minute, complained of
feebleness in her fingers, and closed the instrument again; declaring
however with firmness as she did so, that she should in future practice
much.
The next morning produced no abatement in these happy symptoms. On the
contrary, with a mind and body alike strengthened by rest, she looked
and spoke with more genuine spirit, anticipating the pleasure of
Margaret's return, and talking of the dear family party which would
then be restored, of their mutual pursuits and cheerful society, as the
only happiness worth a wish.
"When the weather is settled, and I have recovered my strength," said
she, "we will take long walks together every day. We will walk to the
farm at the edge of the down, and see how the children go on; we will
walk to Sir John's new plantations at Barton Cross, and the Abbeyland;
and we will often go to the old ruins of the Priory, and try to trace its
foundations as far as we are told they once reached. I know we shall
be happy. I know the summer will pass happily away. I mean never to
be later in rising than six, and from that time till dinner I shall
divide every moment between music and reading. I have formed my plan,
and am determined to enter on a course of serious study. Our own
library is too well known to me, to be resorted to for any thing beyond
mere amusement. But there are many works well worth reading at the
Park; and there are others of more modern production which I know I can
borrow of Colonel Brandon. By reading only six hours a-day, I shall
gain in the course of a twelve-month a great deal of instruction which
I now feel myself to want."
Elinor honoured her for a plan which originated so nobly as this;
though smiling to see the same eager fancy which had been leading her
to the extreme of languid indolence and selfish repining, now at work
in introducing excess into a scheme of such rational employment and
virtuous self-control. Her smile however changed to a sigh when she
remembered that promise to Willoughby was yet unfulfilled, and feared
she had that to communicate which might again unsettle the mind of
Marianne, and ruin at least for a time this fair prospect of busy
tranquillity. Willing therefore to delay the evil hour, she resolved
to wait till her sister's health were more secure, before she appointed
it. But the resolution was made only to be broken.
Marianne had been two or three days at home, before the weather was
fine enough for an invalid like herself to venture out. But at last a
soft, genial morning appeared; such as might tempt the daughter's
wishes and the mother's confidence; and Marianne, leaning on Elinor's
arm, was authorised to walk as long as she could without fatigue, in
the lane before the house.
The sisters set out at a pace, slow as the feebleness of Marianne in an
exercise hitherto untried since her illness required;--and they had
advanced only so far beyond the house as to admit a full view of the
hill, the important hill behind, when pausing with her eyes turned
towards it, Marianne calmly said,
"There, exactly there,"--pointing with one hand, "on that projecting
mound,--there I fell; and there I first saw Willoughby."
Her voice sunk with the word, but presently reviving she added,
"I am thankful to find that I can look with so little pain on the
spot!--shall we ever talk on that subject, Elinor?"--hesitatingly it
was said.--"Or will it be wrong?--I can talk of it now, I hope, as I
ought to do."--
Elinor tenderly invited her to be open.
"As for regret," said Marianne, "I have done with that, as far as HE is
concerned. I do not mean to talk to you of what my feelings have been
for him, but what they are NOW.--At present, if I could be satisfied on
one point, if I could be allowed to think that he was not ALWAYS acting
a part, not ALWAYS deceiving me;--but above all, if I could be assured
that he never was so VERY wicked as my fears have sometimes fancied
him, since the story of that unfortunate girl"--
She stopt. Elinor joyfully treasured her words as she answered,
"If you could be assured of that, you think you should be easy."
"Yes. My peace of mind is doubly involved in it;--for not only is it
horrible to suspect a person, who has been what HE has been to ME, of
such designs,--but what must it make me appear to myself?--What in a
situation like mine, but a most shamefully unguarded affection could
expose me to"--
"How then," asked her sister, "would you account for his behaviour?"
"I would suppose him,--Oh, how gladly would I suppose him, only fickle,
very, very fickle."
Elinor said no more. She was debating within herself on the
eligibility of beginning her story directly, or postponing it till
Marianne were in stronger health;--and they crept on for a few minutes
in silence.
"I am not wishing him too much good," said Marianne at last with a
sigh, "when I wish his secret reflections may be no more unpleasant
than my own. He will suffer enough in them."
"Do you compare your conduct with his?"
"No. I compare it with what it ought to have been; I compare it with
yours."
"Our situations have borne little resemblance."
"They have borne more than our conduct.--Do not, my dearest Elinor, let
your kindness defend what I know your judgment must censure. My
illness has made me think-- It has given me leisure and calmness for
serious recollection. Long before I was enough recovered to talk, I
was perfectly able to reflect. I considered the past: I saw in my own
behaviour, since the beginning of our acquaintance with him last
autumn, nothing but a series of imprudence towards myself, and want of
kindness to others. I saw that my own feelings had prepared my
sufferings, and that my want of fortitude under them had almost led me
to the grave. My illness, I well knew, had been entirely brought on by
myself by such negligence of my own health, as I had felt even at the
time to be wrong. Had I died,--it would have been self-destruction. I
did not know my danger till the danger was removed; but with such
feelings as these reflections gave me, I wonder at my recovery,--wonder
that the very eagerness of my desire to live, to have time for
atonement to my God, and to you all, did not kill me at once. Had I
died,--in what peculiar misery should I have left you, my nurse, my
friend, my sister!--You, who had seen all the fretful selfishness of my
latter days; who had known all the murmurings of my heart!--How should
I have lived in YOUR remembrance!--My mother too! How could you have
consoled her!--I cannot express my own abhorrence of myself. Whenever
I looked towards the past, I saw some duty neglected, or some failing
indulged. Every body seemed injured by me. The kindness, the
unceasing kindness of Mrs. Jennings, I had repaid with ungrateful
contempt. To the Middletons, to the Palmers, the Steeles, to every
common acquaintance even, I had been insolent and unjust; with a heart
hardened against their merits, and a temper irritated by their very
attention.--To John, to Fanny,--yes, even to them, little as they
deserve, I had given less than their due. But you,--you above all,
above my mother, had been wronged by me. I, and only I, knew your
heart and its sorrows; yet to what did it influence me?--not to any
compassion that could benefit you or myself.--Your example was before
me; but to what avail?--Was I more considerate of you and your comfort?
Did I imitate your forbearance, or lessen your restraints, by taking
any part in those offices of general complaisance or particular
gratitude which you had hitherto been left to discharge
alone?--No;--not less when I knew you to be unhappy, than when I had
believed you at ease, did I turn away from every exertion of duty or
friendship; scarcely allowing sorrow to exist but with me, regretting
only THAT heart which had deserted and wronged me, and leaving you, for
whom I professed an unbounded affection, to be miserable for my sake."
Here ceased the rapid flow of her self-reproving spirit; and Elinor,
impatient to soothe, though too honest to flatter, gave her instantly
that praise and support which her frankness and her contrition so well
deserved. Marianne pressed her hand and replied,
"You are very good.--The future must be my proof. I have laid down my
plan, and if I am capable of adhering to it--my feelings shall be
governed and my temper improved. They shall no longer worry others,
nor torture myself. I shall now live solely for my family. You, my
mother, and Margaret, must henceforth be all the world to me; you will
share my affections entirely between you. From you, from my home, I
shall never again have the smallest incitement to move; and if I do mix
in other society, it will be only to shew that my spirit is humbled, my
heart amended, and that I can practise the civilities, the lesser
duties of life, with gentleness and forbearance. As for Willoughby--to
say that I shall soon or that I shall ever forget him, would be idle.
His remembrance can be overcome by no change of circumstances or
opinions. But it shall be regulated, it shall be checked by religion,
by reason, by constant employment."
She paused--and added in a low voice, "If I could but know HIS heart,
everything would become easy."
Elinor, who had now been for some time reflecting on the propriety or
impropriety of speedily hazarding her narration, without feeling at all
nearer decision than at first, heard this; and perceiving that as
reflection did nothing, resolution must do all, soon found herself
leading to the fact.
She managed the recital, as she hoped, with address; prepared her
anxious listener with caution; related simply and honestly the chief
points on which Willoughby grounded his apology; did justice to his
repentance, and softened only his protestations of present regard.
Marianne said not a word.--She trembled, her eyes were fixed on the
ground, and her lips became whiter than even sickness had left them. A
thousand inquiries sprung up from her heart, but she dared not urge
one. She caught every syllable with panting eagerness; her hand,
unknowingly to herself, closely pressed her sister's, and tears covered
her cheeks.
Elinor, dreading her being tired, led her towards home; and till they
reached the door of the cottage, easily conjecturing what her curiosity
must be though no question was suffered to speak it, talked of nothing
but Willoughby, and their conversation together; and was carefully
minute in every particular of speech and look, where minuteness could
be safely indulged. As soon as they entered the house, Marianne with a
kiss of gratitude and these two words just articulate through her
tears, "Tell mama," withdrew from her sister and walked slowly up
stairs. Elinor would not attempt to disturb a solitude so reasonable
as what she now sought; and with a mind anxiously pre-arranging its
result, and a resolution of reviving the subject again, should Marianne
fail to do it, she turned into the parlour to fulfill her parting
injunction.
| 2,634 | Chapter 46 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210419170735/https://www.gradesaver.com/sense-and-sensibility/study-guide/summary-chapters-41-50 | Marianne makes a quick recovery, and Colonel Brandon is invited to see her, so that she can thank him for bringing her mother. They finally resolve to leave, as Marianne is much improved; Mrs. Jennings is sincerely thanked for her kindness, as is the Colonel. Marianne certainly acts more kind to the Colonel, and he leaves when the Dashwoods do, promising to visit them soon. Marianne has become calm, and seems happy, which Elinor observes with particular satisfaction, and with hope that Marianne is finally recovered from Willoughby's rejection. Although Marianne shows signs of sadness at being reminded of Willoughby by being at Barton, she is far more mature about it, keeping herself busy and refusing to let herself languish in her grief. Marianne finally speaks of Willoughby, and says she wishes she knew that he felt something for her; Elinor decides she must take the opportunity to tell her what Willoughby had said, and Marianne takes it very well. Marianne also laments at her selfishness toward Elinor, above all people, and her lack of civility and compassion toward most of their acquaintance; she is determined to amend her ways, and to act with much greater delicacy from this point onward. | Marianne has finally seen her errors of being selfish and unjust toward many; her repentance is sincere, and she also laments her impropriety with Willoughby. Marianne seems to have truly learned from her behavior and experience, and though she is still of a passionate, emotional nature, it is a distinctly positive sign that she is turning these to her own advantage, in educating herself and seeking her own improvement. Even Marianne's tone and language has changed; she no longer speaks in impassioned outbursts, with dramatic overstatements, or simply of herself and her own feelings. She considers Elinor above all, and how her conduct affected her sister, and evenly appraises recent events in her past. Marianne sounds levelheaded, and solid in her judgments, as hopefully she will continue to be. At last, Marianne has learned moderation; this is a theme which will be of great importance to Marianne's future, as it will make her conduct and her judgments more just than they once were. That Marianne also seems to have gotten over Willoughby is a very positive sign; along with the change in her conduct, it is hopeful that this will lead to her beginning to think well of the Colonel | 201 | 200 | [
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5,658 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/22.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Lord Jim/section_21_part_0.txt | Lord Jim.chapter 22 | chapter 22 | null | {"name": "Chapter 22", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-22", "summary": "We're all wondering about this Patusan place. Good thing we have Marlow to give us a the low-down. According to him, Patusan is a small island that was a Dutch trading hotspot for years. The ruler of Patusan is a dim-witted sultan, but he doesn't have any real power.The real ruler of the island is the sultan's uncle, Rajah Allang. By the way, Stein, a German, has a fondness for Brits because of his friendship with a Scotsman named Alexander McNeil. Alexander introduced Stein to his future wife. No wonder he has a soft spot. When Stein and Marlow fill Jim in on their Patusan idea, Jim is thrilled. He's ready and raring to go.", "analysis": ""} |
'The conquest of love, honour, men's confidence--the pride of it, the
power of it, are fit materials for a heroic tale; only our minds are
struck by the externals of such a success, and to Jim's successes there
were no externals. Thirty miles of forest shut it off from the sight of
an indifferent world, and the noise of the white surf along the coast
overpowered the voice of fame. The stream of civilisation, as if divided
on a headland a hundred miles north of Patusan, branches east and
south-east, leaving its plains and valleys, its old trees and its old
mankind, neglected and isolated, such as an insignificant and crumbling
islet between the two branches of a mighty, devouring stream. You find
the name of the country pretty often in collections of old voyages. The
seventeenth-century traders went there for pepper, because the passion
for pepper seemed to burn like a flame of love in the breast of Dutch
and English adventurers about the time of James the First. Where
wouldn't they go for pepper! For a bag of pepper they would cut each
other's throats without hesitation, and would forswear their souls,
of which they were so careful otherwise: the bizarre obstinacy of that
desire made them defy death in a thousand shapes--the unknown seas, the
loathsome and strange diseases; wounds, captivity, hunger, pestilence,
and despair. It made them great! By heavens! it made them heroic; and
it made them pathetic too in their craving for trade with the inflexible
death levying its toll on young and old. It seems impossible to believe
that mere greed could hold men to such a steadfastness of purpose, to
such a blind persistence in endeavour and sacrifice. And indeed those
who adventured their persons and lives risked all they had for a slender
reward. They left their bones to lie bleaching on distant shores, so
that wealth might flow to the living at home. To us, their less tried
successors, they appear magnified, not as agents of trade but as
instruments of a recorded destiny, pushing out into the unknown in
obedience to an inward voice, to an impulse beating in the blood, to a
dream of the future. They were wonderful; and it must be owned they
were ready for the wonderful. They recorded it complacently in their
sufferings, in the aspect of the seas, in the customs of strange
nations, in the glory of splendid rulers.
'In Patusan they had found lots of pepper, and had been impressed by the
magnificence and the wisdom of the Sultan; but somehow, after a century
of chequered intercourse, the country seems to drop gradually out of the
trade. Perhaps the pepper had given out. Be it as it may, nobody cares
for it now; the glory has departed, the Sultan is an imbecile youth
with two thumbs on his left hand and an uncertain and beggarly revenue
extorted from a miserable population and stolen from him by his many
uncles.
'This of course I have from Stein. He gave me their names and a short
sketch of the life and character of each. He was as full of information
about native states as an official report, but infinitely more amusing.
He _had_ to know. He traded in so many, and in some districts--as in
Patusan, for instance--his firm was the only one to have an agency by
special permit from the Dutch authorities. The Government trusted his
discretion, and it was understood that he took all the risks. The men
he employed understood that too, but he made it worth their while
apparently. He was perfectly frank with me over the breakfast-table in
the morning. As far as he was aware (the last news was thirteen months
old, he stated precisely), utter insecurity for life and property was
the normal condition. There were in Patusan antagonistic forces, and one
of them was Rajah Allang, the worst of the Sultan's uncles, the governor
of the river, who did the extorting and the stealing, and ground down
to the point of extinction the country-born Malays, who, utterly
defenceless, had not even the resource of emigrating--"For indeed," as
Stein remarked, "where could they go, and how could they get away?"
No doubt they did not even desire to get away. The world (which is
circumscribed by lofty impassable mountains) has been given into the
hand of the high-born, and _this_ Rajah they knew: he was of their own
royal house. I had the pleasure of meeting the gentleman later on. He
was a dirty, little, used-up old man with evil eyes and a weak mouth,
who swallowed an opium pill every two hours, and in defiance of common
decency wore his hair uncovered and falling in wild stringy locks about
his wizened grimy face. When giving audience he would clamber upon a
sort of narrow stage erected in a hall like a ruinous barn with a rotten
bamboo floor, through the cracks of which you could see, twelve or
fifteen feet below, the heaps of refuse and garbage of all kinds lying
under the house. That is where and how he received us when, accompanied
by Jim, I paid him a visit of ceremony. There were about forty people in
the room, and perhaps three times as many in the great courtyard below.
There was constant movement, coming and going, pushing and murmuring,
at our backs. A few youths in gay silks glared from the distance; the
majority, slaves and humble dependants, were half naked, in ragged
sarongs, dirty with ashes and mud-stains. I had never seen Jim look so
grave, so self-possessed, in an impenetrable, impressive way. In the
midst of these dark-faced men, his stalwart figure in white apparel,
the gleaming clusters of his fair hair, seemed to catch all the sunshine
that trickled through the cracks in the closed shutters of that dim
hall, with its walls of mats and a roof of thatch. He appeared like a
creature not only of another kind but of another essence. Had they not
seen him come up in a canoe they might have thought he had descended
upon them from the clouds. He did, however, come in a crazy dug-out,
sitting (very still and with his knees together, for fear of overturning
the thing)--sitting on a tin box--which I had lent him--nursing on his
lap a revolver of the Navy pattern--presented by me on parting--which,
through an interposition of Providence, or through some wrong-headed
notion, that was just like him, or else from sheer instinctive sagacity,
he had decided to carry unloaded. That's how he ascended the Patusan
river. Nothing could have been more prosaic and more unsafe, more
extravagantly casual, more lonely. Strange, this fatality that would
cast the complexion of a flight upon all his acts, of impulsive
unreflecting desertion of a jump into the unknown.
'It is precisely the casualness of it that strikes me most. Neither
Stein nor I had a clear conception of what might be on the other side
when we, metaphorically speaking, took him up and hove him over the
wall with scant ceremony. At the moment I merely wished to achieve his
disappearance; Stein characteristically enough had a sentimental motive.
He had a notion of paying off (in kind, I suppose) the old debt he had
never forgotten. Indeed he had been all his life especially friendly to
anybody from the British Isles. His late benefactor, it is true, was a
Scot--even to the length of being called Alexander McNeil--and Jim came
from a long way south of the Tweed; but at the distance of six or
seven thousand miles Great Britain, though never diminished, looks
foreshortened enough even to its own children to rob such details of
their importance. Stein was excusable, and his hinted intentions were
so generous that I begged him most earnestly to keep them secret for
a time. I felt that no consideration of personal advantage should be
allowed to influence Jim; that not even the risk of such influence
should be run. We had to deal with another sort of reality. He wanted
a refuge, and a refuge at the cost of danger should be offered
him--nothing more.
'Upon every other point I was perfectly frank with him, and I even (as
I believed at the time) exaggerated the danger of the undertaking. As
a matter of fact I did not do it justice; his first day in Patusan was
nearly his last--would have been his last if he had not been so reckless
or so hard on himself and had condescended to load that revolver. I
remember, as I unfolded our precious scheme for his retreat, how his
stubborn but weary resignation was gradually replaced by surprise,
interest, wonder, and by boyish eagerness. This was a chance he had been
dreaming of. He couldn't think how he merited that I . . . He would be
shot if he could see to what he owed . . . And it was Stein, Stein the
merchant, who . . . but of course it was me he had to . . . I cut him
short. He was not articulate, and his gratitude caused me inexplicable
pain. I told him that if he owed this chance to any one especially, it
was to an old Scot of whom he had never heard, who had died many years
ago, of whom little was remembered besides a roaring voice and a rough
sort of honesty. There was really no one to receive his thanks. Stein
was passing on to a young man the help he had received in his own young
days, and I had done no more than to mention his name. Upon this he
coloured, and, twisting a bit of paper in his fingers, he remarked
bashfully that I had always trusted him.
'I admitted that such was the case, and added after a pause that I
wished he had been able to follow my example. "You think I don't?" he
asked uneasily, and remarked in a mutter that one had to get some sort
of show first; then brightening up, and in a loud voice he protested he
would give me no occasion to regret my confidence, which--which . . .
'"Do not misapprehend," I interrupted. "It is not in your power to make
me regret anything." There would be no regrets; but if there were, it
would be altogether my own affair: on the other hand, I wished him to
understand clearly that this arrangement, this--this--experiment, was
his own doing; he was responsible for it and no one else. "Why? Why," he
stammered, "this is the very thing that I . . ." I begged him not to
be dense, and he looked more puzzled than ever. He was in a fair way
to make life intolerable to himself . . . "Do you think so?" he asked,
disturbed; but in a moment added confidently, "I was going on though.
Was I not?" It was impossible to be angry with him: I could not help a
smile, and told him that in the old days people who went on like
this were on the way of becoming hermits in a wilderness. "Hermits be
hanged!" he commented with engaging impulsiveness. Of course he didn't
mind a wilderness. . . . "I was glad of it," I said. That was where
he would be going to. He would find it lively enough, I ventured to
promise. "Yes, yes," he said, keenly. He had shown a desire, I continued
inflexibly, to go out and shut the door after him. . . . "Did I?" he
interrupted in a strange access of gloom that seemed to envelop him
from head to foot like the shadow of a passing cloud. He was wonderfully
expressive after all. Wonderfully! "Did I?" he repeated bitterly. "You
can't say I made much noise about it. And I can keep it up, too--only,
confound it! you show me a door." . . . "Very well. Pass on," I struck
in. I could make him a solemn promise that it would be shut behind him
with a vengeance. His fate, whatever it was, would be ignored,
because the country, for all its rotten state, was not judged ripe
for interference. Once he got in, it would be for the outside world as
though he had never existed. He would have nothing but the soles of his
two feet to stand upon, and he would have first to find his ground at
that. "Never existed--that's it, by Jove," he murmured to himself. His
eyes, fastened upon my lips, sparkled. If he had thoroughly understood
the conditions, I concluded, he had better jump into the first gharry he
could see and drive on to Stein's house for his final instructions. He
flung out of the room before I had fairly finished speaking.'
| 1,980 | Chapter 22 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-22 | We're all wondering about this Patusan place. Good thing we have Marlow to give us a the low-down. According to him, Patusan is a small island that was a Dutch trading hotspot for years. The ruler of Patusan is a dim-witted sultan, but he doesn't have any real power.The real ruler of the island is the sultan's uncle, Rajah Allang. By the way, Stein, a German, has a fondness for Brits because of his friendship with a Scotsman named Alexander McNeil. Alexander introduced Stein to his future wife. No wonder he has a soft spot. When Stein and Marlow fill Jim in on their Patusan idea, Jim is thrilled. He's ready and raring to go. | null | 115 | 1 | [
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23,042 | false | sparknotes | all_chapterized_books/23042-chapters/5.txt | finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Tempest/section_5_part_0.txt | The Tempest.act iii.scene i | act iii, scene i | null | {"name": "Act III, scene i", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210131162607/https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/tempest/section6/", "summary": "I am your wife, if you will marry me. If not, I'll die your maid. To be your fellowYou may deny me, but I'll be your servantWhether you will or no. Back at Prospero's cell, Ferdinand takes over Caliban's duties and carries wood for Prospero. Unlike Caliban, however, Ferdinand has no desire to curse. Instead, he enjoys his labors because they serve the woman he loves, Miranda. As Ferdinand works and thinks of Miranda, she enters, and after her, unseen by either lover, Prospero enters. Miranda tells Ferdinand to take a break from his work, or to let her work for him, thinking that her father is away. Ferdinand refuses to let her work for him but does rest from his work and asks Miranda her name. She tells him, and he is pleased: \"Miranda\" comes from the same Latin word that gives English the word \"admiration.\" Ferdinand's speech plays on the etymology: \"Admired Miranda! / Indeed the top of admiration, worth / What's dearest to the world!\" . Ferdinand goes on to flatter his beloved. Miranda is, of course, modest, pointing out that she has no idea of any woman's face but her own. She goes on to praise Ferdinand's face, but then stops herself, remembering her father's instructions that she should not speak to Ferdinand. Ferdinand assures Miranda that he is a prince and probably a king now, though he prays his father is not dead. Miranda seems unconcerned with Ferdinand's title, and asks only if he loves her. Ferdinand replies enthusiastically that he does, and his response emboldens Miranda to propose marriage. Ferdinand accepts and the two part. Prospero comes forth, subdued in his happiness, for he has known that this would happen. He then hastens to his book of magic in order to prepare for remaining business.", "analysis": "Analysis There be some sports are painful, and their labourDelight in them sets off. Some kinds of basenessAre nobly undergone, and most poor mattersPoint to rich ends. This my mean taskWould be as heavy to me as odious, butThe mistress which I serve quickens what's deadAnd makes my labours pleasures. This scene revolves around different images of servitude. Ferdinand is literally in service to Prospero, but in order to make his labor more pleasant he sees Miranda as his taskmaster. When he talks to Miranda, Ferdinand brings up a different kind of servitude--the love he has felt for a number of other beautiful women. Ferdinand sees this love, in comparison to his love for Miranda, as an enforced servitude: \"Full many a lady / I have eyed with the best regard, and many a time / Th' harmony of their tongues hath into bondage / Brought my too diligent ear\" . When Miranda stops the conversation momentarily, remembering her father's command against talking to Ferdinand, the prince hastens to assure her that he is worthy of her love. He is royalty, he says, and in normal life \"would no more endure / This wooden slavery than to suffer / The flesh-fly blow my mouth\" . But this slavery is made tolerable by a different kind of slavery: \"The very instant that I saw you did / My heart fly to your service; there resides, / To make me slave to it\" . The words \"slavery\" and \"slave\" underscore the parallel as well as the difference between Ferdinand and Caliban. Prospero repeatedly calls Caliban a slave, and we see Caliban as a slave both to Prospero and to his own anger. Ferdinand, on the other hand, is a willing slave to his love, happy in a servitude that makes him rejoice rather than curse. At the end of the scene, Miranda takes up the theme of servitude. Proposing marriage to Ferdinand, she says that \"I am your wife, if you will marry me; / If not, I'll die your maid. . . . / You may deny me; but I'll be your servant / Whether you will or no\" . This is the only scene of actual interaction we see between Ferdinand and Miranda. Miranda is, as we know, and as she says, very innocent: \"I do not know / One of my sex, no woman's face remember / Save from my glass mine own; nor have I seen / More that I may call men than you, good friend, / And my dear father\" . The play has to make an effort to overcome the implausibility of this courtship--to make Miranda look like something more than Prospero's puppet and a fool for the first man she sees. Shakespeare accomplishes this by showing Ferdinand in one kind of servitude--in which he must literally and physically humble himself--as he talks earnestly about another kind of servitude, in which he gives himself wholly to Miranda. The fact that Miranda speaks of a similar servitude of her own accord, that she remembers her father's \"precepts\" and then disregards them, and that Prospero remains in the background without interfering helps the audience to trust this meeting between the lovers more than their first meeting in Act I, scene ii. Of course, Prospero's presence in the first place may suggest that he is somehow in control of what Miranda does or says. At the end he steps forward to assure the audience that he knew what would happen: \"So glad of this as they I cannot be, / Who are surprised with all\" . But Prospero's five other lines do not suggest that he controls what Miranda says. Rather, he watches in the manner of a father--both proud of his daughter's choice and slightly sad to see her grow up."} | ACT III. SCENE I.
_Before PROSPERO'S cell._
_Enter FERDINAND, bearing a log._
_Fer._ There be some sports are painful, and their labour
Delight in them sets off: some kinds of baseness
Are nobly undergone, and most poor matters
Point to rich ends. This my mean task
Would be as heavy to me as odious, but 5
The mistress which I serve quickens what's dead,
And makes my labours pleasures: O, she is
Ten times more gentle than her father's crabbed.
And he's composed of harshness. I must remove
Some thousands of these logs, and pile them up, 10
Upon a sore injunction: my sweet mistress
Weeps when she sees me work, and says, such baseness
Had never like executor. I forget:
But these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labours,
Most busy lest, when I do it.
_Enter MIRANDA; and PROSPERO at a distance, unseen._
_Mir._ Alas, now, pray you, 15
Work not so hard: I would the lightning had
Burnt up those logs that you are enjoin'd to pile!
Pray, set it down, and rest you: when this burns,
'Twill weep for having wearied you. My father
Is hard at study; pray, now, rest yourself; 20
He's safe for these three hours.
_Fer._ O most dear mistress,
The sun will set before I shall discharge
What I must strive to do.
_Mir._ If you'll sit down,
I'll bear your logs the while: pray, give me that;
I'll carry it to the pile.
_Fer._ No, precious creature; 25
I had rather crack my sinews, break my back,
Than you should such dishonour undergo,
While I sit lazy by.
_Mir._ It would become me
As well as it does you: and I should do it
With much more ease; for my good will is to it, 30
And yours it is against.
_Pros._ Poor worm, thou art infected!
This visitation shows it.
_Mir._ You look wearily.
_Fer._ No, noble mistress; 'tis fresh morning with me
When you are by at night. I do beseech you,--
Chiefly that I might set it in my prayers,-- 35
What is your name?
_Mir._ Miranda. --O my father,
I have broke your hest to say so!
_Fer._ Admired Miranda!
Indeed the top of admiration! worth
What's dearest to the world! Full many a lady
I have eyed with best regard, and many a time 40
The harmony of their tongues hath into bondage
Brought my too diligent ear: for several virtues
Have I liked several women; never any
With so full soul, but some defect in her
Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed, 45
And put it to the foil: but you, O you,
So perfect and so peerless, are created
Of every creature's best!
_Mir._ I do not know
One of my sex; no woman's face remember,
Save, from my glass, mine own; nor have I seen 50
More that I may call men than you, good friend,
And my dear father: how features are abroad,
I am skilless of; but, by my modesty,
The jewel in my dower, I would not wish
Any companion in the world but you; 55
Nor can imagination form a shape,
Besides yourself, to like of. But I prattle
Something too wildly, and my father's precepts
I therein do forget.
_Fer._ I am, in my condition,
A prince, Miranda; I do think, a king; 60
I would, not so!--and would no more endure
This wooden slavery than to suffer
The flesh-fly blow my mouth. Hear my soul speak:
The very instant that I saw you, did
My heart fly to your service; there resides, 65
To make me slave to it; and for your sake
Am I this patient log-man.
_Mir._ Do you love me?
_Fer._ O heaven, O earth, bear witness to this sound,
And crown what I profess with kind event,
If I speak true! if hollowly, invert 70
What best is boded me to mischief! I,
Beyond all limit of what else i' the world,
Do love, prize, honour you.
_Mir._ I am a fool
To weep at what I am glad of.
_Pros._ Fair encounter
Of two most rare affections! Heavens rain grace 75
On that which breeds between 'em!
_Fer._ Wherefore weep you?
_Mir._ At mine unworthiness, that dare not offer
What I desire to give; and much less take
What I shall die to want. But this is trifling;
And all the more it seeks to hide itself, 80
The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning!
And prompt me, plain and holy innocence!
I am your wife, if you will marry me;
If not, I'll die your maid: to be your fellow
You may deny me; but I'll be your servant, 85
Whether you will or no.
_Fer._ My mistress, dearest;
And I thus humble ever.
_Mir._ My husband, then?
_Fer._ Ay, with a heart as willing
As bondage e'er of freedom: here's my hand.
_Mir._ And mine, with my heart in't: and now farewell 90
Till half an hour hence.
_Fer._ A thousand thousand!
[_Exeunt Fer. and Mir. severally._
_Pros._ So glad of this as they I cannot be,
Who are surprised withal; but my rejoicing
At nothing can be more. I'll to my book;
For yet, ere supper-time, must I perform 95
Much business appertaining. [_Exit._
Notes: III, 1.
1: _and_] _but_ Pope.
2: _sets_] Rowe. _set_ Ff.
4, 5: _my ... odious_] _my mean task would be As heavy to me as
'tis odious_ Pope.
9: _remove_] _move_ Pope.
14: _labours_] _labour_ Hanmer.
15: _Most busy lest_] F1. _Most busy least_ F2 F3 F4. _Least busy_
Pope. _Most busie-less_ Theobald._ Most busiest_ Holt White conj.
_Most busy felt_ Staunton. _Most busy still_ Staunton conj.
_Most busy-blest_ Collier MS. _Most busiliest_ Bullock conj.
_Most busy lest, when I do_ (_doe_ F1 F2 F3) _it_] _Most busy when
least I do it_ Brae conj. _Most busiest when idlest_ Spedding
conj. _Most busy left when idlest_ Edd. conj. See note (XIII).
at a distance, unseen] Rowe.
17: _you are_] F1. _thou art_ F2 F3 F4.
31: _it is_] _is it_ Steevens conj. (ed. 1, 2, and 3). om. Steevens
(ed. 4) (Farmer conj.).
34, 35: _I do beseech you,--Chiefly_] _I do beseech you Chiefly_ Ff.
59: _I therein do_] _I do_ Pope. _Therein_ Steevens.
62: _wooden_] _wodden_ F1.
_than to_] _than I would_ Pope.
72: _what else_] _aught else_ Malone conj. (withdrawn).
80: _seeks_] _seekd_ F3 F4.
88: _as_] F1. _so_ F2 F3 F4.
91: _severally_] Capell.
93: _withal_] Theobald. _with all_ Ff.
| 1,778 | Act III, scene i | https://web.archive.org/web/20210131162607/https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/tempest/section6/ | I am your wife, if you will marry me. If not, I'll die your maid. To be your fellowYou may deny me, but I'll be your servantWhether you will or no. Back at Prospero's cell, Ferdinand takes over Caliban's duties and carries wood for Prospero. Unlike Caliban, however, Ferdinand has no desire to curse. Instead, he enjoys his labors because they serve the woman he loves, Miranda. As Ferdinand works and thinks of Miranda, she enters, and after her, unseen by either lover, Prospero enters. Miranda tells Ferdinand to take a break from his work, or to let her work for him, thinking that her father is away. Ferdinand refuses to let her work for him but does rest from his work and asks Miranda her name. She tells him, and he is pleased: "Miranda" comes from the same Latin word that gives English the word "admiration." Ferdinand's speech plays on the etymology: "Admired Miranda! / Indeed the top of admiration, worth / What's dearest to the world!" . Ferdinand goes on to flatter his beloved. Miranda is, of course, modest, pointing out that she has no idea of any woman's face but her own. She goes on to praise Ferdinand's face, but then stops herself, remembering her father's instructions that she should not speak to Ferdinand. Ferdinand assures Miranda that he is a prince and probably a king now, though he prays his father is not dead. Miranda seems unconcerned with Ferdinand's title, and asks only if he loves her. Ferdinand replies enthusiastically that he does, and his response emboldens Miranda to propose marriage. Ferdinand accepts and the two part. Prospero comes forth, subdued in his happiness, for he has known that this would happen. He then hastens to his book of magic in order to prepare for remaining business. | Analysis There be some sports are painful, and their labourDelight in them sets off. Some kinds of basenessAre nobly undergone, and most poor mattersPoint to rich ends. This my mean taskWould be as heavy to me as odious, butThe mistress which I serve quickens what's deadAnd makes my labours pleasures. This scene revolves around different images of servitude. Ferdinand is literally in service to Prospero, but in order to make his labor more pleasant he sees Miranda as his taskmaster. When he talks to Miranda, Ferdinand brings up a different kind of servitude--the love he has felt for a number of other beautiful women. Ferdinand sees this love, in comparison to his love for Miranda, as an enforced servitude: "Full many a lady / I have eyed with the best regard, and many a time / Th' harmony of their tongues hath into bondage / Brought my too diligent ear" . When Miranda stops the conversation momentarily, remembering her father's command against talking to Ferdinand, the prince hastens to assure her that he is worthy of her love. He is royalty, he says, and in normal life "would no more endure / This wooden slavery than to suffer / The flesh-fly blow my mouth" . But this slavery is made tolerable by a different kind of slavery: "The very instant that I saw you did / My heart fly to your service; there resides, / To make me slave to it" . The words "slavery" and "slave" underscore the parallel as well as the difference between Ferdinand and Caliban. Prospero repeatedly calls Caliban a slave, and we see Caliban as a slave both to Prospero and to his own anger. Ferdinand, on the other hand, is a willing slave to his love, happy in a servitude that makes him rejoice rather than curse. At the end of the scene, Miranda takes up the theme of servitude. Proposing marriage to Ferdinand, she says that "I am your wife, if you will marry me; / If not, I'll die your maid. . . . / You may deny me; but I'll be your servant / Whether you will or no" . This is the only scene of actual interaction we see between Ferdinand and Miranda. Miranda is, as we know, and as she says, very innocent: "I do not know / One of my sex, no woman's face remember / Save from my glass mine own; nor have I seen / More that I may call men than you, good friend, / And my dear father" . The play has to make an effort to overcome the implausibility of this courtship--to make Miranda look like something more than Prospero's puppet and a fool for the first man she sees. Shakespeare accomplishes this by showing Ferdinand in one kind of servitude--in which he must literally and physically humble himself--as he talks earnestly about another kind of servitude, in which he gives himself wholly to Miranda. The fact that Miranda speaks of a similar servitude of her own accord, that she remembers her father's "precepts" and then disregards them, and that Prospero remains in the background without interfering helps the audience to trust this meeting between the lovers more than their first meeting in Act I, scene ii. Of course, Prospero's presence in the first place may suggest that he is somehow in control of what Miranda does or says. At the end he steps forward to assure the audience that he knew what would happen: "So glad of this as they I cannot be, / Who are surprised with all" . But Prospero's five other lines do not suggest that he controls what Miranda says. Rather, he watches in the manner of a father--both proud of his daughter's choice and slightly sad to see her grow up. | 303 | 637 | [
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28,054 | false | sparknotes | all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/41.txt | finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_8_part_4.txt | The Brothers Karamazov.book 6.chapter 3 | book 6, chapter 3 | null | {"name": "book 6, Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section9/", "summary": "From Talks and Homilies of the Elder Zosima Zosima tells Alyosha about the importance of monks in Russian life. He says that the monk is closer to the common people than anyone else, and that the faith of the common people is the hope of Russia. He says that all people are equal in spirit, and that all people should be meek with one another, so that there are no more masters and servants. Like his brother before him, Zosima urges all who hear him to love all mankind and all of God's creation. He says that no one should judge anyone else, even criminals. Instead, people should pray for the salvation of the wayward, to save them from spiritual hell. Zosima lowers himself to the floor, and, reaching out his arms as though to embrace the world, he dies.", "analysis": "Book VI: The Russian Monk, Chapters 1-3 The main philosophical conflict of the novel is apparent in the structural division between Books V and VI: the dark and brooding Book V is consumed with the tremors of Ivan's doubt, while the more peaceful Book VI is devoted to the quiet wisdom of Zosima's faith. Zosima's final anecdotes work as a cooling antidote to the disturbing arguments in Book V, replacing Ivan's frenzied logical examinations with more positive examples of the power of faith to do good in the world. In a way, the anecdote of the murderer is the exact opposite of the Grand Inquisitor story. The Grand Inquisitor story tells about an innocent man who is imprisoned and judged, while Zosima's anecdote of the murderer tells about a guilty man who is goes free and is forgiven. The contrast in the two anecdotes reveals a great deal about the contrast between Zosima's philosophy and Ivan's. Zosima emphasizes the power of love to overcome sin, whereas Ivan emphasizes only the baseness of the world and the cold logic with which he believes it must be faced. In addition to the parallel between the story of the Grand Inquisitor and the anecdote of the murderer, there are a number of other parallels between things Zosima describes in Book VI and events that take place in the larger narrative, both before and after this section of the novel. For instance, Zosima's description of himself in youth as a soldier like Dmitri, with a brother who helped to redeem him spiritually, echoes the relationship between Dmitri and Alyosha: Alyosha also helps to redeem Dmitri, and Zosima says specifically that Alyosha reminds him of his brother. Zosima's youthful duel and the murder committed in the anecdote of the murderer are both crimes of passion committed for a woman's love, and thus echo the rivalry between Fyodor Pavlovich and Dmitri for Grushenka. The murderer's acceptance of responsibility and his desire to confess involve many of the same issues of responsibility and redemption that affect Ivan. These parallels ultimately are another sign of the infallible wisdom of Zosima. He is able to predict, better than anyone else, what lies ahead for the Karamazovs, and he is thus able to tailor his final lesson to what he knows will be Alyosha's needs in the coming crisis. Alyosha has proved himself capable of internalizing Zosima's lessons, and he emerges from this final conversation with Zosima better prepared to handle the hardships that lie ahead. Zosima's death, as he stretches out his arms to embrace the Earth, is a symbol of acceptance and faith, indicating his love of God's creation with the last energy left in his body. Zosima's sincerity and his assent to the will of God are total. He does not die with fear, resentment, or regret. His final gesture is one of rapturous acquiescence, and thus Zosima's death works as an emblem of everything he has taught, spoken, and stood for throughout the novel"} | Chapter III. Conversations And Exhortations Of Father Zossima
_(e) The Russian Monk and his possible Significance_
Fathers and teachers, what is the monk? In the cultivated world the word
is nowadays pronounced by some people with a jeer, and by others it is
used as a term of abuse, and this contempt for the monk is growing. It is
true, alas, it is true, that there are many sluggards, gluttons,
profligates and insolent beggars among monks. Educated people point to
these: "You are idlers, useless members of society, you live on the labor
of others, you are shameless beggars." And yet how many meek and humble
monks there are, yearning for solitude and fervent prayer in peace! These
are less noticed, or passed over in silence. And how surprised men would
be if I were to say that from these meek monks, who yearn for solitary
prayer, the salvation of Russia will come perhaps once more! For they are
in truth made ready in peace and quiet "for the day and the hour, the
month and the year." Meanwhile, in their solitude, they keep the image of
Christ fair and undefiled, in the purity of God's truth, from the times of
the Fathers of old, the Apostles and the martyrs. And when the time comes
they will show it to the tottering creeds of the world. That is a great
thought. That star will rise out of the East.
That is my view of the monk, and is it false? is it too proud? Look at the
worldly and all who set themselves up above the people of God, has not
God's image and His truth been distorted in them? They have science; but
in science there is nothing but what is the object of sense. The spiritual
world, the higher part of man's being is rejected altogether, dismissed
with a sort of triumph, even with hatred. The world has proclaimed the
reign of freedom, especially of late, but what do we see in this freedom
of theirs? Nothing but slavery and self-destruction! For the world says:
"You have desires and so satisfy them, for you have the same rights as the
most rich and powerful. Don't be afraid of satisfying them and even
multiply your desires." That is the modern doctrine of the world. In that
they see freedom. And what follows from this right of multiplication of
desires? In the rich, isolation and spiritual suicide; in the poor, envy
and murder; for they have been given rights, but have not been shown the
means of satisfying their wants. They maintain that the world is getting
more and more united, more and more bound together in brotherly community,
as it overcomes distance and sets thoughts flying through the air.
Alas, put no faith in such a bond of union. Interpreting freedom as the
multiplication and rapid satisfaction of desires, men distort their own
nature, for many senseless and foolish desires and habits and ridiculous
fancies are fostered in them. They live only for mutual envy, for luxury
and ostentation. To have dinners, visits, carriages, rank and slaves to
wait on one is looked upon as a necessity, for which life, honor and human
feeling are sacrificed, and men even commit suicide if they are unable to
satisfy it. We see the same thing among those who are not rich, while the
poor drown their unsatisfied need and their envy in drunkenness. But soon
they will drink blood instead of wine, they are being led on to it. I ask
you is such a man free? I knew one "champion of freedom" who told me
himself that, when he was deprived of tobacco in prison, he was so
wretched at the privation that he almost went and betrayed his cause for
the sake of getting tobacco again! And such a man says, "I am fighting for
the cause of humanity."
How can such a one fight? what is he fit for? He is capable perhaps of
some action quickly over, but he cannot hold out long. And it's no wonder
that instead of gaining freedom they have sunk into slavery, and instead
of serving the cause of brotherly love and the union of humanity have
fallen, on the contrary, into dissension and isolation, as my mysterious
visitor and teacher said to me in my youth. And therefore the idea of the
service of humanity, of brotherly love and the solidarity of mankind, is
more and more dying out in the world, and indeed this idea is sometimes
treated with derision. For how can a man shake off his habits? What can
become of him if he is in such bondage to the habit of satisfying the
innumerable desires he has created for himself? He is isolated, and what
concern has he with the rest of humanity? They have succeeded in
accumulating a greater mass of objects, but the joy in the world has grown
less.
The monastic way is very different. Obedience, fasting and prayer are
laughed at, yet only through them lies the way to real, true freedom. I
cut off my superfluous and unnecessary desires, I subdue my proud and
wanton will and chastise it with obedience, and with God's help I attain
freedom of spirit and with it spiritual joy. Which is most capable of
conceiving a great idea and serving it--the rich man in his isolation or
the man who has freed himself from the tyranny of material things and
habits? The monk is reproached for his solitude, "You have secluded
yourself within the walls of the monastery for your own salvation, and
have forgotten the brotherly service of humanity!" But we shall see which
will be most zealous in the cause of brotherly love. For it is not we, but
they, who are in isolation, though they don't see that. Of old, leaders of
the people came from among us, and why should they not again? The same
meek and humble ascetics will rise up and go out to work for the great
cause. The salvation of Russia comes from the people. And the Russian monk
has always been on the side of the people. We are isolated only if the
people are isolated. The people believe as we do, and an unbelieving
reformer will never do anything in Russia, even if he is sincere in heart
and a genius. Remember that! The people will meet the atheist and overcome
him, and Russia will be one and orthodox. Take care of the peasant and
guard his heart. Go on educating him quietly. That's your duty as monks,
for the peasant has God in his heart.
(_f_) _Of Masters and Servants, and of whether it is possible for them to
be Brothers in the Spirit_
Of course, I don't deny that there is sin in the peasants too. And the
fire of corruption is spreading visibly, hourly, working from above
downwards. The spirit of isolation is coming upon the people too. Money-
lenders and devourers of the commune are rising up. Already the merchant
grows more and more eager for rank, and strives to show himself cultured
though he has not a trace of culture, and to this end meanly despises his
old traditions, and is even ashamed of the faith of his fathers. He visits
princes, though he is only a peasant corrupted. The peasants are rotting
in drunkenness and cannot shake off the habit. And what cruelty to their
wives, to their children even! All from drunkenness! I've seen in the
factories children of nine years old, frail, rickety, bent and already
depraved. The stuffy workshop, the din of machinery, work all day long,
the vile language and the drink, the drink--is that what a little child's
heart needs? He needs sunshine, childish play, good examples all about
him, and at least a little love. There must be no more of this, monks, no
more torturing of children, rise up and preach that, make haste, make
haste!
But God will save Russia, for though the peasants are corrupted and cannot
renounce their filthy sin, yet they know it is cursed by God and that they
do wrong in sinning. So that our people still believe in righteousness,
have faith in God and weep tears of devotion.
It is different with the upper classes. They, following science, want to
base justice on reason alone, but not with Christ, as before, and they
have already proclaimed that there is no crime, that there is no sin. And
that's consistent, for if you have no God what is the meaning of crime? In
Europe the people are already rising up against the rich with violence,
and the leaders of the people are everywhere leading them to bloodshed,
and teaching them that their wrath is righteous. But their "wrath is
accursed, for it is cruel." But God will save Russia as He has saved her
many times. Salvation will come from the people, from their faith and
their meekness.
Fathers and teachers, watch over the people's faith and this will not be a
dream. I've been struck all my life in our great people by their dignity,
their true and seemly dignity. I've seen it myself, I can testify to it,
I've seen it and marveled at it, I've seen it in spite of the degraded
sins and poverty-stricken appearance of our peasantry. They are not
servile, and even after two centuries of serfdom they are free in manner
and bearing, yet without insolence, and not revengeful and not envious.
"You are rich and noble, you are clever and talented, well, be so, God
bless you. I respect you, but I know that I too am a man. By the very fact
that I respect you without envy I prove my dignity as a man."
In truth if they don't say this (for they don't know how to say this yet),
that is how they act. I have seen it myself, I have known it myself, and,
would you believe it, the poorer our Russian peasant is, the more
noticeable is that serene goodness, for the rich among them are for the
most part corrupted already, and much of that is due to our carelessness
and indifference. But God will save His people, for Russia is great in her
humility. I dream of seeing, and seem to see clearly already, our future.
It will come to pass, that even the most corrupt of our rich will end by
being ashamed of his riches before the poor, and the poor, seeing his
humility, will understand and give way before him, will respond joyfully
and kindly to his honorable shame. Believe me that it will end in that;
things are moving to that. Equality is to be found only in the spiritual
dignity of man, and that will only be understood among us. If we were
brothers, there would be fraternity, but before that, they will never
agree about the division of wealth. We preserve the image of Christ, and
it will shine forth like a precious diamond to the whole world. So may it
be, so may it be!
Fathers and teachers, a touching incident befell me once. In my wanderings
I met in the town of K. my old orderly, Afanasy. It was eight years since
I had parted from him. He chanced to see me in the market-place,
recognized me, ran up to me, and how delighted he was! He simply pounced
on me: "Master dear, is it you? Is it really you I see?" He took me home
with him.
He was no longer in the army, he was married and already had two little
children. He and his wife earned their living as costermongers in the
market-place. His room was poor, but bright and clean. He made me sit
down, set the samovar, sent for his wife, as though my appearance were a
festival for them. He brought me his children: "Bless them, Father."
"Is it for me to bless them? I am only a humble monk. I will pray for
them. And for you, Afanasy Pavlovitch, I have prayed every day since that
day, for it all came from you," said I. And I explained that to him as
well as I could. And what do you think? The man kept gazing at me and
could not believe that I, his former master, an officer, was now before
him in such a guise and position; it made him shed tears.
"Why are you weeping?" said I, "better rejoice over me, dear friend, whom
I can never forget, for my path is a glad and joyful one."
He did not say much, but kept sighing and shaking his head over me
tenderly.
"What has became of your fortune?" he asked.
"I gave it to the monastery," I answered; "we live in common."
After tea I began saying good-by, and suddenly he brought out half a
rouble as an offering to the monastery, and another half-rouble I saw him
thrusting hurriedly into my hand: "That's for you in your wanderings, it
may be of use to you, Father."
I took his half-rouble, bowed to him and his wife, and went out rejoicing.
And on my way I thought: "Here we are both now, he at home and I on the
road, sighing and shaking our heads, no doubt, and yet smiling joyfully in
the gladness of our hearts, remembering how God brought about our
meeting."
I have never seen him again since then. I had been his master and he my
servant, but now when we exchanged a loving kiss with softened hearts,
there was a great human bond between us. I have thought a great deal about
that, and now what I think is this: Is it so inconceivable that that grand
and simple-hearted unity might in due time become universal among the
Russian people? I believe that it will come to pass and that the time is
at hand.
And of servants I will add this: In old days when I was young I was often
angry with servants; "the cook had served something too hot, the orderly
had not brushed my clothes." But what taught me better then was a thought
of my dear brother's, which I had heard from him in childhood: "Am I worth
it, that another should serve me and be ordered about by me in his poverty
and ignorance?" And I wondered at the time that such simple and self-
evident ideas should be so slow to occur to our minds.
It is impossible that there should be no servants in the world, but act so
that your servant may be freer in spirit than if he were not a servant.
And why cannot I be a servant to my servant and even let him see it, and
that without any pride on my part or any mistrust on his? Why should not
my servant be like my own kindred, so that I may take him into my family
and rejoice in doing so? Even now this can be done, but it will lead to
the grand unity of men in the future, when a man will not seek servants
for himself, or desire to turn his fellow creatures into servants as he
does now, but on the contrary, will long with his whole heart to be the
servant of all, as the Gospel teaches.
And can it be a dream, that in the end man will find his joy only in deeds
of light and mercy, and not in cruel pleasures as now, in gluttony,
fornication, ostentation, boasting and envious rivalry of one with the
other? I firmly believe that it is not and that the time is at hand.
People laugh and ask: "When will that time come and does it look like
coming?" I believe that with Christ's help we shall accomplish this great
thing. And how many ideas there have been on earth in the history of man
which were unthinkable ten years before they appeared! Yet when their
destined hour had come, they came forth and spread over the whole earth.
So it will be with us, and our people will shine forth in the world, and
all men will say: "The stone which the builders rejected has become the
corner-stone of the building."
And we may ask the scornful themselves: If our hope is a dream, when will
you build up your edifice and order things justly by your intellect alone,
without Christ? If they declare that it is they who are advancing towards
unity, only the most simple-hearted among them believe it, so that one may
positively marvel at such simplicity. Of a truth, they have more fantastic
dreams than we. They aim at justice, but, denying Christ, they will end by
flooding the earth with blood, for blood cries out for blood, and he that
taketh up the sword shall perish by the sword. And if it were not for
Christ's covenant, they would slaughter one another down to the last two
men on earth. And those two last men would not be able to restrain each
other in their pride, and the one would slay the other and then himself.
And that would come to pass, were it not for the promise of Christ that
for the sake of the humble and meek the days shall be shortened.
While I was still wearing an officer's uniform after my duel, I talked
about servants in general society, and I remember every one was amazed at
me. "What!" they asked, "are we to make our servants sit down on the sofa
and offer them tea?" And I answered them: "Why not, sometimes at least?"
Every one laughed. Their question was frivolous and my answer was not
clear; but the thought in it was to some extent right.
(_g_) _Of Prayer, of Love, and of Contact with other Worlds_
Young man, be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer
is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will
give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an
education. Remember, too, every day, and whenever you can, repeat to
yourself, "Lord, have mercy on all who appear before Thee to-day." For
every hour and every moment thousands of men leave life on this earth, and
their souls appear before God. And how many of them depart in solitude,
unknown, sad, dejected that no one mourns for them or even knows whether
they have lived or not! And behold, from the other end of the earth
perhaps, your prayer for their rest will rise up to God though you knew
them not nor they you. How touching it must be to a soul standing in dread
before the Lord to feel at that instant that, for him too, there is one to
pray, that there is a fellow creature left on earth to love him too! And
God will look on you both more graciously, for if you have had so much
pity on him, how much will He have pity Who is infinitely more loving and
merciful than you! And He will forgive him for your sake.
Brothers, have no fear of men's sin. Love a man even in his sin, for that
is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all
God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf,
every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love
everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery
in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better
every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-
embracing love. Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of
thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble it, don't harass them, don't
deprive them of their happiness, don't work against God's intent. Man, do
not pride yourself on superiority to the animals; they are without sin,
and you, with your greatness, defile the earth by your appearance on it,
and leave the traces of your foulness after you--alas, it is true of almost
every one of us! Love children especially, for they too are sinless like
the angels; they live to soften and purify our hearts and as it were to
guide us. Woe to him who offends a child! Father Anfim taught me to love
children. The kind, silent man used often on our wanderings to spend the
farthings given us on sweets and cakes for the children. He could not pass
by a child without emotion. That's the nature of the man.
At some thoughts one stands perplexed, especially at the sight of men's
sin, and wonders whether one should use force or humble love. Always
decide to use humble love. If you resolve on that once for all, you may
subdue the whole world. Loving humility is marvelously strong, the
strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it.
Every day and every hour, every minute, walk round yourself and watch
yourself, and see that your image is a seemly one. You pass by a little
child, you pass by, spiteful, with ugly words, with wrathful heart; you
may not have noticed the child, but he has seen you, and your image,
unseemly and ignoble, may remain in his defenseless heart. You don't know
it, but you may have sown an evil seed in him and it may grow, and all
because you were not careful before the child, because you did not foster
in yourself a careful, actively benevolent love. Brothers, love is a
teacher; but one must know how to acquire it, for it is hard to acquire,
it is dearly bought, it is won slowly by long labor. For we must love not
only occasionally, for a moment, but for ever. Every one can love
occasionally, even the wicked can.
My brother asked the birds to forgive him; that sounds senseless, but it
is right; for all is like an ocean, all is flowing and blending; a touch
in one place sets up movement at the other end of the earth. It may be
senseless to beg forgiveness of the birds, but birds would be happier at
your side--a little happier, anyway--and children and all animals, if you
were nobler than you are now. It's all like an ocean, I tell you. Then you
would pray to the birds too, consumed by an all-embracing love, in a sort
of transport, and pray that they too will forgive you your sin. Treasure
this ecstasy, however senseless it may seem to men.
My friends, pray to God for gladness. Be glad as children, as the birds of
heaven. And let not the sin of men confound you in your doings. Fear not
that it will wear away your work and hinder its being accomplished. Do not
say, "Sin is mighty, wickedness is mighty, evil environment is mighty, and
we are lonely and helpless, and evil environment is wearing us away and
hindering our good work from being done." Fly from that dejection,
children! There is only one means of salvation, then take yourself and
make yourself responsible for all men's sins, that is the truth, you know,
friends, for as soon as you sincerely make yourself responsible for
everything and for all men, you will see at once that it is really so, and
that you are to blame for every one and for all things. But throwing your
own indolence and impotence on others you will end by sharing the pride of
Satan and murmuring against God.
Of the pride of Satan what I think is this: it is hard for us on earth to
comprehend it, and therefore it is so easy to fall into error and to share
it, even imagining that we are doing something grand and fine. Indeed,
many of the strongest feelings and movements of our nature we cannot
comprehend on earth. Let not that be a stumbling-block, and think not that
it may serve as a justification to you for anything. For the Eternal Judge
asks of you what you can comprehend and not what you cannot. You will know
that yourself hereafter, for you will behold all things truly then and
will not dispute them. On earth, indeed, we are as it were astray, and if
it were not for the precious image of Christ before us, we should be
undone and altogether lost, as was the human race before the flood. Much
on earth is hidden from us, but to make up for that we have been given a
precious mystic sense of our living bond with the other world, with the
higher heavenly world, and the roots of our thoughts and feelings are not
here but in other worlds. That is why the philosophers say that we cannot
apprehend the reality of things on earth.
God took seeds from different worlds and sowed them on this earth, and His
garden grew up and everything came up that could come up, but what grows
lives and is alive only through the feeling of its contact with other
mysterious worlds. If that feeling grows weak or is destroyed in you, the
heavenly growth will die away in you. Then you will be indifferent to life
and even grow to hate it. That's what I think.
_(h) Can a Man judge his Fellow Creatures? Faith to the End_
Remember particularly that you cannot be a judge of any one. For no one
can judge a criminal, until he recognizes that he is just such a criminal
as the man standing before him, and that he perhaps is more than all men
to blame for that crime. When he understands that, he will be able to be a
judge. Though that sounds absurd, it is true. If I had been righteous
myself, perhaps there would have been no criminal standing before me. If
you can take upon yourself the crime of the criminal your heart is
judging, take it at once, suffer for him yourself, and let him go without
reproach. And even if the law itself makes you his judge, act in the same
spirit so far as possible, for he will go away and condemn himself more
bitterly than you have done. If, after your kiss, he goes away untouched,
mocking at you, do not let that be a stumbling-block to you. It shows his
time has not yet come, but it will come in due course. And if it come not,
no matter; if not he, then another in his place will understand and
suffer, and judge and condemn himself, and the truth will be fulfilled.
Believe that, believe it without doubt; for in that lies all the hope and
faith of the saints.
Work without ceasing. If you remember in the night as you go to sleep, "I
have not done what I ought to have done," rise up at once and do it. If
the people around you are spiteful and callous and will not hear you, fall
down before them and beg their forgiveness; for in truth you are to blame
for their not wanting to hear you. And if you cannot speak to them in
their bitterness, serve them in silence and in humility, never losing
hope. If all men abandon you and even drive you away by force, then when
you are left alone fall on the earth and kiss it, water it with your tears
and it will bring forth fruit even though no one has seen or heard you in
your solitude. Believe to the end, even if all men went astray and you
were left the only one faithful; bring your offering even then and praise
God in your loneliness. And if two of you are gathered together--then there
is a whole world, a world of living love. Embrace each other tenderly and
praise God, for if only in you two His truth has been fulfilled.
If you sin yourself and grieve even unto death for your sins or for your
sudden sin, then rejoice for others, rejoice for the righteous man,
rejoice that if you have sinned, he is righteous and has not sinned.
If the evil-doing of men moves you to indignation and overwhelming
distress, even to a desire for vengeance on the evil-doers, shun above all
things that feeling. Go at once and seek suffering for yourself, as though
you were yourself guilty of that wrong. Accept that suffering and bear it
and your heart will find comfort, and you will understand that you too are
guilty, for you might have been a light to the evil-doers, even as the one
man sinless, and you were not a light to them. If you had been a light,
you would have lightened the path for others too, and the evil-doer might
perhaps have been saved by your light from his sin. And even though your
light was shining, yet you see men were not saved by it, hold firm and
doubt not the power of the heavenly light. Believe that if they were not
saved, they will be saved hereafter. And if they are not saved hereafter,
then their sons will be saved, for your light will not die even when you
are dead. The righteous man departs, but his light remains. Men are always
saved after the death of the deliverer. Men reject their prophets and slay
them, but they love their martyrs and honor those whom they have slain.
You are working for the whole, you are acting for the future. Seek no
reward, for great is your reward on this earth: the spiritual joy which is
only vouchsafed to the righteous man. Fear not the great nor the mighty,
but be wise and ever serene. Know the measure, know the times, study that.
When you are left alone, pray. Love to throw yourself on the earth and
kiss it. Kiss the earth and love it with an unceasing, consuming love.
Love all men, love everything. Seek that rapture and ecstasy. Water the
earth with the tears of your joy and love those tears. Don't be ashamed of
that ecstasy, prize it, for it is a gift of God and a great one; it is not
given to many but only to the elect.
_(i) Of Hell and Hell Fire, a Mystic Reflection_
Fathers and teachers, I ponder, "What is hell?" I maintain that it is the
suffering of being unable to love. Once in infinite existence,
immeasurable in time and space, a spiritual creature was given on his
coming to earth, the power of saying, "I am and I love." Once, only once,
there was given him a moment of active _living_ love, and for that was
earthly life given him, and with it times and seasons. And that happy
creature rejected the priceless gift, prized it and loved it not, scorned
it and remained callous. Such a one, having left the earth, sees Abraham's
bosom and talks with Abraham as we are told in the parable of the rich man
and Lazarus, and beholds heaven and can go up to the Lord. But that is
just his torment, to rise up to the Lord without ever having loved, to be
brought close to those who have loved when he has despised their love. For
he sees clearly and says to himself, "Now I have understanding, and though
I now thirst to love, there will be nothing great, no sacrifice in my
love, for my earthly life is over, and Abraham will not come even with a
drop of living water (that is the gift of earthly active life) to cool the
fiery thirst of spiritual love which burns in me now, though I despised it
on earth; there is no more life for me and will be no more time! Even
though I would gladly give my life for others, it can never be, for that
life is passed which can be sacrificed for love, and now there is a gulf
fixed between that life and this existence."
They talk of hell fire in the material sense. I don't go into that mystery
and I shun it. But I think if there were fire in material sense, they
would be glad of it, for I imagine that in material agony, their still
greater spiritual agony would be forgotten for a moment. Moreover, that
spiritual agony cannot be taken from them, for that suffering is not
external but within them. And if it could be taken from them, I think it
would be bitterer still for the unhappy creatures. For even if the
righteous in Paradise forgave them, beholding their torments, and called
them up to heaven in their infinite love, they would only multiply their
torments, for they would arouse in them still more keenly a flaming thirst
for responsive, active and grateful love which is now impossible. In the
timidity of my heart I imagine, however, that the very recognition of this
impossibility would serve at last to console them. For accepting the love
of the righteous together with the impossibility of repaying it, by this
submissiveness and the effect of this humility, they will attain at last,
as it were, to a certain semblance of that active love which they scorned
in life, to something like its outward expression.... I am sorry, friends
and brothers, that I cannot express this clearly. But woe to those who
have slain themselves on earth, woe to the suicides! I believe that there
can be none more miserable then they. They tell us that it is a sin to
pray for them and outwardly the Church, as it were, renounces them, but in
my secret heart I believe that we may pray even for them. Love can never
be an offense to Christ. For such as those I have prayed inwardly all my
life, I confess it, fathers and teachers, and even now I pray for them
every day.
Oh, there are some who remain proud and fierce even in hell, in spite of
their certain knowledge and contemplation of the absolute truth; there are
some fearful ones who have given themselves over to Satan and his proud
spirit entirely. For such, hell is voluntary and ever consuming; they are
tortured by their own choice. For they have cursed themselves, cursing God
and life. They live upon their vindictive pride like a starving man in the
desert sucking blood out of his own body. But they are never satisfied,
and they refuse forgiveness, they curse God Who calls them. They cannot
behold the living God without hatred, and they cry out that the God of
life should be annihilated, that God should destroy Himself and His own
creation. And they will burn in the fire of their own wrath for ever and
yearn for death and annihilation. But they will not attain to death....
-------------------------------------
Here Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov's manuscript ends. I repeat, it is
incomplete and fragmentary. Biographical details, for instance, cover only
Father Zossima's earliest youth. Of his teaching and opinions we find
brought together sayings evidently uttered on very different occasions.
His utterances during the last few hours have not been kept separate from
the rest, but their general character can be gathered from what we have in
Alexey Fyodorovitch's manuscript.
The elder's death came in the end quite unexpectedly. For although those
who were gathered about him that last evening realized that his death was
approaching, yet it was difficult to imagine that it would come so
suddenly. On the contrary, his friends, as I observed already, seeing him
that night apparently so cheerful and talkative, were convinced that there
was at least a temporary change for the better in his condition. Even five
minutes before his death, they said afterwards wonderingly, it was
impossible to foresee it. He seemed suddenly to feel an acute pain in his
chest, he turned pale and pressed his hands to his heart. All rose from
their seats and hastened to him. But though suffering, he still looked at
them with a smile, sank slowly from his chair on to his knees, then bowed
his face to the ground, stretched out his arms and as though in joyful
ecstasy, praying and kissing the ground, quietly and joyfully gave up his
soul to God.
The news of his death spread at once through the hermitage and reached the
monastery. The nearest friends of the deceased and those whose duty it was
from their position began to lay out the corpse according to the ancient
ritual, and all the monks gathered together in the church. And before dawn
the news of the death reached the town. By the morning all the town was
talking of the event, and crowds were flocking from the town to the
monastery. But this subject will be treated in the next book; I will only
add here that before a day had passed something happened so unexpected, so
strange, upsetting, and bewildering in its effect on the monks and the
townspeople, that after all these years, that day of general suspense is
still vividly remembered in the town.
| 5,777 | book 6, Chapter 3 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section9/ | From Talks and Homilies of the Elder Zosima Zosima tells Alyosha about the importance of monks in Russian life. He says that the monk is closer to the common people than anyone else, and that the faith of the common people is the hope of Russia. He says that all people are equal in spirit, and that all people should be meek with one another, so that there are no more masters and servants. Like his brother before him, Zosima urges all who hear him to love all mankind and all of God's creation. He says that no one should judge anyone else, even criminals. Instead, people should pray for the salvation of the wayward, to save them from spiritual hell. Zosima lowers himself to the floor, and, reaching out his arms as though to embrace the world, he dies. | Book VI: The Russian Monk, Chapters 1-3 The main philosophical conflict of the novel is apparent in the structural division between Books V and VI: the dark and brooding Book V is consumed with the tremors of Ivan's doubt, while the more peaceful Book VI is devoted to the quiet wisdom of Zosima's faith. Zosima's final anecdotes work as a cooling antidote to the disturbing arguments in Book V, replacing Ivan's frenzied logical examinations with more positive examples of the power of faith to do good in the world. In a way, the anecdote of the murderer is the exact opposite of the Grand Inquisitor story. The Grand Inquisitor story tells about an innocent man who is imprisoned and judged, while Zosima's anecdote of the murderer tells about a guilty man who is goes free and is forgiven. The contrast in the two anecdotes reveals a great deal about the contrast between Zosima's philosophy and Ivan's. Zosima emphasizes the power of love to overcome sin, whereas Ivan emphasizes only the baseness of the world and the cold logic with which he believes it must be faced. In addition to the parallel between the story of the Grand Inquisitor and the anecdote of the murderer, there are a number of other parallels between things Zosima describes in Book VI and events that take place in the larger narrative, both before and after this section of the novel. For instance, Zosima's description of himself in youth as a soldier like Dmitri, with a brother who helped to redeem him spiritually, echoes the relationship between Dmitri and Alyosha: Alyosha also helps to redeem Dmitri, and Zosima says specifically that Alyosha reminds him of his brother. Zosima's youthful duel and the murder committed in the anecdote of the murderer are both crimes of passion committed for a woman's love, and thus echo the rivalry between Fyodor Pavlovich and Dmitri for Grushenka. The murderer's acceptance of responsibility and his desire to confess involve many of the same issues of responsibility and redemption that affect Ivan. These parallels ultimately are another sign of the infallible wisdom of Zosima. He is able to predict, better than anyone else, what lies ahead for the Karamazovs, and he is thus able to tailor his final lesson to what he knows will be Alyosha's needs in the coming crisis. Alyosha has proved himself capable of internalizing Zosima's lessons, and he emerges from this final conversation with Zosima better prepared to handle the hardships that lie ahead. Zosima's death, as he stretches out his arms to embrace the Earth, is a symbol of acceptance and faith, indicating his love of God's creation with the last energy left in his body. Zosima's sincerity and his assent to the will of God are total. He does not die with fear, resentment, or regret. His final gesture is one of rapturous acquiescence, and thus Zosima's death works as an emblem of everything he has taught, spoken, and stood for throughout the novel | 140 | 498 | [
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28,054 | true | gradesaver | all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/book_8.txt | finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Brothers Karamazov/section_7_part_0.txt | The Brothers Karamazov.book 8.chapter 1-chapter 8 | book 8 | null | {"name": "Book 8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422052201/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-brothers-karamazov/study-guide/summary-book-8", "summary": "Dmitri is desperate. He is obsessed with Grushenka, and even though she \"loved him for an hour,\" she often treated him \"cruelly, and at times with complete ruthlessness.\" He does not know what she wants. He wants Grushenka to marry him, and he is optimistic that she will be his. He muses that Grushenka is probably deciding whether to be with him or with Fyodor; the thought that she might want to be with another man does not cross his mind. Still, he feels that it is necessary to reimburse Katerina before doing anything with Grushenka. He decides to sell some of Fyodor's land to a rich landowner named Samsanov for 3,000 rubles. Samsanov does not want to receive Dmitri, but after Dmitri pleads with him, he agrees to meet him. Samsanov is hostile toward the desperate Karamazov, and he listens to Dmitri's offer with cold indifference. Samsanov is widely considered a \"wreck\"; he was once a suitor of Grushenka, but his relationship with her is now more of a relationship between a father and a daughter. Finally, Samsanov says he will help Dmitri, who is overjoyed to hear it. He tells Dmiti to visit a man known as \"the Hound,\" who he says can help Dmitri. Samsanov has no intention of helping this man whom he sees as competition for his former lover. Instead of helping him, he sends Dmitri on a wild goose chase to see a \"cold, cruel, mocking man\" named Lyavgeny. Samsanov says that the man is interested in the piece of land that Dmitri is offering, though he knows that the man will not be able to help Dmitri. Dmitri visits Lyavgeny, but he cannot do business with the man, for he is too drunk. Dmitri angrily tries to shake the man out of his drunken delirium, but it is no good. Dmitri is despondent and jealous, worried about Grushenka's fidelity and imagining \"God knows what horrors about her deceiving him.\" Finally, Dmitri is forced to turn to Madame Hohlakov for the money. He realizes that if she will not give him the money, he may be forced to do something desperate. She plays with Dmitri, ironically telling him that she can offer him much more than 3,000 rubles. Then she tells him he should go to the gold mines. She tells him he should forget about women and come back only after many years. When Dmitri asks her again to lend him the money, she says she will not lend Dmitri a ruble. Dmitri, now unsure of what to do, decides to visit Grushenka. When he cannot find her, he ascertains that she has gone to visit his father. He takes a brass pestle and goes to Fyodor's house in a rage. A servant who sees him leave exclaims, \"My God! He'll end up murdering somebody!\" Dmitri goes to his father's house, but he does not find Grushenka. Fyodor is there alone. Grigory awakes, remembering he has forgotten to lock a gate. He has heard from Smerdyakov that this is a very dangerous time for Fyodor, and when he sees Dmitri, he yells, \"You father-killer!\" Before he can pursue the intruder, though, Dmitri hits Grigory with the pestle. After seeing his body lying still on the ground, Dmitri tries to wipe the blood from Grigory's head. He is afraid he has killed the servant, but he realizes there is nothing he can do about it now, so he runs away. He goes back to Grushenka's house to question her servant about Grushenka's whereabouts, and he is horrified to learn of her rendezvous with her ex-lover. Now hopeless, Dmitri reconciles himself to the fact that he cannot have Grushenka. He decides that she is his only reason to live, and he will commit suicide after seeing her one more time. Dmitri goes to reclaim his pistols from a man named Perhotin, who is holding them as collateral for a loan. Perhotin is suspicious of Dmitri, who is covered in blood, and he watches the man order a feast, planning to visit Grushenka. Dmitri finds Grushenka with her gentleman friend and Kalganov. He walks up and says he would like to sit with them. He is very visibly upset, blabbering incoherently and excitedly. At one point, he even bursts into tears. Despite his agitated state, he surprisingly treats the whole party cordially. He is sitting and playing faro with them when the man begins to tell unsavory stories. He is Polish, and he insults Russia, much to Dmitri's annoyance. The men begin to quarrel. Dmitri takes him aside and offers him money if he will leave, but the man is offended and tells Grushenka of Dmitri's bribe. Grushenka is upset with the man for acting so callously, however, and everyone continues to quarrel. Dmitri cannot stand it when the man begins to mock Grushenka, who is greatly offended by his remarks. Dmitri locks the man in another room. Left alone, he and Grushenka begin to talk. Disillusioned by her former lover's bad behavior, she says she cannot love him. She realizes that she loves Dmitri. At first, he is extremely happy. However, Dmitri's elation is tempered by his difficult situation. In addition to his financial burdens, he thinks he may have killed Grigory, and as he is explaining to Grushenka his difficult situation with Katerina, there is a knock on the door. Policemen have come to arrest Dmitri for the murder of Fyodor.", "analysis": "This section of the novel begins comically. Dmitri is on an odyssey to find 3,000 rubles to repay Katerina, but his potential donors are all humorously unhelpful. First, he goes to Samsanov, a man who hates him. Dmitri's earnestness and urgency contrasts greatly with Samsanov's aloofness. It is a triumph for Dmitri that the man will even meet him. He sends Dmitri to Lyavgeny, who he knows will be no help. Though Dmitri is desperate and Samsanov is depressed, the scene is not oppressively bleak. The reader is in fact excited to see what buffoonery will ensue. When Dmitri meets Lyavgeny, the man is drunk and surly, and Dmitri cannot talk sense to him. While Dmitri's situation is getting more dire, his interactions only become more ridiculous. When he decides that Lyavgeny is worthless to him, he visits Madame Hohlakov, who is a quirky character. She cheerily greets Dmitri, and she leads him to believe that she will solve his problems once and for all. Notwithstanding that, her solution is for Dmitri to dig for gold. His exacerbation is tangible, and her delicate nature is offended by his gruff anger. He leaves in a huff, at a loss for a way to win the money for Katerina. This string of comic interactions between Dmitri and his possible benefactors is a reprieve from the mounting ominous tenor of the novel. Humor exists even in the most heavy situations, and Dmitri's ineptness is revealed. He cannot solve his problems, and his attempts at ingratiating himself among his rich acquaintances make him seem pathetic. The humor of this section soon turns grave, however, when Dmitri frantically goes to find Grushenka. Dmitri goes to his father's house looking for Grushenka, practically mad with lust and desperation. He almost escapes without any misfortune befalling him or anyone around him, but trustworthy Grigory wakes up and assumes Dmitri has come to murder his father. With one swift blow, Dmitri dramatically changes the timbre of the novel. Dmitri hits Grigory with the pestle he has in his hand, and Grigory falls to the ground, motionless. The humorous interlude is over, and violence is no longer theoretical. It is ironic that Grigory tries to stop Dmitri when Dmitri had no intention of harming his father that night. The irony is complicated, however, by the fact that Dmitri is entirely capable of murdering his father. In fact, when he goes to his father's house, it is not unlikely that he will kill him. Not until he decides to leave peacefully does Grigory try to stop him, and Grigory's suspicion of Dmitri's violent tendencies turns out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. When the police blame Dmitri for Fyodor's murder, the reader knows that Dmitri did not commit the crime. It is difficult to feel indignant on his behalf, though, because it seems that Dmitri could have committed the murder. He is impulsive and angry, and he has even said he will murder his father. When Dmitri strikes Grigory, it becomes explicit that he is dangerous enough to kill anyone in his path, including his father, whom he loathes. This is a turning point in the novel. The general sense of foreboding has led to this night. Dmitri has proven that violence is indeed in the future for the Karamazovs, and his attack on Grigory is not the only violence that is to come. When Dmitri finds Grushenka in the company of other men, the ensuing spectacle is reminiscent of his humorous pursuit of the money. He is desperate and pathetic, and the people with whom he is talking are annoyed by his presence. The tenor of this meeting is graver than that of his previous meetings, however. This time, Dmitri has vowed to commit suicide after the meeting has concluded. His desperation is no longer funny. Earlier, Ivan commented that one thing all the Karmazovs share is a \"desire for life.\" Dmitri's desire to commit suicide therefore comes as a surprise. It seems to compromise a fundamental tenet of his character. Is Dmitri's earlier lust for life inconsistent with this new desire to kill himself? Perhaps it is not lust for life that drives him. Maybe, like the superstitious Russian folk longing for a miracle, Dmitri has a longing for something remarkable in life. His orgies and affairs are his way of trying to break from his quotidian life. If he cannot have the romantic adventure he desires with Grushenka, suicide is another way to free himself from a menial existence. He does not have a desire for mere survival; he has a desire for an extraordinary life. Since the beginning of the novel, the subject of Fyodor's murder has been looming over every character. Finally, after much speculation and foreshadowing, he is killed. This is the central event of the novel, and, as everything to this point has led up to it, everything in the coming chapters is tied to it. Surprisingly, Dmitri is not his father's killer. While Fyodor's murder is the expected outcome after so much suspense, the killer's identity is completely unexpected. During the preceding chapters, it was assumed that Fyodor's murder was inevitable and Dmitri would be the killer. When Dmitri reconciled with Grushenka and avoided killing his father when he went to his house, it seemed that the impending disaster had been averted. Somehow the murder that was entirely expected came as a surprise. The one event that was expected from the beginning of the novel has become the novel's biggest twist. The structure of the novel sets up the plot in such a way as to suggest that fate is unavoidable, and no matter how characters change, their destiny is set. The strangest part about this fact is that, even though Dmitri did not commit the murder, he is still the one to blame. He is held responsible for a crime he seemed destined to commit even though he did not actually commit it. Father Zossima said that a man shares the responsibility for the sins of all other men. Perhaps guilt does not lie only with the criminal who committed a crime, and all those who are involved share in the guilt of the crime, as Zossima suggested. Perhaps Dmitri is not completely innocent of the murder after all."} | Book VIII. Mitya Chapter I. Kuzma Samsonov
But Dmitri, to whom Grushenka, flying away to a new life, had left her
last greetings, bidding him remember the hour of her love for ever, knew
nothing of what had happened to her, and was at that moment in a condition
of feverish agitation and activity. For the last two days he had been in
such an inconceivable state of mind that he might easily have fallen ill
with brain fever, as he said himself afterwards. Alyosha had not been able
to find him the morning before, and Ivan had not succeeded in meeting him
at the tavern on the same day. The people at his lodgings, by his orders,
concealed his movements.
He had spent those two days literally rushing in all directions,
"struggling with his destiny and trying to save himself," as he expressed
it himself afterwards, and for some hours he even made a dash out of the
town on urgent business, terrible as it was to him to lose sight of
Grushenka for a moment. All this was explained afterwards in detail, and
confirmed by documentary evidence; but for the present we will only note
the most essential incidents of those two terrible days immediately
preceding the awful catastrophe, that broke so suddenly upon him.
Though Grushenka had, it is true, loved him for an hour, genuinely and
sincerely, yet she tortured him sometimes cruelly and mercilessly. The
worst of it was that he could never tell what she meant to do. To prevail
upon her by force or kindness was also impossible: she would yield to
nothing. She would only have become angry and turned away from him
altogether, he knew that well already. He suspected, quite correctly, that
she, too, was passing through an inward struggle, and was in a state of
extraordinary indecision, that she was making up her mind to something,
and unable to determine upon it. And so, not without good reason, he
divined, with a sinking heart, that at moments she must simply hate him
and his passion. And so, perhaps, it was, but what was distressing
Grushenka he did not understand. For him the whole tormenting question lay
between him and Fyodor Pavlovitch.
Here, we must note, by the way, one certain fact: he was firmly persuaded
that Fyodor Pavlovitch would offer, or perhaps had offered, Grushenka
lawful wedlock, and did not for a moment believe that the old voluptuary
hoped to gain his object for three thousand roubles. Mitya had reached
this conclusion from his knowledge of Grushenka and her character. That
was how it was that he could believe at times that all Grushenka's
uneasiness rose from not knowing which of them to choose, which was most
to her advantage.
Strange to say, during those days it never occurred to him to think of the
approaching return of the "officer," that is, of the man who had been such
a fatal influence in Grushenka's life, and whose arrival she was expecting
with such emotion and dread. It is true that of late Grushenka had been
very silent about it. Yet he was perfectly aware of a letter she had
received a month ago from her seducer, and had heard of it from her own
lips. He partly knew, too, what the letter contained. In a moment of spite
Grushenka had shown him that letter, but to her astonishment he attached
hardly any consequence to it. It would be hard to say why this was.
Perhaps, weighed down by all the hideous horror of his struggle with his
own father for this woman, he was incapable of imagining any danger more
terrible, at any rate for the time. He simply did not believe in a suitor
who suddenly turned up again after five years' disappearance, still less
in his speedy arrival. Moreover, in the "officer's" first letter which had
been shown to Mitya, the possibility of his new rival's visit was very
vaguely suggested. The letter was very indefinite, high-flown, and full of
sentimentality. It must be noted that Grushenka had concealed from him the
last lines of the letter, in which his return was alluded to more
definitely. He had, besides, noticed at that moment, he remembered
afterwards, a certain involuntary proud contempt for this missive from
Siberia on Grushenka's face. Grushenka told him nothing of what had passed
later between her and this rival; so that by degrees he had completely
forgotten the officer's existence.
He felt that whatever might come later, whatever turn things might take,
his final conflict with Fyodor Pavlovitch was close upon him, and must be
decided before anything else. With a sinking heart he was expecting every
moment Grushenka's decision, always believing that it would come suddenly,
on the impulse of the moment. All of a sudden she would say to him: "Take
me, I'm yours for ever," and it would all be over. He would seize her and
bear her away at once to the ends of the earth. Oh, then he would bear her
away at once, as far, far away as possible; to the farthest end of Russia,
if not of the earth, then he would marry her, and settle down with her
incognito, so that no one would know anything about them, there, here, or
anywhere. Then, oh, then, a new life would begin at once!
Of this different, reformed and "virtuous" life ("it must, it must be
virtuous") he dreamed feverishly at every moment. He thirsted for that
reformation and renewal. The filthy morass, in which he had sunk of his
own free will, was too revolting to him, and, like very many men in such
cases, he put faith above all in change of place. If only it were not for
these people, if only it were not for these circumstances, if only he
could fly away from this accursed place--he would be altogether
regenerated, would enter on a new path. That was what he believed in, and
what he was yearning for.
But all this could only be on condition of the first, the _happy_ solution
of the question. There was another possibility, a different and awful
ending. Suddenly she might say to him: "Go away. I have just come to terms
with Fyodor Pavlovitch. I am going to marry him and don't want you"--and
then ... but then.... But Mitya did not know what would happen then. Up to
the last hour he didn't know. That must be said to his credit. He had no
definite intentions, had planned no crime. He was simply watching and
spying in agony, while he prepared himself for the first, happy solution
of his destiny. He drove away any other idea, in fact. But for that ending
a quite different anxiety arose, a new, incidental, but yet fatal and
insoluble difficulty presented itself.
If she were to say to him: "I'm yours; take me away," how could he take
her away? Where had he the means, the money to do it? It was just at this
time that all sources of revenue from Fyodor Pavlovitch, doles which had
gone on without interruption for so many years, ceased. Grushenka had
money, of course, but with regard to this Mitya suddenly evinced
extraordinary pride; he wanted to carry her away and begin the new life
with her himself, at his own expense, not at hers. He could not conceive
of taking her money, and the very idea caused him a pang of intense
repulsion. I won't enlarge on this fact or analyze it here, but confine
myself to remarking that this was his attitude at the moment. All this may
have arisen indirectly and unconsciously from the secret stings of his
conscience for the money of Katerina Ivanovna that he had dishonestly
appropriated. "I've been a scoundrel to one of them, and I shall be a
scoundrel again to the other directly," was his feeling then, as he
explained after: "and when Grushenka knows, she won't care for such a
scoundrel."
Where then was he to get the means, where was he to get the fateful money?
Without it, all would be lost and nothing could be done, "and only because
I hadn't the money. Oh, the shame of it!"
To anticipate things: he did, perhaps, know where to get the money, knew,
perhaps, where it lay at that moment. I will say no more of this here, as
it will all be clear later. But his chief trouble, I must explain however
obscurely, lay in the fact that to have that sum he knew of, to _have the
right_ to take it, he must first restore Katerina Ivanovna's three
thousand--if not, "I'm a common pickpocket, I'm a scoundrel, and I don't
want to begin a new life as a scoundrel," Mitya decided. And so he made up
his mind to move heaven and earth to return Katerina Ivanovna that three
thousand, and that _first of all_. The final stage of this decision, so to
say, had been reached only during the last hours, that is, after his last
interview with Alyosha, two days before, on the high-road, on the evening
when Grushenka had insulted Katerina Ivanovna, and Mitya, after hearing
Alyosha's account of it, had admitted that he was a scoundrel, and told
him to tell Katerina Ivanovna so, if it could be any comfort to her. After
parting from his brother on that night, he had felt in his frenzy that it
would be better "to murder and rob some one than fail to pay my debt to
Katya. I'd rather every one thought me a robber and a murderer, I'd rather
go to Siberia than that Katya should have the right to say that I deceived
her and stole her money, and used her money to run away with Grushenka and
begin a new life! That I can't do!" So Mitya decided, grinding his teeth,
and he might well fancy at times that his brain would give way. But
meanwhile he went on struggling....
Strange to say, though one would have supposed there was nothing left for
him but despair--for what chance had he, with nothing in the world, to
raise such a sum?--yet to the very end he persisted in hoping that he would
get that three thousand, that the money would somehow come to him of
itself, as though it might drop from heaven. That is just how it is with
people who, like Dmitri, have never had anything to do with money, except
to squander what has come to them by inheritance without any effort of
their own, and have no notion how money is obtained. A whirl of the most
fantastic notions took possession of his brain immediately after he had
parted with Alyosha two days before, and threw his thoughts into a tangle
of confusion. This is how it was he pitched first on a perfectly wild
enterprise. And perhaps to men of that kind in such circumstances the most
impossible, fantastic schemes occur first, and seem most practical.
He suddenly determined to go to Samsonov, the merchant who was Grushenka's
protector, and to propose a "scheme" to him, and by means of it to obtain
from him at once the whole of the sum required. Of the commercial value of
his scheme he had no doubt, not the slightest, and was only uncertain how
Samsonov would look upon his freak, supposing he were to consider it from
any but the commercial point of view. Though Mitya knew the merchant by
sight, he was not acquainted with him and had never spoken a word to him.
But for some unknown reason he had long entertained the conviction that
the old reprobate, who was lying at death's door, would perhaps not at all
object now to Grushenka's securing a respectable position, and marrying a
man "to be depended upon." And he believed not only that he would not
object, but that this was what he desired, and, if opportunity arose, that
he would be ready to help. From some rumor, or perhaps from some stray
word of Grushenka's, he had gathered further that the old man would
perhaps prefer him to Fyodor Pavlovitch for Grushenka.
Possibly many of the readers of my novel will feel that in reckoning on
such assistance, and being ready to take his bride, so to speak, from the
hands of her protector, Dmitri showed great coarseness and want of
delicacy. I will only observe that Mitya looked upon Grushenka's past as
something completely over. He looked on that past with infinite pity and
resolved with all the fervor of his passion that when once Grushenka told
him she loved him and would marry him, it would mean the beginning of a
new Grushenka and a new Dmitri, free from every vice. They would forgive
one another and would begin their lives afresh. As for Kuzma Samsonov,
Dmitri looked upon him as a man who had exercised a fateful influence in
that remote past of Grushenka's, though she had never loved him, and who
was now himself a thing of the past, completely done with, and, so to say,
non-existent. Besides, Mitya hardly looked upon him as a man at all, for
it was known to every one in the town that he was only a shattered wreck,
whose relations with Grushenka had changed their character and were now
simply paternal, and that this had been so for a long time.
In any case there was much simplicity on Mitya's part in all this, for in
spite of all his vices, he was a very simple-hearted man. It was an
instance of this simplicity that Mitya was seriously persuaded that, being
on the eve of his departure for the next world, old Kuzma must sincerely
repent of his past relations with Grushenka, and that she had no more
devoted friend and protector in the world than this, now harmless old man.
After his conversation with Alyosha, at the cross-roads, he hardly slept
all night, and at ten o'clock next morning, he was at the house of
Samsonov and telling the servant to announce him. It was a very large and
gloomy old house of two stories, with a lodge and outhouses. In the lower
story lived Samsonov's two married sons with their families, his old
sister, and his unmarried daughter. In the lodge lived two of his clerks,
one of whom also had a large family. Both the lodge and the lower story
were overcrowded, but the old man kept the upper floor to himself, and
would not even let the daughter live there with him, though she waited
upon him, and in spite of her asthma was obliged at certain fixed hours,
and at any time he might call her, to run upstairs to him from below.
This upper floor contained a number of large rooms kept purely for show,
furnished in the old-fashioned merchant style, with long monotonous rows
of clumsy mahogany chairs along the walls, with glass chandeliers under
shades, and gloomy mirrors on the walls. All these rooms were entirely
empty and unused, for the old man kept to one room, a small, remote
bedroom, where he was waited upon by an old servant with a kerchief on her
head, and by a lad, who used to sit on the locker in the passage. Owing to
his swollen legs, the old man could hardly walk at all, and was only
rarely lifted from his leather arm-chair, when the old woman supporting
him led him up and down the room once or twice. He was morose and taciturn
even with this old woman.
When he was informed of the arrival of the "captain," he at once refused
to see him. But Mitya persisted and sent his name up again. Samsonov
questioned the lad minutely: What he looked like? Whether he was drunk?
Was he going to make a row? The answer he received was: that he was sober,
but wouldn't go away. The old man again refused to see him. Then Mitya,
who had foreseen this, and purposely brought pencil and paper with him,
wrote clearly on the piece of paper the words: "On most important business
closely concerning Agrafena Alexandrovna," and sent it up to the old man.
After thinking a little Samsonov told the lad to take the visitor to the
drawing-room, and sent the old woman downstairs with a summons to his
younger son to come upstairs to him at once. This younger son, a man over
six foot and of exceptional physical strength, who was closely-shaven and
dressed in the European style, though his father still wore a kaftan and a
beard, came at once without a comment. All the family trembled before the
father. The old man had sent for this giant, not because he was afraid of
the "captain" (he was by no means of a timorous temper), but in order to
have a witness in case of any emergency. Supported by his son and the
servant-lad, he waddled at last into the drawing-room. It may be assumed
that he felt considerable curiosity. The drawing-room in which Mitya was
awaiting him was a vast, dreary room that laid a weight of depression on
the heart. It had a double row of windows, a gallery, marbled walls, and
three immense chandeliers with glass lusters covered with shades.
Mitya was sitting on a little chair at the entrance, awaiting his fate
with nervous impatience. When the old man appeared at the opposite door,
seventy feet away, Mitya jumped up at once, and with his long, military
stride walked to meet him. Mitya was well dressed, in a frock-coat,
buttoned up, with a round hat and black gloves in his hands, just as he
had been three days before at the elder's, at the family meeting with his
father and brothers. The old man waited for him, standing dignified and
unbending, and Mitya felt at once that he had looked him through and
through as he advanced. Mitya was greatly impressed, too, with Samsonov's
immensely swollen face. His lower lip, which had always been thick, hung
down now, looking like a bun. He bowed to his guest in dignified silence,
motioned him to a low chair by the sofa, and, leaning on his son's arm he
began lowering himself on to the sofa opposite, groaning painfully, so
that Mitya, seeing his painful exertions, immediately felt remorseful and
sensitively conscious of his insignificance in the presence of the
dignified person he had ventured to disturb.
"What is it you want of me, sir?" said the old man, deliberately,
distinctly, severely, but courteously, when he was at last seated.
Mitya started, leapt up, but sat down again. Then he began at once
speaking with loud, nervous haste, gesticulating, and in a positive
frenzy. He was unmistakably a man driven into a corner, on the brink of
ruin, catching at the last straw, ready to sink if he failed. Old Samsonov
probably grasped all this in an instant, though his face remained cold and
immovable as a statue's.
"Most honored sir, Kuzma Kuzmitch, you have no doubt heard more than once
of my disputes with my father, Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, who robbed me
of my inheritance from my mother ... seeing the whole town is gossiping
about it ... for here every one's gossiping of what they shouldn't ... and
besides, it might have reached you through Grushenka ... I beg your
pardon, through Agrafena Alexandrovna ... Agrafena Alexandrovna, the lady
for whom I have the highest respect and esteem ..."
So Mitya began, and broke down at the first sentence. We will not
reproduce his speech word for word, but will only summarize the gist of
it. Three months ago, he said, he had of express intention (Mitya
purposely used these words instead of "intentionally") consulted a lawyer
in the chief town of the province, "a distinguished lawyer, Kuzma
Kuzmitch, Pavel Pavlovitch Korneplodov. You have perhaps heard of him? A
man of vast intellect, the mind of a statesman ... he knows you, too ...
spoke of you in the highest terms ..." Mitya broke down again. But these
breaks did not deter him. He leapt instantly over the gaps, and struggled
on and on.
This Korneplodov, after questioning him minutely, and inspecting the
documents he was able to bring him (Mitya alluded somewhat vaguely to
these documents, and slurred over the subject with special haste),
reported that they certainly might take proceedings concerning the village
of Tchermashnya, which ought, he said, to have come to him, Mitya, from
his mother, and so checkmate the old villain, his father ... "because
every door was not closed and justice might still find a loophole." In
fact, he might reckon on an additional sum of six or even seven thousand
roubles from Fyodor Pavlovitch, as Tchermashnya was worth, at least,
twenty-five thousand, he might say twenty-eight thousand, in fact,
"thirty, thirty, Kuzma Kuzmitch, and would you believe it, I didn't get
seventeen from that heartless man!" So he, Mitya, had thrown the business
up, for the time, knowing nothing about the law, but on coming here was
struck dumb by a cross-claim made upon him (here Mitya went adrift again
and again took a flying leap forward), "so will not you, excellent and
honored Kuzma Kuzmitch, be willing to take up all my claims against that
unnatural monster, and pay me a sum down of only three thousand?... You
see, you cannot, in any case, lose over it. On my honor, my honor, I swear
that. Quite the contrary, you may make six or seven thousand instead of
three." Above all, he wanted this concluded that very day.
"I'll do the business with you at a notary's, or whatever it is ... in
fact, I'm ready to do anything.... I'll hand over all the deeds ...
whatever you want, sign anything ... and we could draw up the agreement at
once ... and if it were possible, if it were only possible, that very
morning.... You could pay me that three thousand, for there isn't a
capitalist in this town to compare with you, and so would save me from ...
would save me, in fact ... for a good, I might say an honorable action....
For I cherish the most honorable feelings for a certain person, whom you
know well, and care for as a father. I would not have come, indeed, if it
had not been as a father. And, indeed, it's a struggle of three in this
business, for it's fate--that's a fearful thing, Kuzma Kuzmitch! A tragedy,
Kuzma Kuzmitch, a tragedy! And as you've dropped out long ago, it's a tug-
of-war between two. I'm expressing it awkwardly, perhaps, but I'm not a
literary man. You see, I'm on the one side, and that monster on the other.
So you must choose. It's either I or the monster. It all lies in your
hands--the fate of three lives, and the happiness of two.... Excuse me, I'm
making a mess of it, but you understand ... I see from your venerable eyes
that you understand ... and if you don't understand, I'm done for ... so
you see!"
Mitya broke off his clumsy speech with that, "so you see!" and jumping up
from his seat, awaited the answer to his foolish proposal. At the last
phrase he had suddenly become hopelessly aware that it had all fallen
flat, above all, that he had been talking utter nonsense.
"How strange it is! On the way here it seemed all right, and now it's
nothing but nonsense." The idea suddenly dawned on his despairing mind.
All the while he had been talking, the old man sat motionless, watching
him with an icy expression in his eyes. After keeping him for a moment in
suspense, Kuzma Kuzmitch pronounced at last in the most positive and
chilling tone:
"Excuse me, we don't undertake such business."
Mitya suddenly felt his legs growing weak under him.
"What am I to do now, Kuzma Kuzmitch?" he muttered, with a pale smile. "I
suppose it's all up with me--what do you think?"
"Excuse me...."
Mitya remained standing, staring motionless. He suddenly noticed a
movement in the old man's face. He started.
"You see, sir, business of that sort's not in our line," said the old man
slowly. "There's the court, and the lawyers--it's a perfect misery. But if
you like, there is a man here you might apply to."
"Good heavens! Who is it? You're my salvation, Kuzma Kuzmitch," faltered
Mitya.
"He doesn't live here, and he's not here just now. He is a peasant, he
does business in timber. His name is Lyagavy. He's been haggling with
Fyodor Pavlovitch for the last year, over your copse at Tchermashnya. They
can't agree on the price, maybe you've heard? Now he's come back again and
is staying with the priest at Ilyinskoe, about twelve versts from the
Volovya station. He wrote to me, too, about the business of the copse,
asking my advice. Fyodor Pavlovitch means to go and see him himself. So if
you were to be beforehand with Fyodor Pavlovitch and to make Lyagavy the
offer you've made me, he might possibly--"
"A brilliant idea!" Mitya interrupted ecstatically. "He's the very man, it
would just suit him. He's haggling with him for it, being asked too much,
and here he would have all the documents entitling him to the property
itself. Ha ha ha!"
And Mitya suddenly went off into his short, wooden laugh, startling
Samsonov.
"How can I thank you, Kuzma Kuzmitch?" cried Mitya effusively.
"Don't mention it," said Samsonov, inclining his head.
"But you don't know, you've saved me. Oh, it was a true presentiment
brought me to you.... So now to this priest!"
"No need of thanks."
"I'll make haste and fly there. I'm afraid I've overtaxed your strength. I
shall never forget it. It's a Russian says that, Kuzma Kuzmitch, a R-r-
russian!"
"To be sure!"
Mitya seized his hand to press it, but there was a malignant gleam in the
old man's eye. Mitya drew back his hand, but at once blamed himself for
his mistrustfulness.
"It's because he's tired," he thought.
"For her sake! For her sake, Kuzma Kuzmitch! You understand that it's for
her," he cried, his voice ringing through the room. He bowed, turned
sharply round, and with the same long stride walked to the door without
looking back. He was trembling with delight.
"Everything was on the verge of ruin and my guardian angel saved me," was
the thought in his mind. And if such a business man as Samsonov (a most
worthy old man, and what dignity!) had suggested this course, then ...
then success was assured. He would fly off immediately. "I will be back
before night, I shall be back at night and the thing is done. Could the
old man have been laughing at me?" exclaimed Mitya, as he strode towards
his lodging. He could, of course, imagine nothing, but that the advice was
practical "from such a business man" with an understanding of the
business, with an understanding of this Lyagavy (curious surname!). Or--the
old man was laughing at him.
Alas! The second alternative was the correct one. Long afterwards, when
the catastrophe had happened, old Samsonov himself confessed, laughing,
that he had made a fool of the "captain." He was a cold, spiteful and
sarcastic man, liable to violent antipathies. Whether it was the
"captain's" excited face, or the foolish conviction of the "rake and
spendthrift," that he, Samsonov, could be taken in by such a cock-and-bull
story as his scheme, or his jealousy of Grushenka, in whose name this
"scapegrace" had rushed in on him with such a tale to get money which
worked on the old man, I can't tell. But at the instant when Mitya stood
before him, feeling his legs grow weak under him, and frantically
exclaiming that he was ruined, at that moment the old man looked at him
with intense spite, and resolved to make a laughing-stock of him. When
Mitya had gone, Kuzma Kuzmitch, white with rage, turned to his son and
bade him see to it that that beggar be never seen again, and never
admitted even into the yard, or else he'd--
He did not utter his threat. But even his son, who often saw him enraged,
trembled with fear. For a whole hour afterwards, the old man was shaking
with anger, and by evening he was worse, and sent for the doctor.
Chapter II. Lyagavy
So he must drive at full speed, and he had not the money for horses. He
had forty kopecks, and that was all, all that was left after so many years
of prosperity! But he had at home an old silver watch which had long
ceased to go. He snatched it up and carried it to a Jewish watchmaker who
had a shop in the market-place. The Jew gave him six roubles for it.
"And I didn't expect that," cried Mitya, ecstatically. (He was still in a
state of ecstasy.) He seized his six roubles and ran home. At home he
borrowed three roubles from the people of the house, who loved him so much
that they were pleased to give it him, though it was all they had. Mitya
in his excitement told them on the spot that his fate would be decided
that day, and he described, in desperate haste, the whole scheme he had
put before Samsonov, the latter's decision, his own hopes for the future,
and so on. These people had been told many of their lodger's secrets
before, and so looked upon him as a gentleman who was not at all proud,
and almost one of themselves. Having thus collected nine roubles Mitya
sent for posting-horses to take him to the Volovya station. This was how
the fact came to be remembered and established that "at midday, on the day
before the event, Mitya had not a farthing, and that he had sold his watch
to get money and had borrowed three roubles from his landlord, all in the
presence of witnesses."
I note this fact, later on it will be apparent why I do so.
Though he was radiant with the joyful anticipation that he would at last
solve all his difficulties, yet, as he drew near Volovya station, he
trembled at the thought of what Grushenka might be doing in his absence.
What if she made up her mind to-day to go to Fyodor Pavlovitch? This was
why he had gone off without telling her and why he left orders with his
landlady not to let out where he had gone, if any one came to inquire for
him.
"I must, I must get back to-night," he repeated, as he was jolted along in
the cart, "and I dare say I shall have to bring this Lyagavy back here ...
to draw up the deed." So mused Mitya, with a throbbing heart, but alas!
his dreams were not fated to be carried out.
To begin with, he was late, taking a short cut from Volovya station which
turned out to be eighteen versts instead of twelve. Secondly, he did not
find the priest at home at Ilyinskoe; he had gone off to a neighboring
village. While Mitya, setting off there with the same exhausted horses,
was looking for him, it was almost dark.
The priest, a shy and amiable looking little man, informed him at once
that though Lyagavy had been staying with him at first, he was now at
Suhoy Possyolok, that he was staying the night in the forester's cottage,
as he was buying timber there too. At Mitya's urgent request that he would
take him to Lyagavy at once, and by so doing "save him, so to speak," the
priest agreed, after some demur, to conduct him to Suhoy Possyolok; his
curiosity was obviously aroused. But, unluckily, he advised their going on
foot, as it would not be "much over" a verst. Mitya, of course, agreed,
and marched off with his yard-long strides, so that the poor priest almost
ran after him. He was a very cautious man, though not old.
Mitya at once began talking to him, too, of his plans, nervously and
excitedly asking advice in regard to Lyagavy, and talking all the way. The
priest listened attentively, but gave little advice. He turned off Mitya's
questions with: "I don't know. Ah, I can't say. How can I tell?" and so
on. When Mitya began to speak of his quarrel with his father over his
inheritance, the priest was positively alarmed, as he was in some way
dependent on Fyodor Pavlovitch. He inquired, however, with surprise, why
he called the peasant-trader Gorstkin, Lyagavy, and obligingly explained
to Mitya that, though the man's name really was Lyagavy, he was never
called so, as he would be grievously offended at the name, and that he
must be sure to call him Gorstkin, "or you'll do nothing with him; he
won't even listen to you," said the priest in conclusion.
Mitya was somewhat surprised for a moment, and explained that that was
what Samsonov had called him. On hearing this fact, the priest dropped the
subject, though he would have done well to put into words his doubt
whether, if Samsonov had sent him to that peasant, calling him Lyagavy,
there was not something wrong about it and he was turning him into
ridicule. But Mitya had no time to pause over such trifles. He hurried,
striding along, and only when he reached Suhoy Possyolok did he realize
that they had come not one verst, nor one and a half, but at least three.
This annoyed him, but he controlled himself.
They went into the hut. The forester lived in one half of the hut, and
Gorstkin was lodging in the other, the better room the other side of the
passage. They went into that room and lighted a tallow candle. The hut was
extremely overheated. On the table there was a samovar that had gone out,
a tray with cups, an empty rum bottle, a bottle of vodka partly full, and
some half-eaten crusts of wheaten bread. The visitor himself lay stretched
at full length on the bench, with his coat crushed up under his head for a
pillow, snoring heavily. Mitya stood in perplexity.
"Of course I must wake him. My business is too important. I've come in
such haste. I'm in a hurry to get back to-day," he said in great
agitation. But the priest and the forester stood in silence, not giving
their opinion. Mitya went up and began trying to wake him himself; he
tried vigorously, but the sleeper did not wake.
"He's drunk," Mitya decided. "Good Lord! What am I to do? What am I to
do?" And, terribly impatient, he began pulling him by the arms, by the
legs, shaking his head, lifting him up and making him sit on the bench.
Yet, after prolonged exertions, he could only succeed in getting the
drunken man to utter absurd grunts, and violent, but inarticulate oaths.
"No, you'd better wait a little," the priest pronounced at last, "for he's
obviously not in a fit state."
"He's been drinking the whole day," the forester chimed in.
"Good heavens!" cried Mitya. "If only you knew how important it is to me
and how desperate I am!"
"No, you'd better wait till morning," the priest repeated.
"Till morning? Mercy! that's impossible!"
And in his despair he was on the point of attacking the sleeping man
again, but stopped short at once, realizing the uselessness of his
efforts. The priest said nothing, the sleepy forester looked gloomy.
"What terrible tragedies real life contrives for people," said Mitya, in
complete despair. The perspiration was streaming down his face. The priest
seized the moment to put before him, very reasonably, that, even if he
succeeded in wakening the man, he would still be drunk and incapable of
conversation. "And your business is important," he said, "so you'd
certainly better put it off till morning." With a gesture of despair Mitya
agreed.
"Father, I will stay here with a light, and seize the favorable moment. As
soon as he wakes I'll begin. I'll pay you for the light," he said to the
forester, "for the night's lodging, too; you'll remember Dmitri Karamazov.
Only, Father, I don't know what we're to do with you. Where will you
sleep?"
"No, I'm going home. I'll take his horse and get home," he said,
indicating the forester. "And now I'll say good-by. I wish you all
success."
So it was settled. The priest rode off on the forester's horse, delighted
to escape, though he shook his head uneasily, wondering whether he ought
not next day to inform his benefactor Fyodor Pavlovitch of this curious
incident, "or he may in an unlucky hour hear of it, be angry, and withdraw
his favor."
The forester, scratching himself, went back to his room without a word,
and Mitya sat on the bench to "catch the favorable moment," as he
expressed it. Profound dejection clung about his soul like a heavy mist. A
profound, intense dejection! He sat thinking, but could reach no
conclusion. The candle burnt dimly, a cricket chirped; it became
insufferably close in the overheated room. He suddenly pictured the
garden, the path behind the garden, the door of his father's house
mysteriously opening and Grushenka running in. He leapt up from the bench.
"It's a tragedy!" he said, grinding his teeth. Mechanically he went up to
the sleeping man and looked in his face. He was a lean, middle-aged
peasant, with a very long face, flaxen curls, and a long, thin, reddish
beard, wearing a blue cotton shirt and a black waistcoat, from the pocket
of which peeped the chain of a silver watch. Mitya looked at his face with
intense hatred, and for some unknown reason his curly hair particularly
irritated him.
What was insufferably humiliating was, that after leaving things of such
importance and making such sacrifices, he, Mitya, utterly worn out, should
with business of such urgency be standing over this dolt on whom his whole
fate depended, while he snored as though there were nothing the matter, as
though he'd dropped from another planet.
"Oh, the irony of fate!" cried Mitya, and, quite losing his head, he fell
again to rousing the tipsy peasant. He roused him with a sort of ferocity,
pulled at him, pushed him, even beat him; but after five minutes of vain
exertions, he returned to his bench in helpless despair, and sat down.
"Stupid! Stupid!" cried Mitya. "And how dishonorable it all is!" something
made him add. His head began to ache horribly. "Should he fling it up and
go away altogether?" he wondered. "No, wait till to-morrow now. I'll stay
on purpose. What else did I come for? Besides, I've no means of going. How
am I to get away from here now? Oh, the idiocy of it!"
But his head ached more and more. He sat without moving, and unconsciously
dozed off and fell asleep as he sat. He seemed to have slept for two hours
or more. He was waked up by his head aching so unbearably that he could
have screamed. There was a hammering in his temples, and the top of his
head ached. It was a long time before he could wake up fully and
understand what had happened to him.
At last he realized that the room was full of charcoal fumes from the
stove, and that he might die of suffocation. And the drunken peasant still
lay snoring. The candle guttered and was about to go out. Mitya cried out,
and ran staggering across the passage into the forester's room. The
forester waked up at once, but hearing that the other room was full of
fumes, to Mitya's surprise and annoyance, accepted the fact with strange
unconcern, though he did go to see to it.
"But he's dead, he's dead! and ... what am I to do then?" cried Mitya
frantically.
They threw open the doors, opened a window and the chimney. Mitya brought
a pail of water from the passage. First he wetted his own head, then,
finding a rag of some sort, dipped it into the water, and put it on
Lyagavy's head. The forester still treated the matter contemptuously, and
when he opened the window said grumpily:
"It'll be all right, now."
He went back to sleep, leaving Mitya a lighted lantern. Mitya fussed about
the drunken peasant for half an hour, wetting his head, and gravely
resolved not to sleep all night. But he was so worn out that when he sat
down for a moment to take breath, he closed his eyes, unconsciously
stretched himself full length on the bench and slept like the dead.
It was dreadfully late when he waked. It was somewhere about nine o'clock.
The sun was shining brightly in the two little windows of the hut. The
curly-headed peasant was sitting on the bench and had his coat on. He had
another samovar and another bottle in front of him. Yesterday's bottle had
already been finished, and the new one was more than half empty. Mitya
jumped up and saw at once that the cursed peasant was drunk again,
hopelessly and incurably. He stared at him for a moment with wide opened
eyes. The peasant was silently and slyly watching him, with insulting
composure, and even a sort of contemptuous condescension, so Mitya
fancied. He rushed up to him.
"Excuse me, you see ... I ... you've most likely heard from the forester
here in the hut. I'm Lieutenant Dmitri Karamazov, the son of the old
Karamazov whose copse you are buying."
"That's a lie!" said the peasant, calmly and confidently.
"A lie? You know Fyodor Pavlovitch?"
"I don't know any of your Fyodor Pavlovitches," said the peasant, speaking
thickly.
"You're bargaining with him for the copse, for the copse. Do wake up, and
collect yourself. Father Pavel of Ilyinskoe brought me here. You wrote to
Samsonov, and he has sent me to you," Mitya gasped breathlessly.
"You're l-lying!" Lyagavy blurted out again. Mitya's legs went cold.
"For mercy's sake! It isn't a joke! You're drunk, perhaps. Yet you can
speak and understand ... or else ... I understand nothing!"
"You're a painter!"
"For mercy's sake! I'm Karamazov, Dmitri Karamazov. I have an offer to
make you, an advantageous offer ... very advantageous offer, concerning
the copse!"
The peasant stroked his beard importantly.
"No, you've contracted for the job and turned out a scamp. You're a
scoundrel!"
"I assure you you're mistaken," cried Mitya, wringing his hands in
despair. The peasant still stroked his beard, and suddenly screwed up his
eyes cunningly.
"No, you show me this: you tell me the law that allows roguery. D'you
hear? You're a scoundrel! Do you understand that?"
Mitya stepped back gloomily, and suddenly "something seemed to hit him on
the head," as he said afterwards. In an instant a light seemed to dawn in
his mind, "a light was kindled and I grasped it all." He stood, stupefied,
wondering how he, after all a man of intelligence, could have yielded to
such folly, have been led into such an adventure, and have kept it up for
almost twenty-four hours, fussing round this Lyagavy, wetting his head.
"Why, the man's drunk, dead drunk, and he'll go on drinking now for a
week; what's the use of waiting here? And what if Samsonov sent me here on
purpose? What if she--? Oh, God, what have I done?"
The peasant sat watching him and grinning. Another time Mitya might have
killed the fool in a fury, but now he felt as weak as a child. He went
quietly to the bench, took up his overcoat, put it on without a word, and
went out of the hut. He did not find the forester in the next room; there
was no one there. He took fifty kopecks in small change out of his pocket
and put them on the table for his night's lodging, the candle, and the
trouble he had given. Coming out of the hut he saw nothing but forest all
round. He walked at hazard, not knowing which way to turn out of the hut,
to the right or to the left. Hurrying there the evening before with the
priest, he had not noticed the road. He had no revengeful feeling for
anybody, even for Samsonov, in his heart. He strode along a narrow forest
path, aimless, dazed, without heeding where he was going. A child could
have knocked him down, so weak was he in body and soul. He got out of the
forest somehow, however, and a vista of fields, bare after the harvest,
stretched as far as the eye could see.
"What despair! What death all round!" he repeated, striding on and on.
He was saved by meeting an old merchant who was being driven across
country in a hired trap. When he overtook him, Mitya asked the way, and it
turned out that the old merchant, too, was going to Volovya. After some
discussion Mitya got into the trap. Three hours later they arrived. At
Volovya, Mitya at once ordered posting-horses to drive to the town, and
suddenly realized that he was appallingly hungry. While the horses were
being harnessed, an omelette was prepared for him. He ate it all in an
instant, ate a huge hunk of bread, ate a sausage, and swallowed three
glasses of vodka. After eating, his spirits and his heart grew lighter. He
flew towards the town, urged on the driver, and suddenly made a new and
"unalterable" plan to procure that "accursed money" before evening. "And
to think, only to think that a man's life should be ruined for the sake of
that paltry three thousand!" he cried, contemptuously. "I'll settle it to-
day." And if it had not been for the thought of Grushenka and of what
might have happened to her, which never left him, he would perhaps have
become quite cheerful again.... But the thought of her was stabbing him to
the heart every moment, like a sharp knife.
At last they arrived, and Mitya at once ran to Grushenka.
Chapter III. Gold-Mines
This was the visit of Mitya of which Grushenka had spoken to Rakitin with
such horror. She was just then expecting the "message," and was much
relieved that Mitya had not been to see her that day or the day before.
She hoped that "please God he won't come till I'm gone away," and he
suddenly burst in on her. The rest we know already. To get him off her
hands she suggested at once that he should walk with her to Samsonov's,
where she said she absolutely must go "to settle his accounts," and when
Mitya accompanied her at once, she said good-by to him at the gate, making
him promise to come at twelve o'clock to take her home again. Mitya, too,
was delighted at this arrangement. If she was sitting at Samsonov's she
could not be going to Fyodor Pavlovitch's, "if only she's not lying," he
added at once. But he thought she was not lying from what he saw.
He was that sort of jealous man who, in the absence of the beloved woman,
at once invents all sorts of awful fancies of what may be happening to
her, and how she may be betraying him, but, when shaken, heartbroken,
convinced of her faithlessness, he runs back to her; at the first glance
at her face, her gay, laughing, affectionate face, he revives at once,
lays aside all suspicion and with joyful shame abuses himself for his
jealousy.
After leaving Grushenka at the gate he rushed home. Oh, he had so much
still to do that day! But a load had been lifted from his heart, anyway.
"Now I must only make haste and find out from Smerdyakov whether anything
happened there last night, whether, by any chance, she went to Fyodor
Pavlovitch; ough!" floated through his mind.
Before he had time to reach his lodging, jealousy had surged up again in
his restless heart.
Jealousy! "Othello was not jealous, he was trustful," observed Pushkin.
And that remark alone is enough to show the deep insight of our great
poet. Othello's soul was shattered and his whole outlook clouded simply
because _his ideal was destroyed_. But Othello did not begin hiding,
spying, peeping. He was trustful, on the contrary. He had to be led up,
pushed on, excited with great difficulty before he could entertain the
idea of deceit. The truly jealous man is not like that. It is impossible
to picture to oneself the shame and moral degradation to which the jealous
man can descend without a qualm of conscience. And yet it's not as though
the jealous were all vulgar and base souls. On the contrary, a man of
lofty feelings, whose love is pure and full of self-sacrifice, may yet
hide under tables, bribe the vilest people, and be familiar with the
lowest ignominy of spying and eavesdropping.
Othello was incapable of making up his mind to faithlessness--not incapable
of forgiving it, but of making up his mind to it--though his soul was as
innocent and free from malice as a babe's. It is not so with the really
jealous man. It is hard to imagine what some jealous men can make up their
mind to and overlook, and what they can forgive! The jealous are the
readiest of all to forgive, and all women know it. The jealous man can
forgive extraordinarily quickly (though, of course, after a violent
scene), and he is able to forgive infidelity almost conclusively proved,
the very kisses and embraces he has seen, if only he can somehow be
convinced that it has all been "for the last time," and that his rival
will vanish from that day forward, will depart to the ends of the earth,
or that he himself will carry her away somewhere, where that dreaded rival
will not get near her. Of course the reconciliation is only for an hour.
For, even if the rival did disappear next day, he would invent another one
and would be jealous of him. And one might wonder what there was in a love
that had to be so watched over, what a love could be worth that needed
such strenuous guarding. But that the jealous will never understand. And
yet among them are men of noble hearts. It is remarkable, too, that those
very men of noble hearts, standing hidden in some cupboard, listening and
spying, never feel the stings of conscience at that moment, anyway, though
they understand clearly enough with their "noble hearts" the shameful
depths to which they have voluntarily sunk.
At the sight of Grushenka, Mitya's jealousy vanished, and, for an instant
he became trustful and generous, and positively despised himself for his
evil feelings. But it only proved that, in his love for the woman, there
was an element of something far higher than he himself imagined, that it
was not only a sensual passion, not only the "curve of her body," of which
he had talked to Alyosha. But, as soon as Grushenka had gone, Mitya began
to suspect her of all the low cunning of faithlessness, and he felt no
sting of conscience at it.
And so jealousy surged up in him again. He had, in any case, to make
haste. The first thing to be done was to get hold of at least a small,
temporary loan of money. The nine roubles had almost all gone on his
expedition. And, as we all know, one can't take a step without money. But
he had thought over in the cart where he could get a loan. He had a brace
of fine dueling pistols in a case, which he had not pawned till then
because he prized them above all his possessions.
In the "Metropolis" tavern he had some time since made acquaintance with a
young official and had learnt that this very opulent bachelor was
passionately fond of weapons. He used to buy pistols, revolvers, daggers,
hang them on his wall and show them to acquaintances. He prided himself on
them, and was quite a specialist on the mechanism of the revolver. Mitya,
without stopping to think, went straight to him, and offered to pawn his
pistols to him for ten roubles. The official, delighted, began trying to
persuade him to sell them outright. But Mitya would not consent, so the
young man gave him ten roubles, protesting that nothing would induce him
to take interest. They parted friends.
Mitya was in haste; he rushed towards Fyodor Pavlovitch's by the back way,
to his arbor, to get hold of Smerdyakov as soon as possible. In this way
the fact was established that three or four hours before a certain event,
of which I shall speak later on, Mitya had not a farthing, and pawned for
ten roubles a possession he valued, though, three hours later, he was in
possession of thousands.... But I am anticipating. From Marya Kondratyevna
(the woman living near Fyodor Pavlovitch's) he learned the very disturbing
fact of Smerdyakov's illness. He heard the story of his fall in the
cellar, his fit, the doctor's visit, Fyodor Pavlovitch's anxiety; he heard
with interest, too, that his brother Ivan had set off that morning for
Moscow.
"Then he must have driven through Volovya before me," thought Dmitri, but
he was terribly distressed about Smerdyakov. "What will happen now? Who'll
keep watch for me? Who'll bring me word?" he thought. He began greedily
questioning the women whether they had seen anything the evening before.
They quite understood what he was trying to find out, and completely
reassured him. No one had been there. Ivan Fyodorovitch had been there the
night; everything had been perfectly as usual. Mitya grew thoughtful. He
would certainly have to keep watch to-day, but where? Here or at
Samsonov's gate? He decided that he must be on the look out both here and
there, and meanwhile ... meanwhile.... The difficulty was that he had to
carry out the new plan that he had made on the journey back. He was sure
of its success, but he must not delay acting upon it. Mitya resolved to
sacrifice an hour to it: "In an hour I shall know everything, I shall
settle everything, and then, then, first of all to Samsonov's. I'll
inquire whether Grushenka's there and instantly be back here again, stay
till eleven, and then to Samsonov's again to bring her home." This was
what he decided.
He flew home, washed, combed his hair, brushed his clothes, dressed, and
went to Madame Hohlakov's. Alas! he had built his hopes on her. He had
resolved to borrow three thousand from that lady. And what was more, he
felt suddenly convinced that she would not refuse to lend it to him. It
may be wondered why, if he felt so certain, he had not gone to her at
first, one of his own sort, so to speak, instead of to Samsonov, a man he
did not know, who was not of his own class, and to whom he hardly knew how
to speak.
But the fact was that he had never known Madame Hohlakov well, and had
seen nothing of her for the last month, and that he knew she could not
endure him. She had detested him from the first because he was engaged to
Katerina Ivanovna, while she had, for some reason, suddenly conceived the
desire that Katerina Ivanovna should throw him over, and marry the
"charming, chivalrously refined Ivan, who had such excellent manners."
Mitya's manners she detested. Mitya positively laughed at her, and had
once said about her that she was just as lively and at her ease as she was
uncultivated. But that morning in the cart a brilliant idea had struck
him: "If she is so anxious I should not marry Katerina Ivanovna" (and he
knew she was positively hysterical upon the subject) "why should she
refuse me now that three thousand, just to enable me to leave Katya and
get away from her for ever. These spoilt fine ladies, if they set their
hearts on anything, will spare no expense to satisfy their caprice.
Besides, she's so rich," Mitya argued.
As for his "plan" it was just the same as before; it consisted of the
offer of his rights to Tchermashnya--but not with a commercial object, as
it had been with Samsonov, not trying to allure the lady with the
possibility of making a profit of six or seven thousand--but simply as a
security for the debt. As he worked out this new idea, Mitya was enchanted
with it, but so it always was with him in all his undertakings, in all his
sudden decisions. He gave himself up to every new idea with passionate
enthusiasm. Yet, when he mounted the steps of Madame Hohlakov's house he
felt a shiver of fear run down his spine. At that moment he saw fully, as
a mathematical certainty, that this was his last hope, that if this broke
down, nothing else was left him in the world, but to "rob and murder some
one for the three thousand." It was half-past seven when he rang at the
bell.
At first fortune seemed to smile upon him. As soon as he was announced he
was received with extraordinary rapidity. "As though she were waiting for
me," thought Mitya, and as soon as he had been led to the drawing-room,
the lady of the house herself ran in, and declared at once that she was
expecting him.
"I was expecting you! I was expecting you! Though I'd no reason to suppose
you would come to see me, as you will admit yourself. Yet, I did expect
you. You may marvel at my instinct, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, but I was
convinced all the morning that you would come."
"That is certainly wonderful, madam," observed Mitya, sitting down limply,
"but I have come to you on a matter of great importance.... On a matter of
supreme importance for me, that is, madam ... for me alone ... and I
hasten--"
"I know you've come on most important business, Dmitri Fyodorovitch; it's
not a case of presentiment, no reactionary harking back to the miraculous
(have you heard about Father Zossima?). This is a case of mathematics: you
couldn't help coming, after all that has passed with Katerina Ivanovna;
you couldn't, you couldn't, that's a mathematical certainty."
"The realism of actual life, madam, that's what it is. But allow me to
explain--"
"Realism indeed, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. I'm all for realism now. I've seen
too much of miracles. You've heard that Father Zossima is dead?"
"No, madam, it's the first time I've heard of it." Mitya was a little
surprised. The image of Alyosha rose to his mind.
"Last night, and only imagine--"
"Madam," said Mitya, "I can imagine nothing except that I'm in a desperate
position, and that if you don't help me, everything will come to grief,
and I first of all. Excuse me for the triviality of the expression, but
I'm in a fever--"
"I know, I know that you're in a fever. You could hardly fail to be, and
whatever you may say to me, I know beforehand. I have long been thinking
over your destiny, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, I am watching over it and studying
it.... Oh, believe me, I'm an experienced doctor of the soul, Dmitri
Fyodorovitch."
"Madam, if you are an experienced doctor, I'm certainly an experienced
patient," said Mitya, with an effort to be polite, "and I feel that if you
are watching over my destiny in this way, you will come to my help in my
ruin, and so allow me, at least to explain to you the plan with which I
have ventured to come to you ... and what I am hoping of you.... I have
come, madam--"
"Don't explain it. It's of secondary importance. But as for help, you're
not the first I have helped, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. You have most likely
heard of my cousin, Madame Belmesov. Her husband was ruined, 'had come to
grief,' as you characteristically express it, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. I
recommended him to take to horse-breeding, and now he's doing well. Have
you any idea of horse-breeding, Dmitri Fyodorovitch?"
"Not the faintest, madam; ah, madam, not the faintest!" cried Mitya, in
nervous impatience, positively starting from his seat. "I simply implore
you, madam, to listen to me. Only give me two minutes of free speech that
I may just explain to you everything, the whole plan with which I have
come. Besides, I am short of time. I'm in a fearful hurry," Mitya cried
hysterically, feeling that she was just going to begin talking again, and
hoping to cut her short. "I have come in despair ... in the last gasp of
despair, to beg you to lend me the sum of three thousand, a loan, but on
safe, most safe security, madam, with the most trustworthy guarantees!
Only let me explain--"
"You must tell me all that afterwards, afterwards!" Madame Hohlakov with a
gesture demanded silence in her turn, "and whatever you may tell me, I
know it all beforehand; I've told you so already. You ask for a certain
sum, for three thousand, but I can give you more, immeasurably more, I
will save you, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, but you must listen to me."
Mitya started from his seat again.
"Madam, will you really be so good!" he cried, with strong feeling. "Good
God, you've saved me! You have saved a man from a violent death, from a
bullet.... My eternal gratitude--"
"I will give you more, infinitely more than three thousand!" cried Madame
Hohlakov, looking with a radiant smile at Mitya's ecstasy.
"Infinitely? But I don't need so much. I only need that fatal three
thousand, and on my part I can give security for that sum with infinite
gratitude, and I propose a plan which--"
"Enough, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, it's said and done." Madame Hohlakov cut him
short, with the modest triumph of beneficence: "I have promised to save
you, and I will save you. I will save you as I did Belmesov. What do you
think of the gold-mines, Dmitri Fyodorovitch?"
"Of the gold-mines, madam? I have never thought anything about them."
"But I have thought of them for you. Thought of them over and over again.
I have been watching you for the last month. I've watched you a hundred
times as you've walked past, saying to myself: That's a man of energy who
ought to be at the gold-mines. I've studied your gait and come to the
conclusion: that's a man who would find gold."
"From my gait, madam?" said Mitya, smiling.
"Yes, from your gait. You surely don't deny that character can be told
from the gait, Dmitri Fyodorovitch? Science supports the idea. I'm all for
science and realism now. After all this business with Father Zossima,
which has so upset me, from this very day I'm a realist and I want to
devote myself to practical usefulness. I'm cured. 'Enough!' as Turgenev
says."
"But, madam, the three thousand you so generously promised to lend me--"
"It is yours, Dmitri Fyodorovitch," Madame Hohlakov cut in at once. "The
money is as good as in your pocket, not three thousand, but three million,
Dmitri Fyodorovitch, in less than no time. I'll make you a present of the
idea: you shall find gold-mines, make millions, return and become a
leading man, and wake us up and lead us to better things. Are we to leave
it all to the Jews? You will found institutions and enterprises of all
sorts. You will help the poor, and they will bless you. This is the age of
railways, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. You'll become famous and indispensable to
the Department of Finance, which is so badly off at present. The
depreciation of the rouble keeps me awake at night, Dmitri Fyodorovitch;
people don't know that side of me--"
"Madam, madam!" Dmitri interrupted with an uneasy presentiment. "I shall
indeed, perhaps, follow your advice, your wise advice, madam.... I shall
perhaps set off ... to the gold-mines.... I'll come and see you again
about it ... many times, indeed ... but now, that three thousand you so
generously ... oh, that would set me free, and if you could to-day ... you
see, I haven't a minute, a minute to lose to-day--"
"Enough, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, enough!" Madame Hohlakov interrupted
emphatically. "The question is, will you go to the gold-mines or not; have
you quite made up your mind? Answer yes or no."
"I will go, madam, afterwards.... I'll go where you like ... but now--"
"Wait!" cried Madame Hohlakov. And jumping up and running to a handsome
bureau with numerous little drawers, she began pulling out one drawer
after another, looking for something with desperate haste.
"The three thousand," thought Mitya, his heart almost stopping, "and at
the instant ... without any papers or formalities ... that's doing things
in gentlemanly style! She's a splendid woman, if only she didn't talk so
much!"
"Here!" cried Madame Hohlakov, running back joyfully to Mitya, "here is
what I was looking for!"
It was a tiny silver ikon on a cord, such as is sometimes worn next the
skin with a cross.
"This is from Kiev, Dmitri Fyodorovitch," she went on reverently, "from
the relics of the Holy Martyr, Varvara. Let me put it on your neck myself,
and with it dedicate you to a new life, to a new career."
And she actually put the cord round his neck, and began arranging it. In
extreme embarrassment, Mitya bent down and helped her, and at last he got
it under his neck-tie and collar through his shirt to his chest.
"Now you can set off," Madame Hohlakov pronounced, sitting down
triumphantly in her place again.
"Madam, I am so touched. I don't know how to thank you, indeed ... for
such kindness, but ... If only you knew how precious time is to me....
That sum of money, for which I shall be indebted to your generosity....
Oh, madam, since you are so kind, so touchingly generous to me," Mitya
exclaimed impulsively, "then let me reveal to you ... though, of course,
you've known it a long time ... that I love somebody here.... I have been
false to Katya ... Katerina Ivanovna I should say.... Oh, I've behaved
inhumanly, dishonorably to her, but I fell in love here with another woman
... a woman whom you, madam, perhaps, despise, for you know everything
already, but whom I cannot leave on any account, and therefore that three
thousand now--"
"Leave everything, Dmitri Fyodorovitch," Madame Hohlakov interrupted in
the most decisive tone. "Leave everything, especially women. Gold-mines
are your goal, and there's no place for women there. Afterwards, when you
come back rich and famous, you will find the girl of your heart in the
highest society. That will be a modern girl, a girl of education and
advanced ideas. By that time the dawning woman question will have gained
ground, and the new woman will have appeared."
"Madam, that's not the point, not at all...." Mitya clasped his hands in
entreaty.
"Yes, it is, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, just what you need; the very thing
you're yearning for, though you don't realize it yourself. I am not at all
opposed to the present woman movement, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. The
development of woman, and even the political emancipation of woman in the
near future--that's my ideal. I've a daughter myself, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,
people don't know that side of me. I wrote a letter to the author,
Shtchedrin, on that subject. He has taught me so much, so much about the
vocation of woman. So last year I sent him an anonymous letter of two
lines: 'I kiss and embrace you, my teacher, for the modern woman.
Persevere.' And I signed myself, 'A Mother.' I thought of signing myself
'A contemporary Mother,' and hesitated, but I stuck to the simple
'Mother'; there's more moral beauty in that, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. And the
word 'contemporary' might have reminded him of '_The Contemporary_'--a
painful recollection owing to the censorship.... Good Heavens, what is the
matter!"
"Madam!" cried Mitya, jumping up at last, clasping his hands before her in
helpless entreaty. "You will make me weep if you delay what you have so
generously--"
"Oh, do weep, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, do weep! That's a noble feeling ...
such a path lies open before you! Tears will ease your heart, and later on
you will return rejoicing. You will hasten to me from Siberia on purpose
to share your joy with me--"
"But allow me, too!" Mitya cried suddenly. "For the last time I entreat
you, tell me, can I have the sum you promised me to-day, if not, when may
I come for it?"
"What sum, Dmitri Fyodorovitch?"
"The three thousand you promised me ... that you so generously--"
"Three thousand? Roubles? Oh, no, I haven't got three thousand," Madame
Hohlakov announced with serene amazement. Mitya was stupefied.
"Why, you said just now ... you said ... you said it was as good as in my
hands--"
"Oh, no, you misunderstood me, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. In that case you
misunderstood me. I was talking of the gold-mines. It's true I promised
you more, infinitely more than three thousand, I remember it all now, but
I was referring to the gold-mines."
"But the money? The three thousand?" Mitya exclaimed, awkwardly.
"Oh, if you meant money, I haven't any. I haven't a penny, Dmitri
Fyodorovitch. I'm quarreling with my steward about it, and I've just
borrowed five hundred roubles from Miuesov, myself. No, no, I've no money.
And, do you know, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, if I had, I wouldn't give it to
you. In the first place I never lend money. Lending money means losing
friends. And I wouldn't give it to you particularly. I wouldn't give it
you, because I like you and want to save you, for all you need is the
gold-mines, the gold-mines, the gold-mines!"
"Oh, the devil!" roared Mitya, and with all his might brought his fist
down on the table.
"Aie! Aie!" cried Madame Hohlakov, alarmed, and she flew to the other end
of the drawing-room.
Mitya spat on the ground, and strode rapidly out of the room, out of the
house, into the street, into the darkness! He walked like one possessed,
and beating himself on the breast, on the spot where he had struck himself
two days previously, before Alyosha, the last time he saw him in the dark,
on the road. What those blows upon his breast signified, _on that spot_,
and what he meant by it--that was, for the time, a secret which was known
to no one in the world, and had not been told even to Alyosha. But that
secret meant for him more than disgrace; it meant ruin, suicide. So he had
determined, if he did not get hold of the three thousand that would pay
his debt to Katerina Ivanovna, and so remove from his breast, from _that
spot on his breast_, the shame he carried upon it, that weighed on his
conscience. All this will be fully explained to the reader later on, but
now that his last hope had vanished, this man, so strong in appearance,
burst out crying like a little child a few steps from the Hohlakovs'
house. He walked on, and not knowing what he was doing, wiped away his
tears with his fist. In this way he reached the square, and suddenly
became aware that he had stumbled against something. He heard a piercing
wail from an old woman whom he had almost knocked down.
"Good Lord, you've nearly killed me! Why don't you look where you're
going, scapegrace?"
"Why, it's you!" cried Mitya, recognizing the old woman in the dark. It
was the old servant who waited on Samsonov, whom Mitya had particularly
noticed the day before.
"And who are you, my good sir?" said the old woman, in quite a different
voice. "I don't know you in the dark."
"You live at Kuzma Kuzmitch's. You're the servant there?"
"Just so, sir, I was only running out to Prohoritch's.... But I don't know
you now."
"Tell me, my good woman, is Agrafena Alexandrovna there now?" said Mitya,
beside himself with suspense. "I saw her to the house some time ago."
"She has been there, sir. She stayed a little while, and went off again."
"What? Went away?" cried Mitya. "When did she go?"
"Why, as soon as she came. She only stayed a minute. She only told Kuzma
Kuzmitch a tale that made him laugh, and then she ran away."
"You're lying, damn you!" roared Mitya.
"Aie! Aie!" shrieked the old woman, but Mitya had vanished.
He ran with all his might to the house where Grushenka lived. At the
moment he reached it, Grushenka was on her way to Mokroe. It was not more
than a quarter of an hour after her departure.
Fenya was sitting with her grandmother, the old cook, Matryona, in the
kitchen when "the captain" ran in. Fenya uttered a piercing shriek on
seeing him.
"You scream?" roared Mitya, "where is she?"
But without giving the terror-stricken Fenya time to utter a word, he fell
all of a heap at her feet.
"Fenya, for Christ's sake, tell me, where is she?"
"I don't know. Dmitri Fyodorovitch, my dear, I don't know. You may kill me
but I can't tell you." Fenya swore and protested. "You went out with her
yourself not long ago--"
"She came back!"
"Indeed she didn't. By God I swear she didn't come back."
"You're lying!" shouted Mitya. "From your terror I know where she is."
He rushed away. Fenya in her fright was glad she had got off so easily.
But she knew very well that it was only that he was in such haste, or she
might not have fared so well. But as he ran, he surprised both Fenya and
old Matryona by an unexpected action. On the table stood a brass mortar,
with a pestle in it, a small brass pestle, not much more than six inches
long. Mitya already had opened the door with one hand when, with the
other, he snatched up the pestle, and thrust it in his side-pocket.
"Oh, Lord! He's going to murder some one!" cried Fenya, flinging up her
hands.
Chapter IV. In The Dark
Where was he running? "Where could she be except at Fyodor Pavlovitch's?
She must have run straight to him from Samsonov's, that was clear now. The
whole intrigue, the whole deceit was evident." ... It all rushed whirling
through his mind. He did not run to Marya Kondratyevna's. "There was no
need to go there ... not the slightest need ... he must raise no alarm ...
they would run and tell directly.... Marya Kondratyevna was clearly in the
plot, Smerdyakov too, he too, all had been bought over!"
He formed another plan of action: he ran a long way round Fyodor
Pavlovitch's house, crossing the lane, running down Dmitrovsky Street,
then over the little bridge, and so came straight to the deserted alley at
the back, which was empty and uninhabited, with, on one side the hurdle
fence of a neighbor's kitchen-garden, on the other the strong high fence,
that ran all round Fyodor Pavlovitch's garden. Here he chose a spot,
apparently the very place, where according to the tradition, he knew
Lizaveta had once climbed over it: "If she could climb over it," the
thought, God knows why, occurred to him, "surely I can." He did in fact
jump up, and instantly contrived to catch hold of the top of the fence.
Then he vigorously pulled himself up and sat astride on it. Close by, in
the garden stood the bath-house, but from the fence he could see the
lighted windows of the house too.
"Yes, the old man's bedroom is lighted up. She's there!" and he leapt from
the fence into the garden. Though he knew Grigory was ill and very likely
Smerdyakov, too, and that there was no one to hear him, he instinctively
hid himself, stood still, and began to listen. But there was dead silence
on all sides and, as though of design, complete stillness, not the
slightest breath of wind.
"And naught but the whispering silence," the line for some reason rose to
his mind. "If only no one heard me jump over the fence! I think not."
Standing still for a minute, he walked softly over the grass in the
garden, avoiding the trees and shrubs. He walked slowly, creeping
stealthily at every step, listening to his own footsteps. It took him five
minutes to reach the lighted window. He remembered that just under the
window there were several thick and high bushes of elder and whitebeam.
The door from the house into the garden on the left-hand side, was shut;
he had carefully looked on purpose to see, in passing. At last he reached
the bushes and hid behind them. He held his breath. "I must wait now," he
thought, "to reassure them, in case they heard my footsteps and are
listening ... if only I don't cough or sneeze."
He waited two minutes. His heart was beating violently, and, at moments,
he could scarcely breathe. "No, this throbbing at my heart won't stop," he
thought. "I can't wait any longer." He was standing behind a bush in the
shadow. The light of the window fell on the front part of the bush.
"How red the whitebeam berries are!" he murmured, not knowing why. Softly
and noiselessly, step by step, he approached the window, and raised
himself on tiptoe. All Fyodor Pavlovitch's bedroom lay open before him. It
was not a large room, and was divided in two parts by a red screen,
"Chinese," as Fyodor Pavlovitch used to call it. The word "Chinese"
flashed into Mitya's mind, "and behind the screen, is Grushenka," thought
Mitya. He began watching Fyodor Pavlovitch, who was wearing his new
striped-silk dressing-gown, which Mitya had never seen, and a silk cord
with tassels round the waist. A clean, dandified shirt of fine linen with
gold studs peeped out under the collar of the dressing-gown. On his head
Fyodor Pavlovitch had the same red bandage which Alyosha had seen.
"He has got himself up," thought Mitya.
His father was standing near the window, apparently lost in thought.
Suddenly he jerked up his head, listened a moment, and hearing nothing
went up to the table, poured out half a glass of brandy from a decanter
and drank it off. Then he uttered a deep sigh, again stood still a moment,
walked carelessly up to the looking-glass on the wall, with his right hand
raised the red bandage on his forehead a little, and began examining his
bruises and scars, which had not yet disappeared.
"He's alone," thought Mitya, "in all probability he's alone."
Fyodor Pavlovitch moved away from the looking-glass, turned suddenly to
the window and looked out. Mitya instantly slipped away into the shadow.
"She may be there behind the screen. Perhaps she's asleep by now," he
thought, with a pang at his heart. Fyodor Pavlovitch moved away from the
window. "He's looking for her out of the window, so she's not there. Why
should he stare out into the dark? He's wild with impatience." ... Mitya
slipped back at once, and fell to gazing in at the window again. The old
man was sitting down at the table, apparently disappointed. At last he put
his elbow on the table, and laid his right cheek against his hand. Mitya
watched him eagerly.
"He's alone, he's alone!" he repeated again. "If she were here, his face
would be different."
Strange to say, a queer, irrational vexation rose up in his heart that she
was not here. "It's not that she's not here," he explained to himself,
immediately, "but that I can't tell for certain whether she is or not."
Mitya remembered afterwards that his mind was at that moment exceptionally
clear, that he took in everything to the slightest detail, and missed no
point. But a feeling of misery, the misery of uncertainty and indecision,
was growing in his heart with every instant. "Is she here or not?" The
angry doubt filled his heart, and suddenly, making up his mind, he put out
his hand and softly knocked on the window frame. He knocked the signal the
old man had agreed upon with Smerdyakov, twice slowly and then three times
more quickly, the signal that meant "Grushenka is here!"
The old man started, jerked up his head, and, jumping up quickly, ran to
the window. Mitya slipped away into the shadow. Fyodor Pavlovitch opened
the window and thrust his whole head out.
"Grushenka, is it you? Is it you?" he said, in a sort of trembling half-
whisper. "Where are you, my angel, where are you?" He was fearfully
agitated and breathless.
"He's alone." Mitya decided.
"Where are you?" cried the old man again; and he thrust his head out
farther, thrust it out to the shoulders, gazing in all directions, right
and left. "Come here, I've a little present for you. Come, I'll show
you...."
"He means the three thousand," thought Mitya.
"But where are you? Are you at the door? I'll open it directly."
And the old man almost climbed out of the window, peering out to the
right, where there was a door into the garden, trying to see into the
darkness. In another second he would certainly have run out to open the
door without waiting for Grushenka's answer.
Mitya looked at him from the side without stirring. The old man's profile
that he loathed so, his pendent Adam's apple, his hooked nose, his lips
that smiled in greedy expectation, were all brightly lighted up by the
slanting lamplight falling on the left from the room. A horrible fury of
hatred suddenly surged up in Mitya's heart: "There he was, his rival, the
man who had tormented him, had ruined his life!" It was a rush of that
sudden, furious, revengeful anger of which he had spoken, as though
foreseeing it, to Alyosha, four days ago in the arbor, when, in answer to
Alyosha's question, "How can you say you'll kill our father?" "I don't
know, I don't know," he had said then. "Perhaps I shall not kill him,
perhaps I shall. I'm afraid he'll suddenly be so loathsome to me at that
moment. I hate his double chin, his nose, his eyes, his shameless grin. I
feel a personal repulsion. That's what I'm afraid of, that's what may be
too much for me." ... This personal repulsion was growing unendurable.
Mitya was beside himself, he suddenly pulled the brass pestle out of his
pocket.
-------------------------------------
"God was watching over me then," Mitya himself said afterwards. At that
very moment Grigory waked up on his bed of sickness. Earlier in the
evening he had undergone the treatment which Smerdyakov had described to
Ivan. He had rubbed himself all over with vodka mixed with a secret, very
strong decoction, had drunk what was left of the mixture while his wife
repeated a "certain prayer" over him, after which he had gone to bed.
Marfa Ignatyevna had tasted the stuff, too, and, being unused to strong
drink, slept like the dead beside her husband.
But Grigory waked up in the night, quite suddenly, and, after a moment's
reflection, though he immediately felt a sharp pain in his back, he sat up
in bed. Then he deliberated again, got up and dressed hurriedly. Perhaps
his conscience was uneasy at the thought of sleeping while the house was
unguarded "in such perilous times." Smerdyakov, exhausted by his fit, lay
motionless in the next room. Marfa Ignatyevna did not stir. "The stuff's
been too much for the woman," Grigory thought, glancing at her, and
groaning, he went out on the steps. No doubt he only intended to look out
from the steps, for he was hardly able to walk, the pain in his back and
his right leg was intolerable. But he suddenly remembered that he had not
locked the little gate into the garden that evening. He was the most
punctual and precise of men, a man who adhered to an unchangeable routine,
and habits that lasted for years. Limping and writhing with pain he went
down the steps and towards the garden. Yes, the gate stood wide open.
Mechanically he stepped into the garden. Perhaps he fancied something,
perhaps caught some sound, and, glancing to the left he saw his master's
window open. No one was looking out of it then.
"What's it open for? It's not summer now," thought Grigory, and suddenly,
at that very instant he caught a glimpse of something extraordinary before
him in the garden. Forty paces in front of him a man seemed to be running
in the dark, a sort of shadow was moving very fast.
"Good Lord!" cried Grigory beside himself, and forgetting the pain in his
back, he hurried to intercept the running figure. He took a short cut,
evidently he knew the garden better; the flying figure went towards the
bath-house, ran behind it and rushed to the garden fence. Grigory
followed, not losing sight of him, and ran, forgetting everything. He
reached the fence at the very moment the man was climbing over it. Grigory
cried out, beside himself, pounced on him, and clutched his leg in his two
hands.
Yes, his foreboding had not deceived him. He recognized him, it was he,
the "monster," the "parricide."
"Parricide!" the old man shouted so that the whole neighborhood could
hear, but he had not time to shout more, he fell at once, as though struck
by lightning.
Mitya jumped back into the garden and bent over the fallen man. In Mitya's
hands was a brass pestle, and he flung it mechanically in the grass. The
pestle fell two paces from Grigory, not in the grass but on the path, in a
most conspicuous place. For some seconds he examined the prostrate figure
before him. The old man's head was covered with blood. Mitya put out his
hand and began feeling it. He remembered afterwards clearly, that he had
been awfully anxious to make sure whether he had broken the old man's
skull, or simply stunned him with the pestle. But the blood was flowing
horribly; and in a moment Mitya's fingers were drenched with the hot
stream. He remembered taking out of his pocket the clean white
handkerchief with which he had provided himself for his visit to Madame
Hohlakov, and putting it to the old man's head, senselessly trying to wipe
the blood from his face and temples. But the handkerchief was instantly
soaked with blood.
"Good heavens! what am I doing it for?" thought Mitya, suddenly pulling
himself together. "If I have broken his skull, how can I find out now? And
what difference does it make now?" he added, hopelessly. "If I've killed
him, I've killed him.... You've come to grief, old man, so there you must
lie!" he said aloud. And suddenly turning to the fence, he vaulted over it
into the lane and fell to running--the handkerchief soaked with blood he
held, crushed up in his right fist, and as he ran he thrust it into the
back pocket of his coat. He ran headlong, and the few passers-by who met
him in the dark, in the streets, remembered afterwards that they had met a
man running that night. He flew back again to the widow Morozov's house.
Immediately after he had left it that evening, Fenya had rushed to the
chief porter, Nazar Ivanovitch, and besought him, for Christ's sake, "not
to let the captain in again to-day or to-morrow." Nazar Ivanovitch
promised, but went upstairs to his mistress who had suddenly sent for him,
and meeting his nephew, a boy of twenty, who had recently come from the
country, on the way up told him to take his place, but forgot to mention
"the captain." Mitya, running up to the gate, knocked. The lad instantly
recognized him, for Mitya had more than once tipped him. Opening the gate
at once, he let him in, and hastened to inform him with a good-humored
smile that "Agrafena Alexandrovna is not at home now, you know."
"Where is she then, Prohor?" asked Mitya, stopping short.
"She set off this evening, some two hours ago, with Timofey, to Mokroe."
"What for?" cried Mitya.
"That I can't say. To see some officer. Some one invited her and horses
were sent to fetch her."
Mitya left him, and ran like a madman to Fenya.
Chapter V. A Sudden Resolution
She was sitting in the kitchen with her grandmother; they were both just
going to bed. Relying on Nazar Ivanovitch, they had not locked themselves
in. Mitya ran in, pounced on Fenya and seized her by the throat.
"Speak at once! Where is she? With whom is she now, at Mokroe?" he roared
furiously.
Both the women squealed.
"Aie! I'll tell you. Aie! Dmitri Fyodorovitch, darling, I'll tell you
everything directly, I won't hide anything," gabbled Fenya, frightened to
death; "she's gone to Mokroe, to her officer."
"What officer?" roared Mitya.
"To her officer, the same one she used to know, the one who threw her over
five years ago," cackled Fenya, as fast as she could speak.
Mitya withdrew the hands with which he was squeezing her throat. He stood
facing her, pale as death, unable to utter a word, but his eyes showed
that he realized it all, all, from the first word, and guessed the whole
position. Poor Fenya was not in a condition at that moment to observe
whether he understood or not. She remained sitting on the trunk as she had
been when he ran into the room, trembling all over, holding her hands out
before her as though trying to defend herself. She seemed to have grown
rigid in that position. Her wide-opened, scared eyes were fixed immovably
upon him. And to make matters worse, both his hands were smeared with
blood. On the way, as he ran, he must have touched his forehead with them,
wiping off the perspiration, so that on his forehead and his right cheek
were blood-stained patches. Fenya was on the verge of hysterics. The old
cook had jumped up and was staring at him like a mad woman, almost
unconscious with terror.
Mitya stood for a moment, then mechanically sank on to a chair next to
Fenya. He sat, not reflecting but, as it were, terror-stricken, benumbed.
Yet everything was clear as day: that officer, he knew about him, he knew
everything perfectly, he had known it from Grushenka herself, had known
that a letter had come from him a month before. So that for a month, for a
whole month, this had been going on, a secret from him, till the very
arrival of this new man, and he had never thought of him! But how could
he, how could he not have thought of him? Why was it he had forgotten this
officer, like that, forgotten him as soon as he heard of him? That was the
question that faced him like some monstrous thing. And he looked at this
monstrous thing with horror, growing cold with horror.
But suddenly, as gently and mildly as a gentle and affectionate child, he
began speaking to Fenya as though he had utterly forgotten how he had
scared and hurt her just now. He fell to questioning Fenya with an extreme
preciseness, astonishing in his position, and though the girl looked
wildly at his blood-stained hands, she, too, with wonderful readiness and
rapidity, answered every question as though eager to put the whole truth
and nothing but the truth before him. Little by little, even with a sort
of enjoyment, she began explaining every detail, not wanting to torment
him, but, as it were, eager to be of the utmost service to him. She
described the whole of that day, in great detail, the visit of Rakitin and
Alyosha, how she, Fenya, had stood on the watch, how the mistress had set
off, and how she had called out of the window to Alyosha to give him,
Mitya, her greetings, and to tell him "to remember for ever how she had
loved him for an hour."
Hearing of the message, Mitya suddenly smiled, and there was a flush of
color on his pale cheeks. At the same moment Fenya said to him, not a bit
afraid now to be inquisitive:
"Look at your hands, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. They're all over blood!"
"Yes," answered Mitya mechanically. He looked carelessly at his hands and
at once forgot them and Fenya's question.
He sank into silence again. Twenty minutes had passed since he had run in.
His first horror was over, but evidently some new fixed determination had
taken possession of him. He suddenly stood up, smiling dreamily.
"What has happened to you, sir?" said Fenya, pointing to his hands again.
She spoke compassionately, as though she felt very near to him now in his
grief. Mitya looked at his hands again.
"That's blood, Fenya," he said, looking at her with a strange expression.
"That's human blood, and my God! why was it shed? But ... Fenya ...
there's a fence here" (he looked at her as though setting her a riddle),
"a high fence, and terrible to look at. But at dawn to-morrow, when the
sun rises, Mitya will leap over that fence.... You don't understand what
fence, Fenya, and, never mind.... You'll hear to-morrow and understand ...
and now, good-by. I won't stand in her way. I'll step aside, I know how to
step aside. Live, my joy.... You loved me for an hour, remember Mityenka
Karamazov so for ever.... She always used to call me Mityenka, do you
remember?"
And with those words he went suddenly out of the kitchen. Fenya was almost
more frightened at this sudden departure than she had been when he ran in
and attacked her.
Just ten minutes later Dmitri went in to Pyotr Ilyitch Perhotin, the young
official with whom he had pawned his pistols. It was by now half-past
eight, and Pyotr Ilyitch had finished his evening tea, and had just put
his coat on again to go to the "Metropolis" to play billiards. Mitya
caught him coming out.
Seeing him with his face all smeared with blood, the young man uttered a
cry of surprise.
"Good heavens! What is the matter?"
"I've come for my pistols," said Mitya, "and brought you the money. And
thanks very much. I'm in a hurry, Pyotr Ilyitch, please make haste."
Pyotr Ilyitch grew more and more surprised; he suddenly caught sight of a
bundle of bank-notes in Mitya's hand, and what was more, he had walked in
holding the notes as no one walks in and no one carries money: he had them
in his right hand, and held them outstretched as if to show them.
Perhotin's servant-boy, who met Mitya in the passage, said afterwards that
he walked into the passage in the same way, with the money outstretched in
his hand, so he must have been carrying them like that even in the
streets. They were all rainbow-colored hundred-rouble notes, and the
fingers holding them were covered with blood.
When Pyotr Ilyitch was questioned later on as to the sum of money, he said
that it was difficult to judge at a glance, but that it might have been
two thousand, or perhaps three, but it was a big, "fat" bundle. "Dmitri
Fyodorovitch," so he testified afterwards, "seemed unlike himself, too;
not drunk, but, as it were, exalted, lost to everything, but at the same
time, as it were, absorbed, as though pondering and searching for
something and unable to come to a decision. He was in great haste,
answered abruptly and very strangely, and at moments seemed not at all
dejected but quite cheerful."
"But what _is_ the matter with you? What's wrong?" cried Pyotr Ilyitch,
looking wildly at his guest. "How is it that you're all covered with
blood? Have you had a fall? Look at yourself!"
He took him by the elbow and led him to the glass.
Seeing his blood-stained face, Mitya started and scowled wrathfully.
"Damnation! That's the last straw," he muttered angrily, hurriedly
changing the notes from his right hand to the left, and impulsively jerked
the handkerchief out of his pocket. But the handkerchief turned out to be
soaked with blood, too (it was the handkerchief he had used to wipe
Grigory's face). There was scarcely a white spot on it, and it had not
merely begun to dry, but had stiffened into a crumpled ball and could not
be pulled apart. Mitya threw it angrily on the floor.
"Oh, damn it!" he said. "Haven't you a rag of some sort ... to wipe my
face?"
"So you're only stained, not wounded? You'd better wash," said Pyotr
Ilyitch. "Here's a wash-stand. I'll pour you out some water."
"A wash-stand? That's all right ... but where am I to put this?"
With the strangest perplexity he indicated his bundle of hundred-rouble
notes, looking inquiringly at Pyotr Ilyitch as though it were for him to
decide what he, Mitya, was to do with his own money.
"In your pocket, or on the table here. They won't be lost."
"In my pocket? Yes, in my pocket. All right.... But, I say, that's all
nonsense," he cried, as though suddenly coming out of his absorption.
"Look here, let's first settle that business of the pistols. Give them
back to me. Here's your money ... because I am in great need of them ...
and I haven't a minute, a minute to spare."
And taking the topmost note from the bundle he held it out to Pyotr
Ilyitch.
"But I shan't have change enough. Haven't you less?"
"No," said Mitya, looking again at the bundle, and as though not trusting
his own words he turned over two or three of the topmost ones.
"No, they're all alike," he added, and again he looked inquiringly at
Pyotr Ilyitch.
"How have you grown so rich?" the latter asked. "Wait, I'll send my boy to
Plotnikov's, they close late--to see if they won't change it. Here, Misha!"
he called into the passage.
"To Plotnikov's shop--first-rate!" cried Mitya, as though struck by an
idea. "Misha," he turned to the boy as he came in, "look here, run to
Plotnikov's and tell them that Dmitri Fyodorovitch sends his greetings,
and will be there directly.... But listen, listen, tell them to have
champagne, three dozen bottles, ready before I come, and packed as it was
to take to Mokroe. I took four dozen with me then," he added (suddenly
addressing Pyotr Ilyitch); "they know all about it, don't you trouble,
Misha," he turned again to the boy. "Stay, listen; tell them to put in
cheese, Strasburg pies, smoked fish, ham, caviare, and everything,
everything they've got, up to a hundred roubles, or a hundred and twenty
as before.... But wait: don't let them forget dessert, sweets, pears,
water-melons, two or three or four--no, one melon's enough, and chocolate,
candy, toffee, fondants; in fact, everything I took to Mokroe before,
three hundred roubles' worth with the champagne ... let it be just the
same again. And remember, Misha, if you are called Misha--His name is
Misha, isn't it?" He turned to Pyotr Ilyitch again.
"Wait a minute," Protr Ilyitch intervened, listening and watching him
uneasily, "you'd better go yourself and tell them. He'll muddle it."
"He will, I see he will! Eh, Misha! Why, I was going to kiss you for the
commission.... If you don't make a mistake, there's ten roubles for you,
run along, make haste.... Champagne's the chief thing, let them bring up
champagne. And brandy, too, and red and white wine, and all I had then....
They know what I had then."
"But listen!" Pyotr Ilyitch interrupted with some impatience. "I say, let
him simply run and change the money and tell them not to close, and you go
and tell them.... Give him your note. Be off, Misha! Put your best leg
forward!"
Pyotr Ilyitch seemed to hurry Misha off on purpose, because the boy
remained standing with his mouth and eyes wide open, apparently
understanding little of Mitya's orders, gazing up with amazement and
terror at his blood-stained face and the trembling bloodstained fingers
that held the notes.
"Well, now come and wash," said Pyotr Ilyitch sternly. "Put the money on
the table or else in your pocket.... That's right, come along. But take
off your coat."
And beginning to help him off with his coat, he cried out again:
"Look, your coat's covered with blood, too!"
"That ... it's not the coat. It's only a little here on the sleeve.... And
that's only here where the handkerchief lay. It must have soaked through.
I must have sat on the handkerchief at Fenya's, and the blood's come
through," Mitya explained at once with a childlike unconsciousness that
was astounding. Pyotr Ilyitch listened, frowning.
"Well, you must have been up to something; you must have been fighting
with some one," he muttered.
They began to wash. Pyotr Ilyitch held the jug and poured out the water.
Mitya, in desperate haste, scarcely soaped his hands (they were trembling,
and Pyotr Ilyitch remembered it afterwards). But the young official
insisted on his soaping them thoroughly and rubbing them more. He seemed
to exercise more and more sway over Mitya, as time went on. It may be
noted in passing that he was a young man of sturdy character.
"Look, you haven't got your nails clean. Now rub your face; here, on your
temples, by your ear.... Will you go in that shirt? Where are you going?
Look, all the cuff of your right sleeve is covered with blood."
"Yes, it's all bloody," observed Mitya, looking at the cuff of his shirt.
"Then change your shirt."
"I haven't time. You see I'll ..." Mitya went on with the same confiding
ingenuousness, drying his face and hands on the towel, and putting on his
coat. "I'll turn it up at the wrist. It won't be seen under the coat....
You see!"
"Tell me now, what game have you been up to? Have you been fighting with
some one? In the tavern again, as before? Have you been beating that
captain again?" Pyotr Ilyitch asked him reproachfully. "Whom have you been
beating now ... or killing, perhaps?"
"Nonsense!" said Mitya.
"Why 'nonsense'?"
"Don't worry," said Mitya, and he suddenly laughed. "I smashed an old
woman in the market-place just now."
"Smashed? An old woman?"
"An old man!" cried Mitya, looking Pyotr Ilyitch straight in the face,
laughing, and shouting at him as though he were deaf.
"Confound it! An old woman, an old man.... Have you killed some one?"
"We made it up. We had a row--and made it up. In a place I know of. We
parted friends. A fool.... He's forgiven me.... He's sure to have forgiven
me by now ... if he had got up, he wouldn't have forgiven me"--Mitya
suddenly winked--"only damn him, you know, I say, Pyotr Ilyitch, damn him!
Don't worry about him! I don't want to just now!" Mitya snapped out,
resolutely.
"Whatever do you want to go picking quarrels with every one for? ... Just
as you did with that captain over some nonsense.... You've been fighting
and now you're rushing off on the spree--that's you all over! Three dozen
champagne--what do you want all that for?"
"Bravo! Now give me the pistols. Upon my honor I've no time now. I should
like to have a chat with you, my dear boy, but I haven't the time. And
there's no need, it's too late for talking. Where's my money? Where have I
put it?" he cried, thrusting his hands into his pockets.
"You put it on the table ... yourself.... Here it is. Had you forgotten?
Money's like dirt or water to you, it seems. Here are your pistols. It's
an odd thing, at six o'clock you pledged them for ten roubles, and now
you've got thousands. Two or three I should say."
"Three, you bet," laughed Mitya, stuffing the notes into the side-pocket
of his trousers.
"You'll lose it like that. Have you found a gold-mine?"
"The mines? The gold-mines?" Mitya shouted at the top of his voice and
went off into a roar of laughter. "Would you like to go to the mines,
Perhotin? There's a lady here who'll stump up three thousand for you, if
only you'll go. She did it for me, she's so awfully fond of gold-mines. Do
you know Madame Hohlakov?"
"I don't know her, but I've heard of her and seen her. Did she really give
you three thousand? Did she really?" said Pyotr Ilyitch, eyeing him
dubiously.
"As soon as the sun rises to-morrow, as soon as Phoebus, ever young, flies
upwards, praising and glorifying God, you go to her, this Madame Hohlakov,
and ask her whether she did stump up that three thousand or not. Try and
find out."
"I don't know on what terms you are ... since you say it so positively, I
suppose she did give it to you. You've got the money in your hand, but
instead of going to Siberia you're spending it all.... Where are you
really off to now, eh?"
"To Mokroe."
"To Mokroe? But it's night!"
"Once the lad had all, now the lad has naught," cried Mitya suddenly.
"How 'naught'? You say that with all those thousands!"
"I'm not talking about thousands. Damn thousands! I'm talking of the
female character.
Fickle is the heart of woman
Treacherous and full of vice;
I agree with Ulysses. That's what he says."
"I don't understand you!"
"Am I drunk?"
"Not drunk, but worse."
"I'm drunk in spirit, Pyotr Ilyitch, drunk in spirit! But that's enough!"
"What are you doing, loading the pistol?"
"I'm loading the pistol."
Unfastening the pistol-case, Mitya actually opened the powder horn, and
carefully sprinkled and rammed in the charge. Then he took the bullet and,
before inserting it, held it in two fingers in front of the candle.
"Why are you looking at the bullet?" asked Pyotr Ilyitch, watching him
with uneasy curiosity.
"Oh, a fancy. Why, if you meant to put that bullet in your brain, would
you look at it or not?"
"Why look at it?"
"It's going into my brain, so it's interesting to look and see what it's
like. But that's foolishness, a moment's foolishness. Now that's done," he
added, putting in the bullet and driving it home with the ramrod. "Pyotr
Ilyitch, my dear fellow, that's nonsense, all nonsense, and if only you
knew what nonsense! Give me a little piece of paper now."
"Here's some paper."
"No, a clean new piece, writing-paper. That's right."
And taking a pen from the table, Mitya rapidly wrote two lines, folded the
paper in four, and thrust it in his waistcoat pocket. He put the pistols
in the case, locked it up, and kept it in his hand. Then he looked at
Pyotr Ilyitch with a slow, thoughtful smile.
"Now, let's go."
"Where are we going? No, wait a minute.... Are you thinking of putting
that bullet in your brain, perhaps?" Pyotr Ilyitch asked uneasily.
"I was fooling about the bullet! I want to live. I love life! You may be
sure of that. I love golden-haired Phoebus and his warm light.... Dear
Pyotr Ilyitch, do you know how to step aside?"
"What do you mean by 'stepping aside'?"
"Making way. Making way for a dear creature, and for one I hate. And to
let the one I hate become dear--that's what making way means! And to say to
them: God bless you, go your way, pass on, while I--"
"While you--?"
"That's enough, let's go."
"Upon my word. I'll tell some one to prevent your going there," said Pyotr
Ilyitch, looking at him. "What are you going to Mokroe for, now?"
"There's a woman there, a woman. That's enough for you. You shut up."
"Listen, though you're such a savage I've always liked you.... I feel
anxious."
"Thanks, old fellow. I'm a savage you say. Savages, savages! That's what I
am always saying. Savages! Why, here's Misha! I was forgetting him."
Misha ran in, post-haste, with a handful of notes in change, and reported
that every one was in a bustle at the Plotnikovs'; "They're carrying down
the bottles, and the fish, and the tea; it will all be ready directly."
Mitya seized ten roubles and handed it to Pyotr Ilyitch, then tossed
another ten-rouble note to Misha.
"Don't dare to do such a thing!" cried Pyotr Ilyitch. "I won't have it in
my house, it's a bad, demoralizing habit. Put your money away. Here, put
it here, why waste it? It would come in handy to-morrow, and I dare say
you'll be coming to me to borrow ten roubles again. Why do you keep
putting the notes in your side-pocket? Ah, you'll lose them!"
"I say, my dear fellow, let's go to Mokroe together."
"What should I go for?"
"I say, let's open a bottle at once, and drink to life! I want to drink,
and especially to drink with you. I've never drunk with you, have I?"
"Very well, we can go to the 'Metropolis.' I was just going there."
"I haven't time for that. Let's drink at the Plotnikovs', in the back
room. Shall I ask you a riddle?"
"Ask away."
Mitya took the piece of paper out of his waistcoat pocket, unfolded it and
showed it. In a large, distinct hand was written: "I punish myself for my
whole life, my whole life I punish!"
"I will certainly speak to some one, I'll go at once," said Pyotr Ilyitch,
after reading the paper.
"You won't have time, dear boy, come and have a drink. March!"
Plotnikov's shop was at the corner of the street, next door but one to
Pyotr Ilyitch's. It was the largest grocery shop in our town, and by no
means a bad one, belonging to some rich merchants. They kept everything
that could be got in a Petersburg shop, grocery of all sort, wines
"bottled by the brothers Eliseyev," fruits, cigars, tea, coffee, sugar,
and so on. There were three shop-assistants and two errand boys always
employed. Though our part of the country had grown poorer, the landowners
had gone away, and trade had got worse, yet the grocery stores flourished
as before, every year with increasing prosperity; there were plenty of
purchasers for their goods.
They were awaiting Mitya with impatience in the shop. They had vivid
recollections of how he had bought, three or four weeks ago, wine and
goods of all sorts to the value of several hundred roubles, paid for in
cash (they would never have let him have anything on credit, of course).
They remembered that then, as now, he had had a bundle of hundred-rouble
notes in his hand, and had scattered them at random, without bargaining,
without reflecting, or caring to reflect what use so much wine and
provisions would be to him. The story was told all over the town that,
driving off then with Grushenka to Mokroe, he had "spent three thousand in
one night and the following day, and had come back from the spree without
a penny." He had picked up a whole troop of gypsies (encamped in our
neighborhood at the time), who for two days got money without stint out of
him while he was drunk, and drank expensive wine without stint. People
used to tell, laughing at Mitya, how he had given champagne to grimy-
handed peasants, and feasted the village women and girls on sweets and
Strasburg pies. Though to laugh at Mitya to his face was rather a risky
proceeding, there was much laughter behind his back, especially in the
tavern, at his own ingenuous public avowal that all he had got out of
Grushenka by this "escapade" was "permission to kiss her foot, and that
was the utmost she had allowed him."
By the time Mitya and Pyotr Ilyitch reached the shop, they found a cart
with three horses harnessed abreast with bells, and with Andrey, the
driver, ready waiting for Mitya at the entrance. In the shop they had
almost entirely finished packing one box of provisions, and were only
waiting for Mitya's arrival to nail it down and put it in the cart. Pyotr
Ilyitch was astounded.
"Where did this cart come from in such a hurry?" he asked Mitya.
"I met Andrey as I ran to you, and told him to drive straight here to the
shop. There's no time to lose. Last time I drove with Timofey, but Timofey
now has gone on before me with the witch. Shall we be very late, Andrey?"
"They'll only get there an hour at most before us, not even that maybe. I
got Timofey ready to start. I know how he'll go. Their pace won't be ours,
Dmitri Fyodorovitch. How could it be? They won't get there an hour
earlier!" Andrey, a lanky, red-haired, middle-aged driver, wearing a full-
skirted coat, and with a kaftan on his arm, replied warmly.
"Fifty roubles for vodka if we're only an hour behind them."
"I warrant the time, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. Ech, they won't be half an hour
before us, let alone an hour."
Though Mitya bustled about seeing after things, he gave his orders
strangely, as it were disconnectedly, and inconsecutively. He began a
sentence and forgot the end of it. Pyotr Ilyitch found himself obliged to
come to the rescue.
"Four hundred roubles' worth, not less than four hundred roubles' worth,
just as it was then," commanded Mitya. "Four dozen champagne, not a bottle
less."
"What do you want with so much? What's it for? Stay!" cried Pyotr Ilyitch.
"What's this box? What's in it? Surely there isn't four hundred roubles'
worth here?"
The officious shopmen began explaining with oily politeness that the first
box contained only half a dozen bottles of champagne, and only "the most
indispensable articles," such as savories, sweets, toffee, etc. But the
main part of the goods ordered would be packed and sent off, as on the
previous occasion, in a special cart also with three horses traveling at
full speed, so that it would arrive not more than an hour later than
Dmitri Fyodorovitch himself.
"Not more than an hour! Not more than an hour! And put in more toffee and
fondants. The girls there are so fond of it," Mitya insisted hotly.
"The fondants are all right. But what do you want with four dozen of
champagne? One would be enough," said Pyotr Ilyitch, almost angry. He
began bargaining, asking for a bill of the goods, and refused to be
satisfied. But he only succeeded in saving a hundred roubles. In the end
it was agreed that only three hundred roubles' worth should be sent.
"Well, you may go to the devil!" cried Pyotr Ilyitch, on second thoughts.
"What's it to do with me? Throw away your money, since it's cost you
nothing."
"This way, my economist, this way, don't be angry." Mitya drew him into a
room at the back of the shop. "They'll give us a bottle here directly.
We'll taste it. Ech, Pyotr Ilyitch, come along with me, for you're a nice
fellow, the sort I like."
Mitya sat down on a wicker chair, before a little table, covered with a
dirty dinner-napkin. Pyotr Ilyitch sat down opposite, and the champagne
soon appeared, and oysters were suggested to the gentlemen. "First-class
oysters, the last lot in."
"Hang the oysters. I don't eat them. And we don't need anything," cried
Pyotr Ilyitch, almost angrily.
"There's no time for oysters," said Mitya. "And I'm not hungry. Do you
know, friend," he said suddenly, with feeling, "I never have liked all
this disorder."
"Who does like it? Three dozen of champagne for peasants, upon my word,
that's enough to make any one angry!"
"That's not what I mean. I'm talking of a higher order. There's no order
in me, no higher order. But ... that's all over. There's no need to grieve
about it. It's too late, damn it! My whole life has been disorder, and one
must set it in order. Is that a pun, eh?"
"You're raving, not making puns!"
"Glory be to God in Heaven,
Glory be to God in me....
"That verse came from my heart once, it's not a verse, but a tear.... I
made it myself ... not while I was pulling the captain's beard,
though...."
"Why do you bring him in all of a sudden?"
"Why do I bring him in? Foolery! All things come to an end; all things are
made equal. That's the long and short of it."
"You know, I keep thinking of your pistols."
"That's all foolery, too! Drink, and don't be fanciful. I love life. I've
loved life too much, shamefully much. Enough! Let's drink to life, dear
boy, I propose the toast. Why am I pleased with myself? I'm a scoundrel,
but I'm satisfied with myself. And yet I'm tortured by the thought that
I'm a scoundrel, but satisfied with myself. I bless the creation. I'm
ready to bless God and His creation directly, but ... I must kill one
noxious insect for fear it should crawl and spoil life for others.... Let
us drink to life, dear brother. What can be more precious than life?
Nothing! To life, and to one queen of queens!"
"Let's drink to life and to your queen, too, if you like."
They drank a glass each. Although Mitya was excited and expansive, yet he
was melancholy, too. It was as though some heavy, overwhelming anxiety
were weighing upon him.
"Misha ... here's your Misha come! Misha, come here, my boy, drink this
glass to Phoebus, the golden-haired, of to-morrow morn...."
"What are you giving it him for?" cried Pyotr Ilyitch, irritably.
"Yes, yes, yes, let me! I want to!"
"E--ech!"
Misha emptied the glass, bowed, and ran out.
"He'll remember it afterwards," Mitya remarked. "Woman, I love woman! What
is woman? The queen of creation! My heart is sad, my heart is sad, Pyotr
Ilyitch. Do you remember Hamlet? 'I am very sorry, good Horatio! Alas,
poor Yorick!' Perhaps that's me, Yorick? Yes, I'm Yorick now, and a skull
afterwards."
Pyotr Ilyitch listened in silence. Mitya, too, was silent for a while.
"What dog's that you've got here?" he asked the shopman, casually,
noticing a pretty little lap-dog with dark eyes, sitting in the corner.
"It belongs to Varvara Alexyevna, the mistress," answered the clerk. "She
brought it and forgot it here. It must be taken back to her."
"I saw one like it ... in the regiment ..." murmured Mitya dreamily, "only
that one had its hind leg broken.... By the way, Pyotr Ilyitch, I wanted
to ask you: have you ever stolen anything in your life?"
"What a question!"
"Oh, I didn't mean anything. From somebody's pocket, you know. I don't
mean government money, every one steals that, and no doubt you do,
too...."
"You go to the devil."
"I'm talking of other people's money. Stealing straight out of a pocket?
Out of a purse, eh?"
"I stole twenty copecks from my mother when I was nine years old. I took
it off the table on the sly, and held it tight in my hand."
"Well, and what happened?"
"Oh, nothing. I kept it three days, then I felt ashamed, confessed, and
gave it back."
"And what then?"
"Naturally I was whipped. But why do you ask? Have you stolen something?"
"I have," said Mitya, winking slyly.
"What have you stolen?" inquired Pyotr Ilyitch curiously.
"I stole twenty copecks from my mother when I was nine years old, and gave
it back three days after."
As he said this, Mitya suddenly got up.
"Dmitri Fyodorovitch, won't you come now?" called Andrey from the door of
the shop.
"Are you ready? We'll come!" Mitya started. "A few more last words
and--Andrey, a glass of vodka at starting. Give him some brandy as well!
That box" (the one with the pistols) "put under my seat. Good-by, Pyotr
Ilyitch, don't remember evil against me."
"But you're coming back to-morrow?"
"Of course."
"Will you settle the little bill now?" cried the clerk, springing forward.
"Oh, yes, the bill. Of course."
He pulled the bundle of notes out of his pocket again, picked out three
hundred roubles, threw them on the counter, and ran hurriedly out of the
shop. Every one followed him out, bowing and wishing him good luck.
Andrey, coughing from the brandy he had just swallowed, jumped up on the
box. But Mitya was only just taking his seat when suddenly to his surprise
he saw Fenya before him. She ran up panting, clasped her hands before him
with a cry, and plumped down at his feet.
"Dmitri Fyodorovitch, dear good Dmitri Fyodorovitch, don't harm my
mistress. And it was I told you all about it.... And don't murder him, he
came first, he's hers! He'll marry Agrafena Alexandrovna now. That's why
he's come back from Siberia. Dmitri Fyodorovitch, dear, don't take a
fellow creature's life!"
"Tut--tut--tut! That's it, is it? So you're off there to make trouble!"
muttered Pyotr Ilyitch. "Now, it's all clear, as clear as daylight. Dmitri
Fyodorovitch, give me your pistols at once if you mean to behave like a
man," he shouted aloud to Mitya. "Do you hear, Dmitri?"
"The pistols? Wait a bit, brother, I'll throw them into the pool on the
road," answered Mitya. "Fenya, get up, don't kneel to me. Mitya won't hurt
any one, the silly fool won't hurt any one again. But I say, Fenya," he
shouted, after having taken his seat. "I hurt you just now, so forgive me
and have pity on me, forgive a scoundrel.... But it doesn't matter if you
don't. It's all the same now. Now then, Andrey, look alive, fly along full
speed!"
Andrey whipped up the horses, and the bells began ringing.
"Good-by, Pyotr Ilyitch! My last tear is for you!..."
"He's not drunk, but he keeps babbling like a lunatic," Pyotr Ilyitch
thought as he watched him go. He had half a mind to stay and see the cart
packed with the remaining wines and provisions, knowing that they would
deceive and defraud Mitya. But, suddenly feeling vexed with himself, he
turned away with a curse and went to the tavern to play billiards.
"He's a fool, though he's a good fellow," he muttered as he went. "I've
heard of that officer, Grushenka's former flame. Well, if he has turned
up.... Ech, those pistols! Damn it all! I'm not his nurse! Let them do
what they like! Besides, it'll all come to nothing. They're a set of
brawlers, that's all. They'll drink and fight, fight and make friends
again. They are not men who do anything real. What does he mean by 'I'm
stepping aside, I'm punishing myself?' It'll come to nothing! He's shouted
such phrases a thousand times, drunk, in the taverns. But now he's not
drunk. 'Drunk in spirit'--they're fond of fine phrases, the villains. Am I
his nurse? He must have been fighting, his face was all over blood. With
whom? I shall find out at the 'Metropolis.' And his handkerchief was
soaked in blood.... It's still lying on my floor.... Hang it!"
He reached the tavern in a bad humor and at once made up a game. The game
cheered him. He played a second game, and suddenly began telling one of
his partners that Dmitri Karamazov had come in for some cash
again--something like three thousand roubles, and had gone to Mokroe again
to spend it with Grushenka.... This news roused singular interest in his
listeners. They all spoke of it, not laughing, but with a strange gravity.
They left off playing.
"Three thousand? But where can he have got three thousand?"
Questions were asked. The story of Madame Hohlakov's present was received
with skepticism.
"Hasn't he robbed his old father?--that's the question."
"Three thousand! There's something odd about it."
"He boasted aloud that he would kill his father; we all heard him, here.
And it was three thousand he talked about ..."
Pyotr Ilyitch listened. All at once he became short and dry in his
answers. He said not a word about the blood on Mitya's face and hands,
though he had meant to speak of it at first.
They began a third game, and by degrees the talk about Mitya died away.
But by the end of the third game, Pyotr Ilyitch felt no more desire for
billiards; he laid down the cue, and without having supper as he had
intended, he walked out of the tavern. When he reached the market-place he
stood still in perplexity, wondering at himself. He realized that what he
wanted was to go to Fyodor Pavlovitch's and find out if anything had
happened there. "On account of some stupid nonsense--as it's sure to turn
out--am I going to wake up the household and make a scandal? Fooh! damn it,
is it my business to look after them?"
In a very bad humor he went straight home, and suddenly remembered Fenya.
"Damn it all! I ought to have questioned her just now," he thought with
vexation, "I should have heard everything." And the desire to speak to
her, and so find out, became so pressing and importunate that when he was
half-way home he turned abruptly and went towards the house where
Grushenka lodged. Going up to the gate he knocked. The sound of the knock
in the silence of the night sobered him and made him feel annoyed. And no
one answered him; every one in the house was asleep.
"And I shall be making a fuss!" he thought, with a feeling of positive
discomfort. But instead of going away altogether, he fell to knocking
again with all his might, filling the street with clamor.
"Not coming? Well, I will knock them up, I will!" he muttered at each
knock, fuming at himself, but at the same time he redoubled his knocks on
the gate.
Chapter VI. "I Am Coming, Too!"
But Dmitri Fyodorovitch was speeding along the road. It was a little more
than twenty versts to Mokroe, but Andrey's three horses galloped at such a
pace that the distance might be covered in an hour and a quarter. The
swift motion revived Mitya. The air was fresh and cool, there were big
stars shining in the sky. It was the very night, and perhaps the very
hour, in which Alyosha fell on the earth, and rapturously swore to love it
for ever and ever.
All was confusion, confusion, in Mitya's soul, but although many things
were goading his heart, at that moment his whole being was yearning for
her, his queen, to whom he was flying to look on her for the last time.
One thing I can say for certain; his heart did not waver for one instant.
I shall perhaps not be believed when I say that this jealous lover felt
not the slightest jealousy of this new rival, who seemed to have sprung
out of the earth. If any other had appeared on the scene, he would have
been jealous at once, and would perhaps have stained his fierce hands with
blood again. But as he flew through the night, he felt no envy, no
hostility even, for the man who had been her first lover.... It is true he
had not yet seen him.
"Here there was no room for dispute: it was her right and his; this was
her first love which, after five years, she had not forgotten; so she had
loved him only for those five years, and I, how do I come in? What right
have I? Step aside, Mitya, and make way! What am I now? Now everything is
over apart from the officer--even if he had not appeared, everything would
be over ..."
These words would roughly have expressed his feelings, if he had been
capable of reasoning. But he could not reason at that moment. His present
plan of action had arisen without reasoning. At Fenya's first words, it
had sprung from feeling, and been adopted in a flash, with all its
consequences. And yet, in spite of his resolution, there was confusion in
his soul, an agonizing confusion: his resolution did not give him peace.
There was so much behind that tortured him. And it seemed strange to him,
at moments, to think that he had written his own sentence of death with
pen and paper: "I punish myself," and the paper was lying there in his
pocket, ready; the pistol was loaded; he had already resolved how, next
morning, he would meet the first warm ray of "golden-haired Phoebus."
And yet he could not be quit of the past, of all that he had left behind
and that tortured him. He felt that miserably, and the thought of it sank
into his heart with despair. There was one moment when he felt an impulse
to stop Andrey, to jump out of the cart, to pull out his loaded pistol,
and to make an end of everything without waiting for the dawn. But that
moment flew by like a spark. The horses galloped on, "devouring space,"
and as he drew near his goal, again the thought of her, of her alone, took
more and more complete possession of his soul, chasing away the fearful
images that had been haunting it. Oh, how he longed to look upon her, if
only for a moment, if only from a distance!
"She's now with _him_," he thought, "now I shall see what she looks like
with him, her first love, and that's all I want." Never had this woman,
who was such a fateful influence in his life, aroused such love in his
breast, such new and unknown feeling, surprising even to himself, a
feeling tender to devoutness, to self-effacement before her! "I will
efface myself!" he said, in a rush of almost hysterical ecstasy.
They had been galloping nearly an hour. Mitya was silent, and though
Andrey was, as a rule, a talkative peasant, he did not utter a word,
either. He seemed afraid to talk, he only whipped up smartly his three
lean, but mettlesome, bay horses. Suddenly Mitya cried out in horrible
anxiety:
"Andrey! What if they're asleep?"
This thought fell upon him like a blow. It had not occurred to him before.
"It may well be that they're gone to bed, by now, Dmitri Fyodorovitch."
Mitya frowned as though in pain. Yes, indeed ... he was rushing there ...
with such feelings ... while they were asleep ... she was asleep, perhaps,
there too.... An angry feeling surged up in his heart.
"Drive on, Andrey! Whip them up! Look alive!" he cried, beside himself.
"But maybe they're not in bed!" Andrey went on after a pause. "Timofey
said they were a lot of them there--"
"At the station?"
"Not at the posting-station, but at Plastunov's, at the inn, where they
let out horses, too."
"I know. So you say there are a lot of them? How's that? Who are they?"
cried Mitya, greatly dismayed at this unexpected news.
"Well, Timofey was saying they're all gentlefolk. Two from our town--who
they are I can't say--and there are two others, strangers, maybe more
besides. I didn't ask particularly. They've set to playing cards, so
Timofey said."
"Cards?"
"So, maybe they're not in bed if they're at cards. It's most likely not
more than eleven."
"Quicker, Andrey! Quicker!" Mitya cried again, nervously.
"May I ask you something, sir?" said Andrey, after a pause. "Only I'm
afraid of angering you, sir."
"What is it?"
"Why, Fenya threw herself at your feet just now, and begged you not to
harm her mistress, and some one else, too ... so you see, sir-- It's I am
taking you there ... forgive me, sir, it's my conscience ... maybe it's
stupid of me to speak of it--"
Mitya suddenly seized him by the shoulders from behind.
"Are you a driver?" he asked frantically.
"Yes, sir."
"Then you know that one has to make way. What would you say to a driver
who wouldn't make way for any one, but would just drive on and crush
people? No, a driver mustn't run over people. One can't run over a man.
One can't spoil people's lives. And if you have spoilt a life--punish
yourself.... If only you've spoilt, if only you've ruined any one's
life--punish yourself and go away."
These phrases burst from Mitya almost hysterically. Though Andrey was
surprised at him, he kept up the conversation.
"That's right, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, you're quite right, one mustn't crush
or torment a man, or any kind of creature, for every creature is created
by God. Take a horse, for instance, for some folks, even among us drivers,
drive anyhow. Nothing will restrain them, they just force it along."
"To hell?" Mitya interrupted, and went off into his abrupt, short laugh.
"Andrey, simple soul," he seized him by the shoulders again, "tell me,
will Dmitri Fyodorovitch Karamazov go to hell, or not, what do you think?"
"I don't know, darling, it depends on you, for you are ... you see, sir,
when the Son of God was nailed on the Cross and died, He went straight
down to hell from the Cross, and set free all sinners that were in agony.
And the devil groaned, because he thought that he would get no more
sinners in hell. And God said to him, then, 'Don't groan, for you shall
have all the mighty of the earth, the rulers, the chief judges, and the
rich men, and shall be filled up as you have been in all the ages till I
come again.' Those were His very words ..."
"A peasant legend! Capital! Whip up the left, Andrey!"
"So you see, sir, who it is hell's for," said Andrey, whipping up the left
horse, "but you're like a little child ... that's how we look on you ...
and though you're hasty-tempered, sir, yet God will forgive you for your
kind heart."
"And you, do you forgive me, Andrey?"
"What should I forgive you for, sir? You've never done me any harm."
"No, for every one, for every one, you here alone, on the road, will you
forgive me for every one? Speak, simple peasant heart!"
"Oh, sir! I feel afraid of driving you, your talk is so strange."
But Mitya did not hear. He was frantically praying and muttering to
himself.
"Lord, receive me, with all my lawlessness, and do not condemn me. Let me
pass by Thy judgment ... do not condemn me, for I have condemned myself,
do not condemn me, for I love Thee, O Lord. I am a wretch, but I love
Thee. If Thou sendest me to hell, I shall love Thee there, and from there
I shall cry out that I love Thee for ever and ever.... But let me love to
the end.... Here and now for just five hours ... till the first light of
Thy day ... for I love the queen of my soul ... I love her and I cannot
help loving her. Thou seest my whole heart.... I shall gallop up, I shall
fall before her and say, 'You are right to pass on and leave me. Farewell
and forget your victim ... never fret yourself about me!' "
"Mokroe!" cried Andrey, pointing ahead with his whip.
Through the pale darkness of the night loomed a solid black mass of
buildings, flung down, as it were, in the vast plain. The village of
Mokroe numbered two thousand inhabitants, but at that hour all were
asleep, and only here and there a few lights still twinkled.
"Drive on, Andrey, I come!" Mitya exclaimed, feverishly.
"They're not asleep," said Andrey again, pointing with his whip to the
Plastunovs' inn, which was at the entrance to the village. The six
windows, looking on the street, were all brightly lighted up.
"They're not asleep," Mitya repeated joyously. "Quicker, Andrey! Gallop!
Drive up with a dash! Set the bells ringing! Let all know that I have
come. I'm coming! I'm coming, too!"
Andrey lashed his exhausted team into a gallop, drove with a dash and
pulled up his steaming, panting horses at the high flight of steps.
Mitya jumped out of the cart just as the innkeeper, on his way to bed,
peeped out from the steps curious to see who had arrived.
"Trifon Borissovitch, is that you?"
The innkeeper bent down, looked intently, ran down the steps, and rushed
up to the guest with obsequious delight.
"Dmitri Fyodorovitch, your honor! Do I see you again?"
Trifon Borissovitch was a thick-set, healthy peasant, of middle height,
with a rather fat face. His expression was severe and uncompromising,
especially with the peasants of Mokroe, but he had the power of assuming
the most obsequious countenance, when he had an inkling that it was to his
interest. He dressed in Russian style, with a shirt buttoning down on one
side, and a full-skirted coat. He had saved a good sum of money, but was
for ever dreaming of improving his position. More than half the peasants
were in his clutches, every one in the neighborhood was in debt to him.
From the neighboring landowners he bought and rented lands which were
worked by the peasants, in payment of debts which they could never shake
off. He was a widower, with four grown-up daughters. One of them was
already a widow and lived in the inn with her two children, his
grandchildren, and worked for him like a charwoman. Another of his
daughters was married to a petty official, and in one of the rooms of the
inn, on the wall could be seen, among the family photographs, a miniature
photograph of this official in uniform and official epaulettes. The two
younger daughters used to wear fashionable blue or green dresses, fitting
tight at the back, and with trains a yard long, on Church holidays or when
they went to pay visits. But next morning they would get up at dawn, as
usual, sweep out the rooms with a birch-broom, empty the slops, and clean
up after lodgers.
In spite of the thousands of roubles he had saved, Trifon Borissovitch was
very fond of emptying the pockets of a drunken guest, and remembering that
not a month ago he had, in twenty-four hours, made two if not three
hundred roubles out of Dmitri, when he had come on his escapade with
Grushenka, he met him now with eager welcome, scenting his prey the moment
Mitya drove up to the steps.
"Dmitri Fyodorovitch, dear sir, we see you once more!"
"Stay, Trifon Borissovitch," began Mitya, "first and foremost, where is
she?"
"Agrafena Alexandrovna?" The inn-keeper understood at once, looking
sharply into Mitya's face. "She's here, too ..."
"With whom? With whom?"
"Some strangers. One is an official gentleman, a Pole, to judge from his
speech. He sent the horses for her from here; and there's another with
him, a friend of his, or a fellow traveler, there's no telling. They're
dressed like civilians."
"Well, are they feasting? Have they money?"
"Poor sort of a feast! Nothing to boast of, Dmitri Fyodorovitch."
"Nothing to boast of? And who are the others?"
"They're two gentlemen from the town.... They've come back from Tcherny,
and are putting up here. One's quite a young gentleman, a relative of Mr.
Miuesov, he must be, but I've forgotten his name ... and I expect you know
the other, too, a gentleman called Maximov. He's been on a pilgrimage, so
he says, to the monastery in the town. He's traveling with this young
relation of Mr. Miuesov."
"Is that all?"
"Yes."
"Stay, listen, Trifon Borissovitch. Tell me the chief thing: What of her?
How is she?"
"Oh, she's only just come. She's sitting with them."
"Is she cheerful? Is she laughing?"
"No, I think she's not laughing much. She's sitting quite dull. She's
combing the young gentleman's hair."
"The Pole--the officer?"
"He's not young, and he's not an officer, either. Not him, sir. It's the
young gentleman that's Mr. Miuesov's relation ... I've forgotten his name."
"Kalganov."
"That's it, Kalganov!"
"All right. I'll see for myself. Are they playing cards?"
"They have been playing, but they've left off. They've been drinking tea,
the official gentleman asked for liqueurs."
"Stay, Trifon Borissovitch, stay, my good soul, I'll see for myself. Now
answer one more question: are the gypsies here?"
"You can't have the gypsies now, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. The authorities have
sent them away. But we've Jews that play the cymbals and the fiddle in the
village, so one might send for them. They'd come."
"Send for them. Certainly send for them!" cried Mitya. "And you can get
the girls together as you did then, Marya especially, Stepanida, too, and
Arina. Two hundred roubles for a chorus!"
"Oh, for a sum like that I can get all the village together, though by now
they're asleep. Are the peasants here worth such kindness, Dmitri
Fyodorovitch, or the girls either? To spend a sum like that on such
coarseness and rudeness! What's the good of giving a peasant a cigar to
smoke, the stinking ruffian! And the girls are all lousy. Besides, I'll
get my daughters up for nothing, let alone a sum like that. They've only
just gone to bed, I'll give them a kick and set them singing for you. You
gave the peasants champagne to drink the other day, e--ech!"
For all his pretended compassion for Mitya, Trifon Borissovitch had hidden
half a dozen bottles of champagne on that last occasion, and had picked up
a hundred-rouble note under the table, and it had remained in his
clutches.
"Trifon Borissovitch, I sent more than one thousand flying last time I was
here. Do you remember?"
"You did send it flying. I may well remember. You must have left three
thousand behind you."
"Well, I've come to do the same again, do you see?"
And he pulled out his roll of notes, and held them up before the
innkeeper's nose.
"Now, listen and remember. In an hour's time the wine will arrive,
savories, pies, and sweets--bring them all up at once. That box Andrey has
got is to be brought up at once, too. Open it, and hand champagne
immediately. And the girls, we must have the girls, Marya especially."
He turned to the cart and pulled out the box of pistols.
"Here, Andrey, let's settle. Here's fifteen roubles for the drive, and
fifty for vodka ... for your readiness, for your love.... Remember
Karamazov!"
"I'm afraid, sir," faltered Andrey. "Give me five roubles extra, but more
I won't take. Trifon Borissovitch, bear witness. Forgive my foolish words
..."
"What are you afraid of?" asked Mitya, scanning him. "Well, go to the
devil, if that's it!" he cried, flinging him five roubles. "Now, Trifon
Borissovitch, take me up quietly and let me first get a look at them, so
that they don't see me. Where are they? In the blue room?"
Trifon Borissovitch looked apprehensively at Mitya, but at once obediently
did his bidding. Leading him into the passage, he went himself into the
first large room, adjoining that in which the visitors were sitting, and
took the light away. Then he stealthily led Mitya in, and put him in a
corner in the dark, whence he could freely watch the company without being
seen. But Mitya did not look long, and, indeed, he could not see them, he
saw her, his heart throbbed violently, and all was dark before his eyes.
She was sitting sideways to the table in a low chair, and beside her, on
the sofa, was the pretty youth, Kalganov. She was holding his hand and
seemed to be laughing, while he, seeming vexed and not looking at her, was
saying something in a loud voice to Maximov, who sat the other side of the
table, facing Grushenka. Maximov was laughing violently at something. On
the sofa sat _he_, and on a chair by the sofa there was another stranger.
The one on the sofa was lolling backwards, smoking a pipe, and Mitya had
an impression of a stoutish, broad-faced, short little man, who was
apparently angry about something. His friend, the other stranger, struck
Mitya as extraordinarily tall, but he could make out nothing more. He
caught his breath. He could not bear it for a minute, he put the pistol-
case on a chest, and with a throbbing heart he walked, feeling cold all
over, straight into the blue room to face the company.
"Aie!" shrieked Grushenka, the first to notice him.
Chapter VII. The First And Rightful Lover
With his long, rapid strides, Mitya walked straight up to the table.
"Gentlemen," he said in a loud voice, almost shouting, yet stammering at
every word, "I ... I'm all right! Don't be afraid!" he exclaimed,
"I--there's nothing the matter," he turned suddenly to Grushenka, who had
shrunk back in her chair towards Kalganov, and clasped his hand tightly.
"I ... I'm coming, too. I'm here till morning. Gentlemen, may I stay with
you till morning? Only till morning, for the last time, in this same
room?"
So he finished, turning to the fat little man, with the pipe, sitting on
the sofa. The latter removed his pipe from his lips with dignity and
observed severely:
"_Panie_, we're here in private. There are other rooms."
"Why, it's you, Dmitri Fyodorovitch! What do you mean?" answered Kalganov
suddenly. "Sit down with us. How are you?"
"Delighted to see you, dear ... and precious fellow, I always thought a
lot of you." Mitya responded, joyfully and eagerly, at once holding out
his hand across the table.
"Aie! How tight you squeeze! You've quite broken my fingers," laughed
Kalganov.
"He always squeezes like that, always," Grushenka put in gayly, with a
timid smile, seeming suddenly convinced from Mitya's face that he was not
going to make a scene. She was watching him with intense curiosity and
still some uneasiness. She was impressed by something about him, and
indeed the last thing she expected of him was that he would come in and
speak like this at such a moment.
"Good evening," Maximov ventured blandly on the left. Mitya rushed up to
him, too.
"Good evening. You're here, too! How glad I am to find you here, too!
Gentlemen, gentlemen, I--" (He addressed the Polish gentleman with the pipe
again, evidently taking him for the most important person present.) "I
flew here.... I wanted to spend my last day, my last hour in this room, in
this very room ... where I, too, adored ... my queen.... Forgive me,
_panie_," he cried wildly, "I flew here and vowed-- Oh, don't be afraid,
it's my last night! Let's drink to our good understanding. They'll bring
the wine at once.... I brought this with me." (Something made him pull out
his bundle of notes.) "Allow me, _panie_! I want to have music, singing, a
revel, as we had before. But the worm, the unnecessary worm, will crawl
away, and there'll be no more of him. I will commemorate my day of joy on
my last night."
He was almost choking. There was so much, so much he wanted to say, but
strange exclamations were all that came from his lips. The Pole gazed
fixedly at him, at the bundle of notes in his hand; looked at Grushenka,
and was in evident perplexity.
"If my suverin lady is permitting--" he was beginning.
"What does 'suverin' mean? 'Sovereign,' I suppose?" interrupted Grushenka.
"I can't help laughing at you, the way you talk. Sit down, Mitya, what are
you talking about? Don't frighten us, please. You won't frighten us, will
you? If you won't, I am glad to see you ..."
"Me, me frighten you?" cried Mitya, flinging up his hands. "Oh, pass me
by, go your way, I won't hinder you!..."
And suddenly he surprised them all, and no doubt himself as well, by
flinging himself on a chair, and bursting into tears, turning his head
away to the opposite wall, while his arms clasped the back of the chair
tight, as though embracing it.
"Come, come, what a fellow you are!" cried Grushenka reproachfully.
"That's just how he comes to see me--he begins talking, and I can't make
out what he means. He cried like that once before, and now he's crying
again! It's shameful! Why are you crying? _As though you had anything to
cry for!_" she added enigmatically, emphasizing each word with some
irritability.
"I ... I'm not crying.... Well, good evening!" He instantly turned round
in his chair, and suddenly laughed, not his abrupt wooden laugh, but a
long, quivering, inaudible nervous laugh.
"Well, there you are again.... Come, cheer up, cheer up!" Grushenka said
to him persuasively. "I'm very glad you've come, very glad, Mitya, do you
hear, I'm very glad! I want him to stay here with us," she said
peremptorily, addressing the whole company, though her words were
obviously meant for the man sitting on the sofa. "I wish it, I wish it!
And if he goes away I shall go, too!" she added with flashing eyes.
"What my queen commands is law!" pronounced the Pole, gallantly kissing
Grushenka's hand. "I beg you, _panie_, to join our company," he added
politely, addressing Mitya.
Mitya was jumping up with the obvious intention of delivering another
tirade, but the words did not come.
"Let's drink, _panie_," he blurted out instead of making a speech. Every
one laughed.
"Good heavens! I thought he was going to begin again!" Grushenka exclaimed
nervously. "Do you hear, Mitya," she went on insistently, "don't prance
about, but it's nice you've brought the champagne. I want some myself, and
I can't bear liqueurs. And best of all, you've come yourself. We were
fearfully dull here.... You've come for a spree again, I suppose? But put
your money in your pocket. Where did you get such a lot?"
Mitya had been, all this time, holding in his hand the crumpled bundle of
notes on which the eyes of all, especially of the Poles, were fixed. In
confusion he thrust them hurriedly into his pocket. He flushed. At that
moment the innkeeper brought in an uncorked bottle of champagne, and
glasses on a tray. Mitya snatched up the bottle, but he was so bewildered
that he did not know what to do with it. Kalganov took it from him and
poured out the champagne.
"Another! Another bottle!" Mitya cried to the innkeeper, and, forgetting
to clink glasses with the Pole whom he had so solemnly invited to drink to
their good understanding, he drank off his glass without waiting for any
one else. His whole countenance suddenly changed. The solemn and tragic
expression with which he had entered vanished completely, and a look of
something childlike came into his face. He seemed to have become suddenly
gentle and subdued. He looked shyly and happily at every one, with a
continual nervous little laugh, and the blissful expression of a dog who
has done wrong, been punished, and forgiven. He seemed to have forgotten
everything, and was looking round at every one with a childlike smile of
delight. He looked at Grushenka, laughing continually, and bringing his
chair close up to her. By degrees he had gained some idea of the two
Poles, though he had formed no definite conception of them yet.
The Pole on the sofa struck him by his dignified demeanor and his Polish
accent; and, above all, by his pipe. "Well, what of it? It's a good thing
he's smoking a pipe," he reflected. The Pole's puffy, middle-aged face,
with its tiny nose and two very thin, pointed, dyed and impudent-looking
mustaches, had not so far roused the faintest doubts in Mitya. He was not
even particularly struck by the Pole's absurd wig made in Siberia, with
love-locks foolishly combed forward over the temples. "I suppose it's all
right since he wears a wig," he went on, musing blissfully. The other,
younger Pole, who was staring insolently and defiantly at the company and
listening to the conversation with silent contempt, still only impressed
Mitya by his great height, which was in striking contrast to the Pole on
the sofa. "If he stood up he'd be six foot three." The thought flitted
through Mitya's mind. It occurred to him, too, that this Pole must be the
friend of the other, as it were, a "bodyguard," and no doubt the big Pole
was at the disposal of the little Pole with the pipe. But this all seemed
to Mitya perfectly right and not to be questioned. In his mood of doglike
submissiveness all feeling of rivalry had died away.
Grushenka's mood and the enigmatic tone of some of her words he completely
failed to grasp. All he understood, with thrilling heart, was that she was
kind to him, that she had forgiven him, and made him sit by her. He was
beside himself with delight, watching her sip her glass of champagne. The
silence of the company seemed somehow to strike him, however, and he
looked round at every one with expectant eyes.
"Why are we sitting here though, gentlemen? Why don't you begin doing
something?" his smiling eyes seemed to ask.
"He keeps talking nonsense, and we were all laughing," Kalganov began
suddenly, as though divining his thought, and pointing to Maximov.
Mitya immediately stared at Kalganov and then at Maximov.
"He's talking nonsense?" he laughed, his short, wooden laugh, seeming
suddenly delighted at something--"ha ha!"
"Yes. Would you believe it, he will have it that all our cavalry officers
in the twenties married Polish women. That's awful rot, isn't it?"
"Polish women?" repeated Mitya, perfectly ecstatic.
Kalganov was well aware of Mitya's attitude to Grushenka, and he guessed
about the Pole, too, but that did not so much interest him, perhaps did
not interest him at all; what he was interested in was Maximov. He had
come here with Maximov by chance, and he met the Poles here at the inn for
the first time in his life. Grushenka he knew before, and had once been
with some one to see her; but she had not taken to him. But here she
looked at him very affectionately: before Mitya's arrival, she had been
making much of him, but he seemed somehow to be unmoved by it. He was a
boy, not over twenty, dressed like a dandy, with a very charming fair-
skinned face, and splendid thick, fair hair. From his fair face looked out
beautiful pale blue eyes, with an intelligent and sometimes even deep
expression, beyond his age indeed, although the young man sometimes looked
and talked quite like a child, and was not at all ashamed of it, even when
he was aware of it himself. As a rule he was very willful, even
capricious, though always friendly. Sometimes there was something fixed
and obstinate in his expression. He would look at you and listen, seeming
all the while to be persistently dreaming over something else. Often he
was listless and lazy, at other times he would grow excited, sometimes,
apparently, over the most trivial matters.
"Only imagine, I've been taking him about with me for the last four days,"
he went on, indolently drawling his words, quite naturally though, without
the slightest affectation. "Ever since your brother, do you remember,
shoved him off the carriage and sent him flying. That made me take an
interest in him at the time, and I took him into the country, but he keeps
talking such rot I'm ashamed to be with him. I'm taking him back."
"The gentleman has not seen Polish ladies, and says what is impossible,"
the Pole with the pipe observed to Maximov.
He spoke Russian fairly well, much better, anyway, than he pretended. If
he used Russian words, he always distorted them into a Polish form.
"But I was married to a Polish lady myself," tittered Maximov.
"But did you serve in the cavalry? You were talking about the cavalry.
Were you a cavalry officer?" put in Kalganov at once.
"Was he a cavalry officer indeed? Ha ha!" cried Mitya, listening eagerly,
and turning his inquiring eyes to each as he spoke, as though there were
no knowing what he might hear from each.
"No, you see," Maximov turned to him. "What I mean is that those pretty
Polish ladies ... when they danced the mazurka with our Uhlans ... when
one of them dances a mazurka with a Uhlan she jumps on his knee like a
kitten ... a little white one ... and the _pan_-father and _pan_-mother
look on and allow it.... They allow it ... and next day the Uhlan comes
and offers her his hand.... That's how it is ... offers her his hand, he
he!" Maximov ended, tittering.
"The _pan_ is a _lajdak_!" the tall Pole on the chair growled suddenly and
crossed one leg over the other. Mitya's eye was caught by his huge greased
boot, with its thick, dirty sole. The dress of both the Poles looked
rather greasy.
"Well, now it's _lajdak_! What's he scolding about?" said Grushenka,
suddenly vexed.
"_Pani_ Agrippina, what the gentleman saw in Poland were servant girls,
and not ladies of good birth," the Pole with the pipe observed to
Grushenka.
"You can reckon on that," the tall Pole snapped contemptuously.
"What next! Let him talk! People talk, why hinder them? It makes it
cheerful," Grushenka said crossly.
"I'm not hindering them, _pani_," said the Pole in the wig, with a long
look at Grushenka, and relapsing into dignified silence he sucked his pipe
again.
"No, no. The Polish gentleman spoke the truth." Kalganov got excited
again, as though it were a question of vast import. "He's never been in
Poland, so how can he talk about it? I suppose you weren't married in
Poland, were you?"
"No, in the Province of Smolensk. Only, a Uhlan had brought her to Russia
before that, my future wife, with her mamma and her aunt, and another
female relation with a grown-up son. He brought her straight from Poland
and gave her up to me. He was a lieutenant in our regiment, a very nice
young man. At first he meant to marry her himself. But he didn't marry
her, because she turned out to be lame."
"So you married a lame woman?" cried Kalganov.
"Yes. They both deceived me a little bit at the time, and concealed it. I
thought she was hopping; she kept hopping.... I thought it was for fun."
"So pleased she was going to marry you!" yelled Kalganov, in a ringing,
childish voice.
"Yes, so pleased. But it turned out to be quite a different cause.
Afterwards, when we were married, after the wedding, that very evening,
she confessed, and very touchingly asked forgiveness. 'I once jumped over
a puddle when I was a child,' she said, 'and injured my leg.' He he!"
Kalganov went off into the most childish laughter, almost falling on the
sofa. Grushenka, too, laughed. Mitya was at the pinnacle of happiness.
"Do you know, that's the truth, he's not lying now," exclaimed Kalganov,
turning to Mitya; "and do you know, he's been married twice; it's his
first wife he's talking about. But his second wife, do you know, ran away,
and is alive now."
"Is it possible?" said Mitya, turning quickly to Maximov with an
expression of the utmost astonishment.
"Yes. She did run away. I've had that unpleasant experience," Maximov
modestly assented, "with a _monsieur_. And what was worse, she'd had all
my little property transferred to her beforehand. 'You're an educated
man,' she said to me. 'You can always get your living.' She settled my
business with that. A venerable bishop once said to me: 'One of your wives
was lame, but the other was too light-footed.' He he!"
"Listen, listen!" cried Kalganov, bubbling over, "if he's telling lies--and
he often is--he's only doing it to amuse us all. There's no harm in that,
is there? You know, I sometimes like him. He's awfully low, but it's
natural to him, eh? Don't you think so? Some people are low from self-
interest, but he's simply so, from nature. Only fancy, he claims (he was
arguing about it all the way yesterday) that Gogol wrote _Dead Souls_
about him. Do you remember, there's a landowner called Maximov in it, whom
Nozdryov thrashed. He was charged, do you remember, 'for inflicting bodily
injury with rods on the landowner Maximov in a drunken condition.' Would
you believe it, he claims that he was that Maximov and that he was beaten!
Now can it be so? Tchitchikov made his journey, at the very latest, at the
beginning of the twenties, so that the dates don't fit. He couldn't have
been thrashed then, he couldn't, could he?"
It was difficult to imagine what Kalganov was excited about, but his
excitement was genuine. Mitya followed his lead without protest.
"Well, but if they did thrash him!" he cried, laughing.
"It's not that they thrashed me exactly, but what I mean is--" put in
Maximov.
"What do you mean? Either they thrashed you or they didn't."
"What o'clock is it, _panie_?" the Pole, with the pipe, asked his tall
friend, with a bored expression. The other shrugged his shoulders in
reply. Neither of them had a watch.
"Why not talk? Let other people talk. Mustn't other people talk because
you're bored?" Grushenka flew at him with evident intention of finding
fault. Something seemed for the first time to flash upon Mitya's mind.
This time the Pole answered with unmistakable irritability.
"_Pani_, I didn't oppose it. I didn't say anything."
"All right then. Come, tell us your story," Grushenka cried to Maximov.
"Why are you all silent?"
"There's nothing to tell, it's all so foolish," answered Maximov at once,
with evident satisfaction, mincing a little. "Besides, all that's by way
of allegory in Gogol, for he's made all the names have a meaning. Nozdryov
was really called Nosov, and Kuvshinikov had quite a different name, he
was called Shkvornev. Fenardi really was called Fenardi, only he wasn't an
Italian but a Russian, and Mamsel Fenardi was a pretty girl with her
pretty little legs in tights, and she had a little short skirt with
spangles, and she kept turning round and round, only not for four hours
but for four minutes only, and she bewitched every one..."
"But what were you beaten for?" cried Kalganov.
"For Piron!" answered Maximov.
"What Piron?" cried Mitya.
"The famous French writer, Piron. We were all drinking then, a big party
of us, in a tavern at that very fair. They'd invited me, and first of all
I began quoting epigrams. 'Is that you, Boileau? What a funny get-up!' and
Boileau answers that he's going to a masquerade, that is to the baths, he
he! And they took it to themselves, so I made haste to repeat another,
very sarcastic, well known to all educated people:
Yes, Sappho and Phaon are we!
But one grief is weighing on me.
You don't know your way to the sea!
They were still more offended and began abusing me in the most unseemly
way for it. And as ill-luck would have it, to set things right, I began
telling a very cultivated anecdote about Piron, how he was not accepted
into the French Academy, and to revenge himself wrote his own epitaph:
Ci-git Piron qui ne fut rien,
Pas meme academicien.
They seized me and thrashed me."
"But what for? What for?"
"For my education. People can thrash a man for anything," Maximov
concluded, briefly and sententiously.
"Eh, that's enough! That's all stupid, I don't want to listen. I thought
it would be amusing," Grushenka cut them short, suddenly.
Mitya started, and at once left off laughing. The tall Pole rose upon his
feet, and with the haughty air of a man, bored and out of his element,
began pacing from corner to corner of the room, his hands behind his back.
"Ah, he can't sit still," said Grushenka, looking at him contemptuously.
Mitya began to feel anxious. He noticed besides, that the Pole on the sofa
was looking at him with an irritable expression.
"_Panie!_" cried Mitya, "let's drink! and the other _pan_, too! Let us
drink."
In a flash he had pulled three glasses towards him, and filled them with
champagne.
"To Poland, _panovie_, I drink to your Poland!" cried Mitya.
"I shall be delighted, _panie_," said the Pole on the sofa, with dignity
and affable condescension, and he took his glass.
"And the other _pan_, what's his name? Drink, most illustrious, take your
glass!" Mitya urged.
"Pan Vrublevsky," put in the Pole on the sofa.
Pan Vrublevsky came up to the table, swaying as he walked.
"To Poland, _panovie!_" cried Mitya, raising his glass. "Hurrah!"
All three drank. Mitya seized the bottle and again poured out three
glasses.
"Now to Russia, _panovie_, and let us be brothers!"
"Pour out some for us," said Grushenka; "I'll drink to Russia, too!"
"So will I," said Kalganov.
"And I would, too ... to Russia, the old grandmother!" tittered Maximov.
"All! All!" cried Mitya. "Trifon Borissovitch, some more bottles!"
The other three bottles Mitya had brought with him were put on the table.
Mitya filled the glasses.
"To Russia! Hurrah!" he shouted again. All drank the toast except the
Poles, and Grushenka tossed off her whole glass at once. The Poles did not
touch theirs.
"How's this, _panovie_?" cried Mitya, "won't you drink it?"
Pan Vrublevsky took the glass, raised it and said with a resonant voice:
"To Russia as she was before 1772."
"Come, that's better!" cried the other Pole, and they both emptied their
glasses at once.
"You're fools, you _panovie_," broke suddenly from Mitya.
"_Panie!_" shouted both the Poles, menacingly, setting on Mitya like a
couple of cocks. Pan Vrublevsky was specially furious.
"Can one help loving one's own country?" he shouted.
"Be silent! Don't quarrel! I won't have any quarreling!" cried Grushenka
imperiously, and she stamped her foot on the floor. Her face glowed, her
eyes were shining. The effects of the glass she had just drunk were
apparent. Mitya was terribly alarmed.
"_Panovie_, forgive me! It was my fault, I'm sorry. Vrublevsky, _panie_
Vrublevsky, I'm sorry."
"Hold your tongue, you, anyway! Sit down, you stupid!" Grushenka scolded
with angry annoyance.
Every one sat down, all were silent, looking at one another.
"Gentlemen, I was the cause of it all," Mitya began again, unable to make
anything of Grushenka's words. "Come, why are we sitting here? What shall
we do ... to amuse ourselves again?"
"Ach, it's certainly anything but amusing!" Kalganov mumbled lazily.
"Let's play faro again, as we did just now," Maximov tittered suddenly.
"Faro? Splendid!" cried Mitya. "If only the _panovie_--"
"It's lite, _panovie_," the Pole on the sofa responded, as it were
unwillingly.
"That's true," assented Pan Vrublevsky.
"Lite? What do you mean by 'lite'?" asked Grushenka.
"Late, _pani_! 'a late hour' I mean," the Pole on the sofa explained.
"It's always late with them. They can never do anything!" Grushenka almost
shrieked in her anger. "They're dull themselves, so they want others to be
dull. Before you came, Mitya, they were just as silent and kept turning up
their noses at me."
"My goddess!" cried the Pole on the sofa, "I see you're not well-disposed
to me, that's why I'm gloomy. I'm ready, _panie_," added he, addressing
Mitya.
"Begin, _panie_," Mitya assented, pulling his notes out of his pocket, and
laying two hundred-rouble notes on the table. "I want to lose a lot to
you. Take your cards. Make the bank."
"We'll have cards from the landlord, _panie_," said the little Pole,
gravely and emphatically.
"That's much the best way," chimed in Pan Vrublevsky.
"From the landlord? Very good, I understand, let's get them from him.
Cards!" Mitya shouted to the landlord.
The landlord brought in a new, unopened pack, and informed Mitya that the
girls were getting ready, and that the Jews with the cymbals would most
likely be here soon; but the cart with the provisions had not yet arrived.
Mitya jumped up from the table and ran into the next room to give orders,
but only three girls had arrived, and Marya was not there yet. And he did
not know himself what orders to give and why he had run out. He only told
them to take out of the box the presents for the girls, the sweets, the
toffee and the fondants. "And vodka for Andrey, vodka for Andrey!" he
cried in haste. "I was rude to Andrey!"
Suddenly Maximov, who had followed him out, touched him on the shoulder.
"Give me five roubles," he whispered to Mitya. "I'll stake something at
faro, too, he he!"
"Capital! Splendid! Take ten, here!"
Again he took all the notes out of his pocket and picked out one for ten
roubles. "And if you lose that, come again, come again."
"Very good," Maximov whispered joyfully, and he ran back again. Mitya,
too, returned, apologizing for having kept them waiting. The Poles had
already sat down, and opened the pack. They looked much more amiable,
almost cordial. The Pole on the sofa had lighted another pipe and was
preparing to throw. He wore an air of solemnity.
"To your places, gentlemen," cried Pan Vrublevsky.
"No, I'm not going to play any more," observed Kalganov, "I've lost fifty
roubles to them just now."
"The _pan_ had no luck, perhaps he'll be lucky this time," the Pole on the
sofa observed in his direction.
"How much in the bank? To correspond?" asked Mitya.
"That's according, _panie_, maybe a hundred, maybe two hundred, as much as
you will stake."
"A million!" laughed Mitya.
"The Pan Captain has heard of Pan Podvysotsky, perhaps?"
"What Podvysotsky?"
"In Warsaw there was a bank and any one comes and stakes against it.
Podvysotsky comes, sees a thousand gold pieces, stakes against the bank.
The banker says, '_Panie_ Podvysotsky, are you laying down the gold, or
must we trust to your honor?' 'To my honor, _panie_,' says Podvysotsky.
'So much the better.' The banker throws the dice. Podvysotsky wins. 'Take
it, _panie_,' says the banker, and pulling out the drawer he gives him a
million. 'Take it, _panie_, this is your gain.' There was a million in the
bank. 'I didn't know that,' says Podvysotsky. '_Panie_ Podvysotsky,' said
the banker, 'you pledged your honor and we pledged ours.' Podvysotsky took
the million."
"That's not true," said Kalganov.
"_Panie_ Kalganov, in gentlemanly society one doesn't say such things."
"As if a Polish gambler would give away a million!" cried Mitya, but
checked himself at once. "Forgive me, _panie_, it's my fault again, he
would, he would give away a million, for honor, for Polish honor. You see
how I talk Polish, ha ha! Here, I stake ten roubles, the knave leads."
"And I put a rouble on the queen, the queen of hearts, the pretty little
_panienotchka_, he he!" laughed Maximov, pulling out his queen, and, as
though trying to conceal it from every one, he moved right up and crossed
himself hurriedly under the table. Mitya won. The rouble won, too.
"A corner!" cried Mitya.
"I'll bet another rouble, a 'single' stake," Maximov muttered gleefully,
hugely delighted at having won a rouble.
"Lost!" shouted Mitya. "A 'double' on the seven!"
The seven too was trumped.
"Stop!" cried Kalganov suddenly.
"Double! Double!" Mitya doubled his stakes, and each time he doubled the
stake, the card he doubled was trumped by the Poles. The rouble stakes
kept winning.
"On the double!" shouted Mitya furiously.
"You've lost two hundred, _panie_. Will you stake another hundred?" the
Pole on the sofa inquired.
"What? Lost two hundred already? Then another two hundred! All doubles!"
And pulling his money out of his pocket, Mitya was about to fling two
hundred roubles on the queen, but Kalganov covered it with his hand.
"That's enough!" he shouted in his ringing voice.
"What's the matter?" Mitya stared at him.
"That's enough! I don't want you to play any more. Don't!"
"Why?"
"Because I don't. Hang it, come away. That's why. I won't let you go on
playing."
Mitya gazed at him in astonishment.
"Give it up, Mitya. He may be right. You've lost a lot as it is," said
Grushenka, with a curious note in her voice. Both the Poles rose from
their seats with a deeply offended air.
"Are you joking, _panie_?" said the short man, looking severely at
Kalganov.
"How dare you!" Pan Vrublevsky, too, growled at Kalganov.
"Don't dare to shout like that," cried Grushenka. "Ah, you turkey-cocks!"
Mitya looked at each of them in turn. But something in Grushenka's face
suddenly struck him, and at the same instant something new flashed into
his mind--a strange new thought!
"_Pani_ Agrippina," the little Pole was beginning, crimson with anger,
when Mitya suddenly went up to him and slapped him on the shoulder.
"Most illustrious, two words with you."
"What do you want?"
"In the next room, I've two words to say to you, something pleasant, very
pleasant. You'll be glad to hear it."
The little _pan_ was taken aback and looked apprehensively at Mitya. He
agreed at once, however, on condition that Pan Vrublevsky went with them.
"The bodyguard? Let him come, and I want him, too. I must have him!" cried
Mitya. "March, _panovie_!"
"Where are you going?" asked Grushenka, anxiously.
"We'll be back in one moment," answered Mitya.
There was a sort of boldness, a sudden confidence shining in his eyes. His
face had looked very different when he entered the room an hour before.
He led the Poles, not into the large room where the chorus of girls was
assembling and the table was being laid, but into the bedroom on the
right, where the trunks and packages were kept, and there were two large
beds, with pyramids of cotton pillows on each. There was a lighted candle
on a small deal table in the corner. The small man and Mitya sat down to
this table, facing each other, while the huge Vrublevsky stood beside
them, his hands behind his back. The Poles looked severe but were
evidently inquisitive.
"What can I do for you, _panie_?" lisped the little Pole.
"Well, look here, _panie_, I won't keep you long. There's money for you,"
he pulled out his notes. "Would you like three thousand? Take it and go
your way."
The Pole gazed open-eyed at Mitya, with a searching look.
"Three thousand, _panie_?" He exchanged glances with Vrublevsky.
"Three, _panovie_, three! Listen, _panie_, I see you're a sensible man.
Take three thousand and go to the devil, and Vrublevsky with you--d'you
hear? But, at once, this very minute, and for ever. You understand that,
_panie_, for ever. Here's the door, you go out of it. What have you got
there, a great-coat, a fur coat? I'll bring it out to you. They'll get the
horses out directly, and then--good-by, _panie_!"
Mitya awaited an answer with assurance. He had no doubts. An expression of
extraordinary resolution passed over the Pole's face.
"And the money, _panie_?"
"The money, _panie_? Five hundred roubles I'll give you this moment for
the journey, and as a first installment, and two thousand five hundred to-
morrow, in the town--I swear on my honor, I'll get it, I'll get it at any
cost!" cried Mitya.
The Poles exchanged glances again. The short man's face looked more
forbidding.
"Seven hundred, seven hundred, not five hundred, at once, this minute,
cash down!" Mitya added, feeling something wrong. "What's the matter,
_panie_? Don't you trust me? I can't give you the whole three thousand
straight off. If I give it, you may come back to her to-morrow....
Besides, I haven't the three thousand with me. I've got it at home in the
town," faltered Mitya, his spirit sinking at every word he uttered. "Upon
my word, the money's there, hidden."
In an instant an extraordinary sense of personal dignity showed itself in
the little man's face.
"What next?" he asked ironically. "For shame!" and he spat on the floor.
Pan Vrublevsky spat too.
"You do that, _panie_," said Mitya, recognizing with despair that all was
over, "because you hope to make more out of Grushenka? You're a couple of
capons, that's what you are!"
"This is a mortal insult!" The little Pole turned as red as a crab, and he
went out of the room, briskly, as though unwilling to hear another word.
Vrublevsky swung out after him, and Mitya followed, confused and
crestfallen. He was afraid of Grushenka, afraid that the _pan_ would at
once raise an outcry. And so indeed he did. The Pole walked into the room
and threw himself in a theatrical attitude before Grushenka.
"_Pani_ Agrippina, I have received a mortal insult!" he exclaimed. But
Grushenka suddenly lost all patience, as though they had wounded her in
the tenderest spot.
"Speak Russian! Speak Russian!" she cried, "not another word of Polish!
You used to talk Russian. You can't have forgotten it in five years."
She was red with passion.
"_Pani_ Agrippina--"
"My name's Agrafena, Grushenka, speak Russian or I won't listen!"
The Pole gasped with offended dignity, and quickly and pompously delivered
himself in broken Russian:
"_Pani_ Agrafena, I came here to forget the past and forgive it, to forget
all that has happened till to-day--"
"Forgive? Came here to forgive me?" Grushenka cut him short, jumping up
from her seat.
"Just so, _pani_, I'm not pusillanimous, I'm magnanimous. But I was
astounded when I saw your lovers. Pan Mitya offered me three thousand, in
the other room to depart. I spat in the _pan's_ face."
"What? He offered you money for me?" cried Grushenka, hysterically. "Is it
true, Mitya? How dare you? Am I for sale?"
"_Panie, panie!_" yelled Mitya, "she's pure and shining, and I have never
been her lover! That's a lie...."
"How dare you defend me to him?" shrieked Grushenka. "It wasn't virtue
kept me pure, and it wasn't that I was afraid of Kuzma, but that I might
hold up my head when I met him, and tell him he's a scoundrel. And he did
actually refuse the money?"
"He took it! He took it!" cried Mitya; "only he wanted to get the whole
three thousand at once, and I could only give him seven hundred straight
off."
"I see: he heard I had money, and came here to marry me!"
"_Pani_ Agrippina!" cried the little Pole. "I'm--a knight, I'm--a nobleman,
and not a _lajdak_. I came here to make you my wife and I find you a
different woman, perverse and shameless."
"Oh, go back where you came from! I'll tell them to turn you out and
you'll be turned out," cried Grushenka, furious. "I've been a fool, a
fool, to have been miserable these five years! And it wasn't for his sake,
it was my anger made me miserable. And this isn't he at all! Was he like
this? It might be his father! Where did you get your wig from? He was a
falcon, but this is a gander. He used to laugh and sing to me.... And I've
been crying for five years, damned fool, abject, shameless I was!"
She sank back in her low chair and hid her face in her hands. At that
instant the chorus of Mokroe began singing in the room on the left--a
rollicking dance song.
"A regular Sodom!" Vrublevsky roared suddenly. "Landlord, send the
shameless hussies away!"
The landlord, who had been for some time past inquisitively peeping in at
the door, hearing shouts and guessing that his guests were quarreling, at
once entered the room.
"What are you shouting for? D'you want to split your throat?" he said,
addressing Vrublevsky, with surprising rudeness.
"Animal!" bellowed Pan Vrublevsky.
"Animal? And what sort of cards were you playing with just now? I gave you
a pack and you hid it. You played with marked cards! I could send you to
Siberia for playing with false cards, d'you know that, for it's just the
same as false banknotes...."
And going up to the sofa he thrust his fingers between the sofa back and
the cushion, and pulled out an unopened pack of cards.
"Here's my pack unopened!"
He held it up and showed it to all in the room. "From where I stood I saw
him slip my pack away, and put his in place of it--you're a cheat and not a
gentleman!"
"And I twice saw the _pan_ change a card!" cried Kalganov.
"How shameful! How shameful!" exclaimed Grushenka, clasping her hands, and
blushing for genuine shame. "Good Lord, he's come to that!"
"I thought so, too!" said Mitya. But before he had uttered the words,
Vrublevsky, with a confused and infuriated face, shook his fist at
Grushenka, shouting:
"You low harlot!"
Mitya flew at him at once, clutched him in both hands, lifted him in the
air, and in one instant had carried him into the room on the right, from
which they had just come.
"I've laid him on the floor, there," he announced, returning at once,
gasping with excitement. "He's struggling, the scoundrel! But he won't
come back, no fear of that!..."
He closed one half of the folding doors, and holding the other ajar called
out to the little Pole:
"Most illustrious, will you be pleased to retire as well?"
"My dear Dmitri Fyodorovitch," said Trifon Borissovitch, "make them give
you back the money you lost. It's as good as stolen from you."
"I don't want my fifty roubles back," Kalganov declared suddenly.
"I don't want my two hundred, either," cried Mitya, "I wouldn't take it
for anything! Let him keep it as a consolation."
"Bravo, Mitya! You're a trump, Mitya!" cried Grushenka, and there was a
note of fierce anger in the exclamation.
The little _pan_, crimson with fury but still mindful of his dignity, was
making for the door, but he stopped short and said suddenly, addressing
Grushenka:
"_Pani_, if you want to come with me, come. If not, good-by."
And swelling with indignation and importance he went to the door. This was
a man of character: he had so good an opinion of himself that after all
that had passed, he still expected that she would marry him. Mitya slammed
the door after him.
"Lock it," said Kalganov. But the key clicked on the other side, they had
locked it from within.
"That's capital!" exclaimed Grushenka relentlessly. "Serve them right!"
Chapter VIII. Delirium
What followed was almost an orgy, a feast to which all were welcome.
Grushenka was the first to call for wine.
"I want to drink. I want to be quite drunk, as we were before. Do you
remember, Mitya, do you remember how we made friends here last time!"
Mitya himself was almost delirious, feeling that his happiness was at
hand. But Grushenka was continually sending him away from her.
"Go and enjoy yourself. Tell them to dance, to make merry, 'let the stove
and cottage dance'; as we had it last time," she kept exclaiming. She was
tremendously excited. And Mitya hastened to obey her. The chorus were in
the next room. The room in which they had been sitting till that moment
was too small, and was divided in two by cotton curtains, behind which was
a huge bed with a puffy feather mattress and a pyramid of cotton pillows.
In the four rooms for visitors there were beds. Grushenka settled herself
just at the door. Mitya set an easy chair for her. She had sat in the same
place to watch the dancing and singing "the time before," when they had
made merry there. All the girls who had come had been there then; the
Jewish band with fiddles and zithers had come, too, and at last the long
expected cart had arrived with the wines and provisions.
Mitya bustled about. All sorts of people began coming into the room to
look on, peasants and their women, who had been roused from sleep and
attracted by the hopes of another marvelous entertainment such as they had
enjoyed a month before. Mitya remembered their faces, greeting and
embracing every one he knew. He uncorked bottles and poured out wine for
every one who presented himself. Only the girls were very eager for the
champagne. The men preferred rum, brandy, and, above all, hot punch. Mitya
had chocolate made for all the girls, and ordered that three samovars
should be kept boiling all night to provide tea and punch for everyone to
help himself.
An absurd chaotic confusion followed, but Mitya was in his natural
element, and the more foolish it became, the more his spirits rose. If the
peasants had asked him for money at that moment, he would have pulled out
his notes and given them away right and left. This was probably why the
landlord, Trifon Borissovitch, kept hovering about Mitya to protect him.
He seemed to have given up all idea of going to bed that night; but he
drank little, only one glass of punch, and kept a sharp look-out on
Mitya's interests after his own fashion. He intervened in the nick of
time, civilly and obsequiously persuading Mitya not to give away "cigars
and Rhine wine," and, above all, money to the peasants as he had done
before. He was very indignant, too, at the peasant girls drinking liqueur,
and eating sweets.
"They're a lousy lot, Dmitri Fyodorovitch," he said. "I'd give them a
kick, every one of them, and they'd take it as an honor--that's all they're
worth!"
Mitya remembered Andrey again, and ordered punch to be sent out to him. "I
was rude to him just now," he repeated with a sinking, softened voice.
Kalganov did not want to drink, and at first did not care for the girls'
singing; but after he had drunk a couple of glasses of champagne he became
extraordinarily lively, strolling about the room, laughing and praising
the music and the songs, admiring every one and everything. Maximov,
blissfully drunk, never left his side. Grushenka, too, was beginning to
get drunk. Pointing to Kalganov, she said to Mitya:
"What a dear, charming boy he is!"
And Mitya, delighted, ran to kiss Kalganov and Maximov. Oh, great were his
hopes! She had said nothing yet, and seemed, indeed, purposely to refrain
from speaking. But she looked at him from time to time with caressing and
passionate eyes. At last she suddenly gripped his hand and drew him
vigorously to her. She was sitting at the moment in the low chair by the
door.
"How was it you came just now, eh? Have you walked in!... I was
frightened. So you wanted to give me up to him, did you? Did you really
want to?"
"I didn't want to spoil your happiness!" Mitya faltered blissfully. But
she did not need his answer.
"Well, go and enjoy yourself ..." she sent him away once more. "Don't cry,
I'll call you back again."
He would run away, and she listened to the singing and looked at the
dancing, though her eyes followed him wherever he went. But in another
quarter of an hour she would call him once more and again he would run
back to her.
"Come, sit beside me, tell me, how did you hear about me, and my coming
here yesterday? From whom did you first hear it?"
And Mitya began telling her all about it, disconnectedly, incoherently,
feverishly. He spoke strangely, often frowning, and stopping abruptly.
"What are you frowning at?" she asked.
"Nothing.... I left a man ill there. I'd give ten years of my life for him
to get well, to know he was all right!"
"Well, never mind him, if he's ill. So you meant to shoot yourself to-
morrow! What a silly boy! What for? I like such reckless fellows as you,"
she lisped, with a rather halting tongue. "So you would go any length for
me, eh? Did you really mean to shoot yourself to-morrow, you stupid? No,
wait a little. To-morrow I may have something to say to you.... I won't
say it to-day, but to-morrow. You'd like it to be to-day? No, I don't want
to to-day. Come, go along now, go and amuse yourself."
Once, however, she called him, as it were, puzzled and uneasy.
"Why are you sad? I see you're sad.... Yes, I see it," she added, looking
intently into his eyes. "Though you keep kissing the peasants and
shouting, I see something. No, be merry. I'm merry; you be merry, too....
I love somebody here. Guess who it is. Ah, look, my boy has fallen asleep,
poor dear, he's drunk."
She meant Kalganov. He was, in fact, drunk, and had dropped asleep for a
moment, sitting on the sofa. But he was not merely drowsy from drink; he
felt suddenly dejected, or, as he said, "bored." He was intensely
depressed by the girls' songs, which, as the drinking went on, gradually
became coarse and more reckless. And the dances were as bad. Two girls
dressed up as bears, and a lively girl, called Stepanida, with a stick in
her hand, acted the part of keeper, and began to "show them."
"Look alive, Marya, or you'll get the stick!"
The bears rolled on the ground at last in the most unseemly fashion, amid
roars of laughter from the closely-packed crowd of men and women.
"Well, let them! Let them!" said Grushenka sententiously, with an ecstatic
expression on her face. "When they do get a day to enjoy themselves, why
shouldn't folks be happy?"
Kalganov looked as though he had been besmirched with dirt.
"It's swinish, all this peasant foolery," he murmured, moving away; "it's
the game they play when it's light all night in summer."
He particularly disliked one "new" song to a jaunty dance-tune. It
described how a gentleman came and tried his luck with the girls, to see
whether they would love him:
The master came to try the girls:
Would they love him, would they not?
But the girls could not love the master:
He would beat me cruelly
And such love won't do for me.
Then a gypsy comes along and he, too, tries:
The gypsy came to try the girls:
Would they love him, would they not?
But they couldn't love the gypsy either:
He would be a thief, I fear,
And would cause me many a tear.
And many more men come to try their luck, among them a soldier:
The soldier came to try the girls:
Would they love him, would they not?
But the soldier is rejected with contempt, in two indecent lines, sung
with absolute frankness and producing a furore in the audience. The song
ends with a merchant:
The merchant came to try the girls:
Would they love him, would they not?
And it appears that he wins their love because:
The merchant will make gold for me
And his queen I'll gladly be.
Kalvanov was positively indignant.
"That's just a song of yesterday," he said aloud. "Who writes such things
for them? They might just as well have had a railwayman or a Jew come to
try his luck with the girls; they'd have carried all before them."
And, almost as though it were a personal affront, he declared, on the
spot, that he was bored, sat down on the sofa and immediately fell asleep.
His pretty little face looked rather pale, as it fell back on the sofa
cushion.
"Look how pretty he is," said Grushenka, taking Mitya up to him. "I was
combing his hair just now; his hair's like flax, and so thick...."
And, bending over him tenderly, she kissed his forehead. Kalganov
instantly opened his eyes, looked at her, stood up, and with the most
anxious air inquired where was Maximov?
"So that's who it is you want." Grushenka laughed. "Stay with me a minute.
Mitya, run and find his Maximov."
Maximov, it appeared, could not tear himself away from the girls, only
running away from time to time to pour himself out a glass of liqueur. He
had drunk two cups of chocolate. His face was red, and his nose was
crimson; his eyes were moist and mawkishly sweet. He ran up and announced
that he was going to dance the "sabotiere."
"They taught me all those well-bred, aristocratic dances when I was
little...."
"Go, go with him, Mitya, and I'll watch from here how he dances," said
Grushenka.
"No, no, I'm coming to look on, too," exclaimed Kalganov, brushing aside
in the most naive way Grushenka's offer to sit with him. They all went to
look on. Maximov danced his dance. But it roused no great admiration in
any one but Mitya. It consisted of nothing but skipping and hopping,
kicking up the feet, and at every skip Maximov slapped the upturned sole
of his foot. Kalganov did not like it at all, but Mitya kissed the dancer.
"Thanks. You're tired perhaps? What are you looking for here? Would you
like some sweets? A cigar, perhaps?"
"A cigarette."
"Don't you want a drink?"
"I'll just have a liqueur.... Have you any chocolates?"
"Yes, there's a heap of them on the table there. Choose one, my dear
soul!"
"I like one with vanilla ... for old people. He he!"
"No, brother, we've none of that special sort."
"I say," the old man bent down to whisper in Mitya's ear. "That girl
there, little Marya, he he! How would it be if you were to help me make
friends with her?"
"So that's what you're after! No, brother, that won't do!"
"I'd do no harm to any one," Maximov muttered disconsolately.
"Oh, all right, all right. They only come here to dance and sing, you
know, brother. But damn it all, wait a bit!... Eat and drink and be merry,
meanwhile. Don't you want money?"
"Later on, perhaps," smiled Maximov.
"All right, all right...."
Mitya's head was burning. He went outside to the wooden balcony which ran
round the whole building on the inner side, overlooking the courtyard. The
fresh air revived him. He stood alone in a dark corner, and suddenly
clutched his head in both hands. His scattered thoughts came together; his
sensations blended into a whole and threw a sudden light into his mind. A
fearful and terrible light! "If I'm to shoot myself, why not now?" passed
through his mind. "Why not go for the pistols, bring them here, and here,
in this dark dirty corner, make an end?" Almost a minute he stood,
undecided. A few hours earlier, when he had been dashing here, he was
pursued by disgrace, by the theft he had committed, and that blood, that
blood!... But yet it was easier for him then. Then everything was over: he
had lost her, given her up. She was gone, for him--oh, then his death
sentence had been easier for him; at least it had seemed necessary,
inevitable, for what had he to stay on earth for?
But now? Was it the same as then? Now one phantom, one terror at least was
at an end: that first, rightful lover, that fateful figure had vanished,
leaving no trace. The terrible phantom had turned into something so small,
so comic; it had been carried into the bedroom and locked in. It would
never return. She was ashamed, and from her eyes he could see now whom she
loved. Now he had everything to make life happy ... but he could not go on
living, he could not; oh, damnation! "O God! restore to life the man I
knocked down at the fence! Let this fearful cup pass from me! Lord, thou
hast wrought miracles for such sinners as me! But what, what if the old
man's alive? Oh, then the shame of the other disgrace I would wipe away. I
would restore the stolen money. I'd give it back; I'd get it somehow....
No trace of that shame will remain except in my heart for ever! But no,
no; oh, impossible cowardly dreams! Oh, damnation!"
Yet there was a ray of light and hope in his darkness. He jumped up and
ran back to the room--to her, to her, his queen for ever! Was not one
moment of her love worth all the rest of life, even in the agonies of
disgrace? This wild question clutched at his heart. "To her, to her alone,
to see her, to hear her, to think of nothing, to forget everything, if
only for that night, for an hour, for a moment!" Just as he turned from
the balcony into the passage, he came upon the landlord, Trifon
Borissovitch. He thought he looked gloomy and worried, and fancied he had
come to find him.
"What is it, Trifon Borissovitch? are you looking for me?"
"No, sir." The landlord seemed disconcerted. "Why should I be looking for
you? Where have you been?"
"Why do you look so glum? You're not angry, are you? Wait a bit, you shall
soon get to bed.... What's the time?"
"It'll be three o'clock. Past three, it must be."
"We'll leave off soon. We'll leave off."
"Don't mention it; it doesn't matter. Keep it up as long as you like...."
"What's the matter with him?" Mitya wondered for an instant, and he ran
back to the room where the girls were dancing. But she was not there. She
was not in the blue room either; there was no one but Kalganov asleep on
the sofa. Mitya peeped behind the curtain--she was there. She was sitting
in the corner, on a trunk. Bent forward, with her head and arms on the bed
close by, she was crying bitterly, doing her utmost to stifle her sobs
that she might not be heard. Seeing Mitya, she beckoned him to her, and
when he ran to her, she grasped his hand tightly.
"Mitya, Mitya, I loved him, you know. How I have loved him these five
years, all that time! Did I love him or only my own anger? No, him, him!
It's a lie that it was my anger I loved and not him. Mitya, I was only
seventeen then; he was so kind to me, so merry; he used to sing to me....
Or so it seemed to a silly girl like me.... And now, O Lord, it's not the
same man. Even his face is not the same; he's different altogether. I
shouldn't have known him. I drove here with Timofey, and all the way I was
thinking how I should meet him, what I should say to him, how we should
look at one another. My soul was faint, and all of a sudden it was just as
though he had emptied a pail of dirty water over me. He talked to me like
a schoolmaster, all so grave and learned; he met me so solemnly that I was
struck dumb. I couldn't get a word in. At first I thought he was ashamed
to talk before his great big Pole. I sat staring at him and wondering why
I couldn't say a word to him now. It must have been his wife that ruined
him; you know he threw me up to get married. She must have changed him
like that. Mitya, how shameful it is! Oh, Mitya, I'm ashamed, I'm ashamed
for all my life. Curse it, curse it, curse those five years!"
And again she burst into tears, but clung tight to Mitya's hand and did
not let it go.
"Mitya, darling, stay, don't go away. I want to say one word to you," she
whispered, and suddenly raised her face to him. "Listen, tell me who it is
I love? I love one man here. Who is that man? That's what you must tell
me."
A smile lighted up her face that was swollen with weeping, and her eyes
shone in the half darkness.
"A falcon flew in, and my heart sank. 'Fool! that's the man you love!'
That was what my heart whispered to me at once. You came in and all grew
bright. What's he afraid of? I wondered. For you were frightened; you
couldn't speak. It's not them he's afraid of--could you be frightened of
any one? It's me he's afraid of, I thought, only me. So Fenya told you,
you little stupid, how I called to Alyosha out of the window that I'd
loved Mityenka for one hour, and that I was going now to love ... another.
Mitya, Mitya, how could I be such a fool as to think I could love any one
after you? Do you forgive me, Mitya? Do you forgive me or not? Do you love
me? Do you love me?" She jumped up and held him with both hands on his
shoulders. Mitya, dumb with rapture, gazed into her eyes, at her face, at
her smile, and suddenly clasped her tightly in his arms and kissed her
passionately.
"You will forgive me for having tormented you? It was through spite I
tormented you all. It was for spite I drove the old man out of his
mind.... Do you remember how you drank at my house one day and broke the
wine-glass? I remembered that and I broke a glass to-day and drank 'to my
vile heart.' Mitya, my falcon, why don't you kiss me? He kissed me once,
and now he draws back and looks and listens. Why listen to me? Kiss me,
kiss me hard, that's right. If you love, well, then, love! I'll be your
slave now, your slave for the rest of my life. It's sweet to be a slave.
Kiss me! Beat me, ill-treat me, do what you will with me.... And I do
deserve to suffer. Stay, wait, afterwards, I won't have that...." she
suddenly thrust him away. "Go along, Mitya, I'll come and have some wine,
I want to be drunk, I'm going to get drunk and dance; I must, I must!" She
tore herself away from him and disappeared behind the curtain. Mitya
followed like a drunken man.
"Yes, come what may--whatever may happen now, for one minute I'd give the
whole world," he thought. Grushenka did, in fact, toss off a whole glass
of champagne at one gulp, and became at once very tipsy. She sat down in
the same chair as before, with a blissful smile on her face. Her cheeks
were glowing, her lips were burning, her flashing eyes were moist; there
was passionate appeal in her eyes. Even Kalganov felt a stir at the heart
and went up to her.
"Did you feel how I kissed you when you were asleep just now?" she said
thickly. "I'm drunk now, that's what it is.... And aren't you drunk? And
why isn't Mitya drinking? Why don't you drink, Mitya? I'm drunk, and you
don't drink...."
"I am drunk! I'm drunk as it is ... drunk with you ... and now I'll be
drunk with wine, too."
He drank off another glass, and--he thought it strange himself--that glass
made him completely drunk. He was suddenly drunk, although till that
moment he had been quite sober, he remembered that. From that moment
everything whirled about him, as though he were delirious. He walked,
laughed, talked to everybody, without knowing what he was doing. Only one
persistent burning sensation made itself felt continually, "like a red-hot
coal in his heart," he said afterwards. He went up to her, sat beside her,
gazed at her, listened to her.... She became very talkative, kept calling
every one to her, and beckoned to different girls out of the chorus. When
the girl came up, she either kissed her, or made the sign of the cross
over her. In another minute she might have cried. She was greatly amused
by the "little old man," as she called Maximov. He ran up every minute to
kiss her hands, "each little finger," and finally he danced another dance
to an old song, which he sang himself. He danced with special vigor to the
refrain:
The little pig says--umph! umph! umph!
The little calf says--moo, moo, moo,
The little duck says--quack, quack, quack,
The little goose says--ga, ga, ga.
The hen goes strutting through the porch;
Troo-roo-roo-roo-roo, she'll say,
Troo-roo-roo-roo-roo, she'll say!
"Give him something, Mitya," said Grushenka. "Give him a present, he's
poor, you know. Ah, the poor, the insulted!... Do you know, Mitya, I shall
go into a nunnery. No, I really shall one day, Alyosha said something to
me to-day that I shall remember all my life.... Yes.... But to-day let us
dance. To-morrow to the nunnery, but to-day we'll dance. I want to play
to-day, good people, and what of it? God will forgive us. If I were God,
I'd forgive every one: 'My dear sinners, from this day forth I forgive
you.' I'm going to beg forgiveness: 'Forgive me, good people, a silly
wench.' I'm a beast, that's what I am. But I want to pray. I gave a little
onion. Wicked as I've been, I want to pray. Mitya, let them dance, don't
stop them. Every one in the world is good. Every one--even the worst of
them. The world's a nice place. Though we're bad the world's all right.
We're good and bad, good and bad.... Come, tell me, I've something to ask
you: come here every one, and I'll ask you: Why am I so good? You know I
am good. I'm very good.... Come, why am I so good?"
So Grushenka babbled on, getting more and more drunk. At last she
announced that she was going to dance, too. She got up from her chair,
staggering. "Mitya, don't give me any more wine--if I ask you, don't give
it to me. Wine doesn't give peace. Everything's going round, the stove,
and everything. I want to dance. Let every one see how I dance ... let
them see how beautifully I dance...."
She really meant it. She pulled a white cambric handkerchief out of her
pocket, and took it by one corner in her right hand, to wave it in the
dance. Mitya ran to and fro, the girls were quiet, and got ready to break
into a dancing song at the first signal. Maximov, hearing that Grushenka
wanted to dance, squealed with delight, and ran skipping about in front of
her, humming:
With legs so slim and sides so trim
And its little tail curled tight.
But Grushenka waved her handkerchief at him and drove him away.
"Sh-h! Mitya, why don't they come? Let every one come ... to look on. Call
them in, too, that were locked in.... Why did you lock them in? Tell them
I'm going to dance. Let them look on, too...."
Mitya walked with a drunken swagger to the locked door, and began knocking
to the Poles with his fist.
"Hi, you ... Podvysotskys! Come, she's going to dance. She calls you."
"_Lajdak!_" one of the Poles shouted in reply.
"You're a _lajdak_ yourself! You're a little scoundrel, that's what you
are."
"Leave off laughing at Poland," said Kalganov sententiously. He too was
drunk.
"Be quiet, boy! If I call him a scoundrel, it doesn't mean that I called
all Poland so. One _lajdak_ doesn't make a Poland. Be quiet, my pretty
boy, eat a sweetmeat."
"Ach, what fellows! As though they were not men. Why won't they make
friends?" said Grushenka, and went forward to dance. The chorus broke into
"Ah, my porch, my new porch!" Grushenka flung back her head, half opened
her lips, smiled, waved her handkerchief, and suddenly, with a violent
lurch, stood still in the middle of the room, looking bewildered.
"I'm weak...." she said in an exhausted voice. "Forgive me.... I'm weak, I
can't.... I'm sorry."
She bowed to the chorus, and then began bowing in all directions.
"I'm sorry.... Forgive me...."
"The lady's been drinking. The pretty lady has been drinking," voices were
heard saying.
"The lady's drunk too much," Maximov explained to the girls, giggling.
"Mitya, lead me away ... take me," said Grushenka helplessly. Mitya
pounced on her, snatched her up in his arms, and carried the precious
burden through the curtains.
"Well, now I'll go," thought Kalganov, and walking out of the blue room,
he closed the two halves of the door after him. But the orgy in the larger
room went on and grew louder and louder. Mitya laid Grushenka on the bed
and kissed her on the lips.
"Don't touch me...." she faltered, in an imploring voice. "Don't touch me,
till I'm yours.... I've told you I'm yours, but don't touch me ... spare
me.... With them here, with them close, you mustn't. He's here. It's nasty
here...."
"I'll obey you! I won't think of it ... I worship you!" muttered Mitya.
"Yes, it's nasty here, it's abominable."
And still holding her in his arms, he sank on his knees by the bedside.
"I know, though you're a brute, you're generous," Grushenka articulated
with difficulty. "It must be honorable ... it shall be honorable for the
future ... and let us be honest, let us be good, not brutes, but good ...
take me away, take me far away, do you hear? I don't want it to be here,
but far, far away...."
"Oh, yes, yes, it must be!" said Mitya, pressing her in his arms. "I'll
take you and we'll fly away.... Oh, I'd give my whole life for one year
only to know about that blood!"
"What blood?" asked Grushenka, bewildered.
"Nothing," muttered Mitya, through his teeth. "Grusha, you wanted to be
honest, but I'm a thief. But I've stolen money from Katya.... Disgrace, a
disgrace!"
"From Katya, from that young lady? No, you didn't steal it. Give it her
back, take it from me.... Why make a fuss? Now everything of mine is
yours. What does money matter? We shall waste it anyway.... Folks like us
are bound to waste money. But we'd better go and work the land. I want to
dig the earth with my own hands. We must work, do you hear? Alyosha said
so. I won't be your mistress, I'll be faithful to you, I'll be your slave,
I'll work for you. We'll go to the young lady and bow down to her
together, so that she may forgive us, and then we'll go away. And if she
won't forgive us, we'll go, anyway. Take her her money and love me....
Don't love her.... Don't love her any more. If you love her, I shall
strangle her.... I'll put out both her eyes with a needle...."
"I love you. I love only you. I'll love you in Siberia...."
"Why Siberia? Never mind, Siberia, if you like. I don't care ... we'll
work ... there's snow in Siberia.... I love driving in the snow ... and
must have bells.... Do you hear, there's a bell ringing? Where is that
bell ringing? There are people coming.... Now it's stopped."
She closed her eyes, exhausted, and suddenly fell asleep for an instant.
There had certainly been the sound of a bell in the distance, but the
ringing had ceased. Mitya let his head sink on her breast. He did not
notice that the bell had ceased ringing, nor did he notice that the songs
had ceased, and that instead of singing and drunken clamor there was
absolute stillness in the house. Grushenka opened her eyes.
"What's the matter? Was I asleep? Yes ... a bell ... I've been asleep and
dreamt I was driving over the snow with bells, and I dozed. I was with
some one I loved, with you. And far, far away. I was holding you and
kissing you, nestling close to you. I was cold, and the snow glistened....
You know how the snow glistens at night when the moon shines. It was as
though I was not on earth. I woke up, and my dear one is close to me. How
sweet that is!..."
"Close to you," murmured Mitya, kissing her dress, her bosom, her hands.
And suddenly he had a strange fancy: it seemed to him that she was looking
straight before her, not at him, not into his face, but over his head,
with an intent, almost uncanny fixity. An expression of wonder, almost of
alarm, came suddenly into her face.
"Mitya, who is that looking at us?" she whispered.
Mitya turned, and saw that some one had, in fact, parted the curtains and
seemed to be watching them. And not one person alone, it seemed.
He jumped up and walked quickly to the intruder.
"Here, come to us, come here," said a voice, speaking not loudly, but
firmly and peremptorily.
Mitya passed to the other side of the curtain and stood stock still. The
room was filled with people, but not those who had been there before. An
instantaneous shiver ran down his back, and he shuddered. He recognized
all those people instantly. That tall, stout old man in the overcoat and
forage-cap with a cockade--was the police captain, Mihail Makarovitch. And
that "consumptive-looking" trim dandy, "who always has such polished
boots"--that was the deputy prosecutor. "He has a chronometer worth four
hundred roubles; he showed it to me." And that small young man in
spectacles.... Mitya forgot his surname though he knew him, had seen him:
he was the "investigating lawyer," from the "school of jurisprudence," who
had only lately come to the town. And this man--the inspector of police,
Mavriky Mavrikyevitch, a man he knew well. And those fellows with the
brass plates on, why are they here? And those other two ... peasants....
And there at the door Kalganov with Trifon Borissovitch....
"Gentlemen! What's this for, gentlemen?" began Mitya, but suddenly, as
though beside himself, not knowing what he was doing, he cried aloud, at
the top of his voice:
"I un--der--stand!"
The young man in spectacles moved forward suddenly, and stepping up to
Mitya, began with dignity, though hurriedly:
"We have to make ... in brief, I beg you to come this way, this way to the
sofa.... It is absolutely imperative that you should give an explanation."
"The old man!" cried Mitya frantically. "The old man and his blood!... I
understand."
And he sank, almost fell, on a chair close by, as though he had been mown
down by a scythe.
"You understand? He understands it! Monster and parricide! Your father's
blood cries out against you!" the old captain of police roared suddenly,
stepping up to Mitya.
He was beside himself, crimson in the face and quivering all over.
"This is impossible!" cried the small young man. "Mihail Makarovitch,
Mihail Makarovitch, this won't do!... I beg you'll allow me to speak. I
should never have expected such behavior from you...."
"This is delirium, gentlemen, raving delirium," cried the captain of
police; "look at him: drunk, at this time of night, in the company of a
disreputable woman, with the blood of his father on his hands.... It's
delirium!..."
"I beg you most earnestly, dear Mihail Makarovitch, to restrain your
feelings," the prosecutor said in a rapid whisper to the old police
captain, "or I shall be forced to resort to--"
But the little lawyer did not allow him to finish. He turned to Mitya, and
delivered himself in a loud, firm, dignified voice:
"Ex-Lieutenant Karamazov, it is my duty to inform you that you are charged
with the murder of your father, Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, perpetrated
this night...."
He said something more, and the prosecutor, too, put in something, but
though Mitya heard them he did not understand them. He stared at them all
with wild eyes.
| 33,116 | Book 8 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210422052201/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-brothers-karamazov/study-guide/summary-book-8 | Dmitri is desperate. He is obsessed with Grushenka, and even though she "loved him for an hour," she often treated him "cruelly, and at times with complete ruthlessness." He does not know what she wants. He wants Grushenka to marry him, and he is optimistic that she will be his. He muses that Grushenka is probably deciding whether to be with him or with Fyodor; the thought that she might want to be with another man does not cross his mind. Still, he feels that it is necessary to reimburse Katerina before doing anything with Grushenka. He decides to sell some of Fyodor's land to a rich landowner named Samsanov for 3,000 rubles. Samsanov does not want to receive Dmitri, but after Dmitri pleads with him, he agrees to meet him. Samsanov is hostile toward the desperate Karamazov, and he listens to Dmitri's offer with cold indifference. Samsanov is widely considered a "wreck"; he was once a suitor of Grushenka, but his relationship with her is now more of a relationship between a father and a daughter. Finally, Samsanov says he will help Dmitri, who is overjoyed to hear it. He tells Dmiti to visit a man known as "the Hound," who he says can help Dmitri. Samsanov has no intention of helping this man whom he sees as competition for his former lover. Instead of helping him, he sends Dmitri on a wild goose chase to see a "cold, cruel, mocking man" named Lyavgeny. Samsanov says that the man is interested in the piece of land that Dmitri is offering, though he knows that the man will not be able to help Dmitri. Dmitri visits Lyavgeny, but he cannot do business with the man, for he is too drunk. Dmitri angrily tries to shake the man out of his drunken delirium, but it is no good. Dmitri is despondent and jealous, worried about Grushenka's fidelity and imagining "God knows what horrors about her deceiving him." Finally, Dmitri is forced to turn to Madame Hohlakov for the money. He realizes that if she will not give him the money, he may be forced to do something desperate. She plays with Dmitri, ironically telling him that she can offer him much more than 3,000 rubles. Then she tells him he should go to the gold mines. She tells him he should forget about women and come back only after many years. When Dmitri asks her again to lend him the money, she says she will not lend Dmitri a ruble. Dmitri, now unsure of what to do, decides to visit Grushenka. When he cannot find her, he ascertains that she has gone to visit his father. He takes a brass pestle and goes to Fyodor's house in a rage. A servant who sees him leave exclaims, "My God! He'll end up murdering somebody!" Dmitri goes to his father's house, but he does not find Grushenka. Fyodor is there alone. Grigory awakes, remembering he has forgotten to lock a gate. He has heard from Smerdyakov that this is a very dangerous time for Fyodor, and when he sees Dmitri, he yells, "You father-killer!" Before he can pursue the intruder, though, Dmitri hits Grigory with the pestle. After seeing his body lying still on the ground, Dmitri tries to wipe the blood from Grigory's head. He is afraid he has killed the servant, but he realizes there is nothing he can do about it now, so he runs away. He goes back to Grushenka's house to question her servant about Grushenka's whereabouts, and he is horrified to learn of her rendezvous with her ex-lover. Now hopeless, Dmitri reconciles himself to the fact that he cannot have Grushenka. He decides that she is his only reason to live, and he will commit suicide after seeing her one more time. Dmitri goes to reclaim his pistols from a man named Perhotin, who is holding them as collateral for a loan. Perhotin is suspicious of Dmitri, who is covered in blood, and he watches the man order a feast, planning to visit Grushenka. Dmitri finds Grushenka with her gentleman friend and Kalganov. He walks up and says he would like to sit with them. He is very visibly upset, blabbering incoherently and excitedly. At one point, he even bursts into tears. Despite his agitated state, he surprisingly treats the whole party cordially. He is sitting and playing faro with them when the man begins to tell unsavory stories. He is Polish, and he insults Russia, much to Dmitri's annoyance. The men begin to quarrel. Dmitri takes him aside and offers him money if he will leave, but the man is offended and tells Grushenka of Dmitri's bribe. Grushenka is upset with the man for acting so callously, however, and everyone continues to quarrel. Dmitri cannot stand it when the man begins to mock Grushenka, who is greatly offended by his remarks. Dmitri locks the man in another room. Left alone, he and Grushenka begin to talk. Disillusioned by her former lover's bad behavior, she says she cannot love him. She realizes that she loves Dmitri. At first, he is extremely happy. However, Dmitri's elation is tempered by his difficult situation. In addition to his financial burdens, he thinks he may have killed Grigory, and as he is explaining to Grushenka his difficult situation with Katerina, there is a knock on the door. Policemen have come to arrest Dmitri for the murder of Fyodor. | This section of the novel begins comically. Dmitri is on an odyssey to find 3,000 rubles to repay Katerina, but his potential donors are all humorously unhelpful. First, he goes to Samsanov, a man who hates him. Dmitri's earnestness and urgency contrasts greatly with Samsanov's aloofness. It is a triumph for Dmitri that the man will even meet him. He sends Dmitri to Lyavgeny, who he knows will be no help. Though Dmitri is desperate and Samsanov is depressed, the scene is not oppressively bleak. The reader is in fact excited to see what buffoonery will ensue. When Dmitri meets Lyavgeny, the man is drunk and surly, and Dmitri cannot talk sense to him. While Dmitri's situation is getting more dire, his interactions only become more ridiculous. When he decides that Lyavgeny is worthless to him, he visits Madame Hohlakov, who is a quirky character. She cheerily greets Dmitri, and she leads him to believe that she will solve his problems once and for all. Notwithstanding that, her solution is for Dmitri to dig for gold. His exacerbation is tangible, and her delicate nature is offended by his gruff anger. He leaves in a huff, at a loss for a way to win the money for Katerina. This string of comic interactions between Dmitri and his possible benefactors is a reprieve from the mounting ominous tenor of the novel. Humor exists even in the most heavy situations, and Dmitri's ineptness is revealed. He cannot solve his problems, and his attempts at ingratiating himself among his rich acquaintances make him seem pathetic. The humor of this section soon turns grave, however, when Dmitri frantically goes to find Grushenka. Dmitri goes to his father's house looking for Grushenka, practically mad with lust and desperation. He almost escapes without any misfortune befalling him or anyone around him, but trustworthy Grigory wakes up and assumes Dmitri has come to murder his father. With one swift blow, Dmitri dramatically changes the timbre of the novel. Dmitri hits Grigory with the pestle he has in his hand, and Grigory falls to the ground, motionless. The humorous interlude is over, and violence is no longer theoretical. It is ironic that Grigory tries to stop Dmitri when Dmitri had no intention of harming his father that night. The irony is complicated, however, by the fact that Dmitri is entirely capable of murdering his father. In fact, when he goes to his father's house, it is not unlikely that he will kill him. Not until he decides to leave peacefully does Grigory try to stop him, and Grigory's suspicion of Dmitri's violent tendencies turns out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. When the police blame Dmitri for Fyodor's murder, the reader knows that Dmitri did not commit the crime. It is difficult to feel indignant on his behalf, though, because it seems that Dmitri could have committed the murder. He is impulsive and angry, and he has even said he will murder his father. When Dmitri strikes Grigory, it becomes explicit that he is dangerous enough to kill anyone in his path, including his father, whom he loathes. This is a turning point in the novel. The general sense of foreboding has led to this night. Dmitri has proven that violence is indeed in the future for the Karamazovs, and his attack on Grigory is not the only violence that is to come. When Dmitri finds Grushenka in the company of other men, the ensuing spectacle is reminiscent of his humorous pursuit of the money. He is desperate and pathetic, and the people with whom he is talking are annoyed by his presence. The tenor of this meeting is graver than that of his previous meetings, however. This time, Dmitri has vowed to commit suicide after the meeting has concluded. His desperation is no longer funny. Earlier, Ivan commented that one thing all the Karmazovs share is a "desire for life." Dmitri's desire to commit suicide therefore comes as a surprise. It seems to compromise a fundamental tenet of his character. Is Dmitri's earlier lust for life inconsistent with this new desire to kill himself? Perhaps it is not lust for life that drives him. Maybe, like the superstitious Russian folk longing for a miracle, Dmitri has a longing for something remarkable in life. His orgies and affairs are his way of trying to break from his quotidian life. If he cannot have the romantic adventure he desires with Grushenka, suicide is another way to free himself from a menial existence. He does not have a desire for mere survival; he has a desire for an extraordinary life. Since the beginning of the novel, the subject of Fyodor's murder has been looming over every character. Finally, after much speculation and foreshadowing, he is killed. This is the central event of the novel, and, as everything to this point has led up to it, everything in the coming chapters is tied to it. Surprisingly, Dmitri is not his father's killer. While Fyodor's murder is the expected outcome after so much suspense, the killer's identity is completely unexpected. During the preceding chapters, it was assumed that Fyodor's murder was inevitable and Dmitri would be the killer. When Dmitri reconciled with Grushenka and avoided killing his father when he went to his house, it seemed that the impending disaster had been averted. Somehow the murder that was entirely expected came as a surprise. The one event that was expected from the beginning of the novel has become the novel's biggest twist. The structure of the novel sets up the plot in such a way as to suggest that fate is unavoidable, and no matter how characters change, their destiny is set. The strangest part about this fact is that, even though Dmitri did not commit the murder, he is still the one to blame. He is held responsible for a crime he seemed destined to commit even though he did not actually commit it. Father Zossima said that a man shares the responsibility for the sins of all other men. Perhaps guilt does not lie only with the criminal who committed a crime, and all those who are involved share in the guilt of the crime, as Zossima suggested. Perhaps Dmitri is not completely innocent of the murder after all. | 907 | 1,051 | [
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23,046 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/23046-chapters/10.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Comedy of Errors/section_9_part_0.txt | The Comedy of Errors.act iv.scene iv | act iv, scene iv | null | {"name": "Act IV, Scene iv", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219160210/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/comedy-of-errors/summary/act-iv-scene-iv", "summary": "E. Antipholus is still at the marketplace. He fumes about how he'll give it to everyone once he's bailed out, and he spots E. Dromio just in time to think he's saved. When E. Dromio relates that all he's brought is a piece of rope , E. Dromio receives a beating. E. Dromio laments that this is his usual undeserved payment, but doesn't mention that E. Antipholus never asked him for any bail money. Adriana, Luciana, the Courtesan, and a schoolmaster named Pinch all enter the scene. This is reason enough for E. Antipholus to again beat E. Dromio, at which point all the women descend on E. Antipholus, treating him like he's a raging lunatic. They plead with Pinch, who is a schoolmaster and a conjurer, to exorcise whatever demon possesses E. Antipholus. Now E. Antipholus starts beating Pinch as well. Everyone's stories then begin to work against each other, as E. Antipholus insists that he's not mad. He asks whether this witch-doctor is the man Adriana dined with, and the reason he was locked out of his own house. Adriana insists that E. Antipholus was at dinner, and E. Antipholus and E. Dromio insist they were not. E. Antipholus also is a bit unhappy about being arrested. Adriana promises she sent the bail money via Dromio. Poor E. Dromio is certain that he was neither asked to bring the money, nor given any money, and he certainly didn't deliver the money, as everyone is sure of. Basically, everyone seems crazy, and Pinch concludes the men are possessed and must be bound and put into a dark room for their own good. E. Antipholus is driven into greater fury - he declares his wife a false harlot, and promises to pluck out her eyes with his bare hands. After a bit of a scuffle, E. Dromio is tied up, and he and E. Antipholus are taken away. Adriana then tries to deal with her husband's debt. The officer explains the debt was called in by Angelo the goldsmith for a certain necklace. Adriana notes she never got the necklace her husband had spoken of, and this is when the Courtesan pipes up. The Courtesan says E. Antipholus ran into her house and took a ring from her, promising a gold chain in return. She says she saw Antipholus earlier, wearing the chain. Adriana, confused, and not the recipient of the chain, asks to be taken to Angelo the goldsmith to hear the whole truth. Before they can all leave, S. Antipholus runs in with his sword drawn and S. Dromio in tow. Luciana speaks, shocked that the men are loose again. Adriana decides they should run off and get help to tie the men up again. As the officer runs off with the women, S. Antipholus and S. Dromio are left alone, marveling at the fact that these \"witches\" fear their swords. S. Antipholus hurriedly tells S. Dromio to go grab their things from the Centaur inn so they can leave Ephesus quickly. S. Dromio thinks out loud that S. Antipholus might be being a bit hasty about departing. After all, everyone's so nice to them, and gives them gifts of gold. In fact, if it weren't for \"the mountain of mad flesh\" that wanted to mount him , S. Dromio might be happy to stay. S. Antipholus insists on leaving ASAP.", "analysis": ""} | SCENE IV.
A street.
_Enter _ANTIPHOLUS of Ephesus_ and the _Officer_._
_Ant. E._ Fear me not, man; I will not break away:
I'll give thee, ere I leave thee, so much money,
To warrant thee, as I am 'rested for.
My wife is in a wayward mood to-day,
And will not lightly trust the messenger. 5
That I should be attach'd in Ephesus,
I tell you, 'twill sound harshly in her ears.
_Enter _DROMIO of Ephesus_ with a ropes-end._
Here comes my man; I think he brings the money.
How now, sir! have you that I sent you for?
_Dro. E._ Here's that, I warrant you, will pay them all. 10
_Ant. E._ But where's the money?
_Dro. E._ Why, sir, I gave the money for the rope.
_Ant. E._ Five hundred ducats, villain, for a rope?
_Dro. E._ I'll serve you, sir, five hundred at the rate.
_Ant. E._ To what end did I bid thee hie thee home? 15
_Dro. E._ To a rope's-end, sir; and to that end am I
returned.
_Ant. E._ And to that end, sir, I will welcome you.
[_Beating him._
_Off._ Good sir, be patient.
_Dro. E._ Nay, 'tis for me to be patient; I am in adversity. 20
_Off._ Good, now, hold thy tongue.
_Dro. E._ Nay, rather persuade him to hold his hands.
_Ant. E._ Thou whoreson, senseless villain!
_Dro. E._ I would I were senseless, sir, that I might not
feel your blows. 25
_Ant. E._ Thou art sensible in nothing but blows, and
so is an ass.
_Dro. E._ I am an ass, indeed; you may prove it by my
long ears. I have served him from the hour of my nativity
to this instant, and have nothing at his hands for my service 30
but blows. When I am cold, he heats me with beating;
when I am warm, he cools me with beating: I am waked
with it when I sleep; raised with it when I sit; driven out
of doors with it when I go from home; welcomed home
with it when I return: nay, I bear it on my shoulders, as 35
a beggar wont her brat; and, I think, when he hath lamed
me, I shall beg with it from door to door.
_Ant. E._ Come, go along; my wife is coming yonder.
_Enter ADRIANA, LUCIANA, the _Courtezan_, and PINCH._
_Dro. E._ Mistress, 'respice finem,' respect your end; or
rather, the prophecy like the parrot, 'beware the rope's-end.' 40
_Ant. E._ Wilt thou still talk? [_Beating him._
_Cour._ How say you now? is not your husband mad?
_Adr._ His incivility confirms no less.
Good Doctor Pinch, you are a conjurer;
Establish him in his true sense again, 45
And I will please you what you will demand.
_Luc._ Alas, how fiery and how sharp he looks!
_Cour._ Mark how he trembles in his ecstasy!
_Pinch._ Give me your hand, and let me feel your pulse.
_Ant. E._ There is my hand, and let it feel your ear. 50
[_Striking him._
_Pinch._ I charge thee, Satan, housed within this man,
To yield possession to my holy prayers,
And to thy state of darkness his thee straight:
I conjure thee by all the saints in heaven!
_Ant. E._ Peace, doting wizard, peace! I am not mad. 55
_Adr._ O, that thou wert not, poor distressed soul!
_Ant. E._ You minion, you, are these your customers?
Did this companion with the saffron face
Revel and feast it at my house to-day,
Whilst upon me the guilty doors were shut, 60
And I denied to enter in my house?
_Adr._ O husband, God doth know you dined at home;
Where would you had remain'd until this time,
Free from these slanders and this open shame!
_Ant. E._ Dined at home!--Thou villain, what sayest thou? 65
_Dro. E._ Sir, sooth to say, you did not dine at home.
_Ant. E._ Were not my doors lock'd up, and I shut out?
_Dro. E._ Perdie, your doors were lock'd, and you shut out.
_Ant. E._ And did not she herself revile me there?
_Dro. E._ Sans fable, she herself reviled you there. 70
_Ant. E._ Did not her kitchen-maid rail, taunt, and scorn me?
_Dro. E._ Certes, she did; the kitchen-vestal scorn'd you.
_Ant. E._ And did not I in rage depart from thence?
_Dro. E._ In verity you did; my bones bear witness,
That since have felt the vigour of his rage. 75
_Adr._ Is't good to soothe him in these contraries?
_Pinch._ It is no shame: the fellow finds his vein,
And, yielding to him, humours well his frenzy.
_Ant. E._ Thou hast suborn'd the goldsmith to arrest me.
_Adr._ Alas, I sent you money to redeem you, 80
By Dromio here, who came in haste for it.
_Dro. E._ Money by me! heart and good-will you might;
But surely, master, not a rag of money.
_Ant. E._ Went'st not thou to her for a purse of ducats?
_Adr._ He came to me, and I deliver'd it. 85
_Luc._ And I am witness with her that she did.
_Dro. E._ God and the rope-maker bear me witness
That I was sent for nothing but a rope!
_Pinch._ Mistress, both man and master is possess'd;
I know it by their pale and deadly looks: 90
They must be bound, and laid in some dark room.
_Ant. E._ Say, wherefore didst them lock me forth to-day?
And why dost thou deny the bag of gold?
_Adr._ I did not, gentle husband, lock thee forth.
_Dro. E._ And, gentle master, I received no gold; 95
But I confess, sir, that we were lock'd out.
_Adr._ Dissembling villain, them speak'st false in both.
_Ant. E._ Dissembling harlot, them art false in all,
And art confederate with a damned pack
To make a loathsome abject scorn of me: 100
But with these nails I'll pluck out these false eyes,
That would behold in me this shameful sport.
_Enter three or four, and offer to bind him. He strives._
_Adr._ O, bind him, bind him! let him not come near me.
_Pinch._ More company! The fiend is strong within him.
_Luc._ Ay me, poor man, how pale and wan he looks! 105
_Ant. E._ What, will you murder me? Thou gaoler, thou,
I am thy prisoner: wilt thou suffer them
To make a rescue?
_Off._ Masters, let him go:
He is my prisoner, and you shall not have him.
_Pinch._ Go bind this man, for he is frantic too. 110
[_They offer to bind Dro. E._
_Adr._ What wilt thou do, thou peevish officer?
Hast thou delight to see a wretched man
Do outrage and displeasure to himself?
_Off._ He is my prisoner: if I let him go,
The debt he owes will be required of me. 115
_Adr._ I will discharge thee ere I go from thee:
Bear me forthwith unto his creditor,
And, knowing how the debt grows, I will pay it.
Good master doctor, see him safe convey'd
Home to my house. O most unhappy day! 120
_Ant. E._ O most unhappy strumpet!
_Dro. E._ Master, I am here entered in bond for you.
_Ant. E._ Out on thee, villain! wherefore dost thou mad me?
_Dro. E._ Will you be bound for nothing? be mad, good
master: cry, The devil! 125
_Luc._ God help, poor souls, how idly do they talk!
_Adr._ Go bear him hence. Sister, go you with me.
[_Exeunt all but Adriana, Luciana, Officer and Courtezan._]
Say now; whose suit is he arrested at?
_Off._ One Angelo, a goldsmith: do you know him?
_Adr._ I know the man. What is the sum he owes? 130
_Off._ Two hundred ducats.
_Adr._ Say, how grows it due?
_Off._ Due for a chain your husband had of him.
_Adr._ He did bespeak a chain for me, but had it not.
_Cour._ When as your husband, all in rage, to-day
Came to my house, and took away my ring,-- 135
The ring I saw upon his finger now,--
Straight after did I meet him with a chain.
_Adr._ It may be so, but I did never see it.
Come, gaoler, bring me where the goldsmith is:
I long to know the truth hereof at large. 140
_Enter _ANTIPHOLUS of Syracuse_ with his rapier drawn,
and _DROMIO of Syracuse_._
_Luc._ God, for thy mercy! they are loose again.
_Adr._ And come with naked swords.
Let's call more help to have them bound again.
_Off._ Away! they'll kill us.
[_Exeunt all but Ant. S. and Dro. S._
_Ant. S._ I see these witches are afraid of swords. 145
_Dro. S._ She that would be your wife now ran from you.
_Ant. S._ Come to the Centaur; fetch our stuff from thence:
I long that we were safe and sound aboard.
_Dro. S._ Faith, stay here this night; they will surely do
us no harm: you saw they speak us fair, give us gold: 150
methinks they are such a gentle nation, that, but for the
mountain of mad flesh that claims marriage of me, I could
find in my heart to stay here still, and turn witch.
_Ant. S._ I will not stay to-night for all the town;
Therefore away, to get our stuff aboard.
[_Exeunt._ 155
NOTES: IV, 4.
SCENE IV.] SCENE VIII. Pope.
and the Officer.] Capell. with a Jailor. Ff.
5, 6: _messenger. That ... Ephesus,_] Rowe.
_messenger, That ... Ephesus,_ F1 F2 F3.
_messenger; That ... Ephesus,_ F4.
_messenger, That ... Ephesus:_ Capell.
14: Dro. E.] Off. Edd. conj.
15: _hie_] _high_ F2.
17: _returned_] _come_ Anon. conj.
18: [Beating him.] Capell. [Beats Dro. Pope. om. Ff.
29: _ears_] See note (VII).
38: SCENE IX. Pope. The stage direction 'Enter ... Pinch,'
precedes line 38 in Ff, and all editions till Dyce's.
Pinch.] a schoolmaster, call'd Pinch. Ff.
40: _the prophecy_] _the prophesie_ F1 F2 F3 F4. _prophesie_ Rowe.
_to prophesy_ Dyce.
39-41: _or rather ... talk?_] _or rather, 'prospice funem,'
beware the rope's end._ Ant. E. _Wilt thou still talk like
the parrot?_ Edd. conj.
41: [Beating him.] [Beats Dro. Ff.
46: _what_] _in what_ Hanmer.
65: _Dined_] _Din'd I_ Theobald. _I din'd_ Capell.
72: _Certes_] Pope. _certis_ Ff.
74: _bear_] _beares_ F1.
75: _vigour_] _rigour_ Collier MS.
_his_] _your_ Pope.
83: _master_] _mistress_ Dyce conj.
_rag_] _bag_ Becket conj.
84: _not thou_] _thou not_ Capell.
87: _bear_] _do bear_ Pope. _now bear_ Collier MS.
89: _is_] _are_ Rowe.
101: _these false_] Ff. _those false_ Rowe.
102: [Flying at his wife. Capell.
Enter ...] The stage direction is transferred by Dyce to follow 105.
106: _me? Thou ... thou,_] Rowe. _me, thou ... thou?_ Ff.
110: [They ... Dro. E.] Edd. om. Ff.
117: [They bind ANT. and DRO. Rowe.
124: _nothing?_] _nothing thus?_ Hanmer, reading as verse.
126: _help, poor_] Theobald. _help poor_ Ff.
_idly_] Pope. _idlely_ Ff.
127: _go_] _stay_ Pope.
[Exeunt all but ...] Exeunt. Manet ... Ff (after line 128).
129: SCENE X. Pope.
133: _for me_] om. Hanmer.
141: SCENE XI. Pope.
143: [Runne all out. Ff.
144: [Exeunt ...] Exeunt omnes, as fast as may be, frighted. Ff.
150: _saw ... speak us ... give_] F1.
_saw ... spake us ... give_ F2 F3 F4.
_saw ... spake to us ... give_ Rowe.
_saw ... spake us ... gave_ Pope.
_see ... speak us ... give_ Capell.
| 2,527 | Act IV, Scene iv | https://web.archive.org/web/20201219160210/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/comedy-of-errors/summary/act-iv-scene-iv | E. Antipholus is still at the marketplace. He fumes about how he'll give it to everyone once he's bailed out, and he spots E. Dromio just in time to think he's saved. When E. Dromio relates that all he's brought is a piece of rope , E. Dromio receives a beating. E. Dromio laments that this is his usual undeserved payment, but doesn't mention that E. Antipholus never asked him for any bail money. Adriana, Luciana, the Courtesan, and a schoolmaster named Pinch all enter the scene. This is reason enough for E. Antipholus to again beat E. Dromio, at which point all the women descend on E. Antipholus, treating him like he's a raging lunatic. They plead with Pinch, who is a schoolmaster and a conjurer, to exorcise whatever demon possesses E. Antipholus. Now E. Antipholus starts beating Pinch as well. Everyone's stories then begin to work against each other, as E. Antipholus insists that he's not mad. He asks whether this witch-doctor is the man Adriana dined with, and the reason he was locked out of his own house. Adriana insists that E. Antipholus was at dinner, and E. Antipholus and E. Dromio insist they were not. E. Antipholus also is a bit unhappy about being arrested. Adriana promises she sent the bail money via Dromio. Poor E. Dromio is certain that he was neither asked to bring the money, nor given any money, and he certainly didn't deliver the money, as everyone is sure of. Basically, everyone seems crazy, and Pinch concludes the men are possessed and must be bound and put into a dark room for their own good. E. Antipholus is driven into greater fury - he declares his wife a false harlot, and promises to pluck out her eyes with his bare hands. After a bit of a scuffle, E. Dromio is tied up, and he and E. Antipholus are taken away. Adriana then tries to deal with her husband's debt. The officer explains the debt was called in by Angelo the goldsmith for a certain necklace. Adriana notes she never got the necklace her husband had spoken of, and this is when the Courtesan pipes up. The Courtesan says E. Antipholus ran into her house and took a ring from her, promising a gold chain in return. She says she saw Antipholus earlier, wearing the chain. Adriana, confused, and not the recipient of the chain, asks to be taken to Angelo the goldsmith to hear the whole truth. Before they can all leave, S. Antipholus runs in with his sword drawn and S. Dromio in tow. Luciana speaks, shocked that the men are loose again. Adriana decides they should run off and get help to tie the men up again. As the officer runs off with the women, S. Antipholus and S. Dromio are left alone, marveling at the fact that these "witches" fear their swords. S. Antipholus hurriedly tells S. Dromio to go grab their things from the Centaur inn so they can leave Ephesus quickly. S. Dromio thinks out loud that S. Antipholus might be being a bit hasty about departing. After all, everyone's so nice to them, and gives them gifts of gold. In fact, if it weren't for "the mountain of mad flesh" that wanted to mount him , S. Dromio might be happy to stay. S. Antipholus insists on leaving ASAP. | null | 563 | 1 | [
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5,658 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/07.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Lord Jim/section_6_part_0.txt | Lord Jim.chapter 7 | chapter 7 | null | {"name": "Chapter 7", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219145744/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/l/lord-jim/summary-and-analysis/chapter-7", "summary": "During dinner, the wine loosened Jim's tongue, and he began his painful story. Now, he has no money, no job, no future as a sailor, and he has shamed his pastor father, who is incapable of understanding what has happened. Impulsively, Jim asks Marlow if he can understand it all. What would Marlow have done? Jim said that after he and his fellow officers were picked up and taken ashore, he learned that the Patna did not sink. The news seemed impossible to believe; the Patna had been doomed. Jim recalled in detail how he himself examined the bulkhead of the ship; he remembered how it had bulged, ready to crack momentarily. There were seven lifeboats and 800 passengers. If Jim had alerted the passengers, their panic would have caused virtual chaos. He was surrounded by a sea ready to swallow him up, and he was surrounded by 800 sleeping natives who would soon be drowning, screaming like frightened, panicking animals. \"They were dead. Nothing could save them!\" Jim swore to Marlow that he was not afraid of death, even as they were talking; nor was he afraid of death then, and Marlow was inclined to believe him -- simply because Jim's mind dwelled not on death, but on his fear of unleashed panic. Marlow realized also that Jim never tried to suggest that what the crewmen did was not terribly wrong, and \"therein lies his distinction.\" In anguish, Jim moaned, \"What a chance missed!\" What should he have done? Even now, he didn't know. All he could do was remember what he did do.", "analysis": "Chapter 7 allows the reader to know more about Jim's predicament, but not before Marlow again lets us know that Jim \"was of the right sort; he was one of us.\" The repetition of this phrase functions to remind us again and again that we are like Jim and would probably have reacted the same way that he did, especially since Jim states his case directly to Marlow in such a way that aligns all of us to Jim. \"Do you know what you would have done? Do you? and you don't think yourself . . . you don't think yourself a -- a -- cur?\" When Jim maintains that after this terrible event, \"this . . . hell,\" he can never go home again, and after he explains further that with his \"certificate gone, career broken, no money . . . no work that he could obtain,\" that he is, in essence, ruined, the reader's interest in Jim's disgrace is intensified. The reason for the narrative of Jim's exploits lies simply in his statement to Marlow: \"It is all in being ready. I wasn't; not -- not then. I don't want to excuse myself, but I would like to explain -- I would like somebody to understand -- somebody -- one person at least! You! Why not you?\" Thus Marlow, through his initial empathy for this young and handsome man, is chosen by him to be the recipient of this horrible experience. Our first real intimation as to what really happened comes when Marlow says: \"So that bulkhead held out after all,\" and then a second hint comes when Jim murmurs: \"Ali! What a chance missed! My God! what a chance missed.\" It is then after some contemplation that Marlow finally reacts and says, \"If you had stuck to the ship, you mean.\" Still, even the most sensitive readers might miss this clue or not come to the full implication of its meaning. For many readers, it will not be clear what happened until much later, when we hear that the Patna was towed to Aden. Some readers, of course, will not be fully aware of what has happened until they hear the French lieutenant's story. But nevertheless, most readers, by now, are forming some definite impressions about the character of Jim and the character of Marlow, as well as some of the other characters. When Jim maintains that there was nothing that he could do for the pilgrims , he also protests that he was not thinking of saving himself, that he was not afraid of death. At this point, Marlow interprets for the reader by saying that Jim was not afraid of death, but . . . he was afraid of the emergency.\" Marlow then interprets for us that Jim \"might have been resigned to die, but I suspect he wanted to die without added terrors, quietly, in a sort of peaceful trance.\" Marlow will continue to interpret for the reader, but we should always remember that we are still free to disagree with his viewpoint."} | 'An outward-bound mail-boat had come in that afternoon, and the
big dining-room of the hotel was more than half full of people with
a-hundred-pounds-round-the-world tickets in their pockets. There were
married couples looking domesticated and bored with each other in the
midst of their travels; there were small parties and large parties,
and lone individuals dining solemnly or feasting boisterously, but all
thinking, conversing, joking, or scowling as was their wont at home;
and just as intelligently receptive of new impressions as their trunks
upstairs. Henceforth they would be labelled as having passed through
this and that place, and so would be their luggage. They would cherish
this distinction of their persons, and preserve the gummed tickets on
their portmanteaus as documentary evidence, as the only permanent trace
of their improving enterprise. The dark-faced servants tripped without
noise over the vast and polished floor; now and then a girl's laugh
would be heard, as innocent and empty as her mind, or, in a sudden hush
of crockery, a few words in an affected drawl from some wit embroidering
for the benefit of a grinning tableful the last funny story of shipboard
scandal. Two nomadic old maids, dressed up to kill, worked acrimoniously
through the bill of fare, whispering to each other with faded lips,
wooden-faced and bizarre, like two sumptuous scarecrows. A little wine
opened Jim's heart and loosened his tongue. His appetite was good, too,
I noticed. He seemed to have buried somewhere the opening episode of
our acquaintance. It was like a thing of which there would be no more
question in this world. And all the time I had before me these blue,
boyish eyes looking straight into mine, this young face, these capable
shoulders, the open bronzed forehead with a white line under the roots
of clustering fair hair, this appearance appealing at sight to all
my sympathies: this frank aspect, the artless smile, the youthful
seriousness. He was of the right sort; he was one of us. He talked
soberly, with a sort of composed unreserve, and with a quiet bearing
that might have been the outcome of manly self-control, of impudence, of
callousness, of a colossal unconsciousness, of a gigantic deception. Who
can tell! From our tone we might have been discussing a third person,
a football match, last year's weather. My mind floated in a sea of
conjectures till the turn of the conversation enabled me, without being
offensive, to remark that, upon the whole, this inquiry must have been
pretty trying to him. He darted his arm across the tablecloth, and
clutching my hand by the side of my plate, glared fixedly. I was
startled. "It must be awfully hard," I stammered, confused by this
display of speechless feeling. "It is--hell," he burst out in a muffled
voice.
'This movement and these words caused two well-groomed male
globe-trotters at a neighbouring table to look up in alarm from their
iced pudding. I rose, and we passed into the front gallery for coffee
and cigars.
'On little octagon tables candles burned in glass globes; clumps of
stiff-leaved plants separated sets of cosy wicker chairs; and between
the pairs of columns, whose reddish shafts caught in a long row the
sheen from the tall windows, the night, glittering and sombre, seemed
to hang like a splendid drapery. The riding lights of ships winked afar
like setting stars, and the hills across the roadstead resembled rounded
black masses of arrested thunder-clouds.
'"I couldn't clear out," Jim began. "The skipper did--that's all very
well for him. I couldn't, and I wouldn't. They all got out of it in one
way or another, but it wouldn't do for me."
'I listened with concentrated attention, not daring to stir in my chair;
I wanted to know--and to this day I don't know, I can only guess. He
would be confident and depressed all in the same breath, as if some
conviction of innate blamelessness had checked the truth writhing within
him at every turn. He began by saying, in the tone in which a man would
admit his inability to jump a twenty-foot wall, that he could never
go home now; and this declaration recalled to my mind what Brierly had
said, "that the old parson in Essex seemed to fancy his sailor son not a
little."
'I can't tell you whether Jim knew he was especially "fancied," but the
tone of his references to "my Dad" was calculated to give me a notion
that the good old rural dean was about the finest man that ever had been
worried by the cares of a large family since the beginning of the world.
This, though never stated, was implied with an anxiety that there should
be no mistake about it, which was really very true and charming, but
added a poignant sense of lives far off to the other elements of the
story. "He has seen it all in the home papers by this time," said Jim.
"I can never face the poor old chap." I did not dare to lift my eyes
at this till I heard him add, "I could never explain. He wouldn't
understand." Then I looked up. He was smoking reflectively, and after
a moment, rousing himself, began to talk again. He discovered at once
a desire that I should not confound him with his partners in--in crime,
let us call it. He was not one of them; he was altogether of another
sort. I gave no sign of dissent. I had no intention, for the sake of
barren truth, to rob him of the smallest particle of any saving grace
that would come in his way. I didn't know how much of it he believed
himself. I didn't know what he was playing up to--if he was playing up
to anything at all--and I suspect he did not know either; for it is my
belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape
from the grim shadow of self-knowledge. I made no sound all the time
he was wondering what he had better do after "that stupid inquiry was
over."
'Apparently he shared Brierly's contemptuous opinion of these
proceedings ordained by law. He would not know where to turn, he
confessed, clearly thinking aloud rather than talking to me. Certificate
gone, career broken, no money to get away, no work that he could obtain
as far as he could see. At home he could perhaps get something; but it
meant going to his people for help, and that he would not do. He
saw nothing for it but ship before the mast--could get perhaps a
quartermaster's billet in some steamer. Would do for a quartermaster.
. . . "Do you think you would?" I asked pitilessly. He jumped up, and
going to the stone balustrade looked out into the night. In a moment he
was back, towering above my chair with his youthful face clouded yet by
the pain of a conquered emotion. He had understood very well I did not
doubt his ability to steer a ship. In a voice that quavered a bit he
asked me why did I say that? I had been "no end kind" to him. I had not
even laughed at him when--here he began to mumble--"that mistake, you
know--made a confounded ass of myself." I broke in by saying rather
warmly that for me such a mistake was not a matter to laugh at. He sat
down and drank deliberately some coffee, emptying the small cup to the
last drop. "That does not mean I admit for a moment the cap fitted,"
he declared distinctly. "No?" I said. "No," he affirmed with quiet
decision. "Do you know what _you_ would have done? Do you? And you
don't think yourself" . . . he gulped something . . . "you don't think
yourself a--a--cur?"
'And with this--upon my honour!--he looked up at me inquisitively. It
was a question it appears--a bona fide question! However, he didn't wait
for an answer. Before I could recover he went on, with his eyes straight
before him, as if reading off something written on the body of the
night. "It is all in being ready. I wasn't; not--not then. I don't want
to excuse myself; but I would like to explain--I would like somebody to
understand--somebody--one person at least! You! Why not you?"
'It was solemn, and a little ridiculous too, as they always are, those
struggles of an individual trying to save from the fire his idea of what
his moral identity should be, this precious notion of a convention, only
one of the rules of the game, nothing more, but all the same so terribly
effective by its assumption of unlimited power over natural instincts,
by the awful penalties of its failure. He began his story quietly
enough. On board that Dale Line steamer that had picked up these four
floating in a boat upon the discreet sunset glow of the sea, they had
been after the first day looked askance upon. The fat skipper told some
story, the others had been silent, and at first it had been accepted.
You don't cross-examine poor castaways you had the good luck to save,
if not from cruel death, then at least from cruel suffering. Afterwards,
with time to think it over, it might have struck the officers of the
Avondale that there was "something fishy" in the affair; but of course
they would keep their doubts to themselves. They had picked up the
captain, the mate, and two engineers of the steamer Patna sunk at sea,
and that, very properly, was enough for them. I did not ask Jim about
the nature of his feelings during the ten days he spent on board. From
the way he narrated that part I was at liberty to infer he was partly
stunned by the discovery he had made--the discovery about himself--and
no doubt was at work trying to explain it away to the only man who
was capable of appreciating all its tremendous magnitude. You must
understand he did not try to minimise its importance. Of that I am sure;
and therein lies his distinction. As to what sensations he experienced
when he got ashore and heard the unforeseen conclusion of the tale in
which he had taken such a pitiful part, he told me nothing of them, and
it is difficult to imagine.
'I wonder whether he felt the ground cut from under his feet? I wonder?
But no doubt he managed to get a fresh foothold very soon. He was ashore
a whole fortnight waiting in the Sailors' Home, and as there were six or
seven men staying there at the time, I had heard of him a little.
Their languid opinion seemed to be that, in addition to his other
shortcomings, he was a sulky brute. He had passed these days on the
verandah, buried in a long chair, and coming out of his place of
sepulture only at meal-times or late at night, when he wandered on the
quays all by himself, detached from his surroundings, irresolute and
silent, like a ghost without a home to haunt. "I don't think I've spoken
three words to a living soul in all that time," he said, making me very
sorry for him; and directly he added, "One of these fellows would have
been sure to blurt out something I had made up my mind not to put up
with, and I didn't want a row. No! Not then. I was too--too . . . I
had no heart for it." "So that bulkhead held out after all," I remarked
cheerfully. "Yes," he murmured, "it held. And yet I swear to you I felt
it bulge under my hand." "It's extraordinary what strains old iron will
stand sometimes," I said. Thrown back in his seat, his legs stiffly out
and arms hanging down, he nodded slightly several times. You could not
conceive a sadder spectacle. Suddenly he lifted his head; he sat up;
he slapped his thigh. "Ah! what a chance missed! My God! what a chance
missed!" he blazed out, but the ring of the last "missed" resembled a
cry wrung out by pain.
'He was silent again with a still, far-away look of fierce yearning
after that missed distinction, with his nostrils for an instant dilated,
sniffing the intoxicating breath of that wasted opportunity. If you
think I was either surprised or shocked you do me an injustice in more
ways than one! Ah, he was an imaginative beggar! He would give himself
away; he would give himself up. I could see in his glance darted into
the night all his inner being carried on, projected headlong into the
fanciful realm of recklessly heroic aspirations. He had no leisure to
regret what he had lost, he was so wholly and naturally concerned for
what he had failed to obtain. He was very far away from me who watched
him across three feet of space. With every instant he was penetrating
deeper into the impossible world of romantic achievements. He got to
the heart of it at last! A strange look of beatitude overspread his
features, his eyes sparkled in the light of the candle burning between
us; he positively smiled! He had penetrated to the very heart--to
the very heart. It was an ecstatic smile that your faces--or mine
either--will never wear, my dear boys. I whisked him back by saying, "If
you had stuck to the ship, you mean!"
'He turned upon me, his eyes suddenly amazed and full of pain, with a
bewildered, startled, suffering face, as though he had tumbled down
from a star. Neither you nor I will ever look like this on any man. He
shuddered profoundly, as if a cold finger-tip had touched his heart.
Last of all he sighed.
'I was not in a merciful mood. He provoked one by his contradictory
indiscretions. "It is unfortunate you didn't know beforehand!" I
said with every unkind intention; but the perfidious shaft fell
harmless--dropped at his feet like a spent arrow, as it were, and he did
not think of picking it up. Perhaps he had not even seen it. Presently,
lolling at ease, he said, "Dash it all! I tell you it bulged. I was
holding up my lamp along the angle-iron in the lower deck when a
flake of rust as big as the palm of my hand fell off the plate, all of
itself." He passed his hand over his forehead. "The thing stirred and
jumped off like something alive while I was looking at it." "That made
you feel pretty bad," I observed casually. "Do you suppose," he said,
"that I was thinking of myself, with a hundred and sixty people at my
back, all fast asleep in that fore-'tween-deck alone--and more of them
aft; more on the deck--sleeping--knowing nothing about it--three times
as many as there were boats for, even if there had been time? I expected
to see the iron open out as I stood there and the rush of water going
over them as they lay. . . . What could I do--what?"
'I can easily picture him to myself in the peopled gloom of the
cavernous place, with the light of the globe-lamp falling on a small
portion of the bulkhead that had the weight of the ocean on the other
side, and the breathing of unconscious sleepers in his ears. I can see
him glaring at the iron, startled by the falling rust, overburdened by
the knowledge of an imminent death. This, I gathered, was the second
time he had been sent forward by that skipper of his, who, I rather
think, wanted to keep him away from the bridge. He told me that his
first impulse was to shout and straightway make all those people
leap out of sleep into terror; but such an overwhelming sense of his
helplessness came over him that he was not able to produce a sound. This
is, I suppose, what people mean by the tongue cleaving to the roof of
the mouth. "Too dry," was the concise expression he used in reference to
this state. Without a sound, then, he scrambled out on deck through
the number one hatch. A windsail rigged down there swung against him
accidentally, and he remembered that the light touch of the canvas on
his face nearly knocked him off the hatchway ladder.
'He confessed that his knees wobbled a good deal as he stood on the
foredeck looking at another sleeping crowd. The engines having been
stopped by that time, the steam was blowing off. Its deep rumble made
the whole night vibrate like a bass string. The ship trembled to it.
'He saw here and there a head lifted off a mat, a vague form uprise in
sitting posture, listen sleepily for a moment, sink down again into the
billowy confusion of boxes, steam-winches, ventilators. He was aware
all these people did not know enough to take intelligent notice of
that strange noise. The ship of iron, the men with white faces, all the
sights, all the sounds, everything on board to that ignorant and pious
multitude was strange alike, and as trustworthy as it would for ever
remain incomprehensible. It occurred to him that the fact was fortunate.
The idea of it was simply terrible.
'You must remember he believed, as any other man would have done in
his place, that the ship would go down at any moment; the bulging,
rust-eaten plates that kept back the ocean, fatally must give way, all
at once like an undermined dam, and let in a sudden and overwhelming
flood. He stood still looking at these recumbent bodies, a doomed man
aware of his fate, surveying the silent company of the dead. They _were_
dead! Nothing could save them! There were boats enough for half of them
perhaps, but there was no time. No time! No time! It did not seem worth
while to open his lips, to stir hand or foot. Before he could shout
three words, or make three steps, he would be floundering in a sea
whitened awfully by the desperate struggles of human beings, clamorous
with the distress of cries for help. There was no help. He imagined
what would happen perfectly; he went through it all motionless by the
hatchway with the lamp in his hand--he went through it to the very last
harrowing detail. I think he went through it again while he was telling
me these things he could not tell the court.
'"I saw as clearly as I see you now that there was nothing I could do.
It seemed to take all life out of my limbs. I thought I might just as
well stand where I was and wait. I did not think I had many
seconds. . . ." Suddenly the steam ceased blowing off. The noise, he
remarked, had been distracting, but the silence at once became
intolerably oppressive.
'"I thought I would choke before I got drowned," he said.
'He protested he did not think of saving himself. The only distinct
thought formed, vanishing, and re-forming in his brain, was: eight
hundred people and seven boats; eight hundred people and seven boats.
'"Somebody was speaking aloud inside my head," he said a little wildly.
"Eight hundred people and seven boats--and no time! Just think of it."
He leaned towards me across the little table, and I tried to avoid his
stare. "Do you think I was afraid of death?" he asked in a voice very
fierce and low. He brought down his open hand with a bang that made the
coffee-cups dance. "I am ready to swear I was not--I was not. . . . By
God--no!" He hitched himself upright and crossed his arms; his chin fell
on his breast.
'The soft clashes of crockery reached us faintly through the high
windows. There was a burst of voices, and several men came out in high
good-humour into the gallery. They were exchanging jocular reminiscences
of the donkeys in Cairo. A pale anxious youth stepping softly on long
legs was being chaffed by a strutting and rubicund globe-trotter about
his purchases in the bazaar. "No, really--do you think I've been done
to that extent?" he inquired very earnest and deliberate. The band moved
away, dropping into chairs as they went; matches flared, illuminating
for a second faces without the ghost of an expression and the flat glaze
of white shirt-fronts; the hum of many conversations animated with the
ardour of feasting sounded to me absurd and infinitely remote.
'"Some of the crew were sleeping on the number one hatch within reach of
my arm," began Jim again.
'You must know they kept Kalashee watch in that ship, all hands sleeping
through the night, and only the reliefs of quartermasters and look-out
men being called. He was tempted to grip and shake the shoulder of the
nearest lascar, but he didn't. Something held his arms down along his
sides. He was not afraid--oh no! only he just couldn't--that's all. He
was not afraid of death perhaps, but I'll tell you what, he was afraid
of the emergency. His confounded imagination had evoked for him all
the horrors of panic, the trampling rush, the pitiful screams, boats
swamped--all the appalling incidents of a disaster at sea he had ever
heard of. He might have been resigned to die but I suspect he wanted
to die without added terrors, quietly, in a sort of peaceful trance. A
certain readiness to perish is not so very rare, but it is seldom
that you meet men whose souls, steeled in the impenetrable armour of
resolution, are ready to fight a losing battle to the last; the desire
of peace waxes stronger as hope declines, till at last it conquers the
very desire of life. Which of us here has not observed this, or maybe
experienced something of that feeling in his own person--this extreme
weariness of emotions, the vanity of effort, the yearning for rest?
Those striving with unreasonable forces know it well,--the shipwrecked
castaways in boats, wanderers lost in a desert, men battling against the
unthinking might of nature, or the stupid brutality of crowds.'
| 3,410 | Chapter 7 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201219145744/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/l/lord-jim/summary-and-analysis/chapter-7 | During dinner, the wine loosened Jim's tongue, and he began his painful story. Now, he has no money, no job, no future as a sailor, and he has shamed his pastor father, who is incapable of understanding what has happened. Impulsively, Jim asks Marlow if he can understand it all. What would Marlow have done? Jim said that after he and his fellow officers were picked up and taken ashore, he learned that the Patna did not sink. The news seemed impossible to believe; the Patna had been doomed. Jim recalled in detail how he himself examined the bulkhead of the ship; he remembered how it had bulged, ready to crack momentarily. There were seven lifeboats and 800 passengers. If Jim had alerted the passengers, their panic would have caused virtual chaos. He was surrounded by a sea ready to swallow him up, and he was surrounded by 800 sleeping natives who would soon be drowning, screaming like frightened, panicking animals. "They were dead. Nothing could save them!" Jim swore to Marlow that he was not afraid of death, even as they were talking; nor was he afraid of death then, and Marlow was inclined to believe him -- simply because Jim's mind dwelled not on death, but on his fear of unleashed panic. Marlow realized also that Jim never tried to suggest that what the crewmen did was not terribly wrong, and "therein lies his distinction." In anguish, Jim moaned, "What a chance missed!" What should he have done? Even now, he didn't know. All he could do was remember what he did do. | Chapter 7 allows the reader to know more about Jim's predicament, but not before Marlow again lets us know that Jim "was of the right sort; he was one of us." The repetition of this phrase functions to remind us again and again that we are like Jim and would probably have reacted the same way that he did, especially since Jim states his case directly to Marlow in such a way that aligns all of us to Jim. "Do you know what you would have done? Do you? and you don't think yourself . . . you don't think yourself a -- a -- cur?" When Jim maintains that after this terrible event, "this . . . hell," he can never go home again, and after he explains further that with his "certificate gone, career broken, no money . . . no work that he could obtain," that he is, in essence, ruined, the reader's interest in Jim's disgrace is intensified. The reason for the narrative of Jim's exploits lies simply in his statement to Marlow: "It is all in being ready. I wasn't; not -- not then. I don't want to excuse myself, but I would like to explain -- I would like somebody to understand -- somebody -- one person at least! You! Why not you?" Thus Marlow, through his initial empathy for this young and handsome man, is chosen by him to be the recipient of this horrible experience. Our first real intimation as to what really happened comes when Marlow says: "So that bulkhead held out after all," and then a second hint comes when Jim murmurs: "Ali! What a chance missed! My God! what a chance missed." It is then after some contemplation that Marlow finally reacts and says, "If you had stuck to the ship, you mean." Still, even the most sensitive readers might miss this clue or not come to the full implication of its meaning. For many readers, it will not be clear what happened until much later, when we hear that the Patna was towed to Aden. Some readers, of course, will not be fully aware of what has happened until they hear the French lieutenant's story. But nevertheless, most readers, by now, are forming some definite impressions about the character of Jim and the character of Marlow, as well as some of the other characters. When Jim maintains that there was nothing that he could do for the pilgrims , he also protests that he was not thinking of saving himself, that he was not afraid of death. At this point, Marlow interprets for the reader by saying that Jim was not afraid of death, but . . . he was afraid of the emergency." Marlow then interprets for us that Jim "might have been resigned to die, but I suspect he wanted to die without added terrors, quietly, in a sort of peaceful trance." Marlow will continue to interpret for the reader, but we should always remember that we are still free to disagree with his viewpoint. | 265 | 509 | [
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5,658 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/02.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Lord Jim/section_1_part_0.txt | Lord Jim.chapter 2 | chapter 2 | null | {"name": "Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219145744/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/l/lord-jim/summary-and-analysis/chapter-2", "summary": "After two years of naval training, Jim's dreams of romance seemingly became reality. While still a young man, he was assigned to be the chief mate of a fine ship, but it was soon apparent that his new job was both monotonous and barren. Yet, curiously, Jim was addicted, \"enslaved,\" as it were, to life at sea. Jim loved the sea because he felt constantly challenged by its savage capriciousness. He felt that at any time, he could triumph over its untamed power. Ironically, he had never been tested by the sea; only once, in fact, had he glimpsed the sea's \"sinister something,\" that power which reveals that the sea can, if it chooses, smash, destroy, and annihilate everything, including Jim's individual and unique life. During the single time that Jim witnessed the deadly fury of the sea, he was wounded. A heavy spar from the ship's mast fell on him from high up. As he lay on his back, he felt pleased that he didn't have to be on deck during the storm. Then he was swept with guilt. When fine weather returned, Jim was taken to a hospital in Singapore. His recovery was slow, and his ship sailed without him. At first, Jim was wary and disdainful of Singapore's \"bewitching breath\" which seemed to smell of softness and decay. And yet Jim was increasingly fascinated by the white men whom he saw. He realized that unlike the heroic figures of his romantic dreams, these men \"did well\" on a very small allowance of danger and work. Suddenly, he decided not to go home. He accepted the position of chief mate on the Patna, an old, rusty steamer which was owned by a Chinese, chartered by an Arab, and captained by a \"blood-and-iron\" German, steering toward various holy places with 800 ragged, hopeful, and meek Moslem pilgrims crowded into every crevice and cranny.", "analysis": "The actual day-to-day routine of being first mate was \"strangely barren\" and dully monotonous; it contrasted significantly with Jim's romantic dreams and fantasies. Jim's injury served merely to place him in a hospital in an \"Eastern port\" where he was in danger of \"lounging through the days in easy chairs . . . with eternal serenity.\" Thus, he determined to take the first available passage out and, consequently, he signed on as first mate on the Patna, a rusty, old dilapidated steamer, \"eaten with rust worse than a condemned water-tank.\" It was commanded by an incompetent, disreputable captain and a crew from which Jim stood out; he was too \"perfect.\" Conrad's description of the ship and the captain portends that this ship is unsafe and that an unfortunate incident is imminent. Reading the description of the pilgrims boarding the ship, one is reminded of cattle being blindly herded and crowded into small, unclean quarters. The German captain's view of the pilgrims as \"cattle\" emphasizes his disgust with them and justifies, in his mind, his later desertion of them to seemingly certain death -- a view that completely separates him from Jim, who is deeply and profoundly affected by his actions. Jim's jumping from the Patna controls the rest of his life. Concerning the episode of the Patna and the pilgrims, Conrad is basing this part of Lord Jim upon an actual event. The actual ship was named the Jeddah, and it was loaded with about 1,000 pilgrims. When it almost foundered, the ship was abandoned by the captain and the crew, who were picked up by a steamship and taken to the port of Aden, where they reported the \"loss\" of their ship. The next day, the Jeddah was towed into the port of Aden with all of her pilgrim/passengers still on board. This was a naval scandal, and the disgrace became widely known throughout the nautical world, causing horrendous gossip and a full inquiry. But Conrad's readers will not be informed about the events concerning the Patna until later, and even then, the facts will be only slowly revealed."} | After two years of training he went to sea, and entering the regions so
well known to his imagination, found them strangely barren of adventure.
He made many voyages. He knew the magic monotony of existence between
sky and water: he had to bear the criticism of men, the exactions of the
sea, and the prosaic severity of the daily task that gives bread--but
whose only reward is in the perfect love of the work. This reward eluded
him. Yet he could not go back, because there is nothing more enticing,
disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea. Besides, his
prospects were good. He was gentlemanly, steady, tractable, with a
thorough knowledge of his duties; and in time, when yet very young, he
became chief mate of a fine ship, without ever having been tested by
those events of the sea that show in the light of day the inner worth of
a man, the edge of his temper, and the fibre of his stuff; that reveal
the quality of his resistance and the secret truth of his pretences, not
only to others but also to himself.
Only once in all that time he had again a glimpse of the earnestness in
the anger of the sea. That truth is not so often made apparent as people
might think. There are many shades in the danger of adventures and
gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of
facts a sinister violence of intention--that indefinable something which
forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication
of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose
of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty
that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his
fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to
annihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is
priceless and necessary--the sunshine, the memories, the future; which
means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by
the simple and appalling act of taking his life.
Jim, disabled by a falling spar at the beginning of a week of which his
Scottish captain used to say afterwards, 'Man! it's a pairfect meeracle
to me how she lived through it!' spent many days stretched on his back,
dazed, battered, hopeless, and tormented as if at the bottom of an
abyss of unrest. He did not care what the end would be, and in his lucid
moments overvalued his indifference. The danger, when not seen, has
the imperfect vagueness of human thought. The fear grows shadowy; and
Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated,
sinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion. Jim saw nothing
but the disorder of his tossed cabin. He lay there battened down in the
midst of a small devastation, and felt secretly glad he had not to go on
deck. But now and again an uncontrollable rush of anguish would grip
him bodily, make him gasp and writhe under the blankets, and then the
unintelligent brutality of an existence liable to the agony of such
sensations filled him with a despairing desire to escape at any cost.
Then fine weather returned, and he thought no more about It.
His lameness, however, persisted, and when the ship arrived at an
Eastern port he had to go to the hospital. His recovery was slow, and he
was left behind.
There were only two other patients in the white men's ward: the purser
of a gunboat, who had broken his leg falling down a hatchway; and a kind
of railway contractor from a neighbouring province, afflicted by
some mysterious tropical disease, who held the doctor for an ass, and
indulged in secret debaucheries of patent medicine which his Tamil
servant used to smuggle in with unwearied devotion. They told each other
the story of their lives, played cards a little, or, yawning and in
pyjamas, lounged through the day in easy-chairs without saying a word.
The hospital stood on a hill, and a gentle breeze entering through the
windows, always flung wide open, brought into the bare room the softness
of the sky, the languor of the earth, the bewitching breath of the
Eastern waters. There were perfumes in it, suggestions of infinite
repose, the gift of endless dreams. Jim looked every day over the
thickets of gardens, beyond the roofs of the town, over the fronds of
palms growing on the shore, at that roadstead which is a thoroughfare
to the East,--at the roadstead dotted by garlanded islets, lighted by
festal sunshine, its ships like toys, its brilliant activity resembling
a holiday pageant, with the eternal serenity of the Eastern sky overhead
and the smiling peace of the Eastern seas possessing the space as far as
the horizon.
Directly he could walk without a stick, he descended into the town to
look for some opportunity to get home. Nothing offered just then, and,
while waiting, he associated naturally with the men of his calling in
the port. These were of two kinds. Some, very few and seen there but
seldom, led mysterious lives, had preserved an undefaced energy with the
temper of buccaneers and the eyes of dreamers. They appeared to live
in a crazy maze of plans, hopes, dangers, enterprises, ahead of
civilisation, in the dark places of the sea; and their death was the
only event of their fantastic existence that seemed to have a reasonable
certitude of achievement. The majority were men who, like himself,
thrown there by some accident, had remained as officers of country
ships. They had now a horror of the home service, with its harder
conditions, severer view of duty, and the hazard of stormy oceans. They
were attuned to the eternal peace of Eastern sky and sea. They
loved short passages, good deck-chairs, large native crews, and the
distinction of being white. They shuddered at the thought of hard work,
and led precariously easy lives, always on the verge of dismissal,
always on the verge of engagement, serving Chinamen, Arabs,
half-castes--would have served the devil himself had he made it easy
enough. They talked everlastingly of turns of luck: how So-and-so got
charge of a boat on the coast of China--a soft thing; how this one had
an easy billet in Japan somewhere, and that one was doing well in the
Siamese navy; and in all they said--in their actions, in their looks, in
their persons--could be detected the soft spot, the place of decay, the
determination to lounge safely through existence.
To Jim that gossiping crowd, viewed as seamen, seemed at first more
unsubstantial than so many shadows. But at length he found a fascination
in the sight of those men, in their appearance of doing so well on
such a small allowance of danger and toil. In time, beside the original
disdain there grew up slowly another sentiment; and suddenly, giving up
the idea of going home, he took a berth as chief mate of the Patna.
The Patna was a local steamer as old as the hills, lean like a
greyhound, and eaten up with rust worse than a condemned water-tank. She
was owned by a Chinaman, chartered by an Arab, and commanded by a sort
of renegade New South Wales German, very anxious to curse publicly
his native country, but who, apparently on the strength of Bismarck's
victorious policy, brutalised all those he was not afraid of, and wore a
'blood-and-iron' air,' combined with a purple nose and a red moustache.
After she had been painted outside and whitewashed inside, eight hundred
pilgrims (more or less) were driven on board of her as she lay with
steam up alongside a wooden jetty.
They streamed aboard over three gangways, they streamed in urged by
faith and the hope of paradise, they streamed in with a continuous tramp
and shuffle of bare feet, without a word, a murmur, or a look back; and
when clear of confining rails spread on all sides over the deck, flowed
forward and aft, overflowed down the yawning hatchways, filled the inner
recesses of the ship--like water filling a cistern, like water flowing
into crevices and crannies, like water rising silently even with the
rim. Eight hundred men and women with faith and hopes, with affections
and memories, they had collected there, coming from north and south
and from the outskirts of the East, after treading the jungle paths,
descending the rivers, coasting in praus along the shallows, crossing in
small canoes from island to island, passing through suffering, meeting
strange sights, beset by strange fears, upheld by one desire. They
came from solitary huts in the wilderness, from populous campongs, from
villages by the sea. At the call of an idea they had left their forests,
their clearings, the protection of their rulers, their prosperity,
their poverty, the surroundings of their youth and the graves of their
fathers. They came covered with dust, with sweat, with grime, with
rags--the strong men at the head of family parties, the lean old men
pressing forward without hope of return; young boys with fearless eyes
glancing curiously, shy little girls with tumbled long hair; the timid
women muffled up and clasping to their breasts, wrapped in loose ends of
soiled head-cloths, their sleeping babies, the unconscious pilgrims of
an exacting belief.
'Look at dese cattle,' said the German skipper to his new chief mate.
An Arab, the leader of that pious voyage, came last. He walked slowly
aboard, handsome and grave in his white gown and large turban. A string
of servants followed, loaded with his luggage; the Patna cast off and
backed away from the wharf.
She was headed between two small islets, crossed obliquely the
anchoring-ground of sailing-ships, swung through half a circle in the
shadow of a hill, then ranged close to a ledge of foaming reefs. The
Arab, standing up aft, recited aloud the prayer of travellers by sea.
He invoked the favour of the Most High upon that journey, implored His
blessing on men's toil and on the secret purposes of their hearts; the
steamer pounded in the dusk the calm water of the Strait; and far astern
of the pilgrim ship a screw-pile lighthouse, planted by unbelievers on
a treacherous shoal, seemed to wink at her its eye of flame, as if in
derision of her errand of faith.
She cleared the Strait, crossed the bay, continued on her way through
the 'One-degree' passage. She held on straight for the Red Sea under a
serene sky, under a sky scorching and unclouded, enveloped in a fulgor
of sunshine that killed all thought, oppressed the heart, withered all
impulses of strength and energy. And under the sinister splendour of
that sky the sea, blue and profound, remained still, without a stir,
without a ripple, without a wrinkle--viscous, stagnant, dead. The
Patna, with a slight hiss, passed over that plain, luminous and smooth,
unrolled a black ribbon of smoke across the sky, left behind her on the
water a white ribbon of foam that vanished at once, like the phantom of
a track drawn upon a lifeless sea by the phantom of a steamer.
Every morning the sun, as if keeping pace in his revolutions with the
progress of the pilgrimage, emerged with a silent burst of light exactly
at the same distance astern of the ship, caught up with her at noon,
pouring the concentrated fire of his rays on the pious purposes of the
men, glided past on his descent, and sank mysteriously into the sea
evening after evening, preserving the same distance ahead of her
advancing bows. The five whites on board lived amidships, isolated from
the human cargo. The awnings covered the deck with a white roof from
stem to stern, and a faint hum, a low murmur of sad voices, alone
revealed the presence of a crowd of people upon the great blaze of the
ocean. Such were the days, still, hot, heavy, disappearing one by one
into the past, as if falling into an abyss for ever open in the wake
of the ship; and the ship, lonely under a wisp of smoke, held on her
steadfast way black and smouldering in a luminous immensity, as if
scorched by a flame flicked at her from a heaven without pity.
The nights descended on her like a benediction. | 1,911 | Chapter 2 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201219145744/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/l/lord-jim/summary-and-analysis/chapter-2 | After two years of naval training, Jim's dreams of romance seemingly became reality. While still a young man, he was assigned to be the chief mate of a fine ship, but it was soon apparent that his new job was both monotonous and barren. Yet, curiously, Jim was addicted, "enslaved," as it were, to life at sea. Jim loved the sea because he felt constantly challenged by its savage capriciousness. He felt that at any time, he could triumph over its untamed power. Ironically, he had never been tested by the sea; only once, in fact, had he glimpsed the sea's "sinister something," that power which reveals that the sea can, if it chooses, smash, destroy, and annihilate everything, including Jim's individual and unique life. During the single time that Jim witnessed the deadly fury of the sea, he was wounded. A heavy spar from the ship's mast fell on him from high up. As he lay on his back, he felt pleased that he didn't have to be on deck during the storm. Then he was swept with guilt. When fine weather returned, Jim was taken to a hospital in Singapore. His recovery was slow, and his ship sailed without him. At first, Jim was wary and disdainful of Singapore's "bewitching breath" which seemed to smell of softness and decay. And yet Jim was increasingly fascinated by the white men whom he saw. He realized that unlike the heroic figures of his romantic dreams, these men "did well" on a very small allowance of danger and work. Suddenly, he decided not to go home. He accepted the position of chief mate on the Patna, an old, rusty steamer which was owned by a Chinese, chartered by an Arab, and captained by a "blood-and-iron" German, steering toward various holy places with 800 ragged, hopeful, and meek Moslem pilgrims crowded into every crevice and cranny. | The actual day-to-day routine of being first mate was "strangely barren" and dully monotonous; it contrasted significantly with Jim's romantic dreams and fantasies. Jim's injury served merely to place him in a hospital in an "Eastern port" where he was in danger of "lounging through the days in easy chairs . . . with eternal serenity." Thus, he determined to take the first available passage out and, consequently, he signed on as first mate on the Patna, a rusty, old dilapidated steamer, "eaten with rust worse than a condemned water-tank." It was commanded by an incompetent, disreputable captain and a crew from which Jim stood out; he was too "perfect." Conrad's description of the ship and the captain portends that this ship is unsafe and that an unfortunate incident is imminent. Reading the description of the pilgrims boarding the ship, one is reminded of cattle being blindly herded and crowded into small, unclean quarters. The German captain's view of the pilgrims as "cattle" emphasizes his disgust with them and justifies, in his mind, his later desertion of them to seemingly certain death -- a view that completely separates him from Jim, who is deeply and profoundly affected by his actions. Jim's jumping from the Patna controls the rest of his life. Concerning the episode of the Patna and the pilgrims, Conrad is basing this part of Lord Jim upon an actual event. The actual ship was named the Jeddah, and it was loaded with about 1,000 pilgrims. When it almost foundered, the ship was abandoned by the captain and the crew, who were picked up by a steamship and taken to the port of Aden, where they reported the "loss" of their ship. The next day, the Jeddah was towed into the port of Aden with all of her pilgrim/passengers still on board. This was a naval scandal, and the disgrace became widely known throughout the nautical world, causing horrendous gossip and a full inquiry. But Conrad's readers will not be informed about the events concerning the Patna until later, and even then, the facts will be only slowly revealed. | 314 | 351 | [
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110 | false | pinkmonkey | all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/33.txt | finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_13_part_1.txt | Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 33 | chapter 33 | null | {"name": "CHAPTER 33", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820050202/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmTessD43.asp", "summary": "Before the wedding, Angel takes Tess into town to make some purchases. While she waits for Angel, Tess is spotted by an acquaintance from Trantridge, who rudely makes a comment about her lack of chastity. Angel hears the remark and hits the man. The Trantridge man apologizes, Angel gives him some money, and they go peacefully on their separate ways. The incident unnerves Tess, and she looks forward to moving far away where she will not be recognized. But that night, she decides she must confess her past to Angel in a letter. She writes down everything and slips the letter under Angel's door. The next day she is pleasantly surprised by his warmth and love and thinks he is forgiving her. Tess breathes a sigh of relief that the ordeal is over. On the day of the wedding she is shocked to discover her sealed letter beneath the carpet in his room. Since the wedding is about to begin, she decides to tell Angel in person about her past. She destroys the letter and rushes to find her future husband. She tells him she wants to confess her faults before the wedding. Angel, not wanting to spoil the day, assures Tess that there is plenty of time in the future to talk about their wrongdoings. With no choice left, a dismayed Tess proceeds with her wedding. It is a quiet ceremony held in the local church.", "analysis": "Notes The work of fate is clearly seen in this chapter. While Tess and Angel are shopping in town, Tess is recognized by a male acquaintance from Trantridge, who casts aspersions upon her character. Angel defends his future wife by striking the man, but the whole incident, right before the wedding, unnerves Tess and plants a seed of doubt in Angel's mind. The incident also convinces Tess to write a letter of confession to Angel, which she does that very night. Fate also has a hand in the letter. When Tess slips it under Angel's door, it goes underneath the rug; therefore, Angel never sees it. When Angel is warm and kind to Tess the next morning, she reads it as a sign of his understanding and forgiveness and feels very relieved. On the morning of the wedding, she discovers the truth about the letter. She tears up the unopened envelope and rushes to tell Angel the truth in person. He refuses to hear any of her confession, stating there will be plenty of time for such things in their future. Dismayed by the power of fate, a confused Tess goes through with the marriage ceremony. The honest and kind young woman worships Angel, almost like a god; but she feels terribly troubled that she has been unable to tell him about her tainted past, even though she has made two earnest tries to do so. Her troubled heart receives a further jolt after the wedding when she sees the D'Urberville carriage that will take them away and when she hears the cock crow. Hardy explains that when a cock crows in the afternoon it brings ill luck. Thus, the stage is set for a series of tragic events in Tess's life"} |
Angel felt that he would like to spend a day with her before the
wedding, somewhere away from the dairy, as a last jaunt in her
company while there were yet mere lover and mistress; a romantic day,
in circumstances that would never be repeated; with that other and
greater day beaming close ahead of them. During the preceding week,
therefore, he suggested making a few purchases in the nearest town,
and they started together.
Clare's life at the dairy had been that of a recluse in respect the
world of his own class. For months he had never gone near a town,
and, requiring no vehicle, had never kept one, hiring the dairyman's
cob or gig if he rode or drove. They went in the gig that day.
And then for the first time in their lives they shopped as partners
in one concern. It was Christmas Eve, with its loads a holly and
mistletoe, and the town was very full of strangers who had come in
from all parts of the country on account of the day. Tess paid the
penalty of walking about with happiness superadded to beauty on her
countenance by being much stared at as she moved amid them on his
arm.
In the evening they returned to the inn at which they had put up, and
Tess waited in the entry while Angel went to see the horse and gig
brought to the door. The general sitting-room was full of guests,
who were continually going in and out. As the door opened and shut
each time for the passage of these, the light within the parlour fell
full upon Tess's face. Two men came out and passed by her among the
rest. One of them had stared her up and down in surprise, and she
fancied he was a Trantridge man, though that village lay so many
miles off that Trantridge folk were rarities here.
"A comely maid that," said the other.
"True, comely enough. But unless I make a great mistake--" And he
negatived the remainder of the definition forthwith.
Clare had just returned from the stable-yard, and, confronting the
man on the threshold, heard the words, and saw the shrinking of
Tess. The insult to her stung him to the quick, and before he had
considered anything at all he struck the man on the chin with the
full force of his fist, sending him staggering backwards into the
passage.
The man recovered himself, and seemed inclined to come on, and Clare,
stepping outside the door, put himself in a posture of defence. But
his opponent began to think better of the matter. He looked anew at
Tess as he passed her, and said to Clare--
"I beg pardon, sir; 'twas a complete mistake. I thought she was
another woman, forty miles from here."
Clare, feeling then that he had been too hasty, and that he was,
moreover, to blame for leaving her standing in an inn-passage, did
what he usually did in such cases, gave the man five shillings to
plaster the blow; and thus they parted, bidding each other a pacific
good night. As soon as Clare had taken the reins from the ostler,
and the young couple had driven off, the two men went in the other
direction.
"And was it a mistake?" said the second one.
"Not a bit of it. But I didn't want to hurt the gentleman's
feelings--not I."
In the meantime the lovers were driving onward.
"Could we put off our wedding till a little later?" Tess asked in a
dry dull voice. "I mean if we wished?"
"No, my love. Calm yourself. Do you mean that the fellow may have
time to summon me for assault?" he asked good-humouredly.
"No--I only meant--if it should have to be put off."
What she meant was not very clear, and he directed her to dismiss
such fancies from her mind, which she obediently did as well as she
could. But she was grave, very grave, all the way home; till she
thought, "We shall go away, a very long distance, hundreds of miles
from these parts, and such as this can never happen again, and no
ghost of the past reach there."
They parted tenderly that night on the landing, and Clare ascended to
his attic. Tess sat up getting on with some little requisites, lest
the few remaining days should not afford sufficient time. While she
sat she heard a noise in Angel's room overhead, a sound of thumping
and struggling. Everybody else in the house was asleep, and in her
anxiety lest Clare should be ill she ran up and knocked at his door,
and asked him what was the matter.
"Oh, nothing, dear," he said from within. "I am so sorry I disturbed
you! But the reason is rather an amusing one: I fell asleep and
dreamt that I was fighting that fellow again who insulted you,
and the noise you heard was my pummelling away with my fists at
my portmanteau, which I pulled out to-day for packing. I am
occasionally liable to these freaks in my sleep. Go to bed and
think of it no more."
This was the last drachm required to turn the scale of her
indecision. Declare the past to him by word of mouth she could not;
but there was another way. She sat down and wrote on the four pages
of a note-sheet a succinct narrative of those events of three or four
years ago, put it into an envelope, and directed it to Clare. Then,
lest the flesh should again be weak, she crept upstairs without any
shoes and slipped the note under his door.
Her night was a broken one, as it well might be, and she listened for
the first faint noise overhead. It came, as usual; he descended, as
usual. She descended. He met her at the bottom of the stairs and
kissed her. Surely it was as warmly as ever!
He looked a little disturbed and worn, she thought. But he said not
a word to her about her revelation, even when they were alone. Could
he have had it? Unless he began the subject she felt that she could
say nothing. So the day passed, and it was evident that whatever
he thought he meant to keep to himself. Yet he was frank and
affectionate as before. Could it be that her doubts were childish?
that he forgave her; that he loved her for what she was, just as she
was, and smiled at her disquiet as at a foolish nightmare? Had he
really received her note? She glanced into his room, and could see
nothing of it. It might be that he forgave her. But even if he had
not received it she had a sudden enthusiastic trust that he surely
would forgive her.
Every morning and night he was the same, and thus New Year's Eve
broke--the wedding day.
The lovers did not rise at milking-time, having through the whole of
this last week of their sojourn at the dairy been accorded something
of the position of guests, Tess being honoured with a room of her
own. When they arrived downstairs at breakfast-time they were
surprised to see what effects had been produced in the large
kitchen for their glory since they had last beheld it. At some
unnatural hour of the morning the dairyman had caused the yawning
chimney-corner to be whitened, and the brick hearth reddened, and a
blazing yellow damask blower to be hung across the arch in place of
the old grimy blue cotton one with a black sprig pattern which had
formerly done duty there. This renovated aspect of what was the
focus indeed of the room on a full winter morning threw a smiling
demeanour over the whole apartment.
"I was determined to do summat in honour o't", said the dairyman.
"And as you wouldn't hear of my gieing a rattling good randy wi'
fiddles and bass-viols complete, as we should ha' done in old times,
this was all I could think o' as a noiseless thing."
Tess's friends lived so far off that none could conveniently have
been present at the ceremony, even had any been asked; but as a fact
nobody was invited from Marlott. As for Angel's family, he had
written and duly informed them of the time, and assured them that he
would be glad to see one at least of them there for the day if he
would like to come. His brothers had not replied at all, seeming
to be indignant with him; while his father and mother had written
a rather sad letter, deploring his precipitancy in rushing into
marriage, but making the best of the matter by saying that, though
a dairywoman was the last daughter-in-law they could have expected,
their son had arrived at an age which he might be supposed to be the
best judge.
This coolness in his relations distressed Clare less than it would
have done had he been without the grand card with which he meant to
surprise them ere long. To produce Tess, fresh from the dairy, as
a d'Urberville and a lady, he had felt to be temerarious and risky;
hence he had concealed her lineage till such time as, familiarized
with worldly ways by a few months' travel and reading with him, he
could take her on a visit to his parents and impart the knowledge
while triumphantly producing her as worthy of such an ancient line.
It was a pretty lover's dream, if no more. Perhaps Tess's lineage
had more value for himself than for anybody in the world beside.
Her perception that Angel's bearing towards her still remained in no
whit altered by her own communication rendered Tess guiltily doubtful
if he could have received it. She rose from breakfast before he had
finished, and hastened upstairs. It had occurred to her to look once
more into the queer gaunt room which had been Clare's den, or rather
eyrie, for so long, and climbing the ladder she stood at the open
door of the apartment, regarding and pondering. She stooped to the
threshold of the doorway, where she had pushed in the note two or
three days earlier in such excitement. The carpet reached close to
the sill, and under the edge of the carpet she discerned the faint
white margin of the envelope containing her letter to him, which he
obviously had never seen, owing to her having in her haste thrust it
beneath the carpet as well as beneath the door.
With a feeling of faintness she withdrew the letter. There it
was--sealed up, just as it had left her hands. The mountain had
not yet been removed. She could not let him read it now, the house
being in full bustle of preparation; and descending to her own room
she destroyed the letter there.
She was so pale when he saw her again that he felt quite anxious.
The incident of the misplaced letter she had jumped at as if it
prevented a confession; but she knew in her conscience that it need
not; there was still time. Yet everything was in a stir; there
was coming and going; all had to dress, the dairyman and Mrs Crick
having been asked to accompany them as witnesses; and reflection or
deliberate talk was well-nigh impossible. The only minute Tess could
get to be alone with Clare was when they met upon the landing.
"I am so anxious to talk to you--I want to confess all my faults and
blunders!" she said with attempted lightness.
"No, no--we can't have faults talked of--you must be deemed perfect
to-day at least, my Sweet!" he cried. "We shall have plenty of time,
hereafter, I hope, to talk over our failings. I will confess mine at
the same time."
"But it would be better for me to do it now, I think, so that you
could not say--"
"Well, my quixotic one, you shall tell me anything--say, as soon as
we are settled in our lodging; not now. I, too, will tell you my
faults then. But do not let us spoil the day with them; they will
be excellent matter for a dull time."
"Then you don't wish me to, dearest?"
"I do not, Tessy, really."
The hurry of dressing and starting left no time for more than this.
Those words of his seemed to reassure her on further reflection.
She was whirled onward through the next couple of critical hours by
the mastering tide of her devotion to him, which closed up further
meditation. Her one desire, so long resisted, to make herself his,
to call him her lord, her own--then, if necessary, to die--had
at last lifted her up from her plodding reflective pathway. In
dressing, she moved about in a mental cloud of many-coloured
idealities, which eclipsed all sinister contingencies by its
brightness.
The church was a long way off, and they were obliged to drive,
particularly as it was winter. A closed carriage was ordered from
a roadside inn, a vehicle which had been kept there ever since the
old days of post-chaise travelling. It had stout wheel-spokes, and
heavy felloes a great curved bed, immense straps and springs, and a
pole like a battering-ram. The postilion was a venerable "boy" of
sixty--a martyr to rheumatic gout, the result of excessive exposure
in youth, counter-acted by strong liquors--who had stood at inn-doors
doing nothing for the whole five-and-twenty years that had elapsed
since he had no longer been required to ride professionally, as if
expecting the old times to come back again. He had a permanent
running wound on the outside of his right leg, originated by the
constant bruisings of aristocratic carriage-poles during the many
years that he had been in regular employ at the King's Arms,
Casterbridge.
Inside this cumbrous and creaking structure, and behind this decayed
conductor, the _partie carree_ took their seats--the bride and
bridegroom and Mr and Mrs Crick. Angel would have liked one at least
of his brothers to be present as groomsman, but their silence after
his gentle hint to that effect by letter had signified that they did
not care to come. They disapproved of the marriage, and could not be
expected to countenance it. Perhaps it was as well that they could
not be present. They were not worldly young fellows, but fraternizing
with dairy-folk would have struck unpleasantly upon their biased
niceness, apart from their views of the match.
Upheld by the momentum of the time, Tess knew nothing of this, did
not see anything, did not know the road they were taking to the
church. She knew that Angel was close to her; all the rest was
a luminous mist. She was a sort of celestial person, who owed
her being to poetry--one of those classical divinities Clare was
accustomed to talk to her about when they took their walks together.
The marriage being by licence there were only a dozen or so of people
in the church; had there been a thousand they would have produced
no more effect upon her. They were at stellar distances from her
present world. In the ecstatic solemnity with which she swore her
faith to him the ordinary sensibilities of sex seemed a flippancy.
At a pause in the service, while they were kneeling together, she
unconsciously inclined herself towards him, so that her shoulder
touched his arm; she had been frightened by a passing thought, and
the movement had been automatic, to assure herself that he was really
there, and to fortify her belief that his fidelity would be proof
against all things.
Clare knew that she loved him--every curve of her form showed that--
but he did not know at that time the full depth of her devotion, its
single-mindedness, its meekness; what long-suffering it guaranteed,
what honesty, what endurance, what good faith.
As they came out of church the ringers swung the bells off their
rests, and a modest peal of three notes broke forth--that limited
amount of expression having been deemed sufficient by the church
builders for the joys of such a small parish. Passing by the tower
with her husband on the path to the gate she could feel the vibrant
air humming round them from the louvred belfry in the circle of
sound, and it matched the highly-charged mental atmosphere in which
she was living.
This condition of mind, wherein she felt glorified by an irradiation
not her own, like the angel whom St John saw in the sun, lasted till
the sound of the church bells had died away, and the emotions of the
wedding-service had calmed down. Her eyes could dwell upon details
more clearly now, and Mr and Mrs Crick having directed their own gig
to be sent for them, to leave the carriage to the young couple, she
observed the build and character of that conveyance for the first
time. Sitting in silence she regarded it long.
"I fancy you seem oppressed, Tessy," said Clare.
"Yes," she answered, putting her hand to her brow. "I tremble at
many things. It is all so serious, Angel. Among other things I seem
to have seen this carriage before, to be very well acquainted with
it. It is very odd--I must have seen it in a dream."
"Oh--you have heard the legend of the d'Urberville Coach--that
well-known superstition of this county about your family when they
were very popular here; and this lumbering old thing reminds you of
it."
"I have never heard of it to my knowledge," said she. "What is the
legend--may I know it?"
"Well--I would rather not tell it in detail just now. A certain
d'Urberville of the sixteenth or seventeenth century committed a
dreadful crime in his family coach; and since that time members of
the family see or hear the old coach whenever--But I'll tell you
another day--it is rather gloomy. Evidently some dim knowledge of
it has been brought back to your mind by the sight of this venerable
caravan."
"I don't remember hearing it before," she murmured. "Is it when we
are going to die, Angel, that members of my family see it, or is it
when we have committed a crime?"
"Now, Tess!"
He silenced her by a kiss.
By the time they reached home she was contrite and spiritless. She
was Mrs Angel Clare, indeed, but had she any moral right to the name?
Was she not more truly Mrs Alexander d'Urberville? Could intensity
of love justify what might be considered in upright souls as culpable
reticence? She knew not what was expected of women in such cases;
and she had no counsellor.
However, when she found herself alone in her room for a few
minutes--the last day this on which she was ever to enter it--she
knelt down and prayed. She tried to pray to God, but it was her
husband who really had her supplication. Her idolatry of this man
was such that she herself almost feared it to be ill-omened. She was
conscious of the notion expressed by Friar Laurence: "These violent
delights have violent ends." It might be too desperate for human
conditions--too rank, to wild, too deadly.
"O my love, why do I love you so!" she whispered there alone; "for
she you love is not my real self, but one in my image; the one I
might have been!"
Afternoon came, and with it the hour for departure. They had decided
to fulfil the plan of going for a few days to the lodgings in the old
farmhouse near Wellbridge Mill, at which he meant to reside during
his investigation of flour processes. At two o'clock there was
nothing left to do but to start. All the servantry of the dairy were
standing in the red-brick entry to see them go out, the dairyman and
his wife following to the door. Tess saw her three chamber-mates
in a row against the wall, pensively inclining their heads. She
had much questioned if they would appear at the parting moment; but
there they were, stoical and staunch to the last. She knew why the
delicate Retty looked so fragile, and Izz so tragically sorrowful,
and Marian so blank; and she forgot her own dogging shadow for a
moment in contemplating theirs.
She impulsively whispered to him--
"Will you kiss 'em all, once, poor things, for the first and last
time?"
Clare had not the least objection to such a farewell formality--which
was all that it was to him--and as he passed them he kissed them in
succession where they stood, saying "Goodbye" to each as he did so.
When they reached the door Tess femininely glanced back to discern
the effect of that kiss of charity; there was no triumph in her
glance, as there might have been. If there had it would have
disappeared when she saw how moved the girls all were. The kiss had
obviously done harm by awakening feelings they were trying to subdue.
Of all this Clare was unconscious. Passing on to the wicket-gate he
shook hands with the dairyman and his wife, and expressed his last
thanks to them for their attentions; after which there was a moment
of silence before they had moved off. It was interrupted by the
crowing of a cock. The white one with the rose comb had come and
settled on the palings in front of the house, within a few yards of
them, and his notes thrilled their ears through, dwindling away like
echoes down a valley of rocks.
"Oh?" said Mrs Crick. "An afternoon crow!"
Two men were standing by the yard gate, holding it open.
"That's bad," one murmured to the other, not thinking that the words
could be heard by the group at the door-wicket.
The cock crew again--straight towards Clare.
"Well!" said the dairyman.
"I don't like to hear him!" said Tess to her husband. "Tell the man
to drive on. Goodbye, goodbye!"
The cock crew again.
"Hoosh! Just you be off, sir, or I'll twist your neck!" said the
dairyman with some irritation, turning to the bird and driving him
away. And to his wife as they went indoors: "Now, to think o' that
just to-day! I've not heard his crow of an afternoon all the year
afore."
"It only means a change in the weather," said she; "not what you
think: 'tis impossible!"
| 3,515 | CHAPTER 33 | https://web.archive.org/web/20180820050202/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmTessD43.asp | Before the wedding, Angel takes Tess into town to make some purchases. While she waits for Angel, Tess is spotted by an acquaintance from Trantridge, who rudely makes a comment about her lack of chastity. Angel hears the remark and hits the man. The Trantridge man apologizes, Angel gives him some money, and they go peacefully on their separate ways. The incident unnerves Tess, and she looks forward to moving far away where she will not be recognized. But that night, she decides she must confess her past to Angel in a letter. She writes down everything and slips the letter under Angel's door. The next day she is pleasantly surprised by his warmth and love and thinks he is forgiving her. Tess breathes a sigh of relief that the ordeal is over. On the day of the wedding she is shocked to discover her sealed letter beneath the carpet in his room. Since the wedding is about to begin, she decides to tell Angel in person about her past. She destroys the letter and rushes to find her future husband. She tells him she wants to confess her faults before the wedding. Angel, not wanting to spoil the day, assures Tess that there is plenty of time in the future to talk about their wrongdoings. With no choice left, a dismayed Tess proceeds with her wedding. It is a quiet ceremony held in the local church. | Notes The work of fate is clearly seen in this chapter. While Tess and Angel are shopping in town, Tess is recognized by a male acquaintance from Trantridge, who casts aspersions upon her character. Angel defends his future wife by striking the man, but the whole incident, right before the wedding, unnerves Tess and plants a seed of doubt in Angel's mind. The incident also convinces Tess to write a letter of confession to Angel, which she does that very night. Fate also has a hand in the letter. When Tess slips it under Angel's door, it goes underneath the rug; therefore, Angel never sees it. When Angel is warm and kind to Tess the next morning, she reads it as a sign of his understanding and forgiveness and feels very relieved. On the morning of the wedding, she discovers the truth about the letter. She tears up the unopened envelope and rushes to tell Angel the truth in person. He refuses to hear any of her confession, stating there will be plenty of time for such things in their future. Dismayed by the power of fate, a confused Tess goes through with the marriage ceremony. The honest and kind young woman worships Angel, almost like a god; but she feels terribly troubled that she has been unable to tell him about her tainted past, even though she has made two earnest tries to do so. Her troubled heart receives a further jolt after the wedding when she sees the D'Urberville carriage that will take them away and when she hears the cock crow. Hardy explains that when a cock crows in the afternoon it brings ill luck. Thus, the stage is set for a series of tragic events in Tess's life | 237 | 292 | [
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161 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/39.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Sense and Sensibility/section_38_part_0.txt | Sense and Sensibility.chapter 39 | chapter 39 | null | {"name": "Chapter 39", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210421140324/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/sense-and-sensibility/summary/chapter-39", "summary": "Both Elinor and Marianne are anxious to leave London and go home to Barton. They're invited to go visit the Palmers at Cleveland with Mrs. Jennings, and Elinor accepts, thinking that it'll be better than staying in town. Marianne, however, is of a different opinion - remember, Cleveland isn't too far away from Willoughby's home. However, practicality wins out - since Cleveland is on the way home to Barton, they might as well stop there for a little while. Mrs. Jennings urges the girls to return with her to London after the Cleveland visit, but they insist that they must go home afterwards. Colonel Brandon stops by to visit after their plan is settled, and Mrs. Jennings sighs, asking him what they shall do once Elinor and Marianne have gone back to Barton. Elinor and Colonel Brandon go aside to speak in private, and Mrs. Jennings is dying to know what they say - could he be proposing? She's thrilled. She assumes that the marriage is in the bag. What actually happened, however, is a very different story. Colonel Brandon is concerned about Edward and the cruel punishment inflicted on him by his mother. The Colonel has taken a liking to Edward, especially because of his friendship with the Dashwoods. He wants to offer Edward the living at Delaford, his country home. This would enable him to support himself, at least moderately. Elinor is surprised and overcome - she's incredibly grateful to the Colonel. Elinor agrees to deliver the news, saying that it will be welcome to both Edward and his bride. Colonel Brandon is surprised by this development; he's not sure that the Delaford living is enough to support Edward and a wife. It's clear that the wedding will have to be in the distant future.", "analysis": ""} |
The Miss Dashwoods had now been rather more than two months in town,
and Marianne's impatience to be gone increased every day. She sighed
for the air, the liberty, the quiet of the country; and fancied that if
any place could give her ease, Barton must do it. Elinor was hardly
less anxious than herself for their removal, and only so much less bent
on its being effected immediately, as that she was conscious of the
difficulties of so long a journey, which Marianne could not be brought
to acknowledge. She began, however, seriously to turn her thoughts
towards its accomplishment, and had already mentioned their wishes to
their kind hostess, who resisted them with all the eloquence of her
good-will, when a plan was suggested, which, though detaining them from
home yet a few weeks longer, appeared to Elinor altogether much more
eligible than any other. The Palmers were to remove to Cleveland about
the end of March, for the Easter holidays; and Mrs. Jennings, with both
her friends, received a very warm invitation from Charlotte to go with
them. This would not, in itself, have been sufficient for the delicacy
of Miss Dashwood;--but it was inforced with so much real politeness by
Mr. Palmer himself, as, joined to the very great amendment of his
manners towards them since her sister had been known to be unhappy,
induced her to accept it with pleasure.
When she told Marianne what she had done, however, her first reply was
not very auspicious.
"Cleveland!"--she cried, with great agitation. "No, I cannot go to
Cleveland."--
"You forget," said Elinor gently, "that its situation is not...that it
is not in the neighbourhood of..."
"But it is in Somersetshire.--I cannot go into Somersetshire.--There,
where I looked forward to going...No, Elinor, you cannot expect me to
go there."
Elinor would not argue upon the propriety of overcoming such
feelings;--she only endeavoured to counteract them by working on
others;--represented it, therefore, as a measure which would fix the
time of her returning to that dear mother, whom she so much wished to
see, in a more eligible, more comfortable manner, than any other plan
could do, and perhaps without any greater delay. From Cleveland, which
was within a few miles of Bristol, the distance to Barton was not
beyond one day, though a long day's journey; and their mother's servant
might easily come there to attend them down; and as there could be no
occasion of their staying above a week at Cleveland, they might now be
at home in little more than three weeks' time. As Marianne's affection
for her mother was sincere, it must triumph with little difficulty,
over the imaginary evils she had started.
Mrs. Jennings was so far from being weary of her guests, that she
pressed them very earnestly to return with her again from Cleveland.
Elinor was grateful for the attention, but it could not alter her
design; and their mother's concurrence being readily gained, every
thing relative to their return was arranged as far as it could be;--and
Marianne found some relief in drawing up a statement of the hours that
were yet to divide her from Barton.
"Ah! Colonel, I do not know what you and I shall do without the Miss
Dashwoods;"--was Mrs. Jennings's address to him when he first called on
her, after their leaving her was settled--"for they are quite resolved
upon going home from the Palmers;--and how forlorn we shall be, when I
come back!--Lord! we shall sit and gape at one another as dull as two
cats."
Perhaps Mrs. Jennings was in hopes, by this vigorous sketch of their
future ennui, to provoke him to make that offer, which might give
himself an escape from it;--and if so, she had soon afterwards good
reason to think her object gained; for, on Elinor's moving to the
window to take more expeditiously the dimensions of a print, which she
was going to copy for her friend, he followed her to it with a look of
particular meaning, and conversed with her there for several minutes.
The effect of his discourse on the lady too, could not escape her
observation, for though she was too honorable to listen, and had even
changed her seat, on purpose that she might NOT hear, to one close by
the piano forte on which Marianne was playing, she could not keep
herself from seeing that Elinor changed colour, attended with
agitation, and was too intent on what he said to pursue her
employment.-- Still farther in confirmation of her hopes, in the
interval of Marianne's turning from one lesson to another, some words
of the Colonel's inevitably reached her ear, in which he seemed to be
apologising for the badness of his house. This set the matter beyond a
doubt. She wondered, indeed, at his thinking it necessary to do so;
but supposed it to be the proper etiquette. What Elinor said in reply
she could not distinguish, but judged from the motion of her lips, that
she did not think THAT any material objection;--and Mrs. Jennings
commended her in her heart for being so honest. They then talked on
for a few minutes longer without her catching a syllable, when another
lucky stop in Marianne's performance brought her these words in the
Colonel's calm voice,--
"I am afraid it cannot take place very soon."
Astonished and shocked at so unlover-like a speech, she was almost
ready to cry out, "Lord! what should hinder it?"--but checking her
desire, confined herself to this silent ejaculation.
"This is very strange!--sure he need not wait to be older."
This delay on the Colonel's side, however, did not seem to offend or
mortify his fair companion in the least, for on their breaking up the
conference soon afterwards, and moving different ways, Mrs. Jennings
very plainly heard Elinor say, and with a voice which shewed her to
feel what she said,
"I shall always think myself very much obliged to you."
Mrs. Jennings was delighted with her gratitude, and only wondered that
after hearing such a sentence, the Colonel should be able to take leave
of them, as he immediately did, with the utmost sang-froid, and go away
without making her any reply!--She had not thought her old friend could
have made so indifferent a suitor.
What had really passed between them was to this effect.
"I have heard," said he, with great compassion, "of the injustice your
friend Mr. Ferrars has suffered from his family; for if I understand
the matter right, he has been entirely cast off by them for persevering
in his engagement with a very deserving young woman.-- Have I been
rightly informed?--Is it so?--"
Elinor told him that it was.
"The cruelty, the impolitic cruelty,"--he replied, with great
feeling,--"of dividing, or attempting to divide, two young people long
attached to each other, is terrible.-- Mrs. Ferrars does not know what
she may be doing--what she may drive her son to. I have seen Mr.
Ferrars two or three times in Harley Street, and am much pleased with
him. He is not a young man with whom one can be intimately acquainted
in a short time, but I have seen enough of him to wish him well for his
own sake, and as a friend of yours, I wish it still more. I understand
that he intends to take orders. Will you be so good as to tell him
that the living of Delaford, now just vacant, as I am informed by this
day's post, is his, if he think it worth his acceptance--but THAT,
perhaps, so unfortunately circumstanced as he is now, it may be
nonsense to appear to doubt; I only wish it were more valuable.-- It
is a rectory, but a small one; the late incumbent, I believe, did not
make more than 200 L per annum, and though it is certainly capable of
improvement, I fear, not to such an amount as to afford him a very
comfortable income. Such as it is, however, my pleasure in presenting
it to him, will be very great. Pray assure him of it."
Elinor's astonishment at this commission could hardly have been
greater, had the Colonel been really making her an offer of his hand.
The preferment, which only two days before she had considered as
hopeless for Edward, was already provided to enable him to marry;--and
SHE, of all people in the world, was fixed on to bestow it!--Her
emotion was such as Mrs. Jennings had attributed to a very different
cause;--but whatever minor feelings less pure, less pleasing, might
have a share in that emotion, her esteem for the general benevolence,
and her gratitude for the particular friendship, which together
prompted Colonel Brandon to this act, were strongly felt, and warmly
expressed. She thanked him for it with all her heart, spoke of
Edward's principles and disposition with that praise which she knew
them to deserve; and promised to undertake the commission with
pleasure, if it were really his wish to put off so agreeable an office
to another. But at the same time, she could not help thinking that no
one could so well perform it as himself. It was an office in short,
from which, unwilling to give Edward the pain of receiving an
obligation from HER, she would have been very glad to be spared
herself;-- but Colonel Brandon, on motives of equal delicacy, declining
it likewise, still seemed so desirous of its being given through her
means, that she would not on any account make farther opposition.
Edward, she believed, was still in town, and fortunately she had heard
his address from Miss Steele. She could undertake therefore to inform
him of it, in the course of the day. After this had been settled,
Colonel Brandon began to talk of his own advantage in securing so
respectable and agreeable a neighbour, and THEN it was that he
mentioned with regret, that the house was small and indifferent;--an
evil which Elinor, as Mrs. Jennings had supposed her to do, made very
light of, at least as far as regarded its size.
"The smallness of the house," said she, "I cannot imagine any
inconvenience to them, for it will be in proportion to their family and
income."
By which the Colonel was surprised to find that SHE was considering Mr.
Ferrars's marriage as the certain consequence of the presentation; for
he did not suppose it possible that Delaford living could supply such
an income, as anybody in his style of life would venture to settle
on--and he said so.
"This little rectory CAN do no more than make Mr. Ferrars comfortable
as a bachelor; it cannot enable him to marry. I am sorry to say that
my patronage ends with this; and my interest is hardly more extensive.
If, however, by an unforeseen chance it should be in my power to serve
him farther, I must think very differently of him from what I now do,
if I am not as ready to be useful to him then as I sincerely wish I
could be at present. What I am now doing indeed, seems nothing at all,
since it can advance him so little towards what must be his principal,
his only object of happiness. His marriage must still be a distant
good;--at least, I am afraid it cannot take place very soon.--"
Such was the sentence which, when misunderstood, so justly offended the
delicate feelings of Mrs. Jennings; but after this narration of what
really passed between Colonel Brandon and Elinor, while they stood at
the window, the gratitude expressed by the latter on their parting, may
perhaps appear in general, not less reasonably excited, nor less
properly worded than if it had arisen from an offer of marriage.
| 1,817 | Chapter 39 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210421140324/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/sense-and-sensibility/summary/chapter-39 | Both Elinor and Marianne are anxious to leave London and go home to Barton. They're invited to go visit the Palmers at Cleveland with Mrs. Jennings, and Elinor accepts, thinking that it'll be better than staying in town. Marianne, however, is of a different opinion - remember, Cleveland isn't too far away from Willoughby's home. However, practicality wins out - since Cleveland is on the way home to Barton, they might as well stop there for a little while. Mrs. Jennings urges the girls to return with her to London after the Cleveland visit, but they insist that they must go home afterwards. Colonel Brandon stops by to visit after their plan is settled, and Mrs. Jennings sighs, asking him what they shall do once Elinor and Marianne have gone back to Barton. Elinor and Colonel Brandon go aside to speak in private, and Mrs. Jennings is dying to know what they say - could he be proposing? She's thrilled. She assumes that the marriage is in the bag. What actually happened, however, is a very different story. Colonel Brandon is concerned about Edward and the cruel punishment inflicted on him by his mother. The Colonel has taken a liking to Edward, especially because of his friendship with the Dashwoods. He wants to offer Edward the living at Delaford, his country home. This would enable him to support himself, at least moderately. Elinor is surprised and overcome - she's incredibly grateful to the Colonel. Elinor agrees to deliver the news, saying that it will be welcome to both Edward and his bride. Colonel Brandon is surprised by this development; he's not sure that the Delaford living is enough to support Edward and a wife. It's clear that the wedding will have to be in the distant future. | null | 297 | 1 | [
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161 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/29.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Sense and Sensibility/section_19_part_0.txt | Sense and Sensibility.chapter 29 | chapter 29 | null | {"name": "Chapter 29", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapter-29", "summary": "While they were breakfasting the next day, a letter was delivered to Marianne, who, \"turning of a deathlike paleness, instantly ran our of the room.\" Following her, filled with foreboding, Elinor found her sister \"stretched on the bed, almost choked by grief, one letter in her hand, and two or three others lying by her.\" When Marianne's spasm of weeping was over, Elinor read Willoughby's letter. In it, he said that his \"esteem\" for Marianne's family was \"very sincere.\" However, it was impossible that he could have \"meant more\" towards Marianne because his affections had \"been long engaged elsewhere.\" He thus returned Marianne's letters and the lock of hair she had given him. Aghast at such \"depravity of . . . mind,\" Elinor did her best to comfort her sister. Eventually Marianne admitted that she and Willoughby had never been engaged; he had never actually declared his love, only implied it. Elinor was amazed at Marianne's indiscretion, for without an engagement as sanction, her conduct could not be excused. But Marianne cared little for public opinion and wanted to leave for home immediately. Elinor reminded her that they owed Mrs. Jennings \"much more than civility\" and persuaded her hysterical sister to stay another day or two.", "analysis": "John Willoughby seems scarcely to be credible in this chapter. He first appeared in the romantic role of rescuer and completely captivated Marianne. But in London he ignores her completely, until she finally forces him to speak. He leaves her with blatant rudeness and sends her a letter which is a masterpiece of callousness. After this behavior, the reader is prepared to believe anything of him and is not surprised when later chapters reveal more of his depravity. In this chapter, Elinor's devotion to Marianne is shown in a most moving way. Without saying a word, she sits on her bed, holds Marianne's hand, and then gives way to \"a burst of tears, which at first was scarcely less violent than Marianne's.\" Knowing that Marianne's grief must take its course, she watches by her \"till this excess of suffering had somewhat spent itself.\" Remember that she, too, has experienced disappointment but is too concerned with the feelings of those that love her to tell them of Edward's deceit. In comparison with this unselfish behavior, Marianne is hardly likeable. She has been rude to everyone except her family and Willoughby -- rudeness which is often undeserved. People like Colonel Brandon and Mrs. Jennings, who have been genuinely kind to the girl, have met with a callousness which is only equaled by Willoughby's to her. Even people like Lady Middleron and her husband, definitely not sympathetic characters, have always been cordial to the girl and yet have been treated by her with definite incivility. It is thus difficult to really feel sorry for Marianne."} |
Before the house-maid had lit their fire the next day, or the sun
gained any power over a cold, gloomy morning in January, Marianne, only
half dressed, was kneeling against one of the window-seats for the sake
of all the little light she could command from it, and writing as fast
as a continual flow of tears would permit her. In this situation,
Elinor, roused from sleep by her agitation and sobs, first perceived
her; and after observing her for a few moments with silent anxiety,
said, in a tone of the most considerate gentleness,
"Marianne, may I ask-?"
"No, Elinor," she replied, "ask nothing; you will soon know all."
The sort of desperate calmness with which this was said, lasted no
longer than while she spoke, and was immediately followed by a return
of the same excessive affliction. It was some minutes before she could
go on with her letter, and the frequent bursts of grief which still
obliged her, at intervals, to withhold her pen, were proofs enough of
her feeling how more than probable it was that she was writing for the
last time to Willoughby.
Elinor paid her every quiet and unobtrusive attention in her power; and
she would have tried to sooth and tranquilize her still more, had not
Marianne entreated her, with all the eagerness of the most nervous
irritability, not to speak to her for the world. In such
circumstances, it was better for both that they should not be long
together; and the restless state of Marianne's mind not only prevented
her from remaining in the room a moment after she was dressed, but
requiring at once solitude and continual change of place, made her
wander about the house till breakfast time, avoiding the sight of every
body.
At breakfast she neither ate, nor attempted to eat any thing; and
Elinor's attention was then all employed, not in urging her, not in
pitying her, nor in appearing to regard her, but in endeavouring to
engage Mrs. Jennings's notice entirely to herself.
As this was a favourite meal with Mrs. Jennings, it lasted a
considerable time, and they were just setting themselves, after it,
round the common working table, when a letter was delivered to
Marianne, which she eagerly caught from the servant, and, turning of a
death-like paleness, instantly ran out of the room. Elinor, who saw as
plainly by this, as if she had seen the direction, that it must come
from Willoughby, felt immediately such a sickness at heart as made her
hardly able to hold up her head, and sat in such a general tremour as
made her fear it impossible to escape Mrs. Jennings's notice. That good
lady, however, saw only that Marianne had received a letter from
Willoughby, which appeared to her a very good joke, and which she
treated accordingly, by hoping, with a laugh, that she would find it to
her liking. Of Elinor's distress, she was too busily employed in
measuring lengths of worsted for her rug, to see any thing at all; and
calmly continuing her talk, as soon as Marianne disappeared, she said,
"Upon my word, I never saw a young woman so desperately in love in my
life! MY girls were nothing to her, and yet they used to be foolish
enough; but as for Miss Marianne, she is quite an altered creature. I
hope, from the bottom of my heart, he won't keep her waiting much
longer, for it is quite grievous to see her look so ill and forlorn.
Pray, when are they to be married?"
Elinor, though never less disposed to speak than at that moment,
obliged herself to answer such an attack as this, and, therefore,
trying to smile, replied, "And have you really, Ma'am, talked yourself
into a persuasion of my sister's being engaged to Mr. Willoughby? I
thought it had been only a joke, but so serious a question seems to
imply more; and I must beg, therefore, that you will not deceive
yourself any longer. I do assure you that nothing would surprise me
more than to hear of their being going to be married."
"For shame, for shame, Miss Dashwood! how can you talk so? Don't we
all know that it must be a match, that they were over head and ears in
love with each other from the first moment they met? Did not I see
them together in Devonshire every day, and all day long; and did not I
know that your sister came to town with me on purpose to buy wedding
clothes? Come, come, this won't do. Because you are so sly about it
yourself, you think nobody else has any senses; but it is no such
thing, I can tell you, for it has been known all over town this ever so
long. I tell every body of it and so does Charlotte."
"Indeed, Ma'am," said Elinor, very seriously, "you are mistaken.
Indeed, you are doing a very unkind thing in spreading the report, and
you will find that you have though you will not believe me now."
Mrs. Jennings laughed again, but Elinor had not spirits to say more,
and eager at all events to know what Willoughby had written, hurried
away to their room, where, on opening the door, she saw Marianne
stretched on the bed, almost choked by grief, one letter in her hand,
and two or three others laying by her. Elinor drew near, but without
saying a word; and seating herself on the bed, took her hand, kissed
her affectionately several times, and then gave way to a burst of
tears, which at first was scarcely less violent than Marianne's. The
latter, though unable to speak, seemed to feel all the tenderness of
this behaviour, and after some time thus spent in joint affliction, she
put all the letters into Elinor's hands; and then covering her face
with her handkerchief, almost screamed with agony. Elinor, who knew
that such grief, shocking as it was to witness it, must have its
course, watched by her till this excess of suffering had somewhat spent
itself, and then turning eagerly to Willoughby's letter, read as
follows:
"Bond Street, January.
"MY DEAR MADAM,
"I have just had the honour of receiving your
letter, for which I beg to return my sincere
acknowledgments. I am much concerned to find there
was anything in my behaviour last night that did
not meet your approbation; and though I am quite at
a loss to discover in what point I could be so
unfortunate as to offend you, I entreat your
forgiveness of what I can assure you to have been
perfectly unintentional. I shall never reflect on
my former acquaintance with your family in Devonshire
without the most grateful pleasure, and flatter
myself it will not be broken by any mistake or
misapprehension of my actions. My esteem for your
whole family is very sincere; but if I have been so
unfortunate as to give rise to a belief of more than
I felt, or meant to express, I shall reproach myself
for not having been more guarded in my professions
of that esteem. That I should ever have meant more
you will allow to be impossible, when you understand
that my affections have been long engaged elsewhere,
and it will not be many weeks, I believe, before
this engagement is fulfilled. It is with great
regret that I obey your commands in returning the
letters with which I have been honoured from you,
and the lock of hair, which you so obligingly bestowed
on me.
"I am, dear Madam,
"Your most obedient
"humble servant,
"JOHN WILLOUGHBY."
With what indignation such a letter as this must be read by Miss
Dashwood, may be imagined. Though aware, before she began it, that it
must bring a confession of his inconstancy, and confirm their
separation for ever, she was not aware that such language could be
suffered to announce it; nor could she have supposed Willoughby capable
of departing so far from the appearance of every honourable and
delicate feeling--so far from the common decorum of a gentleman, as to
send a letter so impudently cruel: a letter which, instead of bringing
with his desire of a release any professions of regret, acknowledged no
breach of faith, denied all peculiar affection whatever--a letter of
which every line was an insult, and which proclaimed its writer to be
deep in hardened villainy.
She paused over it for some time with indignant astonishment; then read
it again and again; but every perusal only served to increase her
abhorrence of the man, and so bitter were her feelings against him,
that she dared not trust herself to speak, lest she might wound
Marianne still deeper by treating their disengagement, not as a loss to
her of any possible good but as an escape from the worst and most
irremediable of all evils, a connection, for life, with an unprincipled
man, as a deliverance the most real, a blessing the most important.
In her earnest meditations on the contents of the letter, on the
depravity of that mind which could dictate it, and probably, on the
very different mind of a very different person, who had no other
connection whatever with the affair than what her heart gave him with
every thing that passed, Elinor forgot the immediate distress of her
sister, forgot that she had three letters on her lap yet unread, and so
entirely forgot how long she had been in the room, that when on hearing
a carriage drive up to the door, she went to the window to see who
could be coming so unreasonably early, she was all astonishment to
perceive Mrs. Jennings's chariot, which she knew had not been ordered
till one. Determined not to quit Marianne, though hopeless of
contributing, at present, to her ease, she hurried away to excuse
herself from attending Mrs. Jennings, on account of her sister being
indisposed. Mrs. Jennings, with a thoroughly good-humoured concern for
its cause, admitted the excuse most readily, and Elinor, after seeing
her safe off, returned to Marianne, whom she found attempting to rise
from the bed, and whom she reached just in time to prevent her from
falling on the floor, faint and giddy from a long want of proper rest
and food; for it was many days since she had any appetite, and many
nights since she had really slept; and now, when her mind was no longer
supported by the fever of suspense, the consequence of all this was
felt in an aching head, a weakened stomach, and a general nervous
faintness. A glass of wine, which Elinor procured for her directly,
made her more comfortable, and she was at last able to express some
sense of her kindness, by saying,
"Poor Elinor! how unhappy I make you!"
"I only wish," replied her sister, "there were any thing I COULD do,
which might be of comfort to you."
This, as every thing else would have been, was too much for Marianne,
who could only exclaim, in the anguish of her heart, "Oh! Elinor, I am
miserable, indeed," before her voice was entirely lost in sobs.
Elinor could no longer witness this torrent of unresisted grief in
silence.
"Exert yourself, dear Marianne," she cried, "if you would not kill
yourself and all who love you. Think of your mother; think of her
misery while YOU suffer: for her sake you must exert yourself."
"I cannot, I cannot," cried Marianne; "leave me, leave me, if I
distress you; leave me, hate me, forget me! but do not torture me so.
Oh! how easy for those, who have no sorrow of their own to talk of
exertion! Happy, happy Elinor, YOU cannot have an idea of what I
suffer."
"Do you call ME happy, Marianne? Ah! if you knew!--And can you believe
me to be so, while I see you so wretched!"
"Forgive me, forgive me," throwing her arms round her sister's neck; "I
know you feel for me; I know what a heart you have; but yet you
are--you must be happy; Edward loves you--what, oh what, can do away
such happiness as that?"
"Many, many circumstances," said Elinor, solemnly.
"No, no, no," cried Marianne wildly, "he loves you, and only you. You
CAN have no grief."
"I can have no pleasure while I see you in this state."
"And you will never see me otherwise. Mine is a misery which nothing
can do away."
"You must not talk so, Marianne. Have you no comforts? no friends? Is
your loss such as leaves no opening for consolation? Much as you
suffer now, think of what you would have suffered if the discovery of
his character had been delayed to a later period--if your engagement
had been carried on for months and months, as it might have been,
before he chose to put an end to it. Every additional day of unhappy
confidence, on your side, would have made the blow more dreadful."
"Engagement!" cried Marianne, "there has been no engagement."
"No engagement!"
"No, he is not so unworthy as you believe him. He has broken no faith
with me."
"But he told you that he loved you."
"Yes--no--never absolutely. It was every day implied, but never
professedly declared. Sometimes I thought it had been--but it never
was."
"Yet you wrote to him?"--
"Yes--could that be wrong after all that had passed?-- But I cannot
talk."
Elinor said no more, and turning again to the three letters which now
raised a much stronger curiosity than before, directly ran over the
contents of all. The first, which was what her sister had sent him on
their arrival in town, was to this effect.
Berkeley Street, January.
"How surprised you will be, Willoughby, on
receiving this; and I think you will feel something
more than surprise, when you know that I am in town.
An opportunity of coming hither, though with Mrs.
Jennings, was a temptation we could not resist.
I wish you may receive this in time to come here
to-night, but I will not depend on it. At any rate
I shall expect you to-morrow. For the present, adieu.
"M.D."
Her second note, which had been written on the morning after the dance
at the Middletons', was in these words:--
"I cannot express my disappointment in having
missed you the day before yesterday, nor my astonishment
at not having received any answer to a note which
I sent you above a week ago. I have been expecting
to hear from you, and still more to see you, every
hour of the day. Pray call again as soon as possible,
and explain the reason of my having expected this
in vain. You had better come earlier another time,
because we are generally out by one. We were last
night at Lady Middleton's, where there was a dance.
I have been told that you were asked to be of the
party. But could it be so? You must be very much
altered indeed since we parted, if that could be
the case, and you not there. But I will not suppose
this possible, and I hope very soon to receive your
personal assurance of its being otherwise.
"M.D."
The contents of her last note to him were these:--
"What am I to imagine, Willoughby, by your
behaviour last night? Again I demand an explanation
of it. I was prepared to meet you with the pleasure
which our separation naturally produced, with the
familiarity which our intimacy at Barton appeared
to me to justify. I was repulsed indeed! I have
passed a wretched night in endeavouring to excuse
a conduct which can scarcely be called less than
insulting; but though I have not yet been able to
form any reasonable apology for your behaviour,
I am perfectly ready to hear your justification of
it. You have perhaps been misinformed, or purposely
deceived, in something concerning me, which may have
lowered me in your opinion. Tell me what it is,
explain the grounds on which you acted, and I shall
be satisfied, in being able to satisfy you. It
would grieve me indeed to be obliged to think ill
of you; but if I am to do it, if I am to learn that
you are not what we have hitherto believed you, that
your regard for us all was insincere, that your
behaviour to me was intended only to deceive, let
it be told as soon as possible. My feelings are at
present in a state of dreadful indecision; I wish
to acquit you, but certainty on either side will be
ease to what I now suffer. If your sentiments are
no longer what they were, you will return my notes,
and the lock of my hair which is in your possession.
"M.D."
That such letters, so full of affection and confidence, could have been
so answered, Elinor, for Willoughby's sake, would have been unwilling
to believe. But her condemnation of him did not blind her to the
impropriety of their having been written at all; and she was silently
grieving over the imprudence which had hazarded such unsolicited proofs
of tenderness, not warranted by anything preceding, and most severely
condemned by the event, when Marianne, perceiving that she had finished
the letters, observed to her that they contained nothing but what any
one would have written in the same situation.
"I felt myself," she added, "to be as solemnly engaged to him, as if
the strictest legal covenant had bound us to each other."
"I can believe it," said Elinor; "but unfortunately he did not feel the
same."
"He DID feel the same, Elinor--for weeks and weeks he felt it. I know
he did. Whatever may have changed him now, (and nothing but the
blackest art employed against me can have done it), I was once as dear
to him as my own soul could wish. This lock of hair, which now he can
so readily give up, was begged of me with the most earnest
supplication. Had you seen his look, his manner, had you heard his
voice at that moment! Have you forgot the last evening of our being
together at Barton? The morning that we parted too! When he told me
that it might be many weeks before we met again--his distress--can I
ever forget his distress?"
For a moment or two she could say no more; but when this emotion had
passed away, she added, in a firmer tone,
"Elinor, I have been cruelly used; but not by Willoughby."
"Dearest Marianne, who but himself? By whom can he have been
instigated?"
"By all the world, rather than by his own heart. I could rather
believe every creature of my acquaintance leagued together to ruin me
in his opinion, than believe his nature capable of such cruelty. This
woman of whom he writes--whoever she be--or any one, in short, but your
own dear self, mama, and Edward, may have been so barbarous to bely me.
Beyond you three, is there a creature in the world whom I would not
rather suspect of evil than Willoughby, whose heart I know so well?"
Elinor would not contend, and only replied, "Whoever may have been so
detestably your enemy, let them be cheated of their malignant triumph,
my dear sister, by seeing how nobly the consciousness of your own
innocence and good intentions supports your spirits. It is a
reasonable and laudable pride which resists such malevolence."
"No, no," cried Marianne, "misery such as mine has no pride. I care
not who knows that I am wretched. The triumph of seeing me so may be
open to all the world. Elinor, Elinor, they who suffer little may be
proud and independent as they like--may resist insult, or return
mortification--but I cannot. I must feel--I must be wretched--and they
are welcome to enjoy the consciousness of it that can."
"But for my mother's sake and mine--"
"I would do more than for my own. But to appear happy when I am so
miserable--Oh! who can require it?"
Again they were both silent. Elinor was employed in walking
thoughtfully from the fire to the window, from the window to the fire,
without knowing that she received warmth from one, or discerning
objects through the other; and Marianne, seated at the foot of the bed,
with her head leaning against one of its posts, again took up
Willoughby's letter, and, after shuddering over every sentence,
exclaimed--
"It is too much! Oh, Willoughby, Willoughby, could this be yours!
Cruel, cruel--nothing can acquit you. Elinor, nothing can. Whatever
he might have heard against me--ought he not to have suspended his
belief? ought he not to have told me of it, to have given me the power
of clearing myself? 'The lock of hair, (repeating it from the letter,)
which you so obligingly bestowed on me'--That is unpardonable.
Willoughby, where was your heart when you wrote those words? Oh,
barbarously insolent!--Elinor, can he be justified?"
"No, Marianne, in no possible way."
"And yet this woman--who knows what her art may have been?--how long it
may have been premeditated, and how deeply contrived by her!--Who is
she?--Who can she be?--Whom did I ever hear him talk of as young and
attractive among his female acquaintance?--Oh! no one, no one--he
talked to me only of myself."
Another pause ensued; Marianne was greatly agitated, and it ended thus.
"Elinor, I must go home. I must go and comfort mama. Can not we be
gone to-morrow?"
"To-morrow, Marianne!"
"Yes, why should I stay here? I came only for Willoughby's sake--and
now who cares for me? Who regards me?"
"It would be impossible to go to-morrow. We owe Mrs. Jennings much more
than civility; and civility of the commonest kind must prevent such a
hasty removal as that."
"Well then, another day or two, perhaps; but I cannot stay here long, I
cannot stay to endure the questions and remarks of all these people.
The Middletons and Palmers--how am I to bear their pity? The pity of
such a woman as Lady Middleton! Oh, what would HE say to that!"
Elinor advised her to lie down again, and for a moment she did so; but
no attitude could give her ease; and in restless pain of mind and body
she moved from one posture to another, till growing more and more
hysterical, her sister could with difficulty keep her on the bed at
all, and for some time was fearful of being constrained to call for
assistance. Some lavender drops, however, which she was at length
persuaded to take, were of use; and from that time till Mrs. Jennings
returned, she continued on the bed quiet and motionless.
| 4,173 | Chapter 29 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapter-29 | While they were breakfasting the next day, a letter was delivered to Marianne, who, "turning of a deathlike paleness, instantly ran our of the room." Following her, filled with foreboding, Elinor found her sister "stretched on the bed, almost choked by grief, one letter in her hand, and two or three others lying by her." When Marianne's spasm of weeping was over, Elinor read Willoughby's letter. In it, he said that his "esteem" for Marianne's family was "very sincere." However, it was impossible that he could have "meant more" towards Marianne because his affections had "been long engaged elsewhere." He thus returned Marianne's letters and the lock of hair she had given him. Aghast at such "depravity of . . . mind," Elinor did her best to comfort her sister. Eventually Marianne admitted that she and Willoughby had never been engaged; he had never actually declared his love, only implied it. Elinor was amazed at Marianne's indiscretion, for without an engagement as sanction, her conduct could not be excused. But Marianne cared little for public opinion and wanted to leave for home immediately. Elinor reminded her that they owed Mrs. Jennings "much more than civility" and persuaded her hysterical sister to stay another day or two. | John Willoughby seems scarcely to be credible in this chapter. He first appeared in the romantic role of rescuer and completely captivated Marianne. But in London he ignores her completely, until she finally forces him to speak. He leaves her with blatant rudeness and sends her a letter which is a masterpiece of callousness. After this behavior, the reader is prepared to believe anything of him and is not surprised when later chapters reveal more of his depravity. In this chapter, Elinor's devotion to Marianne is shown in a most moving way. Without saying a word, she sits on her bed, holds Marianne's hand, and then gives way to "a burst of tears, which at first was scarcely less violent than Marianne's." Knowing that Marianne's grief must take its course, she watches by her "till this excess of suffering had somewhat spent itself." Remember that she, too, has experienced disappointment but is too concerned with the feelings of those that love her to tell them of Edward's deceit. In comparison with this unselfish behavior, Marianne is hardly likeable. She has been rude to everyone except her family and Willoughby -- rudeness which is often undeserved. People like Colonel Brandon and Mrs. Jennings, who have been genuinely kind to the girl, have met with a callousness which is only equaled by Willoughby's to her. Even people like Lady Middleron and her husband, definitely not sympathetic characters, have always been cordial to the girl and yet have been treated by her with definite incivility. It is thus difficult to really feel sorry for Marianne. | 206 | 262 | [
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110 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/04.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_1_part_4.txt | Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter iv | chapter iv | null | {"name": "Chapter IV", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase1-chapter1-11", "summary": "Meanwhile, upstairs at Rolliver's, Abraham listens to his parents discuss Tess's future. Joan tells Durbeyfield that Tess should be sent to rich relatives of the name d'Urberville to make her fortune and perhaps marry a rich man. Back home, Tess realizes that her father will not be able to take the beehives. Her mother soon wakes her to take on the job herself with her brother Abraham. As the horse Prince drags the cart in the dark, the youngsters talk about the stars and Tess explains that stars are indeed worlds \"most of them splendid and sound--a few blighted,\" and that they have the misfortune to live on a blighted star. After a while, there is a jolt and Tess, who has fallen into a sound sleep, wakes in the midst of a horrible accident. The mail cart has run into the horse that lies dying on the road. Well aware of the economic damage to her family, Tess is overcome with guilt. Durbeyfield works harder than he ever has to bury Prince", "analysis": ""} |
Rolliver's inn, the single alehouse at this end of the long and
broken village, could only boast of an off-licence; hence, as
nobody could legally drink on the premises, the amount of overt
accommodation for consumers was strictly limited to a little board
about six inches wide and two yards long, fixed to the garden palings
by pieces of wire, so as to form a ledge. On this board thirsty
strangers deposited their cups as they stood in the road and drank,
and threw the dregs on the dusty ground to the pattern of Polynesia,
and wished they could have a restful seat inside.
Thus the strangers. But there were also local customers who felt the
same wish; and where there's a will there's a way.
In a large bedroom upstairs, the window of which was thickly
curtained with a great woollen shawl lately discarded by the
landlady, Mrs Rolliver, were gathered on this evening nearly a dozen
persons, all seeking beatitude; all old inhabitants of the nearer
end of Marlott, and frequenters of this retreat. Not only did the
distance to the The Pure Drop, the fully-licensed tavern at the
further part of the dispersed village, render its accommodation
practically unavailable for dwellers at this end; but the far more
serious question, the quality of the liquor, confirmed the prevalent
opinion that it was better to drink with Rolliver in a corner of the
housetop than with the other landlord in a wide house.
A gaunt four-post bedstead which stood in the room afforded
sitting-space for several persons gathered round three of its sides;
a couple more men had elevated themselves on a chest of drawers;
another rested on the oak-carved "cwoffer"; two on the wash-stand;
another on the stool; and thus all were, somehow, seated at their
ease. The stage of mental comfort to which they had arrived at this
hour was one wherein their souls expanded beyond their skins, and
spread their personalities warmly through the room. In this process
the chamber and its furniture grew more and more dignified and
luxurious; the shawl hanging at the window took upon itself the
richness of tapestry; the brass handles of the chest of drawers were
as golden knockers; and the carved bedposts seemed to have some
kinship with the magnificent pillars of Solomon's temple.
Mrs Durbeyfield, having quickly walked hitherward after parting from
Tess, opened the front door, crossed the downstairs room, which was
in deep gloom, and then unfastened the stair-door like one whose
fingers knew the tricks of the latches well. Her ascent of the
crooked staircase was a slower process, and her face, as it rose into
the light above the last stair, encountered the gaze of all the party
assembled in the bedroom.
"--Being a few private friends I've asked in to keep up club-walking
at my own expense," the landlady exclaimed at the sound of footsteps,
as glibly as a child repeating the Catechism, while she peered over
the stairs. "Oh, 'tis you, Mrs Durbeyfield--Lard--how you frightened
me!--I thought it might be some gaffer sent by Gover'ment."
Mrs Durbeyfield was welcomed with glances and nods by the remainder
of the conclave, and turned to where her husband sat. He was humming
absently to himself, in a low tone: "I be as good as some folks here
and there! I've got a great family vault at Kingsbere-sub-Greenhill,
and finer skillentons than any man in Wessex!"
"I've something to tell 'ee that's come into my head about that--a
grand projick!" whispered his cheerful wife. "Here, John, don't 'ee
see me?" She nudged him, while he, looking through her as through a
window-pane, went on with his recitative.
"Hush! Don't 'ee sing so loud, my good man," said the landlady; "in
case any member of the Gover'ment should be passing, and take away my
licends."
"He's told 'ee what's happened to us, I suppose?" asked Mrs
Durbeyfield.
"Yes--in a way. D'ye think there's any money hanging by it?"
"Ah, that's the secret," said Joan Durbeyfield sagely. "However,
'tis well to be kin to a coach, even if you don't ride in 'en." She
dropped her public voice, and continued in a low tone to her husband:
"I've been thinking since you brought the news that there's a great
rich lady out by Trantridge, on the edge o' The Chase, of the name of
d'Urberville."
"Hey--what's that?" said Sir John.
She repeated the information. "That lady must be our relation," she
said. "And my projick is to send Tess to claim kin."
"There IS a lady of the name, now you mention it," said Durbeyfield.
"Pa'son Tringham didn't think of that. But she's nothing beside
we--a junior branch of us, no doubt, hailing long since King Norman's
day."
While this question was being discussed neither of the pair noticed,
in their preoccupation, that little Abraham had crept into the room,
and was awaiting an opportunity of asking them to return.
"She is rich, and she'd be sure to take notice o' the maid,"
continued Mrs Durbeyfield; "and 'twill be a very good thing. I don't
see why two branches o' one family should not be on visiting terms."
"Yes; and we'll all claim kin!" said Abraham brightly from under the
bedstead. "And we'll all go and see her when Tess has gone to live
with her; and we'll ride in her coach and wear black clothes!"
"How do you come here, child? What nonsense be ye talking! Go away,
and play on the stairs till father and mother be ready! ... Well,
Tess ought to go to this other member of our family. She'd be sure
to win the lady--Tess would; and likely enough 'twould lead to some
noble gentleman marrying her. In short, I know it."
"How?"
"I tried her fate in the _Fortune-Teller_, and it brought out that
very thing! ... You should ha' seen how pretty she looked to-day;
her skin is as sumple as a duchess'."
"What says the maid herself to going?"
"I've not asked her. She don't know there is any such lady-relation
yet. But it would certainly put her in the way of a grand marriage,
and she won't say nay to going."
"Tess is queer."
"But she's tractable at bottom. Leave her to me."
Though this conversation had been private, sufficient of its import
reached the understandings of those around to suggest to them that
the Durbeyfields had weightier concerns to talk of now than common
folks had, and that Tess, their pretty eldest daughter, had fine
prospects in store.
"Tess is a fine figure o' fun, as I said to myself to-day when I zeed
her vamping round parish with the rest," observed one of the elderly
boozers in an undertone. "But Joan Durbeyfield must mind that she
don't get green malt in floor." It was a local phrase which had a
peculiar meaning, and there was no reply.
The conversation became inclusive, and presently other footsteps were
heard crossing the room below.
"--Being a few private friends asked in to-night to keep up
club-walking at my own expense." The landlady had rapidly re-used
the formula she kept on hand for intruders before she recognized that
the newcomer was Tess.
Even to her mother's gaze the girl's young features looked sadly
out of place amid the alcoholic vapours which floated here as
no unsuitable medium for wrinkled middle-age; and hardly was a
reproachful flash from Tess's dark eyes needed to make her father
and mother rise from their seats, hastily finish their ale, and
descend the stairs behind her, Mrs Rolliver's caution following
their footsteps.
"No noise, please, if ye'll be so good, my dears; or I mid lose my
licends, and be summons'd, and I don't know what all! 'Night t'ye!"
They went home together, Tess holding one arm of her father, and Mrs
Durbeyfield the other. He had, in truth, drunk very little--not a
fourth of the quantity which a systematic tippler could carry to
church on a Sunday afternoon without a hitch in his eastings or
genuflections; but the weakness of Sir John's constitution made
mountains of his petty sins in this kind. On reaching the fresh
air he was sufficiently unsteady to incline the row of three at one
moment as if they were marching to London, and at another as if they
were marching to Bath--which produced a comical effect, frequent
enough in families on nocturnal homegoings; and, like most comical
effects, not quite so comic after all. The two women valiantly
disguised these forced excursions and countermarches as well as they
could from Durbeyfield, their cause, and from Abraham, and from
themselves; and so they approached by degrees their own door, the
head of the family bursting suddenly into his former refrain as he
drew near, as if to fortify his soul at sight of the smallness of
his present residence--
"I've got a fam--ily vault at Kingsbere!"
"Hush--don't be so silly, Jacky," said his wife. "Yours is not the
only family that was of 'count in wold days. Look at the Anktells,
and Horseys, and the Tringhams themselves--gone to seed a'most as
much as you--though you was bigger folks than they, that's true.
Thank God, I was never of no family, and have nothing to be ashamed
of in that way!"
"Don't you be so sure o' that. From you nater 'tis my belief you've
disgraced yourselves more than any o' us, and was kings and queens
outright at one time."
Tess turned the subject by saying what was far more prominent in her
own mind at the moment than thoughts of her ancestry--"I am afraid
father won't be able to take the journey with the beehives to-morrow
so early."
"I? I shall be all right in an hour or two," said Durbeyfield.
It was eleven o'clock before the family were all in bed, and
two o'clock next morning was the latest hour for starting with
the beehives if they were to be delivered to the retailers in
Casterbridge before the Saturday market began, the way thither lying
by bad roads over a distance of between twenty and thirty miles, and
the horse and waggon being of the slowest. At half-past one Mrs
Durbeyfield came into the large bedroom where Tess and all her
little brothers and sisters slept.
"The poor man can't go," she said to her eldest daughter, whose great
eyes had opened the moment her mother's hand touched the door.
Tess sat up in bed, lost in a vague interspace between a dream and
this information.
"But somebody must go," she replied. "It is late for the hives
already. Swarming will soon be over for the year; and it we put off
taking 'em till next week's market the call for 'em will be past, and
they'll be thrown on our hands."
Mrs Durbeyfield looked unequal to the emergency. "Some young feller,
perhaps, would go? One of them who were so much after dancing with
'ee yesterday," she presently suggested.
"O no--I wouldn't have it for the world!" declared Tess proudly.
"And letting everybody know the reason--such a thing to be ashamed
of! I think _I_ could go if Abraham could go with me to kip me
company."
Her mother at length agreed to this arrangement. Little Abraham was
aroused from his deep sleep in a corner of the same apartment, and
made to put on his clothes while still mentally in the other world.
Meanwhile Tess had hastily dressed herself; and the twain, lighting
a lantern, went out to the stable. The rickety little waggon was
already laden, and the girl led out the horse, Prince, only a degree
less rickety than the vehicle.
The poor creature looked wonderingly round at the night, at the
lantern, at their two figures, as if he could not believe that at
that hour, when every living thing was intended to be in shelter and
at rest, he was called upon to go out and labour. They put a stock
of candle-ends into the lantern, hung the latter to the off-side of
the load, and directed the horse onward, walking at his shoulder at
first during the uphill parts of the way, in order not to overload
an animal of so little vigour. To cheer themselves as well as they
could, they made an artificial morning with the lantern, some bread
and butter, and their own conversation, the real morning being far
from come. Abraham, as he more fully awoke (for he had moved in a
sort of trance so far), began to talk of the strange shapes assumed
by the various dark objects against the sky; of this tree that looked
like a raging tiger springing from a lair; of that which resembled a
giant's head.
When they had passed the little town of Stourcastle, dumbly somnolent
under its thick brown thatch, they reached higher ground. Still
higher, on their left, the elevation called Bulbarrow, or Bealbarrow,
well-nigh the highest in South Wessex, swelled into the sky,
engirdled by its earthen trenches. From hereabout the long road was
fairly level for some distance onward. They mounted in front of the
waggon, and Abraham grew reflective.
"Tess!" he said in a preparatory tone, after a silence.
"Yes, Abraham."
"Bain't you glad that we've become gentlefolk?"
"Not particular glad."
"But you be glad that you 'm going to marry a gentleman?"
"What?" said Tess, lifting her face.
"That our great relation will help 'ee to marry a gentleman."
"I? Our great relation? We have no such relation. What has put
that into your head?"
"I heard 'em talking about it up at Rolliver's when I went to find
father. There's a rich lady of our family out at Trantridge, and
mother said that if you claimed kin with the lady, she'd put 'ee in
the way of marrying a gentleman."
His sister became abruptly still, and lapsed into a pondering
silence. Abraham talked on, rather for the pleasure of utterance
than for audition, so that his sister's abstraction was of no
account. He leant back against the hives, and with upturned face
made observations on the stars, whose cold pulses were beating
amid the black hollows above, in serene dissociation from these two
wisps of human life. He asked how far away those twinklers were,
and whether God was on the other side of them. But ever and anon
his childish prattle recurred to what impressed his imagination
even more deeply than the wonders of creation. If Tess were made
rich by marrying a gentleman, would she have money enough to buy a
spyglass so large that it would draw the stars as near to her as
Nettlecombe-Tout?
The renewed subject, which seemed to have impregnated the whole
family, filled Tess with impatience.
"Never mind that now!" she exclaimed.
"Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?"
"Yes."
"All like ours?"
"I don't know; but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the
apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound--a few
blighted."
"Which do we live on--a splendid one or a blighted one?"
"A blighted one."
"'Tis very unlucky that we didn't pitch on a sound one, when there
were so many more of 'em!"
"Yes."
"Is it like that REALLY, Tess?" said Abraham, turning to her much
impressed, on reconsideration of this rare information. "How would
it have been if we had pitched on a sound one?"
"Well, father wouldn't have coughed and creeped about as he does,
and wouldn't have got too tipsy to go on this journey; and mother
wouldn't have been always washing, and never getting finished."
"And you would have been a rich lady ready-made, and not have had to
be made rich by marrying a gentleman?"
"O Aby, don't--don't talk of that any more!"
Left to his reflections Abraham soon grew drowsy. Tess was not
skilful in the management of a horse, but she thought that she could
take upon herself the entire conduct of the load for the present and
allow Abraham to go to sleep if he wished to do so. She made him a
sort of nest in front of the hives, in such a manner that he could
not fall, and, taking the reins into her own hands, jogged on as
before.
Prince required but slight attention, lacking energy for superfluous
movements of any sort. With no longer a companion to distract her,
Tess fell more deeply into reverie than ever, her back leaning
against the hives. The mute procession past her shoulders of trees
and hedges became attached to fantastic scenes outside reality, and
the occasional heave of the wind became the sigh of some immense sad
soul, conterminous with the universe in space, and with history in
time.
Then, examining the mesh of events in her own life, she seemed to see
the vanity of her father's pride; the gentlemanly suitor awaiting
herself in her mother's fancy; to see him as a grimacing personage,
laughing at her poverty and her shrouded knightly ancestry.
Everything grew more and more extravagant, and she no longer knew how
time passed. A sudden jerk shook her in her seat, and Tess awoke
from the sleep into which she, too, had fallen.
They were a long way further on than when she had lost consciousness,
and the waggon had stopped. A hollow groan, unlike anything she had
ever heard in her life, came from the front, followed by a shout of
"Hoi there!"
The lantern hanging at her waggon had gone out, but another was
shining in her face--much brighter than her own had been. Something
terrible had happened. The harness was entangled with an object
which blocked the way.
In consternation Tess jumped down, and discovered the dreadful truth.
The groan had proceeded from her father's poor horse Prince. The
morning mail-cart, with its two noiseless wheels, speeding along
these lanes like an arrow, as it always did, had driven into her slow
and unlighted equipage. The pointed shaft of the cart had entered
the breast of the unhappy Prince like a sword, and from the wound his
life's blood was spouting in a stream, and falling with a hiss into
the road.
In her despair Tess sprang forward and put her hand upon the hole,
with the only result that she became splashed from face to skirt with
the crimson drops. Then she stood helplessly looking on. Prince
also stood firm and motionless as long as he could; till he suddenly
sank down in a heap.
By this time the mail-cart man had joined her, and began dragging and
unharnessing the hot form of Prince. But he was already dead, and,
seeing that nothing more could be done immediately, the mail-cart man
returned to his own animal, which was uninjured.
"You was on the wrong side," he said. "I am bound to go on with the
mail-bags, so that the best thing for you to do is bide here with
your load. I'll send somebody to help you as soon as I can. It is
getting daylight, and you have nothing to fear."
He mounted and sped on his way; while Tess stood and waited. The
atmosphere turned pale, the birds shook themselves in the hedges,
arose, and twittered; the lane showed all its white features, and
Tess showed hers, still whiter. The huge pool of blood in front of
her was already assuming the iridescence of coagulation; and when the
sun rose a hundred prismatic hues were reflected from it. Prince lay
alongside, still and stark; his eyes half open, the hole in his chest
looking scarcely large enough to have let out all that had animated
him.
"'Tis all my doing--all mine!" the girl cried, gazing at the
spectacle. "No excuse for me--none. What will mother and father
live on now? Aby, Aby!" She shook the child, who had slept soundly
through the whole disaster. "We can't go on with our load--Prince
is killed!"
When Abraham realized all, the furrows of fifty years were
extemporized on his young face.
"Why, I danced and laughed only yesterday!" she went on to herself.
"To think that I was such a fool!"
"'Tis because we be on a blighted star, and not a sound one, isn't
it, Tess?" murmured Abraham through his tears.
In silence they waited through an interval which seemed endless. At
length a sound, and an approaching object, proved to them that the
driver of the mail-car had been as good as his word. A farmer's
man from near Stourcastle came up, leading a strong cob. He was
harnessed to the waggon of beehives in the place of Prince, and the
load taken on towards Casterbridge.
The evening of the same day saw the empty waggon reach again the
spot of the accident. Prince had lain there in the ditch since the
morning; but the place of the blood-pool was still visible in the
middle of the road, though scratched and scraped over by passing
vehicles. All that was left of Prince was now hoisted into the
waggon he had formerly hauled, and with his hoofs in the air, and his
shoes shining in the setting sunlight, he retraced the eight or nine
miles to Marlott.
Tess had gone back earlier. How to break the news was more than she
could think. It was a relief to her tongue to find from the faces of
her parents that they already knew of their loss, though this did not
lessen the self-reproach which she continued to heap upon herself for
her negligence.
But the very shiftlessness of the household rendered the misfortune
a less terrifying one to them than it would have been to a thriving
family, though in the present case it meant ruin, and in the other it
would only have meant inconvenience. In the Durbeyfield countenances
there was nothing of the red wrath that would have burnt upon the
girl from parents more ambitious for her welfare. Nobody blamed Tess
as she blamed herself.
When it was discovered that the knacker and tanner would give only a
very few shillings for Prince's carcase because of his decrepitude,
Durbeyfield rose to the occasion.
"No," said he stoically, "I won't sell his old body. When we
d'Urbervilles was knights in the land, we didn't sell our chargers
for cat's meat. Let 'em keep their shillings! He've served me well
in his lifetime, and I won't part from him now."
He worked harder the next day in digging a grave for Prince in the
garden than he had worked for months to grow a crop for his family.
When the hole was ready, Durbeyfield and his wife tied a rope round
the horse and dragged him up the path towards it, the children
following in funeral train. Abraham and 'Liza-Lu sobbed, Hope and
Modesty discharged their griefs in loud blares which echoed from the
walls; and when Prince was tumbled in they gathered round the grave.
The bread-winner had been taken away from them; what would they do?
"Is he gone to heaven?" asked Abraham, between the sobs.
Then Durbeyfield began to shovel in the earth, and the children cried
anew. All except Tess. Her face was dry and pale, as though she
regarded herself in the light of a murderess.
| 3,615 | Chapter IV | https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase1-chapter1-11 | Meanwhile, upstairs at Rolliver's, Abraham listens to his parents discuss Tess's future. Joan tells Durbeyfield that Tess should be sent to rich relatives of the name d'Urberville to make her fortune and perhaps marry a rich man. Back home, Tess realizes that her father will not be able to take the beehives. Her mother soon wakes her to take on the job herself with her brother Abraham. As the horse Prince drags the cart in the dark, the youngsters talk about the stars and Tess explains that stars are indeed worlds "most of them splendid and sound--a few blighted," and that they have the misfortune to live on a blighted star. After a while, there is a jolt and Tess, who has fallen into a sound sleep, wakes in the midst of a horrible accident. The mail cart has run into the horse that lies dying on the road. Well aware of the economic damage to her family, Tess is overcome with guilt. Durbeyfield works harder than he ever has to bury Prince | null | 173 | 1 | [
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23,042 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/23042-chapters/5.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Tempest/section_4_part_0.txt | The Tempest.act 3.scene 1 | act 3, scene 1 | null | {"name": "Act 3, Scene 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210411014001/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tempest/summary/act-3-scene-1", "summary": "Near Prospero's cell, Ferdinand collects firewood, and philosophizes that it isn't so bad to do such terrible work, because he is refreshed by the thought of his young, virginal, sweet, would-be wife, Miranda. She conveniently enters, and Prospero, being the overbearing father that he is, spies on them. Miranda begs Ferdinand to take a break, and even offers to do his work for a while. Ferdinand refuses, and takes the opportunity to ask a very important question, namely, what his promised wife's name is. Seriously. Moving briskly along, Miranda tells Ferdinand her name, which she promised her father she wouldn't do. The two briefly share their experiences: He's known lots of women , and still likes Miranda best. Miranda has known no men, but likes Ferdinand best. They declare their mutual love of each other and now that all the tricky formalities like knowing each other's names are out of the way, they promise to be husband and wife. Prospero, watching all of this, rejoices.", "analysis": ""} | ACT III. SCENE I.
_Before PROSPERO'S cell._
_Enter FERDINAND, bearing a log._
_Fer._ There be some sports are painful, and their labour
Delight in them sets off: some kinds of baseness
Are nobly undergone, and most poor matters
Point to rich ends. This my mean task
Would be as heavy to me as odious, but 5
The mistress which I serve quickens what's dead,
And makes my labours pleasures: O, she is
Ten times more gentle than her father's crabbed.
And he's composed of harshness. I must remove
Some thousands of these logs, and pile them up, 10
Upon a sore injunction: my sweet mistress
Weeps when she sees me work, and says, such baseness
Had never like executor. I forget:
But these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labours,
Most busy lest, when I do it.
_Enter MIRANDA; and PROSPERO at a distance, unseen._
_Mir._ Alas, now, pray you, 15
Work not so hard: I would the lightning had
Burnt up those logs that you are enjoin'd to pile!
Pray, set it down, and rest you: when this burns,
'Twill weep for having wearied you. My father
Is hard at study; pray, now, rest yourself; 20
He's safe for these three hours.
_Fer._ O most dear mistress,
The sun will set before I shall discharge
What I must strive to do.
_Mir._ If you'll sit down,
I'll bear your logs the while: pray, give me that;
I'll carry it to the pile.
_Fer._ No, precious creature; 25
I had rather crack my sinews, break my back,
Than you should such dishonour undergo,
While I sit lazy by.
_Mir._ It would become me
As well as it does you: and I should do it
With much more ease; for my good will is to it, 30
And yours it is against.
_Pros._ Poor worm, thou art infected!
This visitation shows it.
_Mir._ You look wearily.
_Fer._ No, noble mistress; 'tis fresh morning with me
When you are by at night. I do beseech you,--
Chiefly that I might set it in my prayers,-- 35
What is your name?
_Mir._ Miranda. --O my father,
I have broke your hest to say so!
_Fer._ Admired Miranda!
Indeed the top of admiration! worth
What's dearest to the world! Full many a lady
I have eyed with best regard, and many a time 40
The harmony of their tongues hath into bondage
Brought my too diligent ear: for several virtues
Have I liked several women; never any
With so full soul, but some defect in her
Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed, 45
And put it to the foil: but you, O you,
So perfect and so peerless, are created
Of every creature's best!
_Mir._ I do not know
One of my sex; no woman's face remember,
Save, from my glass, mine own; nor have I seen 50
More that I may call men than you, good friend,
And my dear father: how features are abroad,
I am skilless of; but, by my modesty,
The jewel in my dower, I would not wish
Any companion in the world but you; 55
Nor can imagination form a shape,
Besides yourself, to like of. But I prattle
Something too wildly, and my father's precepts
I therein do forget.
_Fer._ I am, in my condition,
A prince, Miranda; I do think, a king; 60
I would, not so!--and would no more endure
This wooden slavery than to suffer
The flesh-fly blow my mouth. Hear my soul speak:
The very instant that I saw you, did
My heart fly to your service; there resides, 65
To make me slave to it; and for your sake
Am I this patient log-man.
_Mir._ Do you love me?
_Fer._ O heaven, O earth, bear witness to this sound,
And crown what I profess with kind event,
If I speak true! if hollowly, invert 70
What best is boded me to mischief! I,
Beyond all limit of what else i' the world,
Do love, prize, honour you.
_Mir._ I am a fool
To weep at what I am glad of.
_Pros._ Fair encounter
Of two most rare affections! Heavens rain grace 75
On that which breeds between 'em!
_Fer._ Wherefore weep you?
_Mir._ At mine unworthiness, that dare not offer
What I desire to give; and much less take
What I shall die to want. But this is trifling;
And all the more it seeks to hide itself, 80
The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning!
And prompt me, plain and holy innocence!
I am your wife, if you will marry me;
If not, I'll die your maid: to be your fellow
You may deny me; but I'll be your servant, 85
Whether you will or no.
_Fer._ My mistress, dearest;
And I thus humble ever.
_Mir._ My husband, then?
_Fer._ Ay, with a heart as willing
As bondage e'er of freedom: here's my hand.
_Mir._ And mine, with my heart in't: and now farewell 90
Till half an hour hence.
_Fer._ A thousand thousand!
[_Exeunt Fer. and Mir. severally._
_Pros._ So glad of this as they I cannot be,
Who are surprised withal; but my rejoicing
At nothing can be more. I'll to my book;
For yet, ere supper-time, must I perform 95
Much business appertaining. [_Exit._
Notes: III, 1.
1: _and_] _but_ Pope.
2: _sets_] Rowe. _set_ Ff.
4, 5: _my ... odious_] _my mean task would be As heavy to me as
'tis odious_ Pope.
9: _remove_] _move_ Pope.
14: _labours_] _labour_ Hanmer.
15: _Most busy lest_] F1. _Most busy least_ F2 F3 F4. _Least busy_
Pope. _Most busie-less_ Theobald._ Most busiest_ Holt White conj.
_Most busy felt_ Staunton. _Most busy still_ Staunton conj.
_Most busy-blest_ Collier MS. _Most busiliest_ Bullock conj.
_Most busy lest, when I do_ (_doe_ F1 F2 F3) _it_] _Most busy when
least I do it_ Brae conj. _Most busiest when idlest_ Spedding
conj. _Most busy left when idlest_ Edd. conj. See note (XIII).
at a distance, unseen] Rowe.
17: _you are_] F1. _thou art_ F2 F3 F4.
31: _it is_] _is it_ Steevens conj. (ed. 1, 2, and 3). om. Steevens
(ed. 4) (Farmer conj.).
34, 35: _I do beseech you,--Chiefly_] _I do beseech you Chiefly_ Ff.
59: _I therein do_] _I do_ Pope. _Therein_ Steevens.
62: _wooden_] _wodden_ F1.
_than to_] _than I would_ Pope.
72: _what else_] _aught else_ Malone conj. (withdrawn).
80: _seeks_] _seekd_ F3 F4.
88: _as_] F1. _so_ F2 F3 F4.
91: _severally_] Capell.
93: _withal_] Theobald. _with all_ Ff.
| 1,778 | Act 3, Scene 1 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210411014001/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tempest/summary/act-3-scene-1 | Near Prospero's cell, Ferdinand collects firewood, and philosophizes that it isn't so bad to do such terrible work, because he is refreshed by the thought of his young, virginal, sweet, would-be wife, Miranda. She conveniently enters, and Prospero, being the overbearing father that he is, spies on them. Miranda begs Ferdinand to take a break, and even offers to do his work for a while. Ferdinand refuses, and takes the opportunity to ask a very important question, namely, what his promised wife's name is. Seriously. Moving briskly along, Miranda tells Ferdinand her name, which she promised her father she wouldn't do. The two briefly share their experiences: He's known lots of women , and still likes Miranda best. Miranda has known no men, but likes Ferdinand best. They declare their mutual love of each other and now that all the tricky formalities like knowing each other's names are out of the way, they promise to be husband and wife. Prospero, watching all of this, rejoices. | null | 165 | 1 | [
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1,232 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/1232-chapters/18.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Prince/section_18_part_0.txt | The Prince.chapter 18 | chapter 18 | null | {"name": "Chapter 18", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210420060055/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/prince-machiavelli/summary/chapter-18", "summary": "We would all love to be perfect and be honest, but, hey, you have to break some eggs if you're going to make an omelet. Dear Shmooponauts: if you want to rule, you're going to have to lie. A lot. Maybe all the time. Machiavelli gives us some metaphors about law versus force, and our animal side versus our human side. Basically the idea is this: don't be afraid to go a little wild. You're going to have to be a bit tricky and a bit scary, and that's okay. We think Machiavelli would have liked the phrase \"there's a sucker born every minute\" because he thinks that most people are just sitting around, waiting to be lied to. He even gives an example of a lying pope: Alexander VI. Here's a guy whose job is to be religious and moral, but how does he succeed in life? By lying! Ta-da. So, Machiavelli gives us the go-ahead to do the nasty stuff. But here's the thing: we have to seem to be innocent. And we need to know when we have to change our tactics. Anyway, as long as you keep your kingdom prosperous and safe, people will say that you were a good guyeven if you say one thing and do another, like the king of Spain.", "analysis": ""} |
Every one admits how praiseworthy it is in a prince to keep faith, and
to live with integrity and not with craft. Nevertheless our experience
has been that those princes who have done great things have held good
faith of little account, and have known how to circumvent the intellect
of men by craft, and in the end have overcome those who have relied on
their word. You must know there are two ways of contesting,(*) the one
by the law, the other by force; the first method is proper to men, the
second to beasts; but because the first is frequently not sufficient, it
is necessary to have recourse to the second. Therefore it is necessary
for a prince to understand how to avail himself of the beast and the
man. This has been figuratively taught to princes by ancient writers,
who describe how Achilles and many other princes of old were given to
the Centaur Chiron to nurse, who brought them up in his discipline;
which means solely that, as they had for a teacher one who was half
beast and half man, so it is necessary for a prince to know how to make
use of both natures, and that one without the other is not durable. A
prince, therefore, being compelled knowingly to adopt the beast, ought
to choose the fox and the lion; because the lion cannot defend himself
against snares and the fox cannot defend himself against wolves.
Therefore, it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a
lion to terrify the wolves. Those who rely simply on the lion do not
understand what they are about. Therefore a wise lord cannot, nor ought
he to, keep faith when such observance may be turned against him, and
when the reasons that caused him to pledge it exist no longer. If men
were entirely good this precept would not hold, but because they are
bad, and will not keep faith with you, you too are not bound to observe
it with them. Nor will there ever be wanting to a prince legitimate
reasons to excuse this non-observance. Of this endless modern examples
could be given, showing how many treaties and engagements have been made
void and of no effect through the faithlessness of princes; and he who
has known best how to employ the fox has succeeded best.
(*) "Contesting," i.e. "striving for mastery." Mr Burd
points out that this passage is imitated directly from
Cicero's "De Officiis": "Nam cum sint duo genera decertandi,
unum per disceptationem, alterum per vim; cumque illud
proprium sit hominis, hoc beluarum; confugiendum est ad
posterius, si uti non licet superiore."
But it is necessary to know well how to disguise this characteristic,
and to be a great pretender and dissembler; and men are so simple, and
so subject to present necessities, that he who seeks to deceive will
always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived. One recent
example I cannot pass over in silence. Alexander the Sixth did nothing
else but deceive men, nor ever thought of doing otherwise, and he
always found victims; for there never was a man who had greater power
in asserting, or who with greater oaths would affirm a thing, yet would
observe it less; nevertheless his deceits always succeeded according to
his wishes,(*) because he well understood this side of mankind.
(*) "Nondimanco sempre gli succederono gli inganni (ad
votum)." The words "ad votum" are omitted in the Testina
addition, 1550.
Alexander never did what he said,
Cesare never said what he did.
Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities
I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. And
I shall dare to say this also, that to have them and always to observe
them is injurious, and that to appear to have them is useful; to appear
merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so, but with a
mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and
know how to change to the opposite.
And you have to understand this, that a prince, especially a new one,
cannot observe all those things for which men are esteemed, being often
forced, in order to maintain the state, to act contrary to fidelity,(*)
friendship, humanity, and religion. Therefore it is necessary for him to
have a mind ready to turn itself accordingly as the winds and variations
of fortune force it, yet, as I have said above, not to diverge from the
good if he can avoid doing so, but, if compelled, then to know how to
set about it.
(*) "Contrary to fidelity" or "faith," "contro alla fede,"
and "tutto fede," "altogether faithful," in the next
paragraph. It is noteworthy that these two phrases, "contro
alla fede" and "tutto fede," were omitted in the Testina
edition, which was published with the sanction of the papal
authorities. It may be that the meaning attached to the word
"fede" was "the faith," i.e. the Catholic creed, and not as
rendered here "fidelity" and "faithful." Observe that the
word "religione" was suffered to stand in the text of the
Testina, being used to signify indifferently every shade of
belief, as witness "the religion," a phrase inevitably
employed to designate the Huguenot heresy. South in his
Sermon IX, p. 69, ed. 1843, comments on this passage as
follows: "That great patron and Coryphaeus of this tribe,
Nicolo Machiavel, laid down this for a master rule in his
political scheme: 'That the show of religion was helpful to
the politician, but the reality of it hurtful and
pernicious.'"
For this reason a prince ought to take care that he never lets anything
slip from his lips that is not replete with the above-named five
qualities, that he may appear to him who sees and hears him altogether
merciful, faithful, humane, upright, and religious. There is nothing
more necessary to appear to have than this last quality, inasmuch as men
judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, because it belongs to
everybody to see you, to few to come in touch with you. Every one sees
what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare
not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty
of the state to defend them; and in the actions of all men, and
especially of princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges
by the result.
For that reason, let a prince have the credit of conquering and holding
his state, the means will always be considered honest, and he will be
praised by everybody; because the vulgar are always taken by what a
thing seems to be and by what comes of it; and in the world there are
only the vulgar, for the few find a place there only when the many have
no ground to rest on.
One prince(*) of the present time, whom it is not well to name, never
preaches anything else but peace and good faith, and to both he is
most hostile, and either, if he had kept it, would have deprived him of
reputation and kingdom many a time.
(*) Ferdinand of Aragon. "When Machiavelli was writing 'The
Prince' it would have been clearly impossible to mention
Ferdinand's name here without giving offence." Burd's "Il
Principe," p. 308.
| 1,298 | Chapter 18 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210420060055/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/prince-machiavelli/summary/chapter-18 | We would all love to be perfect and be honest, but, hey, you have to break some eggs if you're going to make an omelet. Dear Shmooponauts: if you want to rule, you're going to have to lie. A lot. Maybe all the time. Machiavelli gives us some metaphors about law versus force, and our animal side versus our human side. Basically the idea is this: don't be afraid to go a little wild. You're going to have to be a bit tricky and a bit scary, and that's okay. We think Machiavelli would have liked the phrase "there's a sucker born every minute" because he thinks that most people are just sitting around, waiting to be lied to. He even gives an example of a lying pope: Alexander VI. Here's a guy whose job is to be religious and moral, but how does he succeed in life? By lying! Ta-da. So, Machiavelli gives us the go-ahead to do the nasty stuff. But here's the thing: we have to seem to be innocent. And we need to know when we have to change our tactics. Anyway, as long as you keep your kingdom prosperous and safe, people will say that you were a good guyeven if you say one thing and do another, like the king of Spain. | null | 218 | 1 | [
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110 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/14.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_13_part_0.txt | Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 14 | chapter 14 | null | {"name": "Phase II: \"Maiden No More,\" Chapter Fourteen", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-14", "summary": "It's now August, and the sun is just coming up, casting a red glow on everything in the country. The sun makes the reaping machine appear even redder than it is. The reaper moves around the edge of the field, slowly moving inward as it cuts the grain. All the animals that live in the field are forced into an ever-shrinking area, until the last square yards are cut down by the reaper, and the animals are beaten to death by the workers. The female workers follow the machine, tying up the wheat into bundles as it falls from the machine. One of the women in the group of workers draws the particular attention of onlookers, because, unlike the others, she seems completely intent on what she's doing. When she stands up between tying bundles, one can see her face--she's a good-looking young woman. It's Tess, of course--the same, but not the same, as she was before. The whole group takes a break for breakfast, and then continues to work as before. After a while, Tess sees a group of children approaching the field. One of them is carrying a baby, and another is carrying some lunch. The other workers pause in their labor to go sit under the tree and eat. Tess is one of the last to stop. Tess's sister hands her the baby and runs off to play with the other children. Tess looks around with some embarrassment, and then begins to nurse the child. After the baby has had enough, Tess plays with it absent-mindedly, and then starts kissing it. Her fellow workers discuss her actions among themselves--some say that she loves the baby, though she pretends not to, and others remark that she'll get used to being an unwed mother in time. After the birth of the baby, Tess realized that, by secluding herself, she was only making herself miserable--the opinions of the rest of the world didn't matter much. So she got herself this job with the harvesters, because she wanted to do something that would make her relatively independent. Her friends are happy to see her out of doors again, and their friendliness and cheerfulness are contagious. But then when she gets home, she learns that her baby, which was already kind of weak and sickly, has gotten sick and might not make it. Tess is horrified--of course she wants her baby to live. But what makes her even more horrified is the thought that her baby hasn't been baptized. She takes what she'd been taught about baptism and salvation very literally and very seriously, so this is a matter of great concern to her. From what she's been taught, she believes that, if her baby dies without being baptized, it will go to hell. She asks her father to send for the parson, but he's drunk, and tells her that she's shamed their family honor enough, and that he doesn't want a parson snooping around their house. So Jack Durbeyfield locks the house and goes to bed. Tess goes to bed, too, but she's terribly upset. She prays to God to have pity on the baby. Suddenly she has a thought: what if she baptizes it herself? Perhaps that would be just the same. So she wakes the other children to witness the ceremony. She names the infant \"Sorrow,\" and recites the part of the baptismal service that goes, \"Sorrow, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost\" . The children pipe up with \"Amen!\" when called upon to do so, as Tess goes on with the rest of the service that she has memorized. The baby, Sorrow, dies in the early hours of the morning. Tess starts to worry about its soul again--will her service count? Will she be allowed to bury the child in the holy ground at the church, or will she have to bury it in the woods somewhere? She goes to the parson to ask. She first asks if her baptismal service will \"count\" with God--if it will keep the baby from burning in hell. He assures her that her service will get the job done. So then she asks if he'll give the baby a Christian burial at the church, and he feels trapped. He says that he can't for reasons of Church politics. She then asks, with some passion, whether it will be the same if she buries the baby herself in the churchyard. He reassures her that it would be the same. So Tess gathers some flowers and makes a wooden cross, tips the sexton , and buries her baby in the dead of night.", "analysis": ""} |
It was a hazy sunrise in August. The denser nocturnal vapours,
attacked by the warm beams, were dividing and shrinking into isolated
fleeces within hollows and coverts, where they waited till they
should be dried away to nothing.
The sun, on account of the mist, had a curious sentient, personal
look, demanding the masculine pronoun for its adequate expression.
His present aspect, coupled with the lack of all human forms in the
scene, explained the old-time heliolatries in a moment. One could
feel that a saner religion had never prevailed under the sky. The
luminary was a golden-haired, beaming, mild-eyed, God-like creature,
gazing down in the vigour and intentness of youth upon an earth that
was brimming with interest for him.
His light, a little later, broke though chinks of cottage shutters,
throwing stripes like red-hot pokers upon cupboards, chests of
drawers, and other furniture within; and awakening harvesters who
were not already astir.
But of all ruddy things that morning the brightest were two broad
arms of painted wood, which rose from the margin of yellow cornfield
hard by Marlott village. They, with two others below, formed the
revolving Maltese cross of the reaping-machine, which had been
brought to the field on the previous evening to be ready for
operations this day. The paint with which they were smeared,
intensified in hue by the sunlight, imparted to them a look of
having been dipped in liquid fire.
The field had already been "opened"; that is to say, a lane a few
feet wide had been hand-cut through the wheat along the whole
circumference of the field for the first passage of the horses and
machine.
Two groups, one of men and lads, the other of women, had come down
the lane just at the hour when the shadows of the eastern hedge-top
struck the west hedge midway, so that the heads of the groups were
enjoying sunrise while their feet were still in the dawn. They
disappeared from the lane between the two stone posts which flanked
the nearest field-gate.
Presently there arose from within a ticking like the love-making of
the grasshopper. The machine had begun, and a moving concatenation
of three horses and the aforesaid long rickety machine was visible
over the gate, a driver sitting upon one of the hauling horses,
and an attendant on the seat of the implement. Along one side of
the field the whole wain went, the arms of the mechanical reaper
revolving slowly, till it passed down the hill quite out of sight.
In a minute it came up on the other side of the field at the same
equable pace; the glistening brass star in the forehead of the fore
horse first catching the eye as it rose into view over the stubble,
then the bright arms, and then the whole machine.
The narrow lane of stubble encompassing the field grew wider with
each circuit, and the standing corn was reduced to a smaller area as
the morning wore on. Rabbits, hares, snakes, rats, mice, retreated
inwards as into a fastness, unaware of the ephemeral nature of their
refuge, and of the doom that awaited them later in the day when,
their covert shrinking to a more and more horrible narrowness, they
were huddled together, friends and foes, till the last few yards of
upright wheat fell also under the teeth of the unerring reaper, and
they were every one put to death by the sticks and stones of the
harvesters.
The reaping-machine left the fallen corn behind it in little heaps,
each heap being of the quantity for a sheaf; and upon these the
active binders in the rear laid their hands--mainly women, but some
of them men in print shirts, and trousers supported round their
waists by leather straps, rendering useless the two buttons behind,
which twinkled and bristled with sunbeams at every movement of each
wearer, as if they were a pair of eyes in the small of his back.
But those of the other sex were the most interesting of this company
of binders, by reason of the charm which is acquired by woman when
she becomes part and parcel of outdoor nature, and is not merely
an object set down therein as at ordinary times. A field-man is a
personality afield; a field-woman is a portion of the field; she had
somehow lost her own margin, imbibed the essence of her surrounding,
and assimilated herself with it.
The women--or rather girls, for they were mostly young--wore drawn
cotton bonnets with great flapping curtains to keep off the sun, and
gloves to prevent their hands being wounded by the stubble. There
was one wearing a pale pink jacket, another in a cream-coloured
tight-sleeved gown, another in a petticoat as red as the arms of the
reaping-machine; and others, older, in the brown-rough "wropper"
or over-all--the old-established and most appropriate dress of the
field-woman, which the young ones were abandoning. This morning the
eye returns involuntarily to the girl in the pink cotton jacket, she
being the most flexuous and finely-drawn figure of them all. But
her bonnet is pulled so far over her brow that none of her face is
disclosed while she binds, though her complexion may be guessed from
a stray twine or two of dark brown hair which extends below the
curtain of her bonnet. Perhaps one reason why she seduces casual
attention is that she never courts it, though the other women often
gaze around them.
Her binding proceeds with clock-like monotony. From the sheaf last
finished she draws a handful of ears, patting their tips with her
left palm to bring them even. Then, stooping low, she moves forward,
gathering the corn with both hands against her knees, and pushing
her left gloved hand under the bundle to meet the right on the other
side, holding the corn in an embrace like that of a lover. She
brings the ends of the bond together, and kneels on the sheaf while
she ties it, beating back her skirts now and then when lifted by the
breeze. A bit of her naked arm is visible between the buff leather
of the gauntlet and the sleeve of her gown; and as the day wears on
its feminine smoothness becomes scarified by the stubble and bleeds.
At intervals she stands up to rest, and to retie her disarranged
apron, or to pull her bonnet straight. Then one can see the oval
face of a handsome young woman with deep dark eyes and long heavy
clinging tresses, which seem to clasp in a beseeching way anything
they fall against. The cheeks are paler, the teeth more regular,
the red lips thinner than is usual in a country-bred girl.
It is Tess Durbeyfield, otherwise d'Urberville, somewhat changed--the
same, but not the same; at the present stage of her existence living
as a stranger and an alien here, though it was no strange land that
she was in. After a long seclusion she had come to a resolve to
undertake outdoor work in her native village, the busiest season of
the year in the agricultural world having arrived, and nothing that
she could do within the house being so remunerative for the time as
harvesting in the fields.
The movements of the other women were more or less similar to Tess's,
the whole bevy of them drawing together like dancers in a quadrille
at the completion of a sheaf by each, every one placing her sheaf on
end against those of the rest, till a shock, or "stitch" as it was
here called, of ten or a dozen was formed.
They went to breakfast, and came again, and the work proceeded as
before. As the hour of eleven drew near a person watching her might
have noticed that every now and then Tess's glance flitted wistfully
to the brow of the hill, though she did not pause in her sheafing.
On the verge of the hour the heads of a group of children, of ages
ranging from six to fourteen, rose over the stubbly convexity of the
hill.
The face of Tess flushed slightly, but still she did not pause.
The eldest of the comers, a girl who wore a triangular shawl, its
corner draggling on the stubble, carried in her arms what at first
sight seemed to be a doll, but proved to be an infant in long
clothes. Another brought some lunch. The harvesters ceased working,
took their provisions, and sat down against one of the shocks. Here
they fell to, the men plying a stone jar freely, and passing round a
cup.
Tess Durbeyfield had been one of the last to suspend her labours.
She sat down at the end of the shock, her face turned somewhat away
from her companions. When she had deposited herself a man in a
rabbit-skin cap, and with a red handkerchief tucked into his belt,
held the cup of ale over the top of the shock for her to drink. But
she did not accept his offer. As soon as her lunch was spread she
called up the big girl, her sister, and took the baby of her, who,
glad to be relieved of the burden, went away to the next shock and
joined the other children playing there. Tess, with a curiously
stealthy yet courageous movement, and with a still rising colour,
unfastened her frock and began suckling the child.
The men who sat nearest considerately turned their faces towards the
other end of the field, some of them beginning to smoke; one, with
absent-minded fondness, regretfully stroking the jar that would no
longer yield a stream. All the women but Tess fell into animated
talk, and adjusted the disarranged knots of their hair.
When the infant had taken its fill, the young mother sat it upright
in her lap, and looking into the far distance, dandled it with a
gloomy indifference that was almost dislike; then all of a sudden she
fell to violently kissing it some dozens of times, as if she could
never leave off, the child crying at the vehemence of an onset which
strangely combined passionateness with contempt.
"She's fond of that there child, though she mid pretend to hate en,
and say she wishes the baby and her too were in the churchyard,"
observed the woman in the red petticoat.
"She'll soon leave off saying that," replied the one in buff. "Lord,
'tis wonderful what a body can get used to o' that sort in time!"
"A little more than persuading had to do wi' the coming o't, I
reckon. There were they that heard a sobbing one night last year in
The Chase; and it mid ha' gone hard wi' a certain party if folks had
come along."
"Well, a little more, or a little less, 'twas a thousand pities that
it should have happened to she, of all others. But 'tis always the
comeliest! The plain ones be as safe as churches--hey, Jenny?" The
speaker turned to one of the group who certainly was not ill-defined
as plain.
It was a thousand pities, indeed; it was impossible for even an enemy
to feel otherwise on looking at Tess as she sat there, with her
flower-like mouth and large tender eyes, neither black nor blue nor
grey nor violet; rather all those shades together, and a hundred
others, which could be seen if one looked into their irises--shade
behind shade--tint beyond tint--around pupils that had no bottom; an
almost standard woman, but for the slight incautiousness of character
inherited from her race.
A resolution which had surprised herself had brought her into the
fields this week for the first time during many months. After
wearing and wasting her palpitating heart with every engine of regret
that lonely inexperience could devise, common sense had illuminated
her. She felt that she would do well to be useful again--to taste
anew sweet independence at any price. The past was past; whatever
it had been, it was no more at hand. Whatever its consequences,
time would close over them; they would all in a few years be as if
they had never been, and she herself grassed down and forgotten.
Meanwhile the trees were just as green as before; the birds sang and
the sun shone as clearly now as ever. The familiar surroundings had
not darkened because of her grief, nor sickened because of her pain.
She might have seen that what had bowed her head so profoundly--the
thought of the world's concern at her situation--was founded on an
illusion. She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a
structure of sensations, to anybody but herself. To all humankind
besides, Tess was only a passing thought. Even to friends she was
no more than a frequently passing thought. If she made herself
miserable the livelong night and day it was only this much to
them--"Ah, she makes herself unhappy." If she tried to be cheerful,
to dismiss all care, to take pleasure in the daylight, the flowers,
the baby, she could only be this idea to them--"Ah, she bears it
very well." Moreover, alone in a desert island would she have been
wretched at what had happened to her? Not greatly. If she could
have been but just created, to discover herself as a spouseless
mother, with no experience of life except as the parent of a nameless
child, would the position have caused her to despair? No, she would
have taken it calmly, and found pleasure therein. Most of the misery
had been generated by her conventional aspect, and not by her innate
sensations.
Whatever Tess's reasoning, some spirit had induced her to dress
herself up neatly as she had formerly done, and come out into the
fields, harvest-hands being greatly in demand just then. This was
why she had borne herself with dignity, and had looked people calmly
in the face at times, even when holding the baby in her arms.
The harvest-men rose from the shock of corn, and stretched their
limbs, and extinguished their pipes. The horses, which had been
unharnessed and fed, were again attached to the scarlet machine.
Tess, having quickly eaten her own meal, beckoned to her eldest
sister to come and take away the baby, fastened her dress, put on
the buff gloves again, and stooped anew to draw a bond from the last
completed sheaf for the tying of the next.
In the afternoon and evening the proceedings of the morning were
continued, Tess staying on till dusk with the body of harvesters.
Then they all rode home in one of the largest wagons, in the company
of a broad tarnished moon that had risen from the ground to the
eastwards, its face resembling the outworn gold-leaf halo of some
worm-eaten Tuscan saint. Tess's female companions sang songs, and
showed themselves very sympathetic and glad at her reappearance out
of doors, though they could not refrain from mischievously throwing
in a few verses of the ballad about the maid who went to the merry
green wood and came back a changed state. There are counterpoises
and compensations in life; and the event which had made of her a
social warning had also for the moment made her the most interesting
personage in the village to many. Their friendliness won her still
farther away from herself, their lively spirits were contagious, and
she became almost gay.
But now that her moral sorrows were passing away a fresh one arose on
the natural side of her which knew no social law. When she reached
home it was to learn to her grief that the baby had been suddenly
taken ill since the afternoon. Some such collapse had been probable,
so tender and puny was its frame; but the event came as a shock
nevertheless.
The baby's offence against society in coming into the world was
forgotten by the girl-mother; her soul's desire was to continue that
offence by preserving the life of the child. However, it soon grew
clear that the hour of emancipation for that little prisoner of the
flesh was to arrive earlier than her worst misgiving had conjectured.
And when she had discovered this she was plunged into a misery which
transcended that of the child's simple loss. Her baby had not been
baptized.
Tess had drifted into a frame of mind which accepted passively the
consideration that if she should have to burn for what she had done,
burn she must, and there was an end of it. Like all village girls,
she was well grounded in the Holy Scriptures, and had dutifully
studied the histories of Aholah and Aholibah, and knew the inferences
to be drawn therefrom. But when the same question arose with regard
to the baby, it had a very different colour. Her darling was about
to die, and no salvation.
It was nearly bedtime, but she rushed downstairs and asked if she
might send for the parson. The moment happened to be one at which
her father's sense of the antique nobility of his family was highest,
and his sensitiveness to the smudge which Tess had set upon that
nobility most pronounced, for he had just returned from his weekly
booze at Rolliver's Inn. No parson should come inside his door, he
declared, prying into his affairs, just then, when, by her shame, it
had become more necessary than ever to hide them. He locked the door
and put the key in his pocket.
The household went to bed, and, distressed beyond measure, Tess
retired also. She was continually waking as she lay, and in the
middle of the night found that the baby was still worse. It was
obviously dying--quietly and painlessly, but none the less surely.
In her misery she rocked herself upon the bed. The clock struck the
solemn hour of one, that hour when fancy stalks outside reason, and
malignant possibilities stand rock-firm as facts. She thought of
the child consigned to the nethermost corner of hell, as its double
doom for lack of baptism and lack of legitimacy; saw the arch-fiend
tossing it with his three-pronged fork, like the one they used for
heating the oven on baking days; to which picture she added many
other quaint and curious details of torment sometimes taught the
young in this Christian country. The lurid presentment so powerfully
affected her imagination in the silence of the sleeping house that
her nightgown became damp with perspiration, and the bedstead shook
with each throb of her heart.
The infant's breathing grew more difficult, and the mother's mental
tension increased. It was useless to devour the little thing with
kisses; she could stay in bed no longer, and walked feverishly about
the room.
"O merciful God, have pity; have pity upon my poor baby!" she cried.
"Heap as much anger as you want to upon me, and welcome; but pity the
child!"
She leant against the chest of drawers, and murmured incoherent
supplications for a long while, till she suddenly started up.
"Ah! perhaps baby can be saved! Perhaps it will be just the same!"
She spoke so brightly that it seemed as though her face might have
shone in the gloom surrounding her. She lit a candle, and went to
a second and a third bed under the wall, where she awoke her young
sisters and brothers, all of whom occupied the same room. Pulling
out the washing-stand so that she could get behind it, she poured
some water from a jug, and made them kneel around, putting their
hands together with fingers exactly vertical. While the children,
scarcely awake, awe-stricken at her manner, their eyes growing larger
and larger, remained in this position, she took the baby from her
bed--a child's child--so immature as scarce to seem a sufficient
personality to endow its producer with the maternal title. Tess then
stood erect with the infant on her arm beside the basin; the next
sister held the Prayer-Book open before her, as the clerk at church
held it before the parson; and thus the girl set about baptizing her
child.
Her figure looked singularly tall and imposing as she stood in her
long white nightgown, a thick cable of twisted dark hair hanging
straight down her back to her waist. The kindly dimness of the weak
candle abstracted from her form and features the little blemishes
which sunlight might have revealed--the stubble scratches upon her
wrists, and the weariness of her eyes--her high enthusiasm having
a transfiguring effect upon the face which had been her undoing,
showing it as a thing of immaculate beauty, with a touch of dignity
which was almost regal. The little ones kneeling round, their sleepy
eyes blinking and red, awaited her preparations full of a suspended
wonder which their physical heaviness at that hour would not allow to
become active.
The most impressed of them said:
"Be you really going to christen him, Tess?"
The girl-mother replied in a grave affirmative.
"What's his name going to be?"
She had not thought of that, but a name suggested by a phrase in
the book of Genesis came into her head as she proceeded with the
baptismal service, and now she pronounced it:
"SORROW, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Ghost."
She sprinkled the water, and there was silence.
"Say 'Amen,' children."
The tiny voices piped in obedient response, "Amen!"
Tess went on:
"We receive this child"--and so forth--"and do sign him with the sign
of the Cross."
Here she dipped her hand into the basin, and fervently drew an
immense cross upon the baby with her forefinger, continuing with
the customary sentences as to his manfully fighting against sin,
the world, and the devil, and being a faithful soldier and servant
unto his life's end. She duly went on with the Lord's Prayer, the
children lisping it after her in a thin gnat-like wail, till, at the
conclusion, raising their voices to clerk's pitch, they again piped
into silence, "Amen!"
Then their sister, with much augmented confidence in the efficacy
of the sacrament, poured forth from the bottom of her heart the
thanksgiving that follows, uttering it boldly and triumphantly in the
stopt-diapason note which her voice acquired when her heart was in
her speech, and which will never be forgotten by those who knew her.
The ecstasy of faith almost apotheosized her; it set upon her face a
glowing irradiation, and brought a red spot into the middle of each
cheek; while the miniature candle-flame inverted in her eye-pupils
shone like a diamond. The children gazed up at her with more and
more reverence, and no longer had a will for questioning. She did
not look like Sissy to them now, but as a being large, towering, and
awful--a divine personage with whom they had nothing in common.
Poor Sorrow's campaign against sin, the world, and the devil was
doomed to be of limited brilliancy--luckily perhaps for himself,
considering his beginnings. In the blue of the morning that fragile
soldier and servant breathed his last, and when the other children
awoke they cried bitterly, and begged Sissy to have another pretty
baby.
The calmness which had possessed Tess since the christening remained
with her in the infant's loss. In the daylight, indeed, she felt her
terrors about his soul to have been somewhat exaggerated; whether
well founded or not, she had no uneasiness now, reasoning that
if Providence would not ratify such an act of approximation
she, for one, did not value the kind of heaven lost by the
irregularity--either for herself or for her child.
So passed away Sorrow the Undesired--that intrusive creature, that
bastard gift of shameless Nature, who respects not the social law;
a waif to whom eternal Time had been a matter of days merely, who
knew not that such things as years and centuries ever were; to whom
the cottage interior was the universe, the week's weather climate,
new-born babyhood human existence, and the instinct to suck human
knowledge.
Tess, who mused on the christening a good deal, wondered if it were
doctrinally sufficient to secure a Christian burial for the child.
Nobody could tell this but the parson of the parish, and he was a
new-comer, and did not know her. She went to his house after dusk,
and stood by the gate, but could not summon courage to go in. The
enterprise would have been abandoned if she had not by accident met
him coming homeward as she turned away. In the gloom she did not
mind speaking freely.
"I should like to ask you something, sir."
He expressed his willingness to listen, and she told the story of the
baby's illness and the extemporized ordinance. "And now, sir," she
added earnestly, "can you tell me this--will it be just the same for
him as if you had baptized him?"
Having the natural feelings of a tradesman at finding that a job he
should have been called in for had been unskilfully botched by his
customers among themselves, he was disposed to say no. Yet the
dignity of the girl, the strange tenderness in her voice, combined
to affect his nobler impulses--or rather those that he had left in
him after ten years of endeavour to graft technical belief on actual
scepticism. The man and the ecclesiastic fought within him, and the
victory fell to the man.
"My dear girl," he said, "it will be just the same."
"Then will you give him a Christian burial?" she asked quickly.
The Vicar felt himself cornered. Hearing of the baby's illness, he
had conscientiously gone to the house after nightfall to perform the
rite, and, unaware that the refusal to admit him had come from Tess's
father and not from Tess, he could not allow the plea of necessity
for its irregular administration.
"Ah--that's another matter," he said.
"Another matter--why?" asked Tess, rather warmly.
"Well--I would willingly do so if only we two were concerned. But I
must not--for certain reasons."
"Just for once, sir!"
"Really I must not."
"O sir!" She seized his hand as she spoke.
He withdrew it, shaking his head.
"Then I don't like you!" she burst out, "and I'll never come to your
church no more!"
"Don't talk so rashly."
"Perhaps it will be just the same to him if you don't? ... Will it
be just the same? Don't for God's sake speak as saint to sinner, but
as you yourself to me myself--poor me!"
How the Vicar reconciled his answer with the strict notions he
supposed himself to hold on these subjects it is beyond a layman's
power to tell, though not to excuse. Somewhat moved, he said in
this case also--
"It will be just the same."
So the baby was carried in a small deal box, under an ancient woman's
shawl, to the churchyard that night, and buried by lantern-light,
at the cost of a shilling and a pint of beer to the sexton, in that
shabby corner of God's allotment where He lets the nettles grow,
and where all unbaptized infants, notorious drunkards, suicides,
and others of the conjecturally damned are laid. In spite of the
untoward surroundings, however, Tess bravely made a little cross of
two laths and a piece of string, and having bound it with flowers,
she stuck it up at the head of the grave one evening when she could
enter the churchyard without being seen, putting at the foot also
a bunch of the same flowers in a little jar of water to keep them
alive. What matter was it that on the outside of the jar the eye of
mere observation noted the words "Keelwell's Marmalade"? The eye of
maternal affection did not see them in its vision of higher things.
| 4,306 | Phase II: "Maiden No More," Chapter Fourteen | https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-14 | It's now August, and the sun is just coming up, casting a red glow on everything in the country. The sun makes the reaping machine appear even redder than it is. The reaper moves around the edge of the field, slowly moving inward as it cuts the grain. All the animals that live in the field are forced into an ever-shrinking area, until the last square yards are cut down by the reaper, and the animals are beaten to death by the workers. The female workers follow the machine, tying up the wheat into bundles as it falls from the machine. One of the women in the group of workers draws the particular attention of onlookers, because, unlike the others, she seems completely intent on what she's doing. When she stands up between tying bundles, one can see her face--she's a good-looking young woman. It's Tess, of course--the same, but not the same, as she was before. The whole group takes a break for breakfast, and then continues to work as before. After a while, Tess sees a group of children approaching the field. One of them is carrying a baby, and another is carrying some lunch. The other workers pause in their labor to go sit under the tree and eat. Tess is one of the last to stop. Tess's sister hands her the baby and runs off to play with the other children. Tess looks around with some embarrassment, and then begins to nurse the child. After the baby has had enough, Tess plays with it absent-mindedly, and then starts kissing it. Her fellow workers discuss her actions among themselves--some say that she loves the baby, though she pretends not to, and others remark that she'll get used to being an unwed mother in time. After the birth of the baby, Tess realized that, by secluding herself, she was only making herself miserable--the opinions of the rest of the world didn't matter much. So she got herself this job with the harvesters, because she wanted to do something that would make her relatively independent. Her friends are happy to see her out of doors again, and their friendliness and cheerfulness are contagious. But then when she gets home, she learns that her baby, which was already kind of weak and sickly, has gotten sick and might not make it. Tess is horrified--of course she wants her baby to live. But what makes her even more horrified is the thought that her baby hasn't been baptized. She takes what she'd been taught about baptism and salvation very literally and very seriously, so this is a matter of great concern to her. From what she's been taught, she believes that, if her baby dies without being baptized, it will go to hell. She asks her father to send for the parson, but he's drunk, and tells her that she's shamed their family honor enough, and that he doesn't want a parson snooping around their house. So Jack Durbeyfield locks the house and goes to bed. Tess goes to bed, too, but she's terribly upset. She prays to God to have pity on the baby. Suddenly she has a thought: what if she baptizes it herself? Perhaps that would be just the same. So she wakes the other children to witness the ceremony. She names the infant "Sorrow," and recites the part of the baptismal service that goes, "Sorrow, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" . The children pipe up with "Amen!" when called upon to do so, as Tess goes on with the rest of the service that she has memorized. The baby, Sorrow, dies in the early hours of the morning. Tess starts to worry about its soul again--will her service count? Will she be allowed to bury the child in the holy ground at the church, or will she have to bury it in the woods somewhere? She goes to the parson to ask. She first asks if her baptismal service will "count" with God--if it will keep the baby from burning in hell. He assures her that her service will get the job done. So then she asks if he'll give the baby a Christian burial at the church, and he feels trapped. He says that he can't for reasons of Church politics. She then asks, with some passion, whether it will be the same if she buries the baby herself in the churchyard. He reassures her that it would be the same. So Tess gathers some flowers and makes a wooden cross, tips the sexton , and buries her baby in the dead of night. | null | 781 | 1 | [
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44,747 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/12.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_11_part_0.txt | The Red and the Black.part 1.chapter 12 | part 1, chapter 12 | null | {"name": "Part 1, Chapter 12", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-12", "summary": "Julien asks for a three-day leave from his boss so he can go visit his friend Fouqe. While leaving, he meets with Madame outside the house. She acts coldly toward him and his pride makes him angry with her. She backs down and gets scared that he'll stop loving her. That afternoon, Madame cries at the thought of Julien leaving. She excuses herself from her cousin and goes to cry in bed. Meanwhile, Julien sets off for his friend's house. On the way, he stops on a mountain and writes out his deepest thoughts. He feels completely free and decides to spend the night sleeping on the mountain. When he reaches his destination, his buddy Fouqe offers him a good job as his partner in the timber business. Julien doesn't like the offer because he's afraid it will seduce him away from his ambitions. Julien turns down the offer. Fouqe thinks he's crazy to turn down such a good deal. But there you have it.", "analysis": ""} | CHAPTER XII
A JOURNEY
Elegant people are to be found in Paris. People of
character may exist in the provinces.--Sieyes
At five o'clock the following day, before Madame de Renal was visible,
Julien obtained a three days' holiday from her husband. Contrary to his
expectation Julien found himself desirous of seeing her again. He kept
thinking of that pretty hand of hers. He went down into the garden, but
Madame de Renal kept him waiting for a long time. But if Julien had
loved her, he would have seen her forehead glued to the pane behind the
half-closed blinds on the first floor. She was looking at him. Finally,
in spite of her resolutions, she decided to go into the garden. Her
habitual pallor had been succeeded by more lively hues. This woman,
simple as she was, was manifestly agitated; a sentiment of constraint,
and even of anger, altered that expression of profound serenity which
seemed, as it were, to be above all the vulgar interests of life and
gave so much charm to that divine face.
Julien approached her with eagerness, admiring those beautiful arms
which were just visible through a hastily donned shawl. The freshness
of the morning air seemed to accentuate still more the brilliance of
her complexion which the agitation of the past night rendered all the
more susceptible to all impressions. This demure and pathetic beauty,
which was, at the same time, full of thoughts which are never found in
the inferior classes, seemed to reveal to Julien a faculty in his own
soul which he had never before realised. Engrossed in his admiration of
the charms on which his his greedy gaze was riveted, Julien took for
granted the friendly welcome which he was expecting to receive. He was
all the more astonished at the icy coldness which she endeavoured to
manifest to him, and through which he thought he could even distinguish
the intention of putting him in his place.
The smile of pleasure died away from his lips as he remembered his
rank in society, especially from the point of view of a rich and noble
heiress. In a single moment his face exhibited nothing but haughtiness
and anger against himself. He felt violently disgusted that he could
have put off his departure for more than an hour, simply to receive so
humiliating a welcome.
"It is only a fool," he said to himself, "who is angry with others; a
stone falls because it is heavy. Am I going to be a child all my life?
How on earth is it that I manage to contract the charming habit of
showing my real self to those people simply in return for their money?
If I want to win their respect and that of my own self, I must shew
them that it is simply a business transaction between my poverty and
their wealth, but that my heart is a thousand leagues away from their
insolence, and is situated in too high a sphere to be affected by their
petty marks of favour or disdain."
While these feelings were crowding the soul of the young tutor, his
mobile features assumed an expression of ferocity and injured pride.
Madame de Renal was extremely troubled. The virtuous coldness that she
had meant to put into her welcome was succeeded by an expression of
interest--an interest animated by all the surprise brought about by
the sudden change which she had just seen. The empty morning platitudes
about their health and the fineness of the day suddenly dried up.
Julien's judgment was disturbed by no passion, and he soon found a
means of manifesting to Madame de Renal how light was the friendly
relationship that he considered existed between them. He said nothing
to her about the little journey that he was going to make; saluted her,
and went away.
As she watched him go, she was overwhelmed by the sombre haughtiness
which she read in that look which had been so gracious the previous
evening. Her eldest son ran up from the bottom of the garden, and said
as he kissed her,
"We have a holiday, M. Julien is going on a journey."
At these words, Madame de Renal felt seized by a deadly coldness. She
was unhappy by reason of her virtue, and even more unhappy by reason of
her weakness.
This new event engrossed her imagination, and she was transported far
beyond the good resolutions which she owed to the awful night she had
just passed. It was not now a question of resisting that charming
lover, but of losing him for ever.
It was necessary to appear at breakfast. To complete her anguish, M. de
Renal and Madame Derville talked of nothing but Julien's departure. The
mayor of Verrieres had noticed something unusual in the firm tone in
which he had asked for a holiday.
"That little peasant has no doubt got somebody else's offer up his
sleeve, but that somebody else, even though it's M. Valenod, is bound
to be a little discouraged by the sum of six hundred francs, which the
annual salary now tots up to. He must have asked yesterday at Verrieres
for a period of three days to think it over, and our little gentleman
runs off to the mountains this morning so as not to be obliged to give
me an answer. Think of having to reckon with a wretched workman who
puts on airs, but that's what we've come to."
"If my husband, who does not know how deeply he has wounded Julien,
thinks that he will leave us, what can I think myself?" said Madame de
Renal to herself. "Yes, that is all decided." In order to be able at
any rate to be free to cry, and to avoid answering Madame Derville's
questions, she pleaded an awful headache, and went to bed.
"That's what women are," repeated M. de Renal, "there is always
something out of order in those complicated machines," and he went off
jeering.
While Madame de Renal was a prey to all the poignancy of the terrible
passion in which chance had involved her, Julien went merrily on his
way, surrounded by the most beautiful views that mountain scenery
can offer. He had to cross the great chain north of Vergy. The path
which he followed rose gradually among the big beech woods, and ran
into infinite spirals on the slope of the high mountain which forms
the northern boundary of the Doubs valley. Soon the traveller's view,
as he passed over the lower slopes bounding the course of the Doubs
towards the south, extends as far as the fertile plains of Burgundy and
Beaujolais. However insensible was the soul of this ambitious youth to
this kind of beauty, he could not help stopping from time to time to
look at a spectacle at once so vast and so impressive.
Finally, he reached the summit of the great mountain, near which
he had to pass in order to arrive by this cross-country route at
the solitary valley where lived his friend Fouque, the young wood
merchant. Julien was in no hurry to see him; either him, or any other
human being. Hidden like a bird of prey amid the bare rocks which
crowned the great mountain, he could see a long way off anyone coming
near him. He discovered a little grotto in the middle of the almost
vertical slope of one of the rocks. He found a way to it, and was soon
ensconced in this retreat. "Here," he said, "with eyes brilliant with
joy, men cannot hurt me." It occurred to him to indulge in the pleasure
of writing down those thoughts of his which were so dangerous to him
everywhere else. A square stone served him for a desk; his pen flew. He
saw nothing of what was around him. He noticed at last that the sun was
setting behind the distant mountains of Beaujolais.
"Why shouldn't I pass the night here?" he said to himself. "I have
bread, and I am free." He felt a spiritual exultation at the sound of
that great word. The necessity of playing the hypocrite resulted in his
not being free, even at Fouque's. Leaning his head on his two hands,
Julien stayed in the grotto, more happy than he had ever been in his
life, thrilled by his dreams, and by the bliss of his freedom. Without
realising it, he saw all the rays of the twilight become successively
extinguished. Surrounded by this immense obscurity, his soul wandered
into the contemplation of what he imagined that he would one day meet
in Paris. First it was a woman, much more beautiful and possessed of a
much more refined temperament than anything he could have found in the
provinces. He loved with passion, and was loved. If he separated from
her for some instants, it was only to cover himself with glory, and to
deserve to be loved still more.
A young man brought up in the environment of the sad truths of Paris
society, would, on reaching this point in his romance, even if we
assume him possessed of Julien's imagination, have been brought back
to himself by the cold irony of the situation. Great deeds would have
disappeared from out his ken together with hope of achieving them and
have been succeeded by the platitude. "If one leave one's mistress
one runs alas! the risk of being deceived two or three times a day."
But the young peasant saw nothing but the lack of opportunity between
himself and the most heroic feats.
But a deep night had succeeded the day, and there were still two
leagues to walk before he could descend to the cabin in which Fouque
lived. Before leaving the little cave, Julien made a light and
carefully burnt all that he had written. He quite astonished his friend
when he knocked at his door at one o'clock in the morning. He found
Fouque engaged in making up his accounts. He was a young man of high
stature, rather badly made, with big, hard features, a never-ending
nose, and a large fund of good nature concealed beneath this repulsive
appearance.
"Have you quarelled with M. de Renal then that you turn up unexpectedly
like this?" Julien told him, but in a suitable way, the events of the
previous day.
"Stay with me," said Fouque to him. "I see that you know M. de Renal,
M. Valenod, the sub-prefect Maugron, the cure Chelan. You have
understood the subtleties of the character of those people. So there
you are then, quite qualified to attend auctions. You know arithmetic
better than I do; you will keep my accounts; I make a lot in my
business. The impossibility of doing everything myself, and the fear
of taking a rascal for my partner prevents me daily from undertaking
excellent business. It's scarcely a month since I put Michaud de
Saint-Amand, whom I haven't seen for six years, and whom I ran across
at the sale at Pontarlier in the way of making six thousand francs. Why
shouldn't it have been you who made those six thousand francs, or at
any rate three thousand. For if I had had you with me that day, I would
have raised the bidding for that lot of timber and everybody else would
soon have run away. Be my partner."
This offer upset Julien. It spoilt the train of his mad dreams. Fouque
showed his accounts to Julien during the whole of the supper--which the
two friends prepared themselves like the Homeric heroes (for Fouque
lived alone) and proved to him all the advantages offered by his timber
business. Fouque had the highest opinion of the gifts and character of
Julien.
When, finally, the latter was alone in his little room of pinewood, he
said to himself: "It is true I can make some thousands of francs here
and then take up with advantage the profession of a soldier, or of a
priest, according to the fashion then prevalent in France. The little
hoard that I shall have amassed will remove all petty difficulties. In
the solitude of this mountain I shall have dissipated to some extent my
awful ignorance of so many of the things which make up the life of all
those men of fashion. But Fouque has given up all thoughts of marriage,
and at the same time keeps telling me that solitude makes him unhappy.
It is clear that if he takes a partner who has no capital to put into
his business, he does so in the hopes of getting a companion who will
never leave him."
"Shall I deceive my friend," exclaimed Julien petulantly. This being
who found hypocrisy and complete callousness his ordinary means of
self-preservation could not, on this occasion, endure the idea of the
slightest lack of delicate feeling towards a man whom he loved.
But suddenly Julien was happy. He had a reason for a refusal. What!
Shall I be coward enough to waste seven or eight years. I shall get to
twenty-eight in that way! But at that age Bonaparte had achieved his
greatest feats. When I shall have made in obscurity a little money by
frequenting timber sales, and earning the good graces of some rascally
under-strappers who will guarantee that I shall still have the sacred
fire with which one makes a name for oneself?
The following morning, Julien with considerable sangfroid, said in
answer to the good Fouque, who regarded the matter of the partnership
as settled, that his vocation for the holy ministry of the altars would
not permit him to accept it. Fouque did not return to the subject.
"But just think," he repeated to him, "I'll make you my partner, or if
you prefer it, I'll give you four thousand francs a year, and you want
to return to that M. de Renal of yours, who despises you like the mud
on his shoes. When you have got two hundred louis in front of you, what
is to prevent you from entering the seminary? I'll go further: I will
undertake to procure for you the best living in the district, for,"
added Fouque, lowering his voice, I supply firewood to M. le ----, M.
le ----, M. ----. I provide them with first quality oak, but they only
pay me for plain wood, but never was money better invested.
Nothing could conquer Julien's vocation. Fouque finished by thinking
him a little mad. The third day, in the early morning, Julien left his
friend, and passed the day amongst the rocks of the great mountain. He
found his little cave again, but he had no longer peace of mind. His
friend's offers had robbed him of it. He found himself, not between
vice and virtue, like Hercules, but between mediocrity coupled with
an assured prosperity, and all the heroic dreams of his youth. "So I
have not got real determination after all," he said to himself, and it
was his doubt on this score which pained him the most. "I am not of
the stuff of which great men are made, because I fear that eight years
spent in earning a livelihood will deprive me of that sublime energy
which inspires the accomplishment of extraordinary feats."
| 2,353 | Part 1, Chapter 12 | https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-12 | Julien asks for a three-day leave from his boss so he can go visit his friend Fouqe. While leaving, he meets with Madame outside the house. She acts coldly toward him and his pride makes him angry with her. She backs down and gets scared that he'll stop loving her. That afternoon, Madame cries at the thought of Julien leaving. She excuses herself from her cousin and goes to cry in bed. Meanwhile, Julien sets off for his friend's house. On the way, he stops on a mountain and writes out his deepest thoughts. He feels completely free and decides to spend the night sleeping on the mountain. When he reaches his destination, his buddy Fouqe offers him a good job as his partner in the timber business. Julien doesn't like the offer because he's afraid it will seduce him away from his ambitions. Julien turns down the offer. Fouqe thinks he's crazy to turn down such a good deal. But there you have it. | null | 165 | 1 | [
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1,200 | true | gradesaver | all_chapterized_books/1200-chapters/book_4.txt | finished_summaries/gradesaver/Gargantua and Pantagruel/section_5_part_0.txt | Gargantua and Pantagruel.book 4.chapter 1-chapter 67 | book 4 | null | {"name": "Book 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180420203406/http://www.gradesaver.com/gargantua-and-pantagruel/study-guide/summary-book-4", "summary": "The fourth book begins where the third book left off. Pantagruel, Panurge, Epistemon, Friar John, and all the other companions prepare the eleven ships for the voyage to The Oracle of the Holy Bottle in Lantern Land. Pantagruel names his flagship the Thalamege, and each of the other ten ships is identified by items hung on the stern of each ship, and these items signify different aspects of the mission or they are charms meant to attract good fortune during the mission. Pantagruel and his companions plan to leave from the port of Thalassa, and they have chartered a route that will take them around Africa and up by India within four months. After traveling for several months by sea, Pantagruel and his companions finally make their way to the island of Medamothy. On this peculiar island, all of Pantagruel's companions purchase unique items. Pantagruel himself purchases three unicorns, tapestries that relate the story of Achilles' adventurers, beautiful paintings, and a beast known as a tarand, which is as big as a bull with the head of a deer and has fur that changes color based on its surroundings. It is on the island of Medamothy where Pantagruel receives word from his father via one of his father's servants, Malicorne, who was able to arrive so quickly, because he rode on a smaller ship, the Chelidonia, which is capable of faster speeds. Malicorne brings good tidings from his father as well as a letter. Malicorne also provides Pantagruel with a pigeon so that Pantagruel may send his father a simple message through the use of attaching a colored ribbon to the leg of the pigeon. According to their prearranged code, a black ribbon would imply that something horrible has occurred, whereas a white ribbon would explain that all was well. Having experienced no tragedies upon the voyage thus far, Pantagruel attaches a white ribbon to the leg of the pigeon, and lets it fly homeward to his father. Pantagruel also writes to his father, thanking his father for his thoughtfulness in sending a messenger to him. Within his letter, Pantagruel also explains that he will be sending back several curious items that he has recently purchased, including the unicorns, the Achilles tapestry, and the strange tarand beast. Pantagruel wishes his father well in the letter, and implies that he will write to his father as often as possible concerning the adventures of the voyage to the oracle. Pantagruel then sends the letter along with the curious items to his father by giving them over to Malicorne. As Pantagruel and his companions set out away from the island of Medamothy, they meet a ship with passengers returning from Lantern Land. As they mingle with these other passengers, a sheep merchant by the name of Dingdong notices that Panurge does not wear a codpiece, and that he has metal spectacles attached to his hat. Dingdong whispers to those near him about how Panurge has a cuckold's medal on his head, which of course starts a rather heated argument between Dingdong and Panurge. The two are forced to stop the fight, though, in order to maintain morale of the ship. As an attempt to smooth things over with the sheep merchant, Panurge offers to purchase one of Dingdong's sheep. Dingdong babbles on about the quality of his sheep, how they will be sold to royal houses, how their wool will be made into luxurious fabrics, and so on. As he babbles on, Panurge repeatedly asks how much he wants for one of the sheep. Finally, one of the other sheep merchants insists that Dingdong stop giving Panurge a difficult time and simply sell him a sheep. Dingdong agrees, and then he makes the transaction. After finally getting Dingdong to sell one of his sheep, Panurge picks up his new sheep, and throws it over the edge of the ship and into the water. Hearing their fellow sheep in the water, the rest of the sheep follow the sound and they all run over the edge of the ship and into the ocean where they will no doubt drown. Dingdong and his fellow sheep merchants try to stop the sheep, but they have no luck in the matter, and instead they get pulled over the edge by the sheep, where they too fall into the ocean and drown. Panurge asks Friar John for his opinion on the matter of what just occurred, and Friar John replies that Panurge should not have paid the man if this was his plan all along, because now the drowned man has his money. Panurge says that the payment was worth the fun, and then Panurge goes on to explain how that when he is wronged by someone, he will gladly take vengeance upon them, and the vengeance will be far greater than the initial offense. Although Panurge just murdered several people and killed a bunch of sheep, no one says anything negative about the whole situation. Friar John does say that Panurge has damned himself like an old devil, but it seems to be a passing comment, and not a serious accusation. The next island they sail to is the island of Ennasin. Upon talking with the locals, Pantagruel and his companions learn that everyone on this island is related to one another either closely or distantly. They have not allowed marriage with outsiders for some time, although the people of the island seem to have no problem with Pantagruel his companions visiting. As they walk around the island, they listen to how the men and women talk to one another. Pantagruel and his friends notice that the people of the island don't use such terms as mother, father, brother, sister etc. Instead, when they refer to one another, they use complementary terms, such as pear and cheese, or they use opposing terms to signify their dislike for one another. Depending on the relationship between the people, the terms can be highly sexualized. As they journey on, they sail to the island of Chely to meet with King St. Panigon. During this visit, there is much pomp and circumstance going on. Friar John manages to avoid the ceremonies and instead chooses to sneak away into the kitchens to fill his face whilst everyone else deals with the formalities of the visit. Upon Friar John's return to the ship, his companions question him about where he went. He explains that he did not want to deal with the formalities of royalty, and instead preferred to find food in the kitchens. They then discuss who belongs in the kitchen, and Friar John points out that the higher members of royalty tend to avoid the kitchens, for kitchens are places of servitude. Monks, on the other hand, always seem to be found in kitchens. The next island is noted as the land of Pettifogging. In this inhospitable land, the biggest vocation is that of the catchpoles, who are people hired to serve writs and other legal papers. By doing this job, however, the catchpoles risk being beaten and abused by the people receiving the served papers. Thus, as Pantagruel and his friends describe, the catchpoles are paid to be beaten, or else they will starve. Panurge relates the story of the Lord of Basche, a man who was trying to avoid such catchpoles, and so he paid and instructed his staff to put on a fake wedding whenever one of these catchpoles arrived. His reasoning for the fake wedding was because the custom of this region was to punch people at the close of the nuptials to remind everyone of the date of the event. Therefore, through this tableau, the Lord of Basche's servants could beat up the catchpole without being held accountable for the violent act. They perform this stunt on three different occasions, but during the third time, the catchpole got the upper hand, and he actually beats most of the servants fairly well. Unlike the catchpoles who came before, this third catchpole walks away on his own accord, beaten, but still able to move. After passing the island full of catchpoles, they arrive at the islands of Tohu and Bohu. Here, Pantagruel and his companions hoped to capture some fresh food, unfortunately there's not much left on the island, because of the giant Wide-nostrils. Under the guidance of his physicians, Wide-nostrils has been inhaling and swallowing up all manner of items on these islands as well as surrounding islands. He apparently enjoys swallowing windmills the most. Lately, however, Wide-nostrils had been suffering from strange indigestion pains. His physicians recommended that he heat butter on a stove and swallow it to lubricate his intestines. Upon following his doctor's orders, though, Wide-nostrils choked on the butter and died. His death had been fairly recent, as the people on the islands of Tohu and Bohu explain to Pantagruel and his associates. They move on and make their way to the next island, but as they do so, Friar John notices that his dear friend, Pantagruel, seems to be in a state of melancholy. Before Friar John can discover what troubles Pantagruel, a massive storm hits the ship. During the storm, Pantagruel ties himself to the mast. Friar John and the others strip down and start working the lines and the sails in an attempt to try to keep the ship afloat. Panurge, however, becomes overwhelmed with the fear that he will drown, and he starts ranting hysterically. Friar John tries to shame Panurge into proper action, but Panurge's fear is too powerful. After fighting the storm for some time, they all begin to fear that the storm will overtake them. Some of the companions start to consider their own mortality. Others, such as Friar John, challenge the gods of the sea and the tempest. Panurge tries to bargain with God, begging that God stop the storm. Panurge also offers anyone riches untold if they could get him safely to shore. Just as everyone seems to give up hope, Pantagruel spots land. The storm begins to clear away and everyone feels relieved once again. After the storm has passed and everyone is safe, Panurge acts as if he was never afraid. He even pretends that he provided more than his fair share of help during the storm, even though he did nothing but cry and sob the entire time. Friar John cannot stand by and listen to such lies, and he openly accuses Panurge of cowardice. Pantagruel explains that he would never tolerate his servants acting cowardly during such a conflict. Nevertheless, Pantagruel does not punish Panurge for the way he acted. All of the other supporting characters, though, comment on how Panurge acted cowardly, whereas they did their best to fight the storm. On the island of the Macreons, Pantagruel and his companions meet with the good Macrobius. Macrobius tells Pantagruel and his companions about how the ancient heroes died fighting the great monsters of the region, and how certain astronomical signs, such as comets, foretold of the events. Pantagruel then relates a historical story about how Thamous, the pilot of a large ship, was steering his ship toward port when a ghostly voice called for him three times. He answered after the third time, and the voice told him that he must publish the announcement of the death of Pan. Uncertain if the voice was real, Thamous decides he will only make the announcement if his ship is becalmed prior to getting into port. The ship gets close to land, and just then the wind dies completely and all the currents stop pushing his ship forward, so he cries out the announcement, and all the people on the nearby shores hear of Pan's death, and a great sadness fills the land. Pantagruel then makes the allegorical connection between Pan, the kind and mighty shepherd, and Jesus Christ. Both Pan and Christ are noted as being killed in the same fashion, and supposedly died around the same time. Pantagruel and his companions bid farewell to the good Macrobius and set sail for the next stop on their long journey. As they pass by the Sneaking Island, Xenomanes tells everyone about Shrovetide, the sovereign of the Sneaking Island. Xenomanes describes Shrovetide as a young ruler, but a ruler who is both paranoid and shrewd. Shrovetide's island is known for producing beautiful skewers that are sold throughout the world. Apparently, Shrovetide and his people are always at war with the Chitterlings, who reside on the Wild Island. Xenomanes continues to describe Shrovetide further with an enormous list of similes that depict every part of Shrovetide's body, but those similes are not very favorable. After passing the Sneaking Island, Pantagruel sees a monster in the ocean near the Wild Island. As they get closer, they realize that the monster is a whale, also known as a physeter. The narrator describes this particular whale to have three horns. Pantagruel decides that his fleet of eleven ships will go after this monster and kill it. The battle is difficult, but sure enough, they manage to slay the beast and bring the whale to the shore of the Wild Island. As Pantagruel's servants begin to cut up the whale, Pantagruel and his close companions begin to walk around the shore of the island. Immediately they notice that they have been spotted by the wild Chitterlings, and it appears that these natives are preparing to launch a full-scale attack on Pantagruel and his followers. Once again, Panurge acts cowardly as he tries to get himself away from the potential oncoming battle. He even volunteers to go and worn the soldiers on the ships. Friar John openly accuses Panurge of cowardice. Pantagruel, once again, ignores Panurge's cowardly actions, and instead Pantagruel focuses on making a plan. He does not wish to start a battle, but Pantagruel will not be caught off guard either. He decides to make sure the morale of his soldiers is high by requesting that two of his ships' commanders, Colonel Maul-chitterling and Colonel Cut-pudding the younger, join them on the beach for the potential battle, along with the soldiers whom each colonel commands over. Epistemon complements Pantagruel on his clever choice to choose these specific commanders, since their names describe what they wish to accomplish, should they enter into battle with the Chitterlings, . Both the commanders arrive with their soldiers, and Pantagruel explains that they must prepare for battle. The Chitterlings are described in several different ways. Since many of the Chitterlings are female, they are described as snake-like temptresses and tempters. Of course, this is a metaphorical description. Physically, they look like anthropomorphic sausages. Thus, since they look like food, Friar John convinces all the cooks to join him in the battle. As Friar John enlists the cooks, he goes over their names, and all of their names are linked closely to their cooking vocation. For example: \"Sour-sauce. Crisp-pig. Carbonado. Sweet-meat,\" etc. Friar John gets all of the cooks ready to go inside of a great machine known as the Sow. Similar to the Trojan horse, soldiers can get inside of the Sow. Much like a modern-day tank, the soldiers inside of the Sow can shoot out bolts and other ranged weaponry. Friar John plans to have all the cooks inside of the Sow to go to war against the Chitterlings. The Chitterlings build their lines of defense, and then start the battle. Pantagruel and his companions fight the Chitterlings and cut them to pieces, forcing them to retreat. As the Chitterlings begin to retreat, a gigantic, flying, winged-pig with crimson feathers appears. If flies between the armies calling out the word, \"Carnival,\" again and again. As the giant pig flies overhead, mustard falls out of it, and the mustard lands in heaps on the ground. After a short while, the giant pig flies away. With the battle over, Pantagruel and his companions seek out the leader of the Chitterlings, Queen Niphleseth. They converse with the Queen and discover that the Chitterlings started the battle due to false intelligence reports. The Chitterlings were under the impression that Pantagruel and his companions were allies of Shrovetide. The Queen makes all formal apologies and offers to send tribute to Pantagruel's country, along with 78,000 Chitterlings to serve for a period of six months every year. The following day, she sends the first lot of Chitterlings along with her daughter, young Niphleseth, to Pantagruel's homeland. After she does so, Pantagruel explains that it will not be necessary to send so many Chitterlings every year, nor will they be required to pay tribute on a regular basis. He also forgives all actions taken against him and his soldiers. Pantagruel then asks the Queen about the giant pig that flew in the sky after the battle. The Queen explains that Carnival, their patron God, who looks like a giant hog himself, created the flying pig as a way to protect his people, which is why the flying pig cries out Carnival's name. Pantagruel then inquires why mustard falls out of the flying pig. The Queen then states that, for Chitterlings, mustard acts as a magical balm that cures the sick and raises the dead. Unfortunately, the cure of mustard only works on Chitterlings. Sailing away from Queen Niphleseth and the Wild Island, Pantagruel and his companions arrive at the island of Ruach. On this island, the people do not eat food, and instead they feast upon different types of wind. To produce their food, they have even made massive windmills. The wind eaters of Ruach relate to Pantagruel about the problems they have experienced with their diet, especially since the giant Wide-nostrils swallows up their windmills and destroys other parts of their island. Pantagruel announces that they need not worry about Wide-nostrils any longer, for the giant recently died after choking on hot butter. As Pantagruel and his compatriots sail on, they come to the island of Pope-Figland. By talking to the locals, they learn the history of the island's name. Many years ago, the people of the island were called Gaillardets. One day, three Gaillardets went to visit the neighboring island of Papimany during a religious celebration. The Gaillardets mocked the image of the Papimen's Pope by saying \"a fig to it.\" The next day, the Papimen armies overtook the Gaillardets homelands and killed practically everyone, save the women and children. Of the people who were spared, the Papimen gave them a shameful challenge that was identical to what Emperor Frederick Barbarossa did to the people of Milan. The leader of the Papimen placed a fig within the anal crevice of a donkey so that part of the fig was sticking out. He then challenged the survivors that if any of them wanted to live that they would have to remove the fig and then put it back in place without using their hands. Most of the people took part in the shameful act and became slaves to the Papimen people. The Gaillardets' island was then renamed Pope-Figland, as a reminder of their actions against the Papimen. While learning about the island's history, Pantagruel and his friends see a fountain pool where a man is submerged all the way up to his nostrils. Standing around him are three priests, and they are reading a book to try and remove any devil from possessing the man. One of the people nearby explains to Pantagruel and his friends why the man is submerged in the fountain. A few seasons previously, the man, who happens to be a farmer and a plowman, was in his field throwing corn seeds out in the dirt. The farmer had not had much luck farming this piece of land, but he was desperate to make the corn grow. Just then, a devil appears and makes a deal that he will protect the land so that the corn grows, provided that upon the harvest day the devil can keep everything under the dirt while the farmer keeps everything above the dirt. The farmer agrees, and the devil protects the land. Come harvest, the farmer and his workers arrive just as the devil and his workers arrive. The farmer and his crew work together and harvest everything above land, which is all the healthy stocks of corn, whereas the devil and his group get nothing save the dirt chaff. Both groups go to market, but the devil is unable to tempt anyone into buying his product. The devil thought he was being clever, because he thought he would gain all the corn that the farmer had thrown under the dirt. Clearly, this devil did not understand how plants grow. The devil then offers the farmer a second deal similar to the first, but this time the devil explains that everything above ground will belong to him come harvest time, and that everything below ground will belong to the farmer. The devil then asks the farmer what he plans to grow, to which the farmer cleverly responds that he will grow radishes. Again, harvest time happens, and the farmer gets all of the delicious underground radishes, while the devil gets all the worthless leaves. Once again, the devil cannot tempt anyone to buy his wares. Upset at how he has lost out on the first two deals, the devil offers a third and final deal to the farmer. He claims that whoever wins the third challenge will also win complete ownership of the field. The farmer agrees, and so the devil explains that the third challenge will be a clawing match. The farmer goes home in a panic, since he is uncertain of how he will win the day. His wife sees that he is upset and asks him what is going on. He explains everything and believes he is doomed. She assures him that she has a plan to beat the devil. She does not share her plan with her husband, though, so the farmer goes to the priests, confesses everything that has happened, and begs for help. To save his soul, the priests have submerged him in a pool of water and are saying prayers to ward off devil possession. The day when the clawing match was to take place happens to coincide with the day that Pantagruel and his friends have arrived. Just as they finish hearing the story about why the farmer is now submerged in water, they receive word from members of the town that the farmer's wife has beaten the devil. The way she did so was quite clever. She waited at the house for the devil to arrive, and placed herself in a heap on the ground, making sure to cry like a child. When the devil arrived, she told him that her husband had been practicing his clawing on her, and that he had clawed her up so bad that she will surely die. She then said that her husband was out sharpening his claws for the battle. At first the devil does not believe her, but then the woman holds up her skirts so that the devil can see her vaginal region, which to this unknowledgeable devil looks as if someone has ripped her open. Fearful that the farmer will rip him open, the devil runs away in defeat. Pantagruel and his companions leave the island of Pope-Figland and make way to the neighboring island of Papimany. On this island, Pantagruel and his compatriots discover that people are devout Christian zealots who praise all things related to the Pope, since they see the Pope as the living God on earth. They ask Pantagruel and his companions if they have ever been in the presence of the Pope. As a member royalty, Pantagruel has had the privilege of meeting the Pope, as have many of his companions, so the people of Papimany treats Pantagruel and his friends with the utmost respect. They are then welcomed to the island by Homenas, Bishop of Papimany. From the Bishop, they learn of the Papimen's extreme devotion and how they keep holy relics and holy books treasured under lock and key. To view such items requires people to fast for three days and give confession, as a show of worthiness. Panurge explains that they have been fasting all throughout their voyage, and are thus prepared. The bishop believes Panurge, and thus he shows Pantagruel and his companions all the holy relics, including images of the Pope as well as the holy books, known as decretals, which provide all the infinite knowledge that anyone would ever need. After viewing such holy items, and since the bishop believes that Pantagruel and his companions have been fasting for days, he offers them a great feast in honor of their visit and religious devotion. While feasting, everyone discusses stories about how people who are disrespectful to holy relics and holy books are severely punished, while those who respect such artifacts are eternally blessed. In exchange for blessing the island with their presence, Homenas gives Pantagruel pears that only grow on the island. Homenas claims they are the best pears in the world. Pantagruel explains that he will take a cutting home, if he is allowed, and grow these pears and call them good-Christian pears. Upon leaving the island of Papimany, Pantagruel's fleet of ships sails toward the frozen sea. While there, Pantagruel starts to hear people talking, although he cannot see anyone. Everyone else quiets down to listen closely, but they don't hear anything at first. After listening for a while, Pantagruel's companion start to hear something, although they cannot make out what they hear. They then learn that a battle between the Arimaspians and the Nephelibates had taken place in this region of the frozen sea, so Pantagruel and his friends surmise that perhaps the words they are hearing are from those groups of people. Somehow, Pantagruel reaches out and finds the frozen words, grabs them up, and brings them onto the ship's deck. Everyone starts warming up the frozen words and hears all manner of phrases, although the words are gibberish. By the tones of the words, they can determine that some of the words are beautiful, while others are said in hatred. Some words are reminiscent of the sounds of fighting, and other words are the sounds of screaming. Although some of the people on the ship, including Panurge and the unnamed narrator, wish to keep the words, Pantagruel advises against it, and so all the words are set free. Pantagruel and his companion sail away from the frozen sea and arrive at a new island that is supposed to be where the dwelling of Gaster resides. Gaster is known as the first Master of Arts in the world. Pantagruel goes to shore to meet Gaster. It is unclear whether Gaster is a giant, a demigod, or something else, for he has no doubt lived a long time and he has the brilliance and ability to create things far beyond the capabilities of regular people. While on the island, Pantagruel discovers that there are two groups of natives living there, including the Engastrimythes and the Gastrolaters. The first is a group of cheats and charlatans, the second is a group of thugs who walk around the island in gangs and dress up in strange elaborate costumes. The Gastrolaters have made Gaster into their god. They have also built crude statues to him, and they sacrifice exorbitant amounts of food and drink in his honor. Gaster does not want to be a God, and he often refuses many of the sacrifices. According to the stories, Gaster created all of the arts of agriculture, animal husbandry, cooking, civilization, architecture, war, and so many other arts. His purpose for creating these arts started out as a survival technique. He needed food, so he had to figure out how to grow corn; hence, he created agriculture. He then had to find ways to turn the corn into different types of food, store the food, protect the food, and protect the people who were protecting the food. Thus, all of the arts were created for improving the survival rate of people. Pantagruel then learns about how Gaster perfected some of his art forms. For instance, Gaster supposedly found ways to prevent people from being shot by bullets or cannonballs. To avoid gunshot or cannonballs, Gaster explains that one need only place iron-like stone, known as herculean, between yourself and your enemies. The narrator explains that the bullets and cannonballs will stop and hover near the stone. Supposedly, Gaster also invented a way to stop bullets and reverse their trajectory completely, however, the narrator does not provide an explanation of this technique, and instead discusses at length how all manner of herbs and other regular items can do extraordinary things, if applied in the right fashion. As Pantagruel and his comrades spend most of their time sailing, there is a lot of dead time where there is nothing to do. On one such occasion, each of Pantagruel's friends tried to busy themselves with different activities, but by doing so they all became lethargic and bored. Pantagruel takes a nap during this time, but when he rises, each of his friends ask him all manner of questions, including when should one eat, how to avoid boredom, and when should one sleep. Pantagruel provides religious maxims concerning when to sleep and when to eat, but he does not provide an answer for how to eradicate boredom. Pantagruel passes the time with his friends by chatting, talking about local lore, and asking each other questions. When they see the isle of Ganabim, Xenomanes explains that it is not a good place to visit, since it is filled with thieves. He does acknowledge that parts of the island would be suitable for stocking up on wood and water, though. On the isle, however, they can see a mountain that looks like Parnassus, where supposedly the Muses lived. Although Pantagruel has a strong feeling that he should not to visit the island, he at least wants to pay tribute to the Muses, and so he orders his ships to fire cannons as tribute. During such time, Panurge has gone under decks, once again overcome with fear. He and Friar John had gotten into an argument earlier, and Friar John chastised him for his cowardly inclinations, which made Panurge run away and sulk below decks. While Panurge was sulking, the cannon salute to the Muses went off. Panurge panics, for he believes that they have entered into a new battle. Half dressed, Panurge severely soils himself, and gets in a fight with one of the ship's cats, Rodilardus, who Panurge mistook for a small devil. Panurge runs to Friar John and begs him to save his soul. At this point, Panurge is rambling, stained in his own feces, and covered with cat scratches. Friar John points this all out to Pantagruel, and Pantagruel finally has to deal with situation of Panurge's cowardice. Pantagruel politely instructs Panurge to go clean up and calm himself. Briefly, Panurge acts as if he was never afraid in the first place, and he claims that the feces on his back is not his own, but that it belongs to the ship's cat. Here the fourth book ends rather abruptly.", "analysis": "Once again, the point of view of the story has changed to an unnamed narrator. In the second book, the narrator introduces himself as a servant to Pantagruel, and at some point eventually gives his name as Alcofribas. It is unclear if Alcofribas remains the narrator throughout books three, four, and five. If he were the servant of Pantagruel, then, presumably, he would focus his perspective on everything in relationship to his master. The third book, however, focuses more on Panurge. In this fourth installment, the focus shifts periodically. Most of the time, the point of view focuses on what Pantagruel does throughout the voyage, but then the point of view shifts to Panurge's exploits, and at times to the actions of Friar John. If Alcofribas is indeed the narrator of both the third and fourth books, then he stands in the role of the bystander who has the ability to watch the nobility at all times. Thus, from his perspective, as a virtually invisible servant, Alcofribas can watch every event that goes on, and then provide the readers with an exposition. In addition, depending on Alcofribas's level of skill as a writer and observer, he might be writing about the exploits of the voyage as a favor to Pantagruel. When Pantagruel writes a letter to his father, he explains that he will keep a journal of their adventures for his father to read at a later time. Although Pantagruel seems like the type of person who would want to write such a journal himself, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that he may have asked his servant, this narrator, to also keep an account of the activities during the voyage. Throughout this fourth installment of the series, Pantagruel and his companions come into contact with a full array of real and mythical creatures. From the very start of the journey, Pantagruel and his followers arrive at the island of Medamothy, where literally everything imaginable and unimaginable is for sale. Wes Williams argues that the creatures found for sale on the island, including the unicorns and the color-changing tarand, are \"adynata: impossible objects, derived for the most part from Pliny's Natural History, books 8 and 10, where they figure such creatures as lie beyond credible representation\" . Williams posits that Rabelais includes this episode so early in the fourth book as a way to explain to the reader that this journey will explore many unknown elements. In fact, as the journey progresses, the inhabitants of the islands become more and more peculiar. Granted, some islanders are not so different from people living in the known Western world, but other inhabitants, such as the Chitterlings of the Wild Island and the wind eaters of the island of Ruach, appear so extraordinary that one would certainly question their existence. But, as Williams suggests, starting the journey off by visiting the island of Medamothy, a place full of oddities and curiosities, sets the stage for literally anything to occur throughout the fourth book, including a giant flying pig that spurts mustard. Probably one of the most fascinating aspects of this story is the comedic imagery throughout the voyage. Early on, Panurge gets into an argument with a sheep merchant. Both Panurge and the merchant are reprimanded for their argument and are forced to make amends. Panurge offers to buy one of the merchant's sheep to prove he is truly remorseful. The sheep merchant babbles excessively about the value of his sheep. Although he is but a lowly merchant, he has the opportunity to waste Panurge's time, and he makes full use of that opportunity. Finally, though, he does sell Panurge one of the sheep. Panurge takes his purchased sheep and promptly throws it overboard, causing all the other sheep to follow it into the ocean, and all the sheep merchants are pulled into the ocean by their flock, thus drowning all the sheep and the sheep merchants in one fell swoop. Although this is a grotesque and gruesome image, the dark comedy shows through nonetheless. Eyewitnesses describe other comedic images in the story, in a more indirect manner. For instance, the giant, Wide-nostrils, supposedly dies by choking on melted butter. Another example would be the farmer's wife who manages to trick an unknowledgeable devil into believing that the slit of her vaginal opening was caused by the powerful claws of her husband, whom the devil was going to battle in a clawing match. Of all the comedic imagery, the scenes during the battle with the Chitterlings on Wild Island demonstrate the most vivid examples of personification and contextual foreshadowing. The inhabitants of this island, the Chitterlings, are literally described as walking sausages. These food items made from pork have been personified into male and female warriors, but since they are still walking sausages, they can easily be ripped in half and cut to pieces. Fortunately, thanks to the comedy Rabelais infuses into this story, the Chitterlings need not die from being cut in half. The savior is mustard sauce, for everyone knows that even the worst sausage can be improved with a little bit of mustard. As if the culinary humor was not blatant enough, Rabelais adds the image of a gigantic flying pig with crimson red plumage. While this creature that defies all reason flies over the battlefield, it spurts out mustard to save the fallen soldiers. Although the events on this island rank under the category of bizarre, the island's very name provided contextual foreshadowing to warn outsiders that this is a wild space. The term \"wild\" has many interpretations. Some people may identify wild to mean disorderly. The fact that these personified sausages defy death through the aid of mustard certainly suggests that the normal laws of order and biology no longer apply. As the opening framework of the story indicates that the characters will meet different people and face difficult challenges, the framework of the voyage itself also signifies that the characters will be tested and, as a result of those tests, some characters will change dramatically. Compared to who he was in the second book, Panurge is almost a different character by the end of the fourth book. Of the challenges he faces during this portion of the story, the first challenge is that of the storm. His failure to find his courage during the storm marks the downfall of his character throughout the rest of the story. When the storm hits, Pantagruel ties himself to the mast while Friar John and Epistemon help the crew with the rigging and the sails. Friar John calls out to Panurge, begging that he help them, but Panurge remains frozen in his fear. As he cries like a child, Panurge begs God or anyone listening to bring him safely to dry land. As soon as the storm stops, and after everyone is on dry land, Panurge feigns as if he was never afraid and he pretends that he helped the crew during the storm. Friar John refuses to listen to Panurge's lies, and blatantly calls him a coward. Having failed his first test of the voyage, Panurge continues to falter and spiral downwards. For instance, when it appears that Pantagruel and his companions will have to do battle with the Chitterlings on Wild Island, Panurge offers to go to warn the soldiers on the ships, but he only makes this offer so that he can run away from the battle. Likewise, at the end of the story, while pouting below decks, Panurge hears the sound of cannon fire, which makes him believe that they have once again entered into battle. In this final test of his courage, Panurge soils himself in his own feces and mistakes a cat for a small demon. Truly, Panurge, the once quick-witted, womanizing, master thief and scam artist from the second book has hit rock bottom as he continues to sail on this voyage in his search for answers about cuckoldry after marriage."} | Good people, God save and keep you! Where are you? I can't see you:
stay--I'll saddle my nose with spectacles--oh, oh! 'twill be fair anon: I
see you. Well, you have had a good vintage, they say: this is no bad news
to Frank, you may swear. You have got an infallible cure against thirst:
rarely performed of you, my friends! You, your wives, children, friends,
and families are in as good case as hearts can wish; it is well, it is as I
would have it: God be praised for it, and if such be his will, may you
long be so. For my part, I am thereabouts, thanks to his blessed goodness;
and by the means of a little Pantagruelism (which you know is a certain
jollity of mind, pickled in the scorn of fortune), you see me now hale and
cheery, as sound as a bell, and ready to drink, if you will. Would you
know why I'm thus, good people? I will even give you a positive answer
--Such is the Lord's will, which I obey and revere; it being said in his
word, in great derision to the physician neglectful of his own health,
Physician, heal thyself.
Galen had some knowledge of the Bible, and had conversed with the
Christians of his time, as appears lib. 11. De Usu Partium; lib. 2. De
Differentiis Pulsuum, cap. 3, and ibid. lib. 3. cap. 2. and lib. De Rerum
Affectibus (if it be Galen's). Yet 'twas not for any such veneration of
holy writ that he took care of his own health. No, it was for fear of
being twitted with the saying so well known among physicians:
Iatros allon autos elkesi bruon.
He boasts of healing poor and rich,
Yet is himself all over itch.
This made him boldly say, that he did not desire to be esteemed a
physician, if from his twenty-eighth year to his old age he had not lived
in perfect health, except some ephemerous fevers, of which he soon rid
himself; yet he was not naturally of the soundest temper, his stomach being
evidently bad. Indeed, as he saith, lib. 5, De Sanitate tuenda, that
physician will hardly be thought very careful of the health of others who
neglects his own. Asclepiades boasted yet more than this; for he said that
he had articled with fortune not to be reputed a physician if he could be
said to have been sick since he began to practise physic to his latter age,
which he reached, lusty in all his members and victorious over fortune;
till at last the old gentleman unluckily tumbled down from the top of a
certain ill-propped and rotten staircase, and so there was an end of him.
If by some disaster health is fled from your worships to the right or to
the left, above or below, before or behind, within or without, far or near,
on this side or the other side, wheresoever it be, may you presently, with
the help of the Lord, meet with it. Having found it, may you immediately
claim it, seize it, and secure it. The law allows it; the king would have
it so; nay, you have my advice for it. Neither more nor less than the
law-makers of old did fully empower a master to claim and seize his runaway
servant wherever he might be found. Odds-bodikins, is it not written and
warranted by the ancient customs of this noble, so rich, so flourishing
realm of France, that the dead seizes the quick? See what has been
declared very lately in that point by that learned, wise, courteous, humane
and just civilian, Andrew Tiraqueau, one of the judges in the most
honourable court of Parliament at Paris. Health is our life, as Ariphron
the Sicyonian wisely has it; without health life is not life, it is not
living life: abios bios, bios abiotos. Without health life is only a
languishment and an image of death. Therefore, you that want your health,
that is to say, that are dead, seize the quick; secure life to yourselves,
that is to say, health.
I have this hope in the Lord, that he will hear our supplications,
considering with what faith and zeal we pray, and that he will grant this
our wish because it is moderate and mean. Mediocrity was held by the
ancient sages to be golden, that is to say, precious, praised by all men,
and pleasing in all places. Read the sacred Bible, you will find the
prayers of those who asked moderately were never unanswered. For example,
little dapper Zaccheus, whose body and relics the monks of St. Garlick,
near Orleans, boast of having, and nickname him St. Sylvanus; he only
wished to see our blessed Saviour near Jerusalem. It was but a small
request, and no more than anybody then might pretend to. But alas! he was
but low-built; and one of so diminutive a size, among the crowd, could not
so much as get a glimpse of him. Well then he struts, stands on tiptoes,
bustles, and bestirs his stumps, shoves and makes way, and with much ado
clambers up a sycamore. Upon this, the Lord, who knew his sincere
affection, presented himself to his sight, and was not only seen by him,
but heard also; nay, what is more, he came to his house and blessed his
family.
One of the sons of the prophets in Israel felling would near the river
Jordan, his hatchet forsook the helve and fell to the bottom of the river;
so he prayed to have it again ('twas but a small request, mark ye me), and
having a strong faith, he did not throw the hatchet after the helve, as
some spirits of contradiction say by way of scandalous blunder, but the
helve after the hatchet, as you all properly have it. Presently two great
miracles were seen: up springs the hatchet from the bottom of the water,
and fixes itself to its old acquaintance the helve. Now had he wished to
coach it to heaven in a fiery chariot like Elias, to multiply in seed like
Abraham, be as rich as Job, strong as Samson, and beautiful as Absalom,
would he have obtained it, d'ye think? I' troth, my friends, I question it
very much.
Now I talk of moderate wishes in point of hatchet (but harkee me, be sure
you don't forget when we ought to drink), I will tell you what is written
among the apologues of wise Aesop the Frenchman. I mean the Phrygian and
Trojan, as Max. Planudes makes him; from which people, according to the
most faithful chroniclers, the noble French are descended. Aelian writes
that he was of Thrace and Agathias, after Herodotus, that he was of Samos;
'tis all one to Frank.
In his time lived a poor honest country fellow of Gravot, Tom Wellhung by
name, a wood-cleaver by trade, who in that low drudgery made shift so to
pick up a sorry livelihood. It happened that he lost his hatchet. Now
tell me who ever had more cause to be vexed than poor Tom? Alas, his whole
estate and life depended on his hatchet; by his hatchet he earned many a
fair penny of the best woodmongers or log-merchants among whom he went
a-jobbing; for want of his hatchet he was like to starve; and had death but
met with him six days after without a hatchet, the grim fiend would have
mowed him down in the twinkling of a bedstaff. In this sad case he began
to be in a heavy taking, and called upon Jupiter with the most eloquent
prayers--for you know necessity was the mother of eloquence. With the
whites of his eyes turned up towards heaven, down on his marrow-bones, his
arms reared high, his fingers stretched wide, and his head bare, the poor
wretch without ceasing was roaring out, by way of litany, at every
repetition of his supplications, My hatchet, Lord Jupiter, my hatchet! my
hatchet! only my hatchet, O Jupiter, or money to buy another, and nothing
else! alas, my poor hatchet!
Jupiter happened then to be holding a grand council about certain urgent
affairs, and old gammer Cybele was just giving her opinion, or, if you
would rather have it so, it was young Phoebus the beau; but, in short,
Tom's outcries and lamentations were so loud that they were heard with no
small amazement at the council-board, by the whole consistory of the gods.
What a devil have we below, quoth Jupiter, that howls so horridly? By the
mud of Styx, have not we had all along, and have not we here still enough
to do, to set to rights a world of damned puzzling businesses of
consequence? We made an end of the fray between Presthan, King of Persia,
and Soliman the Turkish emperor, we have stopped up the passages between
the Tartars and the Muscovites; answered the Xeriff's petition; done the
same to that of Golgots Rays; the state of Parma's despatched; so is that
of Maidenburg, that of Mirandola, and that of Africa, that town on the
Mediterranean which we call Aphrodisium; Tripoli by carelessness has got a
new master; her hour was come.
Here are the Gascons cursing and damning, demanding the restitution of
their bells.
In yonder corner are the Saxons, Easterlings, Ostrogoths, and Germans,
nations formerly invincible, but now aberkeids, bridled, curbed, and
brought under a paltry diminutive crippled fellow; they ask us revenge,
relief, restitution of their former good sense and ancient liberty.
But what shall we do with this same Ramus and this Galland, with a pox to
them, who, surrounded with a swarm of their scullions, blackguard
ragamuffins, sizars, vouchers, and stipulators, set together by the ears
the whole university of Paris? I am in a sad quandary about it, and for
the heart's blood of me cannot tell yet with whom of the two to side.
Both seem to me notable fellows, and as true cods as ever pissed. The one
has rose-nobles, I say fine and weighty ones; the other would gladly have
some too. The one knows something; the other's no dunce. The one loves
the better sort of men; the other's beloved by 'em. The one is an old
cunning fox; the other with tongue and pen, tooth and nail, falls foul on
the ancient orators and philosophers, and barks at them like a cur.
What thinkest thou of it, say, thou bawdy Priapus? I have found thy
counsel just before now, et habet tua mentula mentem.
King Jupiter, answered Priapus, standing up and taking off his cowl, his
snout uncased and reared up, fiery and stiffly propped, since you compare
the one to a yelping snarling cur and the other to sly Reynard the fox, my
advice is, with submission, that without fretting or puzzling your brains
any further about 'em, without any more ado, even serve 'em both as, in the
days of yore, you did the dog and the fox. How? asked Jupiter; when? who
were they? where was it? You have a rare memory, for aught I see! returned
Priapus. This right worshipful father Bacchus, whom we have here nodding
with his crimson phiz, to be revenged on the Thebans had got a fairy fox,
who, whatever mischief he did, was never to be caught or wronged by any
beast that wore a head.
The noble Vulcan here present had framed a dog of Monesian brass, and with
long puffing and blowing put the spirit of life into him; he gave it to
you, you gave it your Miss Europa, Miss Europa gave it Minos, Minos gave it
Procris, Procris gave it Cephalus. He was also of the fairy kind; so that,
like the lawyers of our age, he was too hard for all other sorts of
creatures; nothing could scape the dog. Now who should happen to meet but
these two? What do you think they did? Dog by his destiny was to take
fox, and fox by his fate was not to be taken.
The case was brought before your council: you protested that you would not
act against the fates; and the fates were contradictory. In short, the end
and result of the matter was, that to reconcile two contradictions was an
impossibility in nature. The very pang put you into a sweat; some drops of
which happening to light on the earth, produced what the mortals call
cauliflowers. All our noble consistory, for want of a categorical
resolution, were seized with such a horrid thirst, that above seventy-eight
hogsheads of nectar were swilled down at that sitting. At last you took my
advice, and transmogrified them into stones; and immediately got rid of
your perplexity, and a truce with thirst was proclaimed through this vast
Olympus. This was the year of flabby cods, near Teumessus, between Thebes
and Chalcis.
After this manner, it is my opinion that you should petrify this dog and
this fox. The metamorphosis will not be incongruous; for they both bear
the name of Peter. And because, according to the Limosin proverb, to make
an oven's mouth there must be three stones, you may associate them with
Master Peter du Coignet, whom you formerly petrified for the same cause.
Then those three dead pieces shall be put in an equilateral trigone
somewhere in the great temple at Paris--in the middle of the porch, if you
will--there to perform the office of extinguishers, and with their noses
put out the lighted candles, torches, tapers, and flambeaux; since, while
they lived, they still lighted, ballock-like, the fire of faction,
division, ballock sects, and wrangling among those idle bearded boys, the
students. And this will be an everlasting monument to show that those puny
self-conceited pedants, ballock-framers, were rather contemned than
condemned by you. Dixi, I have said my say.
You deal too kindly by them, said Jupiter, for aught I see, Monsieur
Priapus. You do not use to be so kind to everybody, let me tell you; for
as they seek to eternize their names, it would be much better for them to
be thus changed into hard stones than to return to earth and putrefaction.
But now to other matters. Yonder behind us, towards the Tuscan sea and the
neighbourhood of Mount Apennine, do you see what tragedies are stirred up
by certain topping ecclesiastical bullies? This hot fit will last its
time, like the Limosins' ovens, and then will be cooled, but not so fast.
We shall have sport enough with it; but I foresee one inconveniency; for
methinks we have but little store of thunder ammunition since the time that
you, my fellow gods, for your pastime lavished them away to bombard new
Antioch, by my particular permission; as since, after your example, the
stout champions who had undertaken to hold the fortress of Dindenarois
against all comers fairly wasted their powder with shooting at sparrows,
and then, not having wherewith to defend themselves in time of need,
valiantly surrendered to the enemy, who were already packing up their awls,
full of madness and despair, and thought on nothing but a shameful retreat.
Take care this be remedied, son Vulcan; rouse up your drowsy Cyclopes,
Asteropes, Brontes, Arges, Polyphemus, Steropes, Pyracmon, and so forth,
set them at work, and make them drink as they ought.
Never spare liquor to such as are at hot work. Now let us despatch this
bawling fellow below. You, Mercury, go see who it is, and know what he
wants. Mercury looked out at heaven's trapdoor, through which, as I am
told, they hear what is said here below. By the way, one might well enough
mistake it for the scuttle of a ship; though Icaromenippus said it was like
the mouth of a well. The light-heeled deity saw that it was honest Tom,
who asked for his lost hatchet; and accordingly he made his report to the
synod. Marry, said Jupiter, we are finely helped up, as if we had now
nothing else to do here but to restore lost hatchets. Well, he must have
it then for all this, for so 'tis written in the Book of Fate (do you
hear?), as well as if it was worth the whole duchy of Milan. The truth is,
the fellow's hatchet is as much to him as a kingdom to a king. Come, come,
let no more words be scattered about it; let him have his hatchet again.
Now, let us make an end of the difference betwixt the Levites and
mole-catchers of Landerousse. Whereabouts were we? Priapus was standing in
the chimney-corner, and having heard what Mercury had reported, said in a
most courteous and jovial manner: King Jupiter, while by your order and
particular favour I was garden-keeper-general on earth, I observed that this
word hatchet is equivocal to many things; for it signifies a certain
instrument by the means of which men fell and cleave timber. It also
signifies (at least I am sure it did formerly) a female soundly and
frequently thumpthumpriggletickletwiddletobyed. Thus I perceived that every
cock of the game used to call his doxy his hatchet; for with that same tool
(this he said lugging out and exhibiting his nine-inch knocker) they so
strongly and resolutely shove and drive in their helves, that the females
remain free from a fear epidemical amongst their sex, viz., that from the
bottom of the male's belly the instrument should dangle at his heel for want
of such feminine props. And I remember, for I have a member, and a memory
too, ay, and a fine memory, large enough to fill a butter-firkin; I
remember, I say, that one day of tubilustre (horn-fair) at the festivals of
goodman Vulcan in May, I heard Josquin Des Prez, Olkegan, Hobrecht,
Agricola, Brumel, Camelin, Vigoris, De la Fage, Bruyer, Prioris, Seguin, De
la Rue, Midy, Moulu, Mouton, Gascogne, Loyset, Compere, Penet, Fevin,
Rousee, Richard Fort, Rousseau, Consilion, Constantio Festi, Jacquet Bercan,
melodiously singing the following catch on a pleasant green:
Long John to bed went to his bride,
And laid a mallet by his side:
What means this mallet, John? saith she.
Why! 'tis to wedge thee home, quoth he.
Alas! cried she, the man's a fool:
What need you use a wooden tool?
When lusty John does to me come,
He never shoves but with his bum.
Nine Olympiads, and an intercalary year after (I have a rare member, I
would say memory; but I often make blunders in the symbolization and
colligance of those two words), I heard Adrian Villart, Gombert, Janequin,
Arcadet, Claudin, Certon, Manchicourt, Auxerre, Villiers, Sandrin, Sohier,
Hesdin, Morales, Passereau, Maille, Maillart, Jacotin, Heurteur, Verdelot,
Carpentras, L'Heritier, Cadeac, Doublet, Vermont, Bouteiller, Lupi,
Pagnier, Millet, Du Moulin, Alaire, Maraut, Morpain, Gendre, and other
merry lovers of music, in a private garden, under some fine shady trees,
round about a bulwark of flagons, gammons, pasties, with several coated
quails, and laced mutton, waggishly singing:
Since tools without their hafts are useless lumber,
And hatchets without helves are of that number;
That one may go in t'other, and may match it,
I'll be the helve, and thou shalt be the hatchet.
Now would I know what kind of hatchet this bawling Tom wants? This threw
all the venerable gods and goddesses into a fit of laughter, like any
microcosm of flies; and even set limping Vulcan a-hopping and jumping
smoothly three or four times for the sake of his dear. Come, come, said
Jupiter to Mercury, run down immediately, and cast at the poor fellow's
feet three hatchets: his own, another of gold, and a third of massy
silver, all of one size; then having left it to his will to take his
choice, if he take his own, and be satisfied with it, give him the other
two; if he take another, chop his head off with his own; and henceforth
serve me all those losers of hatchets after that manner. Having said this,
Jupiter, with an awkward turn of his head, like a jackanapes swallowing of
pills, made so dreadful a phiz that all the vast Olympus quaked again.
Heaven's foot messenger, thanks to his low-crowned narrow-brimmed hat, his
plume of feathers, heel-pieces, and running stick with pigeon wings, flings
himself out at heaven's wicket, through the idle deserts of the air, and in
a trice nimbly alights upon the earth, and throws at friend Tom's feet the
three hatchets, saying unto him: Thou hast bawled long enough to be a-dry;
thy prayers and request are granted by Jupiter: see which of these three
is thy hatchet, and take it away with thee. Wellhung lifts up the golden
hatchet, peeps upon it, and finds it very heavy; then staring on Mercury,
cries, Codszouks, this is none of mine; I won't ha't: the same he did with
the silver one, and said, 'Tis not this neither, you may e'en take them
again. At last he takes up his own hatchet, examines the end of the helve,
and finds his mark there; then, ravished with joy, like a fox that meets
some straggling poultry, and sneering from the tip of the nose, he cried,
By the mass, this is my hatchet, master god; if you will leave it me, I
will sacrifice to you a very good and huge pot of milk brimful, covered
with fine strawberries, next ides of May.
Honest fellow, said Mercury, I leave it thee; take it; and because thou
hast wished and chosen moderately in point of hatchet, by Jupiter's command
I give thee these two others; thou hast now wherewith to make thyself rich:
be honest. Honest Tom gave Mercury a whole cartload of thanks, and revered
the most great Jupiter. His old hatchet he fastens close to his leathern
girdle, and girds it above his breech like Martin of Cambray; the two
others, being more heavy, he lays on his shoulder. Thus he plods on,
trudging over the fields, keeping a good countenance amongst his neighbours
and fellow-parishioners, with one merry saying or other after Patelin's
way. The next day, having put on a clean white jacket, he takes on his
back the two precious hatchets and comes to Chinon, the famous city, noble
city, ancient city, yea, the first city in the world, according to the
judgment and assertion of the most learned Massorets. At Chinon he turned
his silver hatchet into fine testons, crown-pieces, and other white cash;
his golden hatchet into fine angels, curious ducats, substantial ridders,
spankers, and rose-nobles; then with them purchases a good number of farms,
barns, houses, out-houses, thatched houses, stables, meadows, orchards,
fields, vineyards, woods, arable lands, pastures, ponds, mills, gardens,
nurseries, oxen, cows, sheep, goats, swine, hogs, asses, horses, hens,
cocks, capons, chickens, geese, ganders, ducks, drakes, and a world of all
other necessaries, and in a short time became the richest man in the
country, nay, even richer than that limping scrape-good Maulevrier. His
brother bumpkins, and the other yeomen and country-puts thereabouts,
perceiving his good fortune, were not a little amazed, insomuch that their
former pity of poor Tom was soon changed into an envy of his so great and
unexpected rise; and as they could not for their souls devise how this came
about, they made it their business to pry up and down, and lay their heads
together, to inquire, seek, and inform themselves by what means, in what
place, on what day, what hour, how, why, and wherefore, he had come by this
great treasure.
At last, hearing it was by losing his hatchet, Ha, ha! said they, was there
no more to do but to lose a hatchet to make us rich? Mum for that; 'tis as
easy as pissing a bed, and will cost but little. Are then at this time the
revolutions of the heavens, the constellations of the firmament, and
aspects of the planets such, that whosoever shall lose a hatchet shall
immediately grow rich? Ha, ha, ha! by Jove, you shall e'en be lost, an't
please you, my dear hatchet. With this they all fairly lost their hatchets
out of hand. The devil of one that had a hatchet left; he was not his
mother's son that did not lose his hatchet. No more was wood felled or
cleaved in that country through want of hatchets. Nay, the Aesopian
apologue even saith that certain petty country gents of the lower class,
who had sold Wellhung their little mill and little field to have
wherewithal to make a figure at the next muster, having been told that his
treasure was come to him by that only means, sold the only badge of their
gentility, their swords, to purchase hatchets to go lose them, as the silly
clodpates did, in hopes to gain store of chink by that loss.
You would have truly sworn they had been a parcel of your petty spiritual
usurers, Rome-bound, selling their all, and borrowing of others, to buy
store of mandates, a pennyworth of a new-made pope.
Now they cried out and brayed, and prayed and bawled, and lamented, and
invoked Jupiter: My hatchet! my hatchet! Jupiter, my hatchet! on this
side, My hatchet! on that side, My hatchet! Ho, ho, ho, ho, Jupiter, my
hatchet! The air round about rung again with the cries and howlings of
these rascally losers of hatchets.
Mercury was nimble in bringing them hatchets; to each offering that which
he had lost, as also another of gold, and a third of silver.
Every he still was for that of gold, giving thanks in abundance to the
great giver, Jupiter; but in the very nick of time that they bowed and
stooped to take it from the ground, whip, in a trice, Mercury lopped off
their heads, as Jupiter had commanded; and of heads thus cut off the number
was just equal to that of the lost hatchets.
You see how it is now; you see how it goes with those who in the simplicity
of their hearts wish and desire with moderation. Take warning by this, all
you greedy, fresh-water sharks, who scorn to wish for anything under ten
thousand pounds; and do not for the future run on impudently, as I have
sometimes heard you wishing, Would to God I had now one hundred
seventy-eight millions of gold! Oh! how I should tickle it off. The deuce
on you, what more might a king, an emperor, or a pope wish for? For that
reason, indeed, you see that after you have made such hopeful wishes, all
the good that comes to you of it is the itch or the scab, and not a cross in
your breeches to scare the devil that tempts you to make these wishes: no
more than those two mumpers, wishers after the custom of Paris; one of whom
only wished to have in good old gold as much as hath been spent, bought, and
sold in Paris, since its first foundations were laid, to this hour; all of
it valued at the price, sale, and rate of the dearest year in all that space
of time. Do you think the fellow was bashful? Had he eaten sour plums
unpeeled? Were his teeth on edge, I pray you? The other wished Our Lady's
Church brimful of steel needles, from the floor to the top of the roof, and
to have as many ducats as might be crammed into as many bags as might be
sewed with each and everyone of those needles, till they were all either
broke at the point or eye. This is to wish with a vengeance! What think
you of it? What did they get by't, in your opinion? Why at night both my
gentlemen had kibed heels, a tetter in the chin, a churchyard cough in the
lungs, a catarrh in the throat, a swingeing boil at the rump, and the devil
of one musty crust of a brown george the poor dogs had to scour their
grinders with. Wish therefore for mediocrity, and it shall be given unto
you, and over and above yet; that is to say, provided you bestir yourself
manfully, and do your best in the meantime.
Ay, but say you, God might as soon have given me seventy-eight thousand as
the thirteenth part of one half; for he is omnipotent, and a million of
gold is no more to him than one farthing. Oh, ho! pray tell me who taught
you to talk at this rate of the power and predestination of God, poor silly
people? Peace, tush, st, st, st! fall down before his sacred face and own
the nothingness of your nothing.
Upon this, O ye that labour under the affliction of the gout, I ground my
hopes; firmly believing, that if so it pleases the divine goodness, you
shall obtain health; since you wish and ask for nothing else, at least for
the present. Well, stay yet a little longer with half an ounce of
patience.
The Genoese do not use, like you, to be satisfied with wishing health
alone, when after they have all the livelong morning been in a brown study,
talked, pondered, ruminated, and resolved in the counting-houses of whom
and how they may squeeze the ready, and who by their craft must be hooked
in, wheedled, bubbled, sharped, overreached, and choused; they go to the
exchange, and greet one another with a Sanita e guadagno, Messer! health
and gain to you, sir! Health alone will not go down with the greedy
curmudgeons; they over and above must wish for gain, with a pox to 'em; ay,
and for the fine crowns, or scudi di Guadaigne; whence, heaven be praised!
it happens many a time that the silly wishers and woulders are baulked, and
get neither.
Now, my lads, as you hope for good health, cough once aloud with lungs of
leather; take me off three swingeing bumpers; prick up your ears; and you
shall hear me tell wonders of the noble and good Pantagruel.
How Pantagruel went to sea to visit the oracle of Bacbuc, alias the Holy
Bottle.
In the month of June, on Vesta's holiday, the very numerical day on which
Brutus, conquering Spain, taught its strutting dons to truckle under him,
and that niggardly miser Crassus was routed and knocked on the head by the
Parthians, Pantagruel took his leave of the good Gargantua, his royal
father. The old gentleman, according to the laudable custom of the
primitive Christians, devoutly prayed for the happy voyage of his son and
his whole company, and then they took shipping at the port of Thalassa.
Pantagruel had with him Panurge, Friar John des Entomeures, alias of the
Funnels, Epistemon, Gymnast, Eusthenes, Rhizotome, Carpalin, cum multis
aliis, his ancient servants and domestics; also Xenomanes, the great
traveller, who had crossed so many dangerous roads, dikes, ponds, seas, and
so forth, and was come some time before, having been sent for by Panurge.
For certain good causes and considerations him thereunto moving, he had
left with Gargantua, and marked out, in his great and universal
hydrographical chart, the course which they were to steer to visit the
Oracle of the Holy Bottle Bacbuc. The number of ships were such as I
described in the third book, convoyed by a like number of triremes, men of
war, galleons, and feluccas, well-rigged, caulked, and stored with a good
quantity of Pantagruelion.
All the officers, droggermen, pilots, captains, mates, boatswains,
midshipmen, quartermasters, and sailors, met in the Thalamege, Pantagruel's
principal flag-ship, which had in her stern for her ensign a huge large
bottle, half silver well polished, the other half gold enamelled with
carnation; whereby it was easy to guess that white and red were the colours
of the noble travellers, and that they went for the word of the Bottle.
On the stern of the second was a lantern like those of the ancients,
industriously made with diaphanous stone, implying that they were to pass
by Lanternland. The third ship had for her device a fine deep china ewer.
The fourth, a double-handed jar of gold, much like an ancient urn. The
fifth, a famous can made of sperm of emerald. The sixth, a monk's mumping
bottle made of the four metals together. The seventh, an ebony funnel, all
embossed and wrought with gold after the Tauchic manner. The eighth, an
ivy goblet, very precious, inlaid with gold. The ninth, a cup of fine
Obriz gold. The tenth, a tumbler of aromatic agoloch (you call it lignum
aloes) edged with Cyprian gold, after the Azemine make. The eleventh, a
golden vine-tub of mosaic work. The twelfth, a runlet of unpolished gold,
covered with a small vine of large Indian pearl of Topiarian work.
Insomuch that there was not a man, however in the dumps, musty,
sour-looked, or melancholic he were, not even excepting that blubbering
whiner Heraclitus, had he been there, but seeing this noble convoy of ships
and their devices, must have been seized with present gladness of heart,
and, smiling at the conceit, have said that the travellers were all honest
topers, true pitcher-men, and have judged by a most sure prognostication
that their voyage, both outward and homeward-bound, would be performed in
mirth and perfect health.
In the Thalamege, where was the general meeting, Pantagruel made a short
but sweet exhortation, wholly backed with authorities from Scripture upon
navigation; which being ended, with an audible voice prayers were said in
the presence and hearing of all the burghers of Thalassa, who had flocked
to the mole to see them take shipping. After the prayers was melodiously
sung a psalm of the holy King David, which begins, When Israel went out of
Egypt; and that being ended, tables were placed upon deck, and a feast
speedily served up. The Thalassians, who had also borne a chorus in the
psalm, caused store of belly-timber to be brought out of their houses. All
drank to them; they drank to all; which was the cause that none of the
whole company gave up what they had eaten, nor were sea-sick, with a pain
at the head and stomach; which inconveniency they could not so easily have
prevented by drinking, for some time before, salt water, either alone or
mixed with wine; using quinces, citron peel, juice of pomegranates, sourish
sweetmeats, fasting a long time, covering their stomachs with paper, or
following such other idle remedies as foolish physicians prescribe to those
that go to sea.
Having often renewed their tipplings, each mother's son retired on board
his own ship, and set sail all so fast with a merry gale at south-east; to
which point of the compass the chief pilot, James Brayer by name, had
shaped his course, and fixed all things accordingly. For seeing that the
Oracle of the Holy Bottle lay near Cathay, in the Upper India, his advice,
and that of Xenomanes also, was not to steer the course which the
Portuguese use, while sailing through the torrid zone, and Cape Bona
Speranza, at the south point of Africa, beyond the equinoctial line, and
losing sight of the northern pole, their guide, they make a prodigious long
voyage; but rather to keep as near the parallel of the said India as
possible, and to tack to the westward of the said pole, so that winding
under the north, they might find themselves in the latitude of the port of
Olone, without coming nearer it for fear of being shut up in the frozen
sea; whereas, following this canonical turn, by the said parallel, they
must have that on the right to the eastward, which at their departure was
on their left.
This proved a much shorter cut; for without shipwreck, danger, or loss of
men, with uninterrupted good weather, except one day near the island of the
Macreons, they performed in less than four months the voyage of Upper
India, which the Portuguese, with a thousand inconveniences and innumerable
dangers, can hardly complete in three years. And it is my opinion, with
submission to better judgments, that this course was perhaps steered by
those Indians who sailed to Germany, and were honourably received by the
King of the Swedes, while Quintus Metellus Celer was proconsul of the
Gauls; as Cornelius Nepos, Pomponius Mela, and Pliny after them tell us.
How Pantagruel bought many rarities in the island of Medamothy.
That day and the two following they neither discovered land nor anything
new; for they had formerly sailed that way: but on the fourth they made an
island called Medamothy, of a fine and delightful prospect, by reason of
the vast number of lighthouses and high marble towers in its circuit, which
is not less than that of Canada (sic). Pantagruel, inquiring who governed
there, heard that it was King Philophanes, absent at that time upon account
of the marriage of his brother Philotheamon with the infanta of the kingdom
of Engys.
Hearing this, he went ashore in the harbour, and while every ship's crew
watered, passed his time in viewing divers pictures, pieces of tapestry,
animals, fishes, birds, and other exotic and foreign merchandises, which
were along the walks of the mole and in the markets of the port. For it
was the third day of the great and famous fair of the place, to which the
chief merchants of Africa and Asia resorted. Out of these Friar John
bought him two rare pictures; in one of which the face of a man that brings
in an appeal was drawn to the life; and in the other a servant that wants a
master, with every needful particular, action, countenance, look, gait,
feature, and deportment, being an original by Master Charles Charmois,
principal painter to King Megistus; and he paid for them in the court
fashion, with conge and grimace. Panurge bought a large picture, copied
and done from the needle-work formerly wrought by Philomela, showing to her
sister Progne how her brother-in-law Tereus had by force handselled her
copyhold, and then cut out her tongue that she might not (as women will)
tell tales. I vow and swear by the handle of my paper lantern that it was
a gallant, a mirific, nay, a most admirable piece. Nor do you think, I
pray you, that in it was the picture of a man playing the beast with two
backs with a female; this had been too silly and gross: no, no; it was
another-guise thing, and much plainer. You may, if you please, see it at
Theleme, on the left hand as you go into the high gallery. Epistemon
bought another, wherein were painted to the life the ideas of Plato and the
atoms of Epicurus. Rhizotome purchased another, wherein Echo was drawn to
the life. Pantagruel caused to be bought, by Gymnast, the life and deeds
of Achilles, in seventy-eight pieces of tapestry, four fathom long, and
three fathom broad, all of Phrygian silk, embossed with gold and silver;
the work beginning at the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis, continuing to the
birth of Achilles; his youth, described by Statius Papinius; his warlike
achievements, celebrated by Homer; his death and obsequies, written by Ovid
and Quintus Calaber; and ending at the appearance of his ghost, and
Polyxena's sacrifice, rehearsed by Euripides.
He also caused to be bought three fine young unicorns; one of them a male
of a chestnut colour, and two grey dappled females; also a tarand, whom he
bought of a Scythian of the Gelones' country.
A tarand is an animal as big as a bullock, having a head like a stag, or a
little bigger, two stately horns with large branches, cloven feet, hair
long like that of a furred Muscovite, I mean a bear, and a skin almost as
hard as steel armour. The Scythian said that there are but few tarands to
be found in Scythia, because it varieth its colour according to the
diversity of the places where it grazes and abides, and represents the
colour of the grass, plants, trees, shrubs, flowers, meadows, rocks, and
generally of all things near which it comes. It hath this common with the
sea-pulp, or polypus, with the thoes, with the wolves of India, and with
the chameleon, which is a kind of a lizard so wonderful that Democritus
hath written a whole book of its figure and anatomy, as also of its virtue
and propriety in magic. This I can affirm, that I have seen it change its
colour, not only at the approach of things that have a colour, but by its
own voluntary impulse, according to its fear or other affections; as, for
example, upon a green carpet I have certainly seen it become green; but
having remained there some time, it turned yellow, blue, tanned, and purple
in course, in the same manner as you see a turkey-cock's comb change colour
according to its passions. But what we find most surprising in this tarand
is, that not only its face and skin, but also its hair could take whatever
colour was about it. Near Panurge, with his kersey coat, its hair used to
turn grey; near Pantagruel, with his scarlet mantle, its hair and skin grew
red; near the pilot, dressed after the fashion of the Isiacs of Anubis in
Egypt, its hair seemed all white, which two last colours the chameleons
cannot borrow.
When the creature was free from any fear or affection, the colour of its
hair was just such as you see that of the asses of Meung.
How Pantagruel received a letter from his father Gargantua, and of the
strange way to have speedy news from far distant places.
While Pantagruel was taken up with the purchase of those foreign animals,
the noise of ten guns and culverins, together with a loud and joyful cheer
of all the fleet, was heard from the mole. Pantagruel looked towards the
haven, and perceived that this was occasioned by the arrival of one of his
father Gargantua's celoces, or advice-boats, named the Chelidonia; because
on the stern of it was carved in Corinthian brass a sea-swallow, which is a
fish as large as a dare-fish of Loire, all flesh, without scale, with
cartilaginous wings (like a bat's) very long and broad, by the means of
which I have seen them fly about three fathom above water, about a
bow-shot. At Marseilles 'tis called lendole. And indeed that ship was as
light as a swallow, so that it rather seemed to fly on the sea than to
sail. Malicorne, Gargantua's esquire carver, was come in her, being sent
expressly by his master to have an account of his son's health and
circumstances, and to bring him credentials. When Malicorne had saluted
Pantagruel, before the prince opened the letters, the first thing he said
to him was, Have you here the Gozal, the heavenly messenger? Yes, sir,
said he; here it is swaddled up in this basket. It was a grey pigeon,
taken out of Gargantua's dove-house, whose young ones were just hatched
when the advice-boat was going off.
If any ill fortune had befallen Pantagruel, he would have fastened some
black ribbon to his feet; but because all things had succeeded happily
hitherto, having caused it to be undressed, he tied to its feet a white
ribbon, and without any further delay let it loose. The pigeon presently
flew away, cutting the air with an incredible speed, as you know that there
is no flight like a pigeon's, especially when it hath eggs or young ones,
through the extreme care which nature hath fixed in it to relieve and be
with its young; insomuch that in less than two hours it compassed in the
air the long tract which the advice-boat, with all her diligence, with oars
and sails, and a fair wind, could not go through in less than three days
and three nights; and was seen as it went into the dove-house in its nest.
Whereupon Gargantua, hearing that it had the white ribbon on, was joyful
and secure of his son's welfare. This was the custom of the noble
Gargantua and Pantagruel when they would have speedy news of something of
great concern; as the event of some battle, either by sea or land; the
surrendering or holding out of some strong place; the determination of some
difference of moment; the safe or unhappy delivery of some queen or great
lady; the death or recovery of their sick friends or allies, and so forth.
They used to take the gozal, and had it carried from one to another by the
post, to the places whence they desired to have news. The gozal, bearing
either a black or white ribbon, according to the occurrences and accidents,
used to remove their doubts at its return, making in the space of one hour
more way through the air than thirty postboys could have done in one
natural day. May not this be said to redeem and gain time with a
vengeance, think you? For the like service, therefore, you may believe as
a most true thing that in the dove-houses of their farms there were to be
found all the year long store of pigeons hatching eggs or rearing their
young. Which may be easily done in aviaries and voleries by the help of
saltpetre and the sacred herb vervain.
The gozal being let fly, Pantagruel perused his father Gargantua's letter,
the contents of which were as followeth:
My dearest Son,--The affection that naturally a father bears a beloved son
is so much increased in me by reflecting on the particular gifts which by
the divine goodness have been heaped on thee, that since thy departure it
hath often banished all other thoughts out of my mind, leaving my heart
wholly possessed with fear lest some misfortune has attended thy voyage;
for thou knowest that fear was ever the attendant of true and sincere love.
Now because, as Hesiod saith, A good beginning of anything is the half of
it; or, Well begun's half done, according to the old saying; to free my
mind from this anxiety I have expressly despatched Malicorne, that he may
give me a true account of thy health at the beginning of thy voyage. For
if it be good, and such as I wish it, I shall easily foresee the rest.
I have met with some diverting books, which the bearer will deliver thee;
thou mayest read them when thou wantest to unbend and ease thy mind from
thy better studies. He will also give thee at large the news at court.
The peace of the Lord be with thee. Remember me to Panurge, Friar John,
Epistemon, Xenomanes, Gymnast, and thy other principal domestics. Dated at
our paternal seat, this 13th day of June.
Thy father and friend, Gargantua.
How Pantagruel writ to his father Gargantua, and sent him several
curiosities.
Pantagruel, having perused the letter, had a long conference with the
esquire Malicorne; insomuch that Panurge, at last interrupting them, asked
him, Pray, sir, when do you design to drink? When shall we drink? When
shall the worshipful esquire drink? What a devil! have you not talked long
enough to drink? It is a good motion, answered Pantagruel: go, get us
something ready at the next inn; I think 'tis the Centaur. In the meantime
he writ to Gargantua as followeth, to be sent by the aforesaid esquire:
Most gracious Father,--As our senses and animal faculties are more
discomposed at the news of events unexpected, though desired (even to an
immediate dissolution of the soul from the body), than if those accidents
had been foreseen, so the coming of Malicorne hath much surprised and
disordered me. For I had no hopes to see any of your servants, or to hear
from you, before I had finished our voyage; and contented myself with the
dear remembrance of your august majesty, deeply impressed in the hindmost
ventricle of my brain, often representing you to my mind.
But since you have made me happy beyond expectation by the perusal of your
gracious letter, and the faith I have in your esquire hath revived my
spirits by the news of your welfare, I am as it were compelled to do what
formerly I did freely, that is, first to praise the blessed Redeemer, who
by his divine goodness preserves you in this long enjoyment of perfect
health; then to return you eternal thanks for the fervent affection which
you have for me your most humble son and unprofitable servant.
Formerly a Roman, named Furnius, said to Augustus, who had received his
father into favour, and pardoned him after he had sided with Antony, that
by that action the emperor had reduced him to this extremity, that for want
of power to be grateful, both while he lived and after it, he should be
obliged to be taxed with ingratitude. So I may say, that the excess of
your fatherly affection drives me into such a strait, that I shall be
forced to live and die ungrateful; unless that crime be redressed by the
sentence of the Stoics, who say that there are three parts in a benefit,
the one of the giver, the other of the receiver, the third of the
remunerator; and that the receiver rewards the giver when he freely
receives the benefit and always remembers it; as, on the contrary, that man
is most ungrateful who despises and forgets a benefit. Therefore, being
overwhelmed with infinite favours, all proceeding from your extreme
goodness, and on the other side wholly incapable of making the smallest
return, I hope at least to free myself from the imputation of ingratitude,
since they can never be blotted out of my mind; and my tongue shall never
cease to own that to thank you as I ought transcends my capacity.
As for us, I have this assurance in the Lord's mercy and help, that the end
of our voyage will be answerable to its beginning, and so it will be
entirely performed in health and mirth. I will not fail to set down in a
journal a full account of our navigation, that at our return you may have
an exact relation of the whole.
I have found here a Scythian tarand, an animal strange and wonderful for
the variations of colour on its skin and hair, according to the distinction
of neighbouring things; it is as tractable and easily kept as a lamb. Be
pleased to accept of it.
I also send you three young unicorns, which are the tamest of creatures.
I have conferred with the esquire, and taught him how they must be fed.
These cannot graze on the ground by reason of the long horn on their
forehead, but are forced to browse on fruit trees, or on proper racks, or
to be fed by hand, with herbs, sheaves, apples, pears, barley, rye, and
other fruits and roots, being placed before them.
I am amazed that ancient writers should report them to be so wild, furious,
and dangerous, and never seen alive; far from it, you will find that they
are the mildest things in the world, provided they are not maliciously
offended. Likewise I send you the life and deeds of Achilles in curious
tapestry; assuring you whatever rarities of animals, plants, birds, or
precious stones, and others, I shall be able to find and purchase in our
travels, shall be brought to you, God willing, whom I beseech, by his
blessed grace, to preserve you.
From Medamothy, this 15th of June. Panurge, Friar John, Epistemon,
Zenomanes, Gymnast, Eusthenes, Rhizotome, and Carpalin, having most humbly
kissed your hand, return your salute a thousand times.
Your most dutiful son and servant, Pantagruel.
While Pantagruel was writing this letter, Malicorne was made welcome by all
with a thousand goodly good-morrows and how-d'ye's; they clung about him so
that I cannot tell you how much they made of him, how many humble services,
how many from my love and to my love were sent with him. Pantagruel,
having writ his letters, sat down at table with him, and afterwards
presented him with a large chain of gold, weighing eight hundred crowns,
between whose septenary links some large diamonds, rubies, emeralds,
turquoise stones, and unions were alternately set in. To each of his
bark's crew he ordered to be given five hundred crowns. To Gargantua, his
father, he sent the tarand covered with a cloth of satin, brocaded with
gold, and the tapestry containing the life and deeds of Achilles, with the
three unicorns in friezed cloth of gold trappings; and so they left
Medamothy--Malicorne to return to Gargantua, Pantagruel to proceed in his
voyage, during which Epistemon read to him the books which the esquire had
brought, and because he found them jovial and pleasant, I shall give you an
account of them, if you earnestly desire it.
How Pantagruel met a ship with passengers returning from Lanternland.
On the fifth day we began already to wind by little and little about the
pole; going still farther from the equinoctial line, we discovered a
merchant-man to the windward of us. The joy for this was not small on both
sides; we in hopes to hear news from sea, and those in the merchant-man
from land. So we bore upon 'em, and coming up with them we hailed them;
and finding them to be Frenchmen of Xaintonge, backed our sails and lay by
to talk to them. Pantagruel heard that they came from Lanternland; which
added to his joy, and that of the whole fleet. We inquired about the state
of that country, and the way of living of the Lanterns; and were told that
about the latter end of the following July was the time prefixed for the
meeting of the general chapter of the Lanterns; and that if we arrived
there at that time, as we might easily, we should see a handsome,
honourable, and jolly company of Lanterns; and that great preparations were
making, as if they intended to lanternize there to the purpose. We were
told also that if we touched at the great kingdom of Gebarim, we should be
honourably received and treated by the sovereign of that country, King
Ohabe, who, as well as all his subjects, speaks Touraine French.
While we were listening to these news, Panurge fell out with one Dingdong,
a drover or sheep-merchant of Taillebourg. The occasion of the fray was
thus:
This same Dingdong, seeing Panurge without a codpiece, with his spectacles
fastened to his cap, said to one of his comrades, Prithee, look, is there
not a fine medal of a cuckold? Panurge, by reason of his spectacles, as
you may well think, heard more plainly by half with his ears than usually;
which caused him (hearing this) to say to the saucy dealer in mutton, in a
kind of a pet:
How the devil should I be one of the hornified fraternity, since I am not
yet a brother of the marriage-noose, as thou art; as I guess by thy
ill-favoured phiz?
Yea, verily, quoth the grazier, I am married, and would not be otherwise
for all the pairs of spectacles in Europe; nay, not for all the magnifying
gimcracks in Africa; for I have got me the cleverest, prettiest,
handsomest, properest, neatest, tightest, honestest, and soberest piece of
woman's flesh for my wife that is in all the whole country of Xaintonge;
I'll say that for her, and a fart for all the rest. I bring her home a
fine eleven-inch-long branch of red coral for her Christmas-box. What hast
thou to do with it? what's that to thee? who art thou? whence comest thou,
O dark lantern of Antichrist? Answer, if thou art of God. I ask thee, by
the way of question, said Panurge to him very seriously, if with the
consent and countenance of all the elements, I had gingumbobbed, codpieced,
and thumpthumpriggledtickledtwiddled thy so clever, so pretty, so handsome,
so proper, so neat, so tight, so honest, and so sober female importance,
insomuch that the stiff deity that has no forecast, Priapus (who dwells
here at liberty, all subjection of fastened codpieces, or bolts, bars, and
locks, abdicated), remained sticking in her natural Christmas-box in such a
lamentable manner that it were never to come out, but eternally should
stick there unless thou didst pull it out with thy teeth; what wouldst thou
do? Wouldst thou everlastingly leave it there, or wouldst thou pluck it
out with thy grinders? Answer me, O thou ram of Mahomet, since thou art
one of the devil's gang. I would, replied the sheepmonger, take thee such
a woundy cut on this spectacle-bearing lug of thine with my trusty bilbo as
would smite thee dead as a herring. Thus, having taken pepper in the nose,
he was lugging out his sword, but, alas!--cursed cows have short horns,--it
stuck in the scabbard; as you know that at sea cold iron will easily take
rust by reason of the excessive and nitrous moisture. Panurge, so smitten
with terror that his heart sunk down to his midriff, scoured off to
Pantagruel for help; but Friar John laid hand on his flashing scimitar that
was new ground, and would certainly have despatched Dingdong to rights, had
not the skipper and some of his passengers beseeched Pantagruel not to
suffer such an outrage to be committed on board his ship. So the matter
was made up, and Panurge and his antagonist shaked fists, and drank in
course to one another in token of a perfect reconciliation.
How, the fray being over, Panurge cheapened one of Dingdong's sheep.
This quarrel being hushed, Panurge tipped the wink upon Epistemon and Friar
John, and taking them aside, Stand at some distance out of the way, said
he, and take your share of the following scene of mirth. You shall have
rare sport anon, if my cake be not dough, and my plot do but take. Then
addressing himself to the drover, he took off to him a bumper of good
lantern wine. The other pledged him briskly and courteously. This done,
Panurge earnestly entreated him to sell him one of his sheep.
But the other answered him, Is it come to that, friend and neighbour?
Would you put tricks upon travellers? Alas, how finely you love to play
upon poor folk! Nay, you seem a rare chapman, that's the truth on't. Oh,
what a mighty sheep-merchant you are! In good faith, you look liker one of
the diving trade than a buyer of sheep. Adzookers, what a blessing it
would be to have one's purse well lined with chink near your worship at a
tripe-house when it begins to thaw! Humph, humph, did not we know you
well, you might serve one a slippery trick! Pray do but see, good people,
what a mighty conjuror the fellow would be reckoned. Patience, said
Panurge; but waiving that, be so kind as to sell me one of your sheep.
Come, how much? What do you mean, master of mine? answered the other.
They are long-wool sheep; from these did Jason take his golden fleece. The
gold of the house of Burgundy was drawn from them. Zwoons, man, they are
oriental sheep, topping sheep, fatted sheep, sheep of quality. Be it so,
said Panurge; but sell me one of them, I beseech you; and that for a cause,
paying you ready money upon the nail, in good and lawful occidental current
cash. Wilt say how much? Friend, neighbour, answered the seller of
mutton, hark ye me a little, on the ear.
Panurge. On which side you please; I hear you.
Dingdong. You are going to Lanternland, they say.
Panurge. Yea, verily.
Dingdong. To see fashions?
Panurge. Even so.
Dingdong. And be merry?
Panurge. And be merry.
Dingdong. Your name is, as I take it, Robin Mutton?
Panurge. As you please for that, sweet sir.
Dingdong. Nay, without offence.
Panurge. So I would have it.
Dingdong. You are, as I take it, the king's jester; aren't you?
Panurge. Ay, ay, anything.
Dingdong. Give me your hand--humph, humph, you go to see fashions, you
are the king's jester, your name is Robin Mutton! Do you see this same
ram? His name, too, is Robin. Here, Robin, Robin, Robin! Baea, baea,
baea. Hath he not a rare voice?
Panurge. Ay, marry has he, a very fine and harmonious voice.
Dingdong. Well, this bargain shall be made between you and me, friend
and neighbour; we will get a pair of scales, then you Robin Mutton shall be
put into one of them, and Tup Robin into the other. Now I will hold you a
peck of Busch oysters that in weight, value, and price he shall outdo you,
and you shall be found light in the very numerical manner as when you shall
be hanged and suspended.
Patience, said Panurge; but you would do much for me and your whole
posterity if you would chaffer with me for him, or some other of his
inferiors. I beg it of you; good your worship, be so kind. Hark ye,
friend of mine, answered the other; with the fleece of these your fine
Rouen cloth is to be made; your Leominster superfine wool is mine arse to
it; mere flock in comparison. Of their skins the best cordovan will be
made, which shall be sold for Turkey and Montelimart, or for Spanish
leather at least. Of the guts shall be made fiddle and harp strings that
will sell as dear as if they came from Munican or Aquileia. What do you
think on't, hah? If you please, sell me one of them, said Panurge, and I
will be yours for ever. Look, here's ready cash. What's the price? This
he said exhibiting his purse stuffed with new Henricuses.
Which if you read you'll find how Panurge bargained with Dingdong.
Neighbour, my friend, answered Dingdong, they are meat for none but kings
and princes; their flesh is so delicate, so savoury, and so dainty that one
would swear it melted in the mouth. I bring them out of a country where
the very hogs, God be with us, live on nothing but myrobolans. The sows in
the styes when they lie-in (saving the honour of this good company) are fed
only with orange-flowers. But, said Panurge, drive a bargain with me for
one of them, and I will pay you for't like a king, upon the honest word of
a true Trojan; come, come, what do you ask? Not so fast, Robin, answered
the trader; these sheep are lineally descended from the very family of the
ram that wafted Phryxus and Helle over the sea since called the Hellespont.
A pox on't, said Panurge, you are clericus vel addiscens! Ita is a
cabbage, and vere a leek, answered the merchant. But, rr, rrr, rrrr,
rrrrr, hoh Robin, rr, rrrrrrr, you don't understand that gibberish, do you?
Now I think on't, over all the fields where they piss, corn grows as fast
as if the Lord had pissed there; they need neither be tilled nor dunged.
Besides, man, your chemists extract the best saltpetre in the world out of
their urine. Nay, with their very dung (with reverence be it spoken) the
doctors in our country make pills that cure seventy-eight kinds of
diseases, the least of which is the evil of St. Eutropius of Xaintes, from
which, good Lord, deliver us! Now what do you think on't, neighbour, my
friend? The truth is, they cost me money, that they do. Cost what they
will, cried Panurge, trade with me for one of them, paying you well. Our
friend, quoth the quacklike sheepman, do but mind the wonders of nature
that are found in those animals, even in a member which one would think
were of no use. Take me but these horns, and bray them a little with an
iron pestle, or with an andiron, which you please, it is all one to me;
then bury them wherever you will, provided it be where the sun may shine,
and water them frequently; in a few months I'll engage you will have the
best asparagus in the world, not even excepting those of Ravenna. Now,
come and tell me whether the horns of your other knights of the bull's
feather have such a virtue and wonderful propriety?
Patience, said Panurge. I don't know whether you be a scholar or no,
pursued Dingdong; I have seen a world of scholars, I say great scholars,
that were cuckolds, I'll assure you. But hark you me, if you were a
scholar, you should know that in the most inferior members of those
animals, which are the feet, there is a bone, which is the heel, the
astragalus, if you will have it so, wherewith, and with that of no other
creature breathing, except the Indian ass and the dorcades of Libya, they
used in old times to play at the royal game of dice, whereat Augustus the
emperor won above fifty thousand crowns one evening. Now such cuckolds as
you will be hanged ere you get half so much at it. Patience, said Panurge;
but let us despatch. And when, my friend and neighbour, continued the
canting sheepseller, shall I have duly praised the inward members, the
shoulders, the legs, the knuckles, the neck, the breast, the liver, the
spleen, the tripes, the kidneys, the bladder, wherewith they make
footballs; the ribs, which serve in Pigmyland to make little crossbows to
pelt the cranes with cherry-stones; the head, which with a little brimstone
serves to make a miraculous decoction to loosen and ease the belly of
costive dogs? A turd on't, said the skipper to his preaching passenger,
what a fiddle-faddle have we here? There is too long a lecture by half:
sell him if thou wilt; if thou won't, don't let the man lose more time. I
hate a gibble-gabble and a rimble-ramble talk. I am for a man of brevity.
I will, for your sake, replied the holder-forth; but then he shall give me
three livres, French money, for each pick and choose. It is a woundy
price, cried Panurge; in our country I could have five, nay six, for the
money; see that you do not overreach me, master. You are not the first man
whom I have known to have fallen, even sometimes to the endangering, if not
breaking, of his own neck, for endeavouring to rise all at once. A murrain
seize thee for a blockheaded booby, cried the angry seller of sheep; by the
worthy vow of Our Lady of Charroux, the worst in this flock is four times
better than those which the Coraxians in Tuditania, a country of Spain,
used to sell for a gold talent each; and how much dost thou think, thou
Hibernian fool, that a talent of gold was worth? Sweet sir, you fall into
a passion, I see, returned Panurge; well, hold, here is your money.
Panurge, having paid his money, chose him out of all the flock a fine
topping ram; and as he was hauling it along, crying out and bleating, all
the rest, hearing and bleating in concert, stared to see whither their
brother-ram should be carried. In the meanwhile the drover was saying to
his shepherds: Ah! how well the knave could choose him out a ram; the
whoreson has skill in cattle. On my honest word, I reserved that very
piece of flesh for the Lord of Cancale, well knowing his disposition; for
the good man is naturally overjoyed when he holds a good-sized handsome
shoulder of mutton, instead of a left-handed racket, in one hand, with a
good sharp carver in the other. God wot, how he belabours himself then.
How Panurge caused Dingdong and his sheep to be drowned in the sea.
On a sudden, you would wonder how the thing was so soon done--for my part I
cannot tell you, for I had not leisure to mind it--our friend Panurge,
without any further tittle-tattle, throws you his ram overboard into the
middle of the sea, bleating and making a sad noise. Upon this all the
other sheep in the ship, crying and bleating in the same tone, made all the
haste they could to leap nimbly into the sea, one after another; and great
was the throng who should leap in first after their leader. It was
impossible to hinder them; for you know that it is the nature of sheep
always to follow the first wheresoever it goes; which makes Aristotle, lib.
9. De. Hist. Animal., mark them for the most silly and foolish animals in
the world. Dingdong, at his wits' end, and stark staring mad, as a man who
saw his sheep destroy and drown themselves before his face, strove to
hinder and keep them back with might and main; but all in vain: they all
one after t'other frisked and jumped into the sea, and were lost. At last
he laid hold on a huge sturdy one by the fleece, upon the deck of the ship,
hoping to keep it back, and so save that and the rest; but the ram was so
strong that it proved too hard for him, and carried its master into the
herring pond in spite of his teeth--where it is supposed he drank somewhat
more than his fill, so that he was drowned--in the same manner as one-eyed
Polyphemus' sheep carried out of the den Ulysses and his companions. The
like happened to the shepherds and all their gang, some laying hold on
their beloved tup, this by the horns, t'other by the legs, a third by the
rump, and others by the fleece; till in fine they were all of them forced
to sea, and drowned like so many rats. Panurge, on the gunnel of the ship,
with an oar in his hand, not to help them you may swear, but to keep them
from swimming to the ship and saving themselves from drowning, preached and
canted to them all the while like any little Friar (Oliver) Maillard, or
another Friar John Burgess; laying before them rhetorical commonplaces
concerning the miseries of this life and the blessings and felicity of the
next; assuring them that the dead were much happier than the living in this
vale of misery, and promised to erect a stately cenotaph and honorary tomb
to every one of them on the highest summit of Mount Cenis at his return
from Lanternland; wishing them, nevertheless, in case they were not yet
disposed to shake hands with this life, and did not like their salt liquor,
they might have the good luck to meet with some kind whale which might set
them ashore safe and sound on some blessed land of Gotham, after a famous
example.
The ship being cleared of Dingdong and his tups: Is there ever another
sheepish soul left lurking on board? cried Panurge. Where are those of
Toby Lamb and Robin Ram that sleep while the rest are a-feeding? Faith, I
can't tell myself. This was an old coaster's trick. What think'st of it,
Friar John, hah? Rarely performed, answered Friar John; only methinks that
as formerly in war, on the day of battle, a double pay was commonly
promised the soldiers for that day; for if they overcame, there was enough
to pay them; and if they lost, it would have been shameful for them to
demand it, as the cowardly foresters did after the battle of Cerizoles;
likewise, my friend, you ought not to have paid your man, and the money had
been saved. A fart for the money, said Panurge; have I not had above fifty
thousand pounds' worth of sport? Come now, let's be gone; the wind is
fair. Hark you me, my friend John; never did man do me a good turn, but I
returned, or at least acknowledged it; no, I scorn to be ungrateful; I
never was, nor ever will be. Never did man do me an ill one without rueing
the day that he did it, either in this world or the next. I am not yet so
much a fool neither. Thou damn'st thyself like any old devil, quoth Friar
John; it is written, Mihi vindictam, &c. Matter of breviary, mark ye me
(Motteux adds unnecessarily (by way of explanation), 'that's holy stuff.').
How Pantagruel arrived at the island of Ennasin, and of the strange ways of
being akin in that country.
We had still the wind at south-south-west, and had been a whole day without
making land. On the third day, at the flies' uprising (which, you know, is
some two or three hours after the sun's), we got sight of a triangular
island, very much like Sicily for its form and situation. It was called
the Island of Alliances.
The people there are much like your carrot-pated Poitevins, save only that
all of them, men, women, and children, have their noses shaped like an ace
of clubs. For that reason the ancient name of the country was Ennasin.
They were all akin, as the mayor of the place told us; at least they
boasted so.
You people of the other world esteem it a wonderful thing that, out of the
family of the Fabii at Rome, on a certain day, which was the 13th of
February, at a certain gate, which was the Porta Carmentalis, since named
Scelerata, formerly situated at the foot of the Capitol, between the
Tarpeian rock and the Tiber, marched out against the Veientes of Etruria
three hundred and six men bearing arms, all related to each other, with
five thousand other soldiers, every one of them their vassals, who were all
slain near the river Cremera, that comes out of the lake of Beccano. Now
from this same country of Ennasin, in case of need, above three hundred
thousand, all relations and of one family, might march out. Their degrees
of consanguinity and alliance are very strange; for being thus akin and
allied to one another, we found that none was either father or mother,
brother or sister, uncle or aunt, nephew or niece, son-in-law or
daughter-in-law, godfather or godmother, to the other; unless, truly, a tall
flat-nosed old fellow, who, as I perceived, called a little shitten-arsed
girl of three or four years old, father, and the child called him daughter.
Their distinction of degrees of kindred was thus: a man used to call a
woman, my lean bit; the woman called him, my porpoise. Those, said Friar
John, must needs stink damnably of fish when they have rubbed their bacon
one with the other. One, smiling on a young buxom baggage, said, Good
morrow, dear currycomb. She, to return him his civility, said, The like to
you, my steed. Ha! ha! ha! said Panurge, that is pretty well, in faith;
for indeed it stands her in good stead to currycomb this steed. Another
greeted his buttock with a Farewell, my case. She replied, Adieu, trial.
By St. Winifred's placket, cried Gymnast, this case has been often tried.
Another asked a she-friend of his, How is it, hatchet? She answered him,
At your service, dear helve. Odds belly, saith Carpalin, this helve and
this hatchet are well matched. As we went on, I saw one who, calling his
she-relation, styled her my crumb, and she called him, my crust.
Quoth one to a brisk, plump, juicy female, I am glad to see you, dear tap.
So am I to find you so merry, sweet spiggot, replied she. One called a
wench, his shovel; she called him, her peal: one named his, my slipper;
and she, my foot: another, my boot; she, my shasoon.
In the same degree of kindred, one called his, my butter; she called him,
my eggs; and they were akin just like a dish of buttered eggs. I heard one
call his, my tripe, and she him, my faggot. Now I could not, for the
heart's blood of me, pick out or discover what parentage, alliance,
affinity, or consanguinity was between them, with reference to our custom;
only they told us that she was faggot's tripe. (Tripe de fagot means the
smallest sticks in a faggot.) Another, complimenting his convenient, said,
Yours, my shell; she replied, I was yours before, sweet oyster. I reckon,
said Carpalin, she hath gutted his oyster. Another long-shanked ugly
rogue, mounted on a pair of high-heeled wooden slippers, meeting a
strapping, fusty, squabbed dowdy, says he to her, How is't my top? She was
short upon him, and arrogantly replied, Never the better for you, my whip.
By St. Antony's hog, said Xenomanes, I believe so; for how can this whip be
sufficient to lash this top?
A college professor, well provided with cod, and powdered and prinked up,
having a while discoursed with a great lady, taking his leave with these
words, Thank you, sweetmeat; she cried, There needs no thanks, sour-sauce.
Saith Pantagruel, This is not altogether incongruous, for sweet meat must
have sour sauce. A wooden loggerhead said to a young wench, It is long
since I saw you, bag; All the better, cried she, pipe. Set them together,
said Panurge, then blow in their arses, it will be a bagpipe. We saw,
after that, a diminutive humpbacked gallant, pretty near us, taking leave
of a she-relation of his, thus: Fare thee well, friend hole; she
reparteed, Save thee, friend peg. Quoth Friar John, What could they say
more, were he all peg and she all hole? But now would I give something to
know if every cranny of the hole can be stopped up with that same peg.
A bawdy bachelor, talking with an old trout, was saying, Remember, rusty
gun. I will not fail, said she, scourer. Do you reckon these two to be
akin? said Pantagruel to the mayor. I rather take them to be foes. In our
country a woman would take this as a mortal affront. Good people of
t'other world, replied the mayor, you have few such and so near relations
as this gun and scourer are to one another; for they both come out of one
shop. What, was the shop their mother? quoth Panurge. What mother, said
the mayor, does the man mean? That must be some of your world's affinity;
we have here neither father nor mother. Your little paltry fellows that
live on t'other side the water, poor rogues, booted with wisps of hay, may
indeed have such; but we scorn it. The good Pantagruel stood gazing and
listening; but at those words he had like to have lost all patience. (Here
Motteux adds an aside--'os kai nun o Ermeneutes. P.M.').
Having very exactly viewed the situation of the island and the way of
living of the Enassed nation, we went to take a cup of the creature at a
tavern, where there happened to be a wedding after the manner of the
country. Bating that shocking custom, there was special good cheer.
While we were there, a pleasant match was struck up betwixt a female called
Pear (a tight thing, as we thought, but by some, who knew better things,
said to be quaggy and flabby), and a young soft male, called Cheese,
somewhat sandy. (Many such matches have been, and they were formerly much
commended.) In our country we say, Il ne fut onques tel mariage, qu'est de
la poire et du fromage; there is no match like that made between the pear
and the cheese; and in many other places good store of such bargains have
been driven. Besides, when the women are at their last prayers, it is to
this day a noted saying, that after cheese comes nothing.
In another room I saw them marrying an old greasy boot to a young pliable
buskin. Pantagruel was told that young buskin took old boot to have and to
hold because she was of special leather, in good case, and waxed, seared,
liquored, and greased to the purpose, even though it had been for the
fisherman that went to bed with his boots on. In another room below, I saw
a young brogue taking a young slipper for better for worse; which, they
told us, was neither for the sake of her piety, parts, or person, but for
the fourth comprehensive p, portion; the spankers, spur-royals,
rose-nobles, and other coriander seed with which she was quilted all over.
How Pantagruel went ashore at the island of Chely, where he saw King St.
Panigon.
We sailed right before the wind, which we had at west, leaving those odd
alliancers with their ace-of-clubs snouts, and having taken height by the
sun, stood in for Chely, a large, fruitful, wealthy, and well-peopled
island. King St. Panigon, first of the name, reigned there, and, attended
by the princes his sons and the nobles of his court, came as far as the
port to receive Pantagruel, and conducted him to his palace; near the gate
of which the queen, attended by the princesses her daughters and the court
ladies, received us. Panigon directed her and all her retinue to salute
Pantagruel and his men with a kiss; for such was the civil custom of the
country; and they were all fairly bussed accordingly, except Friar John,
who stepped aside and sneaked off among the king's officers. Panigon used
all the entreaties imaginable to persuade Pantagruel to tarry there that
day and the next; but he would needs be gone, and excused himself upon the
opportunity of wind and weather, which, being oftener desired than enjoyed,
ought not to be neglected when it comes. Panigon, having heard these
reasons, let us go, but first made us take off some five-and-twenty or
thirty bumpers each.
Pantagruel, returning to the port, missed Friar John, and asked why he was
not with the rest of the company. Panurge could not tell how to excuse
him, and would have gone back to the palace to call him, when Friar John
overtook them, and merrily cried, Long live the noble Panigon! As I love
my belly, he minds good eating, and keeps a noble house and a dainty
kitchen. I have been there, boys. Everything goes about by dozens. I was
in good hopes to have stuffed my puddings there like a monk. What! always
in a kitchen, friend? said Pantagruel. By the belly of St. Cramcapon,
quoth the friar, I understand the customs and ceremonies which are used
there much better than all the formal stuff, antique postures, and
nonsensical fiddle-faddle that must be used with those women, magni magna,
shittencumshita, cringes, grimaces, scrapes, bows, and congees; double
honours this way, triple salutes that way, the embrace, the grasp, the
squeeze, the hug, the leer, the smack, baso las manos de vostra merce, de
vostra maesta. You are most tarabin, tarabas, Stront; that's downright
Dutch. Why all this ado? I don't say but a man might be for a bit by the
bye and away, to be doing as well as his neighbours; but this little nasty
cringing and courtesying made me as mad as any March devil. You talk of
kissing ladies; by the worthy and sacred frock I wear, I seldom venture
upon it, lest I be served as was the Lord of Guyercharois. What was it?
said Pantagruel; I know him. He is one of the best friends I have.
He was invited to a sumptuous feast, said Friar John, by a relation and
neighbour of his, together with all the gentlemen and ladies in the
neighbourhood. Now some of the latter expecting his coming, dressed the
pages in women's clothes, and finified them like any babies; then ordered
them to meet my lord at his coming near the drawbridge. So the
complimenting monsieur came, and there kissed the petticoated lads with
great formality. At last the ladies, who minded passages in the gallery,
burst out with laughing, and made signs to the pages to take off their
dress; which the good lord having observed, the devil a bit he durst make
up to the true ladies to kiss them, but said, that since they had disguised
the pages, by his great grandfather's helmet, these were certainly the very
footmen and grooms still more cunningly disguised. Odds fish, da jurandi,
why do not we rather remove our humanities into some good warm kitchen of
God, that noble laboratory, and there admire the turning of the spits, the
harmonious rattling of the jacks and fenders, criticise on the position of
the lard, the temperature of the pottages, the preparation for the dessert,
and the order of the wine service? Beati immaculati in via. Matter of
breviary, my masters.
Why monks love to be in kitchens.
This, said Epistemon, is spoke like a true monk; I mean like a right
monking monk, not a bemonked monastical monkling. Truly you put me in mind
of some passages that happened at Florence, some twenty years ago, in a
company of studious travellers, fond of visiting the learned, and seeing
the antiquities of Italy, among whom I was. As we viewed the situation and
beauty of Florence, the structure of the dome, the magnificence of the
churches and palaces, we strove to outdo one another in giving them their
due; when a certain monk of Amiens, Bernard Lardon by name, quite angry,
scandalized, and out of all patience, told us, I don't know what the devil
you can find in this same town, that is so much cried up; for my part I
have looked and pored and stared as well as the best of you; I think my
eyesight is as clear as another body's, and what can one see after all?
There are fine houses, indeed and that's all. But the cage does not feed
the birds. God and Monsieur St. Bernard, our good patron, be with us! in
all this same town I have not seen one poor lane of roasting cooks; and yet
I have not a little looked about and sought for so necessary a part of a
commonwealth: ay, and I dare assure you that I have pried up and down with
the exactness of an informer; as ready to number, both to the right and
left, how many, and on what side, we might find most roasting cooks, as a
spy would be to reckon the bastions of a town. Now at Amiens, in four,
nay, five times less ground than we have trod in our contemplations, I
could have shown you above fourteen streets of roasting cooks, most
ancient, savoury, and aromatic. I cannot imagine what kind of pleasure you
can have taken in gazing on the lions and Africans (so methinks you call
their tigers) near the belfry, or in ogling the porcupines and estridges in
the Lord Philip Strozzi's palace. Faith and truth I had rather see a good
fat goose at the spit. This porphyry, those marbles are fine; I say
nothing to the contrary; but our cheesecakes at Amiens are far better in my
mind. These ancient statues are well made; I am willing to believe it;
but, by St. Ferreol of Abbeville, we have young wenches in our country
which please me better a thousand times.
What is the reason, asked Friar John, that monks are always to be found in
kitchens, and kings, emperors, and popes are never there? Is there not,
said Rhizotome, some latent virtue and specific propriety hid in the
kettles and pans, which, as the loadstone attracts iron, draws the monks
there, and cannot attract emperors, popes, or kings? Or is it a natural
induction and inclination, fixed in the frocks and cowls, which of itself
leads and forceth those good religious men into kitchens, whether they will
or no? He would speak of forms following matter, as Averroes calls them,
answered Epistemon. Right, said Friar John.
I will not offer to solve this problem, said Pantagruel; for it is somewhat
ticklish, and you can hardly handle it without coming off scurvily; but I
will tell you what I have heard.
Antigonus, King of Macedon, one day coming into one of the tents, where his
cooks used to dress his meat, and finding there poet Antagoras frying a
conger, and holding the pan himself, merrily asked him, Pray, Mr. Poet, was
Homer frying congers when he wrote the deeds of Agamemnon? Antagoras
readily answered: But do you think, sir, that when Agamemnon did them he
made it his business to know if any in his camp were frying congers? The
king thought it an indecency that a poet should be thus a-frying in a
kitchen; and the poet let the king know that it was a more indecent thing
for a king to be found in such a place. I'll clap another story upon the
neck of this, quoth Panurge, and will tell you what Breton Villandry
answered one day to the Duke of Guise.
They were saying that at a certain battle of King Francis against Charles
the Fifth, Breton, armed cap-a-pie to the teeth, and mounted like St.
George, yet sneaked off, and played least in sight during the engagement.
Blood and oons, answered Breton, I was there, and can prove it easily; nay,
even where you, my lord, dared not have been. The duke began to resent
this as too rash and saucy; but Breton easily appeased him, and set them
all a-laughing. Egad, my lord, quoth he, I kept out of harm's way; I was
all the while with your page Jack, skulking in a certain place where you
had not dared hide your head as I did. Thus discoursing, they got to their
ships, and left the island of Chely.
How Pantagruel passed by the land of Pettifogging, and of the strange way
of living among the Catchpoles.
Steering our course forwards the next day, we passed through Pettifogging,
a country all blurred and blotted, so that I could hardly tell what to make
on't. There we saw some pettifoggers and catchpoles, rogues that will hang
their father for a groat. They neither invited us to eat or drink; but,
with a multiplied train of scrapes and cringes, said they were all at our
service for the Legem pone.
One of our droggermen related to Pantagruel their strange way of living,
diametrically opposed to that of our modern Romans; for at Rome a world of
folks get an honest livelihood by poisoning, drubbing, lambasting,
stabbing, and murthering; but the catchpoles earn theirs by being thrashed;
so that if they were long without a tight lambasting, the poor dogs with
their wives and children would be starved. This is just, quoth Panurge,
like those who, as Galen tells us, cannot erect the cavernous nerve towards
the equinoctial circle unless they are soundly flogged. By St. Patrick's
slipper, whoever should jerk me so, would soon, instead of setting me
right, throw me off the saddle, in the devil's name.
The way is this, said the interpreter. When a monk, levite, close-fisted
usurer, or lawyer owes a grudge to some neighbouring gentleman, he sends to
him one of those catchpoles or apparitors, who nabs, or at least cites him,
serves a writ or warrant upon him, thumps, abuses, and affronts him
impudently by natural instinct, and according to his pious instructions;
insomuch, that if the gentleman hath but any guts in his brains, and is not
more stupid than a gyrin frog, he will find himself obliged either to apply
a faggot-stick or his sword to the rascal's jobbernowl, give him the gentle
lash, or make him cut a caper out at the window, by way of correction.
This done, Catchpole is rich for four months at least, as if bastinadoes
were his real harvest; for the monk, levite, usurer, or lawyer will reward
him roundly; and my gentleman must pay him such swingeing damages that his
acres must bleed for it, and he be in danger of miserably rotting within a
stone doublet, as if he had struck the king.
Quoth Panurge, I know an excellent remedy against this used by the Lord of
Basche. What is it? said Pantagruel. The Lord of Basche, said Panurge,
was a brave, honest, noble-spirited gentleman, who, at his return from the
long war in which the Duke of Ferrara, with the help of the French, bravely
defended himself against the fury of Pope Julius the Second, was every day
cited, warned, and prosecuted at the suit and for the sport and fancy of
the fat prior of St. Louant.
One morning, as he was at breakfast with some of his domestics (for he
loved to be sometimes among them) he sent for one Loire, his baker, and his
spouse, and for one Oudart, the vicar of his parish, who was also his
butler, as the custom was then in France; then said to them before his
gentlemen and other servants: You all see how I am daily plagued with
these rascally catchpoles. Truly, if you do not lend me your helping hand,
I am finally resolved to leave the country, and go fight for the sultan, or
the devil, rather than be thus eternally teased. Therefore, to be rid of
their damned visits, hereafter, when any of them come here, be ready, you
baker and your wife, to make your personal appearance in my great hall, in
your wedding clothes, as if you were going to be affianced. Here, take
these ducats, which I give you to keep you in a fitting garb. As for you,
Sir Oudart, be sure you make your personal appearance there in your fine
surplice and stole, not forgetting your holy water, as if you were to wed
them. Be you there also, Trudon, said he to his drummer, with your pipe
and tabor. The form of matrimony must be read, and the bride kissed; then
all of you, as the witnesses used to do in this country, shall give one
another the remembrance of the wedding, which you know is to be a blow with
your fist, bidding the party struck remember the nuptials by that token.
This will but make you have the better stomach to your supper; but when you
come to the catchpole's turn, thrash him thrice and threefold, as you would
a sheaf of green corn; do not spare him; maul him, drub him, lambast him,
swinge him off, I pray you. Here, take these steel gauntlets, covered with
kid. Head, back, belly, and sides, give him blows innumerable; he that
gives him most shall be my best friend. Fear not to be called to an
account about it; I will stand by you; for the blows must seem to be given
in jest, as it is customary among us at all weddings.
Ay, but how shall we know the catchpole? said the man of God. All sorts of
people daily resort to this castle. I have taken care of that, replied the
lord. When some fellow, either on foot, or on a scurvy jade, with a large
broad silver ring on his thumb, comes to the door, he is certainly a
catchpole; the porter having civilly let him in, shall ring the bell; then
be all ready, and come into the hall, to act the tragi-comedy whose plot I
have now laid for you.
That numerical day, as chance would have it, came an old fat ruddy
catchpole. Having knocked at the gate, and then pissed, as most men will
do, the porter soon found him out, by his large greasy spatterdashes, his
jaded hollow-flanked mare, his bagful of writs and informations dangling at
his girdle, but, above all, by the large silver hoop on his left thumb.
The porter was civil to him, admitted him in kindly, and rung the bell
briskly. As soon as the baker and his wife heard it, they clapped on their
best clothes, and made their personal appearance in the hall, keeping their
gravities like a new-made judge. The dominie put on his surplice and
stole, and as he came out of his office, met the catchpole, had him in
there, and made him suck his face a good while, while the gauntlets were
drawing on all hands; and then told him, You are come just in pudding-time;
my lord is in his right cue. We shall feast like kings anon; here is to be
swingeing doings; we have a wedding in the house; here, drink and cheer up;
pull away.
While these two were at it hand-to-fist, Basche, seeing all his people in
the hall in their proper equipage, sends for the vicar. Oudart comes with
the holy-water pot, followed by the catchpole, who, as he came into the
hall, did not forget to make good store of awkward cringes, and then served
Basche with a writ. Basche gave him grimace for grimace, slipped an angel
into his mutton-fist, and prayed him to assist at the contract and
ceremony; which he did. When it was ended, thumps and fisticuffs began to
fly about among the assistants; but when it came to the catchpole's turn,
they all laid on him so unmercifully with their gauntlets that they at last
settled him, all stunned and battered, bruised and mortified, with one of
his eyes black and blue, eight ribs bruised, his brisket sunk in, his
omoplates in four quarters, his under jawbone in three pieces; and all this
in jest, and no harm done. God wot how the levite belaboured him, hiding
within the long sleeve of his canonical shirt his huge steel gauntlet lined
with ermine; for he was a strong-built ball, and an old dog at fisticuffs.
The catchpole, all of a bloody tiger-like stripe, with much ado crawled
home to L'Isle Bouchart, well pleased and edified, however, with Basche's
kind reception; and, with the help of the good surgeons of the place, lived
as long as you would have him. From that time to this, not a word of the
business; the memory of it was lost with the sound of the bells that rung
with joy at his funeral.
How, like Master Francis Villon, the Lord of Basche commended his servants.
The catchpole being packed off on blind Sorrel--so he called his one-eyed
mare--Basche sent for his lady, her women, and all his servants, into the
arbour of his garden; had wine brought, attended with good store of
pasties, hams, fruit, and other table-ammunition, for a nunchion; drank
with them joyfully, and then told them this story:
Master Francis Villon in his old age retired to St. Maxent in Poitou, under
the patronage of a good honest abbot of the place. There to make sport for
the mob, he undertook to get the Passion acted, after the way, and in the
dialect of the country. The parts being distributed, the play having been
rehearsed, and the stage prepared, he told the mayor and aldermen that the
mystery might be ready after Niort fair, and that there only wanted
properties and necessaries, but chiefly clothes fit for the parts; so the
mayor and his brethren took care to get them.
Villon, to dress an old clownish father greybeard, who was to represent God
the father, begged of Friar Stephen Tickletoby, sacristan to the Franciscan
friars of the place, to lend him a cope and a stole. Tickletoby refused
him, alleging that by their provincial statutes it was rigorously forbidden
to give or lend anything to players. Villon replied that the statute
reached no farther than farces, drolls, antics, loose and dissolute games,
and that he asked no more than what he had seen allowed at Brussels and
other places. Tickletoby notwithstanding peremptorily bid him provide
himself elsewhere if he would, and not to hope for anything out of his
monastical wardrobe. Villon gave an account of this to the players, as of
a most abominable action; adding, that God would shortly revenge himself,
and make an example of Tickletoby.
The Saturday following he had notice given him that Tickletoby, upon the
filly of the convent--so they call a young mare that was never leaped yet
--was gone a-mumping to St. Ligarius, and would be back about two in the
afternoon. Knowing this, he made a cavalcade of his devils of the Passion
through the town. They were all rigged with wolves', calves', and rams'
skins, laced and trimmed with sheep's heads, bull's feathers, and large
kitchen tenterhooks, girt with broad leathern girdles, whereat hanged
dangling huge cow-bells and horse-bells, which made a horrid din. Some
held in their claws black sticks full of squibs and crackers; others had
long lighted pieces of wood, upon which, at the corner of every street,
they flung whole handfuls of rosin-dust, that made a terrible fire and
smoke. Having thus led them about, to the great diversion of the mob and
the dreadful fear of little children, he finally carried them to an
entertainment at a summer-house without the gate that leads to St.
Ligarius.
As they came near to the place, he espied Tickletoby afar off, coming home
from mumping, and told them in macaronic verse:
Hic est de patria, natus, de gente belistra,
Qui solet antiqua bribas portare bisacco. (Motteux reads:
'Hic est mumpator natus de gente Cucowli,
Qui solet antiquo Scrappas portare bisacco.')
A plague on his friarship, said the devils then; the lousy beggar would not
lend a poor cope to the fatherly father; let us fright him. Well said,
cried Villon; but let us hide ourselves till he comes by, and then charge
him home briskly with your squibs and burning sticks. Tickletoby being
come to the place, they all rushed on a sudden into the road to meet him,
and in a frightful manner threw fire from all sides upon him and his filly
foal, ringing and tingling their bells, and howling like so many real
devils, Hho, hho, hho, hho, brrou, rrou, rrourrs, rrrourrs, hoo, hou, hou
hho, hho, hhoi. Friar Stephen, don't we play the devils rarely? The filly
was soon scared out of her seven senses, and began to start, to funk it, to
squirt it, to trot it, to fart it, to bound it, to gallop it, to kick it,
to spurn it, to calcitrate it, to wince it, to frisk it, to leap it, to
curvet it, with double jerks, and bum-motions; insomuch that she threw down
Tickletoby, though he held fast by the tree of the pack-saddle with might
and main. Now his straps and stirrups were of cord; and on the right side
his sandals were so entangled and twisted that he could not for the heart's
blood of him get out his foot. Thus he was dragged about by the filly
through the road, scratching his bare breech all the way; she still
multiplying her kicks against him, and straying for fear over hedge and
ditch, insomuch that she trepanned his thick skull so that his cockle
brains were dashed out near the Osanna or high-cross. Then his arms fell
to pieces, one this way and the other that way; and even so were his legs
served at the same time. Then she made a bloody havoc with his puddings;
and being got to the convent, brought back only his right foot and twisted
sandal, leaving them to guess what was become of the rest.
Villon, seeing that things had succeeded as he intended, said to his
devils, You will act rarely, gentlemen devils, you will act rarely; I dare
engage you'll top your parts. I defy the devils of Saumur, Douay,
Montmorillon, Langez, St. Espain, Angers; nay, by gad, even those of
Poictiers, for all their bragging and vapouring, to match you.
Thus, friends, said Basche, I foresee that hereafter you will act rarely
this tragical farce, since the very first time you have so skilfully
hampered, bethwacked, belammed, and bebumped the catchpole. From this day
I double your wages. As for you, my dear, said he to his lady, make your
gratifications as you please; you are my treasurer, you know. For my part,
first and foremost, I drink to you all. Come on, box it about; it is good
and cool. In the second place, you, Mr. Steward, take this silver basin; I
give it you freely. Then you, my gentlemen of the horse, take these two
silver-gilt cups, and let not the pages be horsewhipped these three months.
My dear, let them have my best white plumes of feathers, with the gold
buckles to them. Sir Oudart, this silver flagon falls to your share; this
other I give to the cooks. To the valets de chambre I give this silver
basket; to the grooms, this silver-gilt boat; to the porter, these two
plates; to the hostlers, these ten porringers. Trudon, take you these
silver spoons and this sugar-box. You, footman, take this large salt.
Serve me well, and I will remember you. For, on the word of a gentleman, I
had rather bear in war one hundred blows on my helmet in the service of my
country than be once cited by these knavish catchpoles merely to humour
this same gorbellied prior.
A further account of catchpoles who were drubbed at Basche's house.
Four days after another young, long-shanked, raw-boned catchpole coming to
serve Basche with a writ at the fat prior's request, was no sooner at the
gate but the porter smelt him out and rung the bell; at whose second pull
all the family understood the mystery. Loire was kneading his dough; his
wife was sifting meal; Oudart was toping in his office; the gentlemen were
playing at tennis; the Lord Basche at in-and-out with my lady; the
waiting-men and gentle-women at push-pin; the officers at lanterloo, and the
pages at hot-cockles, giving one another smart bangs. They were all
immediately informed that a catchpole was housed.
Upon this Oudart put on his sacerdotal, and Loire and his wife their
nuptial badges; Trudon piped it, and then tabored it like mad; all made
haste to get ready, not forgetting the gauntlets. Basche went into the
outward yard; there the catchpole meeting him fell on his marrow-bones,
begged of him not to take it ill if he served him with a writ at the suit
of the fat prior; and in a pathetic speech let him know that he was a
public person, a servant to the monking tribe, apparitor to the abbatial
mitre, ready to do as much for him, nay, for the least of his servants,
whensoever he would employ and use him.
Nay, truly, said the lord, you shall not serve your writ till you have
tasted some of my good Quinquenays wine, and been a witness to a wedding
which we are to have this very minute. Let him drink and refresh himself,
added he, turning towards the levitical butler, and then bring him into the
hall. After which, Catchpole, well stuffed and moistened, came with Oudart
to the place where all the actors in the farce stood ready to begin. The
sight of their game set them a-laughing, and the messenger of mischief
grinned also for company's sake. Then the mysterious words were muttered
to and by the couple, their hands joined, the bride bussed, and all
besprinkled with holy water. While they were bringing wine and kickshaws,
thumps began to trot about by dozens. The catchpole gave the levite
several blows. Oudart, who had his gauntlet hid under his canonical shirt,
draws it on like a mitten, and then, with his clenched fist, souse he fell
on the catchpole and mauled him like a devil; the junior gauntlets dropped
on him likewise like so many battering rams. Remember the wedding by this,
by that, by these blows, said they. In short, they stroked him so to the
purpose that he pissed blood out at mouth, nose, ears, and eyes, and was
bruised, thwacked, battered, bebumped, and crippled at the back, neck,
breast, arms, and so forth. Never did the bachelors at Avignon in carnival
time play more melodiously at raphe than was then played on the catchpole's
microcosm. At last down he fell.
They threw a great deal of wine on his snout, tied round the sleeve of his
doublet a fine yellow and green favour, and got him upon his snotty beast,
and God knows how he got to L'Isle Bouchart; where I cannot truly tell you
whether he was dressed and looked after or no, both by his spouse and the
able doctors of the country; for the thing never came to my ears.
The next day they had a third part to the same tune, because it did not
appear by the lean catchpole's bag that he had served his writ. So the fat
prior sent a new catchpole, at the head of a brace of bums for his garde du
corps, to summon my lord. The porter ringing the bell, the whole family
was overjoyed, knowing that it was another rogue. Basche was at dinner
with his lady and the gentlemen; so he sent for the catchpole, made him sit
by him, and the bums by the women, and made them eat till their bellies
cracked with their breeches unbuttoned. The fruit being served, the
catchpole arose from table, and before the bums cited Basche. Basche
kindly asked him for a copy of the warrant, which the other had got ready;
he then takes witness and a copy of the summons. To the catchpole and his
bums he ordered four ducats for civility money. In the meantime all were
withdrawn for the farce. So Trudon gave the alarm with his tabor. Basche
desired the catchpole to stay and see one of his servants married, and
witness the contract of marriage, paying him his fee. The catchpole
slapdash was ready, took out his inkhorn, got paper immediately, and his
bums by him.
Then Loire came into the hall at one door, and his wife with the
gentlewomen at another, in nuptial accoutrements. Oudart, in
pontificalibus, takes them both by their hands, asketh them their will,
giveth them the matrimonial blessing, and was very liberal of holy water.
The contract written, signed, and registered, on one side was brought wine
and comfits; on the other, white and orange-tawny-coloured favours were
distributed; on another, gauntlets privately handed about.
How the ancient custom at nuptials is renewed by the catchpole.
The catchpole, having made shift to get down a swingeing sneaker of Breton
wine, said to Basche, Pray, sir, what do you mean? You do not give one
another the memento of the wedding. By St. Joseph's wooden shoe, all good
customs are forgot. We find the form, but the hare is scampered; and the
nest, but the birds are flown. There are no true friends nowadays. You
see how, in several churches, the ancient laudable custom of tippling on
account of the blessed saints O O, at Christmas, is come to nothing. The
world is in its dotage, and doomsday is certainly coming all so fast. Now
come on; the wedding, the wedding, the wedding; remember it by this. This
he said, striking Basche and his lady; then her women and the levite. Then
the tabor beat a point of war, and the gauntlets began to do their duty;
insomuch that the catchpole had his crown cracked in no less than nine
places. One of the bums had his right arm put out of joint, and the other
his upper jaw-bone or mandibule dislocated so that it hid half his chin,
with a denudation of the uvula, and sad loss of the molar, masticatory, and
canine teeth. Then the tabor beat a retreat; the gauntlets were carefully
hid in a trice, and sweetmeats afresh distributed to renew the mirth of the
company. So they all drank to one another, and especially to the catchpole
and his bums. But Oudart cursed and damned the wedding to the pit of hell,
complaining that one of the bums had utterly disincornifistibulated his
nether shoulder-blade. Nevertheless, he scorned to be thought a flincher,
and made shift to tope to him on the square.
The jawless bum shrugged up his shoulders, joined his hands, and by signs
begged his pardon; for speak he could not. The sham bridegroom made his
moan, that the crippled bum had struck him such a horrid thump with his
shoulder-of-mutton fist on the nether elbow that he was grown quite
esperruquanchuzelubelouzerireliced down to his very heel, to the no small
loss of mistress bride.
But what harm had poor I done? cried Trudon, hiding his left eye with his
kerchief, and showing his tabor cracked on one side; they were not
satisfied with thus poaching, black and bluing, and
morrambouzevezengouzequoquemorgasacbaquevezinemaffreliding my poor eyes,
but they have also broke my harmless drum. Drums indeed are commonly
beaten at weddings, and it is fit they should; but drummers are well
entertained and never beaten. Now let Beelzebub e'en take the drum, to
make his devilship a nightcap. Brother, said the lame catchpole, never
fret thyself; I will make thee a present of a fine, large, old patent,
which I have here in my bag, to patch up thy drum, and for Madame St.
Ann's sake I pray thee forgive us. By Our Lady of Riviere, the blessed
dame, I meant no more harm than the child unborn. One of the equerries,
who, hopping and halting like a mumping cripple, mimicked the good limping
Lord de la Roche Posay, directed his discourse to the bum with the pouting
jaw, and told him: What, Mr. Manhound, was it not enough thus to have
morcrocastebezasteverestegrigeligoscopapopondrillated us all in our upper
members with your botched mittens, but you must also apply such
morderegripippiatabirofreluchamburelurecaquelurintimpaniments on our
shinbones with the hard tops and extremities of your cobbled shoes. Do
you call this children's play? By the mass, 'tis no jest. The bum,
wringing his hands, seemed to beg his pardon, muttering with his tongue,
Mon, mon, mon, vrelon, von, von, like a dumb man. The bride crying
laughed, and laughing cried, because the catchpole was not satisfied with
drubbing her without choice or distinction of members, but had also rudely
roused and toused her, pulled off her topping, and not having the fear of
her husband before his eyes, treacherously
trepignemanpenillorifrizonoufresterfumbled tumbled and squeezed her lower
parts. The devil go with it, said Basche; there was much need indeed that
this same Master King (this was the catchpole's name) should thus break my
wife's back; however, I forgive him now; these are little nuptial
caresses. But this I plainly perceive, that he cited me like an angel, and
drubbed me like a devil. He had something in him of Friar Thumpwell.
Come, for all this, I must drink to him, and to you likewise, his trusty
esquires. But, said his lady, why hath he been so very liberal of his
manual kindness to me, without the least provocation? I assure you, I by
no means like it; but this I dare say for him, that he hath the hardest
knuckles that ever I felt on my shoulders. The steward held his left arm
in a scarf, as if it had been rent and torn in twain. I think it was the
devil, said he, that moved me to assist at these nuptials; shame on ill
luck; I must needs be meddling with a pox, and now see what I have got by
the bargain, both my arms are wretchedly engoulevezinemassed and bruised.
Do you call this a wedding? By St. Bridget's tooth, I had rather be at
that of a Tom T--d-man. This is, o' my word, even just such another feast
as was that of the Lapithae, described by the philosopher of Samosata.
One of the bums had lost his tongue. The other two, tho' they had more
need to complain, made their excuse as well as they could, protesting that
they had no ill design in this dumbfounding; begging that, for goodness
sake, they would forgive them; and so, tho' they could hardly budge a
foot, or wag along, away they crawled. About a mile from Basche's seat,
the catchpole found himself somewhat out of sorts. The bums got to L'Isle
Bouchart, publicly saying that since they were born they had never seen an
honester gentleman than the Lord of Basche, or civiller people than his,
and that they had never been at the like wedding (which I verily believe);
but that it was their own faults if they had been tickled off, and tossed
about from post to pillar, since themselves had began the beating. So
they lived I cannot exactly tell you how many days after this. But from
that time to this it was held for a certain truth that Basche's money was
more pestilential, mortal, and pernicious to the catchpoles and bums than
were formerly the aurum Tholosanum and the Sejan horse to those that
possessed them. Ever since this he lived quietly, and Basche's wedding
grew into a common proverb.
How Friar John made trial of the nature of the catchpoles.
This story would seem pleasant enough, said Pantagruel, were we not to have
always the fear of God before our eyes. It had been better, said
Epistemon, if those gauntlets had fallen upon the fat prior. Since he took
a pleasure in spending his money partly to vex Basche, partly to see those
catchpoles banged, good lusty thumps would have done well on his shaved
crown, considering the horrid concussions nowadays among those puny judges.
What harm had done those poor devils the catchpoles? This puts me in mind,
said Pantagruel, of an ancient Roman named L. Neratius. He was of noble
blood, and for some time was rich; but had this tyrannical inclination,
that whenever he went out of doors he caused his servants to fill their
pockets with gold and silver, and meeting in the street your spruce
gallants and better sort of beaux, without the least provocation, for his
fancy, he used to strike them hard on the face with his fist; and
immediately after that, to appease them and hinder them from complaining to
the magistrates, he would give them as much money as satisfied them
according to the law of the twelve tables. Thus he used to spend his
revenue, beating people for the price of his money. By St. Bennet's sacred
boot, quoth Friar John, I will know the truth of it presently.
This said, he went on shore, put his hand in his fob, and took out twenty
ducats; then said with a loud voice, in the hearing of a shoal of the
nation of catchpoles, Who will earn twenty ducats for being beaten like the
devil? Io, Io, Io, said they all; you will cripple us for ever, sir, that
is most certain; but the money is tempting. With this they were all
thronging who should be first to be thus preciously beaten. Friar John
singled him out of the whole knot of these rogues in grain, a red-snouted
catchpole, who upon his right thumb wore a thick broad silver hoop, wherein
was set a good large toadstone. He had no sooner picked him out from the
rest, but I perceived that they all muttered and grumbled; and I heard a
young thin-jawed catchpole, a notable scholar, a pretty fellow at his pen,
and, according to public report, much cried up for his honesty at Doctors'
Commons, making his complaint and muttering because this same crimson phiz
carried away all the practice, and that if there were but a score and a
half of bastinadoes to be got, he would certainly run away with eight and
twenty of them. But all this was looked upon to be nothing but mere envy.
Friar John so unmercifully thrashed, thumped, and belaboured Red-snout,
back and belly, sides, legs, and arms, head, feet, and so forth, with the
home and frequently repeated application of one of the best members of a
faggot, that I took him to be a dead man; then he gave him the twenty
ducats, which made the dog get on his legs, pleased like a little king or
two. The rest were saying to Friar John, Sir, sir, brother devil, if it
please you to do us the favour to beat some of us for less money, we are
all at your devilship's command, bags, papers, pens, and all. Red-snout
cried out against them, saying, with a loud voice, Body of me, you little
prigs, will you offer to take the bread out of my mouth? will you take my
bargain over my head? would you draw and inveigle from me my clients and
customers? Take notice, I summon you before the official this day
sevennight; I will law and claw you like any old devil of Vauverd, that I
will--Then turning himself towards Friar John, with a smiling and joyful
look, he said to him, Reverend father in the devil, if you have found me a
good hide, and have a mind to divert yourself once more by beating your
humble servant, I will bate you half in half this time rather than lose
your custom; do not spare me, I beseech you; I am all, and more than all,
yours, good Mr. Devil; head, lungs, tripes, guts, and garbage; and that at
a pennyworth, I'll assure you. Friar John never heeded his proffers, but
even left them. The other catchpoles were making addresses to Panurge,
Epistemon, Gymnast, and others, entreating them charitably to bestow upon
their carcasses a small beating, for otherwise they were in danger of
keeping a long fast; but none of them had a stomach to it. Some time
after, seeking fresh water for the ship's company, we met a couple of old
female catchpoles of the place, miserably howling and weeping in concert.
Pantagruel had kept on board, and already had caused a retreat to be
sounded. Thinking that they might be related to the catchpole that was
bastinadoed, we asked them the occasion of their grief. They replied that
they had too much cause to weep; for that very hour, from an exalted triple
tree, two of the honestest gentlemen in Catchpole-land had been made to cut
a caper on nothing. Cut a caper on nothing, said Gymnast; my pages use to
cut capers on the ground; to cut a caper on nothing should be hanging and
choking, or I am out. Ay, ay, said Friar John; you speak of it like St.
John de la Palisse.
We asked them why they treated these worthy persons with such a choking
hempen salad. They told us they had only borrowed, alias stolen, the tools
of the mass and hid them under the handle of the parish. This is a very
allegorical way of speaking, said Epistemon.
How Pantagruel came to the islands of Tohu and Bohu; and of the strange
death of Wide-nostrils, the swallower of windmills.
That day Pantagruel came to the two islands of Tohu and Bohu, where the
devil a bit we could find anything to fry with. For one Wide-nostrils,
a huge giant, had swallowed every individual pan, skillet, kettle,
frying-pan, dripping-pan, and brass and iron pot in the land, for want of
windmills, which were his daily food. Whence it happened that somewhat
before day, about the hour of his digestion, the greedy churl was taken
very ill with a kind of a surfeit, or crudity of stomach, occasioned, as
the physicians said, by the weakness of the concocting faculty of his
stomach, naturally disposed to digest whole windmills at a gust, yet unable
to consume perfectly the pans and skillets; though it had indeed pretty
well digested the kettles and pots, as they said they knew by the
hypostases and eneoremes of four tubs of second-hand drink which he had
evacuated at two different times that morning. They made use of divers
remedies, according to art, to give him ease; but all would not do; the
distemper prevailed over the remedies; insomuch that the famous
Wide-nostrils died that morning of so strange a death that I think you ought
no longer to wonder at that of the poet Aeschylus. It had been foretold him
by the soothsayers that he would die on a certain day by the ruin of
something that should fall on him. The fatal day being come in its turn, he
removed himself out of town, far from all houses, trees, (rocks,) or any
other things that can fall and endanger by their ruin; and strayed in a
large field, trusting himself to the open sky; there very secure, as he
thought, unless indeed the sky should happen to fall, which he held to be
impossible. Yet they say that the larks are much afraid of it; for if it
should fall, they must all be taken.
The Celts that once lived near the Rhine--they are our noble valiant
French--in ancient times were also afraid of the sky's falling; for being
asked by Alexander the Great what they feared most in this world, hoping
well they would say that they feared none but him, considering his great
achievements, they made answer that they feared nothing but the sky's
falling; however, not refusing to enter into a confederacy with so brave a
king, if you believe Strabo, lib. 7, and Arrian, lib. I.
Plutarch also, in his book of the face that appears on the body of the
moon, speaks of one Phenaces, who very much feared the moon should fall on
the earth, and pitied those that live under that planet, as the Aethiopians
and Taprobanians, if so heavy a mass ever happened to fall on them, and
would have feared the like of heaven and earth had they not been duly
propped up and borne by the Atlantic pillars, as the ancients believed,
according to Aristotle's testimony, lib. 5, Metaphys. Notwithstanding all
this, poor Aeschylus was killed by the fall of the shell of a tortoise,
which falling from betwixt the claws of an eagle high in the air, just on
his head, dashed out his brains.
Neither ought you to wonder at the death of another poet, I mean old jolly
Anacreon, who was choked with a grape-stone. Nor at that of Fabius the
Roman praetor, who was choked with a single goat's hair as he was supping
up a porringer of milk. Nor at the death of that bashful fool, who by
holding in his wind, and for want of letting out a bum-gunshot, died
suddenly in the presence of the Emperor Claudius. Nor at that of the
Italian buried on the Via Flaminia at Rome, who in his epitaph complains
that the bite of a she-puss on his little finger was the cause of his
death. Nor of that of Q. Lecanius Bassus, who died suddenly of so small a
prick with a needle on his left thumb that it could hardly be discerned.
Nor of Quenelault, a Norman physician, who died suddenly at Montpellier,
merely for having sideways took a worm out of his hand with a penknife.
Nor of Philomenes, whose servant having got him some new figs for the first
course of his dinner, whilst he went to fetch wine, a straggling well-hung
ass got into the house, and seeing the figs on the table, without further
invitation soberly fell to. Philomenes coming into the room and nicely
observing with what gravity the ass ate its dinner, said to the man, who
was come back, Since thou hast set figs here for this reverend guest of
ours to eat, methinks it is but reason thou also give him some of this wine
to drink. He had no sooner said this, but he was so excessively pleased,
and fell into so exorbitant a fit of laughter, that the use of his spleen
took that of his breath utterly away, and he immediately died. Nor of
Spurius Saufeius, who died supping up a soft-boiled egg as he came out of a
bath. Nor of him who, as Boccaccio tells us, died suddenly by picking his
grinders with a sage-stalk. Nor of Phillipot Placut, who being brisk and
hale, fell dead as he was paying an old debt; which causes, perhaps, many
not to pay theirs, for fear of the like accident. Nor of the painter
Zeuxis, who killed himself with laughing at the sight of the antique
jobbernowl of an old hag drawn by him. Nor, in short, of a thousand more
of which authors write, as Varrius, Pliny, Valerius, J. Baptista Fulgosus,
and Bacabery the elder. In short, Gaffer Wide-nostrils choked himself with
eating a huge lump of fresh butter at the mouth of a hot oven by the advice
of physicians.
They likewise told us there that the King of Cullan in Bohu had routed the
grandees of King Mecloth, and made sad work with the fortresses of Belima.
After this, we sailed by the islands of Nargues and Zargues; also by the
islands of Teleniabin and Geleniabin, very fine and fruitful in ingredients
for clysters; and then by the islands of Enig and Evig, on whose account
formerly the Landgrave of Hesse was swinged off with a vengeance.
How Pantagruel met with a great storm at sea.
The next day we espied nine sail that came spooning before the wind; they
were full of Dominicans, Jesuits, Capuchins, Hermits, Austins, Bernardins,
Egnatins, Celestins, Theatins, Amadeans, Cordeliers, Carmelites, Minims,
and the devil and all of other holy monks and friars, who were going to the
Council of Chesil, to sift and garble some new articles of faith against
the new heretics. Panurge was overjoyed to see them, being most certain of
good luck for that day and a long train of others. So having courteously
saluted the blessed fathers, and recommended the salvation of his precious
soul to their devout prayers and private ejaculations, he caused
seventy-eight dozen of Westphalia hams, units of pots of caviare, tens of
Bolonia sausages, hundreds of botargoes, and thousands of fine angels, for
the souls of the dead, to be thrown on board their ships. Pantagruel seemed
metagrabolized, dozing, out of sorts, and as melancholic as a cat. Friar
John, who soon perceived it, was inquiring of him whence should come this
unusual sadness; when the master, whose watch it was, observing the
fluttering of the ancient above the poop, and seeing that it began to
overcast, judged that we should have wind; therefore he bid the boatswain
call all hands upon deck, officers, sailors, foremast-men, swabbers, and
cabin-boys, and even the passengers; made them first settle their topsails,
take in their spritsail; then he cried, In with your topsails, lower the
foresail, tallow under parrels, braid up close all them sails, strike your
topmasts to the cap, make all sure with your sheeps-feet, lash your guns
fast. All this was nimbly done. Immediately it blowed a storm; the sea
began to roar and swell mountain-high; the rut of the sea was great, the
waves breaking upon our ship's quarter; the north-west wind blustered and
overblowed; boisterous gusts, dreadful clashing, and deadly scuds of wind
whistled through our yards and made our shrouds rattle again. The thunder
grumbled so horridly that you would have thought heaven had been tumbling
about our ears; at the same time it lightened, rained, hailed; the sky lost
its transparent hue, grew dusky, thick, and gloomy, so that we had no other
light than that of the flashes of lightning and rending of the clouds. The
hurricanes, flaws, and sudden whirlwinds began to make a flame about us by
the lightnings, fiery vapours, and other aerial ejaculations. Oh, how our
looks were full of amazement and trouble, while the saucy winds did rudely
lift up above us the mountainous waves of the main! Believe me, it seemed
to us a lively image of the chaos, where fire, air, sea, land, and all the
elements were in a refractory confusion. Poor Panurge having with the full
contents of the inside of his doublet plentifully fed the fish, greedy
enough of such odious fare, sat on the deck all in a heap, with his nose and
arse together, most sadly cast down, moping and half dead; invoked and
called to his assistance all the blessed he- and she-saints he could muster
up; swore and vowed to confess in time and place convenient, and then bawled
out frightfully, Steward, maitre d'hotel, see ho! my friend, my father, my
uncle, prithee let us have a piece of powdered beef or pork; we shall drink
but too much anon, for aught I see. Eat little and drink the more will
hereafter be my motto, I fear. Would to our dear Lord, and to our blessed,
worthy, and sacred Lady, I were now, I say, this very minute of an hour,
well on shore, on terra firma, hale and easy. O twice and thrice happy
those that plant cabbages! O destinies, why did you not spin me for a
cabbage-planter? O how few are there to whom Jupiter hath been so
favourable as to predestinate them to plant cabbages! They have always one
foot on the ground, and the other not far from it. Dispute who will of
felicity and summum bonum, for my part whosoever plants cabbages is now, by
my decree, proclaimed most happy; for as good a reason as the philosopher
Pyrrho, being in the same danger, and seeing a hog near the shore eating
some scattered oats, declared it happy in two respects; first, because it
had plenty of oats, and besides that, was on shore. Ha, for a divine and
princely habitation, commend me to the cows' floor.
Murder! This wave will sweep us away, blessed Saviour! O my friends! a
little vinegar. I sweat again with mere agony. Alas! the mizen-sail's
split, the gallery's washed away, the masts are sprung, the
maintop-masthead dives into the sea; the keel is up to the sun; our shrouds
are almost all broke, and blown away. Alas! alas! where is our main course?
Al is verlooren, by Godt! our topmast is run adrift. Alas! who shall have
this wreck? Friend, lend me here behind you one of these whales. Your
lantern is fallen, my lads. Alas! do not let go the main-tack nor the
bowline. I hear the block crack; is it broke? For the Lord's sake, let us
have the hull, and let all the rigging be damned. Be, be, be, bous, bous,
bous. Look to the needle of your compass, I beseech you, good Sir
Astrophil, and tell us, if you can, whence comes this storm. My heart's
sunk down below my midriff. By my troth, I am in a sad fright, bou, bou,
bou, bous, bous, I am lost for ever. I conskite myself for mere madness and
fear. Bou, bou, bou, bou, Otto to to to to ti. Bou, bou, bou, ou, ou, ou,
bou, bou, bous. I sink, I'm drowned, I'm gone, good people, I'm drowned.
What countenances Panurge and Friar John kept during the storm.
Pantagruel, having first implored the help of the great and Almighty
Deliverer, and prayed publicly with fervent devotion, by the pilot's advice
held tightly the mast of the ship. Friar John had stripped himself to his
waistcoat, to help the seamen. Epistemon, Ponocrates, and the rest did as
much. Panurge alone sat on his breech upon deck, weeping and howling.
Friar John espied him going on the quarter-deck, and said to him, Odzoons!
Panurge the calf, Panurge the whiner, Panurge the brayer, would it not
become thee much better to lend us here a helping hand than to lie lowing
like a cow, as thou dost, sitting on thy stones like a bald-breeched
baboon? Be, be, be, bous, bous, bous, returned Panurge; Friar John, my
friend, my good father, I am drowning, my dear friend! I drown! I am a
dead man, my dear father in God; I am a dead man, my friend; your cutting
hanger cannot save me from this; alas! alas! we are above ela. Above the
pitch, out of tune, and off the hinges. Be, be, be, bou, bous. Alas! we
are now above g sol re ut. I sink, I sink, ha, my father, my uncle, my
all. The water is got into my shoes by the collar; bous, bous, bous,
paish, hu, hu, hu, he, he, he, ha, ha, I drown. Alas! alas! Hu, hu, hu,
hu, hu, hu, hu, be, be, bous, bous, bobous, bobous, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho,
alas! alas! Now I am like your tumblers, my feet stand higher than my
head. Would to heaven I were now with those good holy fathers bound for
the council whom we met this morning, so godly, so fat, so merry, so plump
and comely. Holos, bolos, holas, holas, alas! This devilish wave (mea
culpa Deus), I mean this wave of God, will sink our vessel. Alas! Friar
John, my father, my friend, confession. Here I am down on my knees;
confiteor; your holy blessing. Come hither and be damned, thou pitiful
devil, and help us, said Friar John (who fell a-swearing and cursing like a
tinker), in the name of thirty legions of black devils, come; will you
come? Do not let us swear at this time, said Panurge; holy father, my
friend, do not swear, I beseech you; to-morrow as much as you please.
Holos, holos, alas! our ship leaks. I drown, alas, alas! I will give
eighteen hundred thousand crowns to anyone that will set me on shore, all
berayed and bedaubed as I am now. If ever there was a man in my country in
the like pickle. Confiteor, alas! a word or two of testament or codicil at
least. A thousand devils seize the cuckoldy cow-hearted mongrel, cried
Friar John. Ods-belly, art thou talking here of making thy will now we are
in danger, and it behoveth us to bestir our stumps lustily, or never? Wilt
thou come, ho devil? Midshipman, my friend; O the rare lieutenant; here
Gymnast, here on the poop. We are, by the mass, all beshit now; our light
is out. This is hastening to the devil as fast as it can. Alas, bou, bou,
bou, bou, bou, alas, alas, alas, alas! said Panurge; was it here we were
born to perish? Oh! ho! good people, I drown, I die. Consummatum est. I
am sped--Magna, gna, gna, said Friar John. Fie upon him, how ugly the
shitten howler looks. Boy, younker, see hoyh. Mind the pumps or the devil
choke thee. Hast thou hurt thyself? Zoons, here fasten it to one of these
blocks. On this side, in the devil's name, hay--so, my boy. Ah, Friar
John, said Panurge, good ghostly father, dear friend, don't let us swear,
you sin. Oh, ho, oh, ho, be be be bous, bous, bhous, I sink, I die, my
friends. I die in charity with all the world. Farewell, in manus. Bohus
bohous, bhousowauswaus. St. Michael of Aure! St. Nicholas! now, now or
never, I here make you a solemn vow, and to our Saviour, that if you stand
by me this time, I mean if you set me ashore out of this danger, I will
build you a fine large little chapel or two, between Quande and Montsoreau,
where neither cow nor calf shall feed. Oh ho, oh ho. Above eighteen
pailfuls or two of it are got down my gullet; bous, bhous, bhous, bhous,
how damned bitter and salt it is! By the virtue, said Friar John, of the
blood, the flesh, the belly, the head, if I hear thee again howling, thou
cuckoldy cur, I'll maul thee worse than any sea-wolf. Ods-fish, why don't
we take him up by the lugs and throw him overboard to the bottom of the
sea? Hear, sailor; ho, honest fellow. Thus, thus, my friend, hold fast
above. In truth, here is a sad lightning and thundering; I think that all
the devils are got loose; it is holiday with them; or else Madame
Proserpine is in child's labour: all the devils dance a morrice.
How the pilots were forsaking their ships in the greatest stress of
weather.
Oh, said Panurge, you sin, Friar John, my former crony! former, I say, for
at this time I am no more, you are no more. It goes against my heart to
tell it you; for I believe this swearing doth your spleen a great deal of
good; as it is a great ease to a wood-cleaver to cry hem at every blow, and
as one who plays at ninepins is wonderfully helped if, when he hath not
thrown his bowl right, and is like to make a bad cast, some ingenious
stander-by leans and screws his body halfway about on that side which the
bowl should have took to hit the pins. Nevertheless, you offend, my sweet
friend. But what do you think of eating some kind of cabirotadoes?
Wouldn't this secure us from this storm? I have read that the ministers of
the gods Cabiri, so much celebrated by Orpheus, Apollonius, Pherecydes,
Strabo, Pausanias, and Herodotus were always secure in time of storm. He
dotes, he raves, the poor devil! A thousand, a million, nay, a hundred
million of devils seize the hornified doddipole. Lend's a hand here, hoh,
tiger, wouldst thou? Here, on the starboard side. Ods-me, thou buffalo's
head stuffed with relics, what ape's paternoster art thou muttering and
chattering here between thy teeth? That devil of a sea-calf is the cause
of all this storm, and is the only man who doth not lend a helping hand.
By G--, if I come near thee, I'll fetch thee out by the head and ears with
a vengeance, and chastise thee like any tempestative devil. Here, mate, my
lad, hold fast, till I have made a double knot. O brave boy! Would to
heaven thou wert abbot of Talemouze, and that he that is were guardian of
Croullay. Hold, brother Ponocrates, you will hurt yourself, man.
Epistemon, prithee stand off out of the hatchway. Methinks I saw the
thunder fall there but just now. Con the ship, so ho--Mind your steerage.
Well said, thus, thus, steady, keep her thus, get the longboat clear
--steady. Ods-fish, the beak-head is staved to pieces. Grumble, devils,
fart, belch, shite, a t--d o' the wave. If this be weather, the devil's a
ram. Nay, by G--, a little more would have washed me clear away into the
current. I think all the legions of devils hold here their provincial
chapter, or are polling, canvassing, and wrangling for the election of a
new rector. Starboard; well said. Take heed; have a care of your noddle,
lad, in the devil's name. So ho, starboard, starboard. Be, be, be, bous,
bous, bous, cried Panurge; bous, bous, be, be, be, bous, bous, I am lost.
I see neither heaven nor earth; of the four elements we have here only fire
and water left. Bou, bou, bou, bous, bous, bous. Would it were the
pleasure of the worthy divine bounty that I were at this present hour in
the close at Seuille, or at Innocent's the pastry-cook over against the
painted wine-vault at Chinon, though I were to strip to my doublet, and
bake the petti-pasties myself.
Honest man, could not you throw me ashore? you can do a world of good
things, they say. I give you all Salmigondinois, and my large shore full
of whelks, cockles, and periwinkles, if, by your industry, I ever set foot
on firm ground. Alas, alas! I drown. Harkee, my friends, since we cannot
get safe into port, let us come to an anchor in some road, no matter
whither. Drop all your anchors; let us be out of danger, I beseech you.
Here, honest tar, get you into the chains, and heave the lead, an't please
you. Let us know how many fathom water we are in. Sound, friend, in the
Lord Harry's name. Let us know whether a man might here drink easily
without stooping. I am apt to believe one might. Helm a-lee, hoh, cried
the pilot. Helm a-lee; a hand or two at the helm; about ships with her;
helm a-lee, helm a-lee. Stand off from the leech of the sail. Hoh! belay,
here make fast below; hoh, helm a-lee, lash sure the helm a-lee, and let
her drive. Is it come to that? said Pantagruel; our good Saviour then help
us. Let her lie under the sea, cried James Brahier, our chief mate; let
her drive. To prayers, to prayers; let all think on their souls, and fall
to prayers; nor hope to escape but by a miracle. Let us, said Panurge,
make some good pious kind of vow; alas, alas, alas! bou, bou, be, be, be,
bous, bous, bous, oho, oho, oho, oho, let us make a pilgrim; come, come,
let every man club his penny towards it, come on. Here, here, on this
side, said Friar John, in the devil's name. Let her drive, for the Lord's
sake unhang the rudder; hoh, let her drive, let her drive, and let us
drink, I say, of the best and most cheering; d'ye hear, steward? produce,
exhibit; for, d'ye see this, and all the rest will as well go to the devil
out of hand. A pox on that wind-broker Aeolus, with his fluster-blusters.
Sirrah, page, bring me here my drawer (for so he called his breviary); stay
a little here; haul, friend, thus. Odzoons, here is a deal of hail and
thunder to no purpose. Hold fast above, I pray you. When have we
All-saints day? I believe it is the unholy holiday of all the devil's crew.
Alas! said Panurge, Friar John damns himself here as black as buttermilk
for the nonce. Oh, what a good friend I lose in him. Alas, alas! this is
another gats-bout than last year's. We are falling out of Scylla into
Charybdis. Oho! I drown. Confiteor; one poor word or two by way of
testament, Friar John, my ghostly father; good Mr. Abstractor, my crony,
my Achates, Xenomanes, my all. Alas! I drown; two words of testament here
upon this ladder.
A continuation of the storm, with a short discourse on the subject of
making testaments at sea.
To make one's last will, said Epistemon, at this time that we ought to
bestir ourselves and help our seamen, on the penalty of being drowned,
seems to me as idle and ridiculous a maggot as that of some of Caesar's
men, who, at their coming into the Gauls, were mightily busied in making
wills and codicils; bemoaned their fortune and the absence of their spouses
and friends at Rome, when it was absolutely necessary for them to run to
their arms and use their utmost strength against Ariovistus their enemy.
This also is to be as silly as that jolt-headed loblolly of a carter, who,
having laid his waggon fast in a slough, down on his marrow-bones was
calling on the strong-backed deity, Hercules, might and main, to help him
at a dead lift, but all the while forgot to goad on his oxen and lay his
shoulder to the wheels, as it behoved him; as if a Lord have mercy upon us
alone would have got his cart out of the mire.
What will it signify to make your will now? for either we shall come off or
drown for it. If we 'scape, it will not signify a straw to us; for
testaments are of no value or authority but by the death of the testators.
If we are drowned, will it not be drowned too? Prithee, who will transmit
it to the executors? Some kind wave will throw it ashore, like Ulysses,
replied Panurge; and some king's daughter, going to fetch a walk in the
fresco, on the evening will find it, and take care to have it proved and
fulfilled; nay, and have some stately cenotaph erected to my memory, as
Dido had to that of her goodman Sichaeus; Aeneas to Deiphobus, upon the
Trojan shore, near Rhoete; Andromache to Hector, in the city of Buthrot;
Aristotle to Hermias and Eubulus; the Athenians to the poet Euripides; the
Romans to Drusus in Germany, and to Alexander Severus, their emperor, in
the Gauls; Argentier to Callaischre; Xenocrates to Lysidices; Timares to
his son Teleutagoras; Eupolis and Aristodice to their son Theotimus;
Onestus to Timocles; Callimachus to Sopolis, the son of Dioclides; Catullus
to his brother; Statius to his father; Germain of Brie to Herve, the Breton
tarpaulin. Art thou mad, said Friar John, to run on at this rate? Help,
here, in the name of five hundred thousand millions of cartloads of devils,
help! may a shanker gnaw thy moustachios, and the three rows of pock-royals
and cauliflowers cover thy bum and turd-barrel instead of breeches and
codpiece. Codsooks, our ship is almost overset. Ods-death, how shall we
clear her? it is well if she do not founder. What a devilish sea there
runs! She'll neither try nor hull; the sea will overtake her, so we shall
never 'scape; the devil 'scape me. Then Pantagruel was heard to make a sad
exclamation, saying, with a loud voice, Lord save us, we perish; yet not as
we would have it, but thy holy will be done. The Lord and the blessed
Virgin be with us, said Panurge. Holos, alas, I drown; be be be bous, be
bous, bous; in manus. Good heavens, send me some dolphin to carry me safe
on shore, like a pretty little Arion. I shall make shift to sound the
harp, if it be not unstrung. Let nineteen legions of black devils seize
me, said Friar John. (The Lord be with us! whispered Panurge, between his
chattering teeth.) If I come down to thee, I'll show thee to some purpose
that the badge of thy humanity dangles at a calf's breech, thou ragged,
horned, cuckoldy booby--mgna, mgnan, mgnan--come hither and help us, thou
great weeping calf, or may thirty millions of devils leap on thee. Wilt
thou come, sea-calf? Fie; how ugly the howling whelp looks. What, always
the same ditty? Come on now, my bonny drawer. This he said, opening his
breviary. Come forward, thou and I must be somewhat serious for a while;
let me peruse thee stiffly. Beatus vir qui non abiit. Pshaw, I know all
this by heart; let us see the legend of Mons. St. Nicholas.
Horrida tempestas montem turbavit acutum.
Tempest was a mighty flogger of lads at Mountagu College. If pedants be
damned for whipping poor little innocent wretches their scholars, he is,
upon my honour, by this time fixed within Ixion's wheel, lashing the
crop-eared, bobtailed cur that gives it motion. If they are saved for
having whipped innocent lads, he ought to be above the--
An end of the storm.
Shore, shore! cried Pantagruel. Land to, my friends, I see land! Pluck up
a good spirit, boys, 'tis within a kenning. So! we are not far from a
port.--I see the sky clearing up to the northwards.--Look to the
south-east! Courage, my hearts, said the pilot; now she'll bear the hullock
of a sail; the sea is much smoother; some hands aloft to the maintop. Put
the helm a-weather. Steady! steady! Haul your after-mizen bowlines. Haul,
haul, haul! Thus, thus, and no near. Mind your steerage; bring your
main-tack aboard. Clear your sheets; clear your bowlines; port, port. Helm
a-lee. Now to the sheet on the starboard side, thou son of a whore. Thou
art mightily pleased, honest fellow, quoth Friar John, with hearing make
mention of thy mother. Luff, luff, cried the quartermaster that conned the
ship, keep her full, luff the helm. Luff. It is, answered the steersman.
Keep her thus. Get the bonnets fixed. Steady, steady.
That is well said, said Friar John now, this is something like a tansy.
Come, come, come, children, be nimble. Good. Luff, luff, thus. Helm
a-weather. That's well said and thought on. Methinks the storm is almost
over. It was high time, faith; however, the Lord be thanked. Our devils
begin to scamper. Out with all your sails. Hoist your sails. Hoist.
That is spoke like a man, hoist, hoist. Here, a God's name, honest
Ponocrates; thou art a lusty fornicator; the whoreson will get none but
boys. Eusthenes, thou art a notable fellow. Run up to the fore-topsail.
Thus, thus. Well said, i' faith; thus, thus. I dare not fear anything all
this while, for it is holiday. Vea, vea, vea! huzza! This shout of the
seaman is not amiss, and pleases me, for it is holiday. Keep her full
thus. Good. Cheer up, my merry mates all, cried out Epistemon; I see
already Castor on the right. Be, be, bous, bous, bous, said Panurge; I am
much afraid it is the bitch Helen. It is truly Mixarchagenas, returned
Epistemon, if thou likest better that denomination, which the Argives give
him. Ho, ho! I see land too; let her bear in with the harbour; I see a
good many people on the beach; I see a light on an obeliscolychny. Shorten
your sails, said the pilot; fetch the sounding line; we must double that
point of land, and mind the sands. We are clear of them, said the sailors.
Soon after, Away she goes, quoth the pilot, and so doth the rest of our
fleet; help came in good season.
By St. John, said Panurge, this is spoke somewhat like. O the sweet word!
there is the soul of music in it. Mgna, mgna, mgna, said Friar John; if
ever thou taste a drop of it, let the devil's dam taste me, thou ballocky
devil. Here, honest soul, here's a full sneaker of the very best. Bring
the flagons; dost hear, Gymnast: and that same large pasty jambic,
gammonic, as you will have it. Take heed you pilot her in right.
Cheer up, cried out Pantagruel; cheer up, my boys; let us be ourselves
again. Do you see yonder, close by our ship, two barks, three sloops, five
ships, eight pinks, four yawls, and six frigates making towards us, sent by
the good people of the neighbouring island to our relief? But who is this
Ucalegon below, that cries and makes such a sad moan? Were it not that I
hold the mast firmly with both my hands, and keep it straighter than two
hundred tacklings--I would--It is, said Friar John, that poor devil
Panurge, who is troubled with a calf's ague; he quakes for fear when his
belly's full. If, said Pantagruel, he hath been afraid during this
dreadful hurricane and dangerous storm, provided (waiving that) he hath
done his part like a man, I do not value him a jot the less for it. For as
to fear in all encounters is the mark of a heavy and cowardly heart, as
Agamemnon did, who for that reason is ignominiously taxed by Achilles with
having dog's eyes and a stag's heart; so, not to fear when the case is
evidently dreadful is a sign of want or smallness of judgment. Now, if
anything ought to be feared in this life, next to offending God, I will not
say it is death. I will not meddle with the disputes of Socrates and the
academics, that death of itself is neither bad nor to be feared, but I will
affirm that this kind of shipwreck is to be feared, or nothing is. For, as
Homer saith, it is a grievous, dreadful, and unnatural thing to perish at
sea. And indeed Aeneas, in the storm that took his fleet near Sicily, was
grieved that he had not died by the hand of the brave Diomedes, and said
that those were three, nay four times happy, who perished in the
conflagration at Troy. No man here hath lost his life, the Lord our
Saviour be eternally praised for it! but in truth here is a ship sadly out
of order. Well, we must take care to have the damage repaired. Take heed
we do not run aground and bulge her.
How Panurge played the good fellow when the storm was over.
What cheer, ho, fore and aft? quoth Panurge. Oh ho! all is well, the storm
is over. I beseech ye, be so kind as to let me be the first that is sent
on shore; for I would by all means a little untruss a point. Shall I help
you still? Here, let me see, I will coil this rope; I have plenty of
courage, and of fear as little as may be. Give it me yonder, honest tar.
No, no, I have not a bit of fear. Indeed, that same decumane wave that
took us fore and aft somewhat altered my pulse. Down with your sails; well
said. How now, Friar John? you do nothing. Is it time for us to drink
now? Who can tell but St. Martin's running footman Belzebuth may still be
hatching us some further mischief? Shall I come and help you again? Pork
and peas choke me, if I do heartily repent, though too late, not having
followed the doctrine of the good philosopher who tells us that to walk by
the sea and to navigate by the shore are very safe and pleasant things;
just as 'tis to go on foot when we hold our horse by the bridle. Ha! ha!
ha! by G--, all goes well. Shall I help you here too? Let me see, I will
do this as it should be, or the devil's in't.
Epistemon, who had the inside of one of his hands all flayed and bloody,
having held a tackling with might and main, hearing what Pantagruel had
said, told him: You may believe, my lord, I had my share of fear as well
as Panurge; yet I spared no pains in lending my helping hand. I considered
that, since by fatal and unavoidable necessity we must all die, it is the
blessed will of God that we die this or that hour, and this or that kind of
death. Nevertheless, we ought to implore, invoke, pray, beseech, and
supplicate him; but we must not stop there; it behoveth us also to use our
endeavours on our side, and, as the holy writ saith, to co-operate with
him.
You know what C. Flaminius, the consul, said when by Hannibal's policy he
was penned up near the lake of Peruse, alias Thrasymene. Friends, said he
to his soldiers, you must not hope to get out of this place barely by vows
or prayers to the gods; no, 'tis by fortitude and strength we must escape
and cut ourselves a way with the edge of our swords through the midst of
our enemies.
Sallust likewise makes M. Portius Cato say this: The help of the gods is
not obtained by idle vows and womanish complaints; 'tis by vigilance,
labour, and repeated endeavours that all things succeed according to our
wishes and designs. If a man in time of need and danger is negligent,
heartless, and lazy, in vain he implores the gods; they are then justly
angry and incensed against him. The devil take me, said Friar John,--I'll
go his halves, quoth Panurge,--if the close of Seville had not been all
gathered, vintaged, gleaned, and destroyed, if I had only sung contra
hostium insidias (matter of breviary) like all the rest of the monking
devils, and had not bestirred myself to save the vineyard as I did,
despatching the truant picaroons of Lerne with the staff of the cross.
Let her sink or swim a God's name, said Panurge, all's one to Friar John;
he doth nothing; his name is Friar John Do-little; for all he sees me here
a-sweating and puffing to help with all my might this honest tar, first of
the name.--Hark you me, dear soul, a word with you; but pray be not angry.
How thick do you judge the planks of our ship to be? Some two good inches
and upwards, returned the pilot; don't fear. Ods-kilderkins, said Panurge,
it seems then we are within two fingers' breadth of damnation.
Is this one of the nine comforts of matrimony? Ah, dear soul, you do well
to measure the danger by the yard of fear. For my part, I have none on't;
my name is William Dreadnought. As for heart, I have more than enough
on't. I mean none of your sheep's heart; but of wolf's heart--the courage
of a bravo. By the pavilion of Mars, I fear nothing but danger.
How Panurge was said to have been afraid without reason during the storm.
Good morrow, gentlemen, said Panurge; good morrow to you all; you are in
very good health, thanks to heaven and yourselves; you are all heartily
welcome, and in good time. Let us go on shore.--Here, coxswain, get the
ladder over the gunnel; man the sides; man the pinnace, and get her by the
ship's side. Shall I lend you a hand here? I am stark mad for want of
business, and would work like any two yokes of oxen. Truly this is a fine
place, and these look like a very good people. Children, do you want me
still in anything? do not spare the sweat of my body, for God's sake.
Adam--that is, man--was made to labour and work, as the birds were made to
fly. Our Lord's will is that we get our bread with the sweat of our brows,
not idling and doing nothing, like this tatterdemalion of a monk here, this
Friar Jack, who is fain to drink to hearten himself up, and dies for fear.
--Rare weather.--I now find the answer of Anacharsis, the noble philosopher,
very proper. Being asked what ship he reckoned the safest, he replied:
That which is in the harbour. He made a yet better repartee, said
Pantagruel, when somebody inquiring which is greater, the number of the
living or that of the dead, he asked them amongst which of the two they
reckoned those that are at sea, ingeniously implying that they are
continually in danger of death, dying alive, and living die. Portius Cato
also said that there were but three things of which he would repent: if
ever he had trusted his wife with his secret, if he had idled away a day,
and if he had ever gone by sea to a place which he could visit by land. By
this dignified frock of mine, said Friar John to Panurge, friend, thou hast
been afraid during the storm without cause or reason; for thou wert not
born to be drowned, but rather to be hanged and exalted in the air, or to
be roasted in the midst of a jolly bonfire. My lord, would you have a good
cloak for the rain; leave me off your wolf and badger-skin mantle; let
Panurge but be flayed, and cover yourself with his hide. But do not come
near the fire, nor near your blacksmith's forges, a God's name; for in a
moment you will see it in ashes. Yet be as long as you please in the rain,
snow, hail, nay, by the devil's maker, throw yourself or dive down to the
very bottom of the water, I'll engage you'll not be wet at all. Have some
winter boots made of it, they'll never take in a drop of water; make
bladders of it to lay under boys to teach them to swim, instead of corks,
and they will learn without the least danger. His skin, then, said
Pantagruel, should be like the herb called true maiden's hair, which never
takes wet nor moistness, but still keeps dry, though you lay it at the
bottom of the water as long as you please; and for that reason is called
Adiantos.
Friend Panurge, said Friar John, I pray thee never be afraid of water; thy
life for mine thou art threatened with a contrary element. Ay, ay, replied
Panurge, but the devil's cooks dote sometimes, and are apt to make horrid
blunders as well as others; often putting to boil in water what was
designed to be roasted on the fire; like the head-cooks of our kitchen, who
often lard partridges, queests, and stock-doves with intent to roast them,
one would think; but it happens sometimes that they e'en turn the
partridges into the pot to be boiled with cabbages, the queests with leek
pottage, and the stock-doves with turnips. But hark you me, good friends,
I protest before this noble company, that as for the chapel which I vowed
to Mons. St. Nicholas between Quande and Montsoreau, I honestly mean that
it shall be a chapel of rose-water, which shall be where neither cow nor
calf shall be fed; for between you and I, I intend to throw it to the
bottom of the water. Here is a rare rogue for you, said Eusthenes; here is
a pure rogue, a rogue in grain, a rogue enough, a rogue and a half. He is
resolved to make good the Lombardic proverb, Passato el pericolo, gabbato
el santo.
The devil was sick, the devil a monk would be;
The devil was well, the devil a monk was he.
How, after the storm, Pantagruel went on shore in the islands of the
Macreons.
Immediately after we went ashore at the port of an island which they called
the island of the Macreons. The good people of the place received us very
honourably. An old Macrobius (so they called their eldest elderman)
desired Pantagruel to come to the town-house to refresh himself and eat
something, but he would not budge a foot from the mole till all his men
were landed. After he had seen them, he gave order that they should all
change clothes, and that some of all the stores in the fleet should be
brought on shore, that every ship's crew might live well; which was
accordingly done, and God wot how well they all toped and caroused. The
people of the place brought them provisions in abundance. The
Pantagruelists returned them more; as the truth is, theirs were somewhat
damaged by the late storm. When they had well stuffed the insides of their
doublets, Pantagruel desired everyone to lend their help to repair the
damage; which they readily did. It was easy enough to refit there; for all
the inhabitants of the island were carpenters and all such handicrafts as
are seen in the arsenal at Venice. None but the largest island was
inhabited, having three ports and ten parishes; the rest being overrun with
wood and desert, much like the forest of Arden. We entreated the old
Macrobius to show us what was worth seeing in the island; which he did; and
in the desert and dark forest we discovered several old ruined temples,
obelisks, pyramids, monuments, and ancient tombs, with divers inscriptions
and epitaphs; some of them in hieroglyphic characters; others in the Ionic
dialect; some in the Arabic, Agarenian, Slavonian, and other tongues; of
which Epistemon took an exact account. In the interim, Panurge said to
Friar John, Is this the island of the Macreons? Macreon signifies in Greek
an old man, or one much stricken in years. What is that to me? said Friar
John; how can I help it? I was not in the country when they christened it.
Now I think on't, quoth Panurge, I believe the name of mackerel (Motteux
adds, between brackets,--'that's a Bawd in French.') was derived from it;
for procuring is the province of the old, as buttock-riggling is that of
the young. Therefore I do not know but this may be the bawdy or Mackerel
Island, the original and prototype of the island of that name at Paris.
Let's go and dredge for cock-oysters. Old Macrobius asked, in the Ionic
tongue, How, and by what industry and labour, Pantagruel got to their port
that day, there having been such blustering weather and such a dreadful
storm at sea. Pantagruel told him that the Almighty Preserver of mankind
had regarded the simplicity and sincere affection of his servants, who did
not travel for gain or sordid profit, the sole design of their voyage being
a studious desire to know, see, and visit the Oracle of Bacbuc, and take
the word of the Bottle upon some difficulties offered by one of the
company; nevertheless this had not been without great affliction and
evident danger of shipwreck. After that, he asked him what he judged to be
the cause of that terrible tempest, and if the adjacent seas were thus
frequently subject to storms; as in the ocean are the Ratz of Sammaieu,
Maumusson, and in the Mediterranean sea the Gulf of Sataly, Montargentan,
Piombino, Capo Melio in Laconia, the Straits of Gibraltar, Faro di Messina,
and others.
How the good Macrobius gave us an account of the mansion and decease of the
heroes.
The good Macrobius then answered, Friendly strangers, this island is one of
the Sporades; not of your Sporades that lie in the Carpathian sea, but one
of the Sporades of the ocean; in former times rich, frequented, wealthy,
populous, full of traffic, and in the dominions of the rulers of Britain,
but now, by course of time, and in these latter ages of the world, poor and
desolate, as you see. In this dark forest, above seventy-eight thousand
Persian leagues in compass, is the dwelling-place of the demons and heroes
that are grown old, and we believe that some one of them died yesterday;
since the comet which we saw for three days before together, shines no
more; and now it is likely that at his death there arose this horrible
storm; for while they are alive all happiness attends both this and the
adjacent islands, and a settled calm and serenity. At the death of every
one of them, we commonly hear in the forest loud and mournful groans, and
the whole land is infested with pestilence, earthquakes, inundations, and
other calamities; the air with fogs and obscurity, and the sea with storms
and hurricanes. What you tell us seems to me likely enough, said
Pantagruel. For as a torch or candle, as long as it hath life enough and
is lighted, shines round about, disperses its light, delights those that
are near it, yields them its service and clearness, and never causes any
pain or displeasure; but as soon as 'tis extinguished, its smoke and
evaporation infects the air, offends the bystanders, and is noisome to all;
so, as long as those noble and renowned souls inhabit their bodies, peace,
profit, pleasure, and honour never leave the places where they abide; but
as soon as they leave them, both the continent and adjacent islands are
annoyed with great commotions; in the air fogs, darkness, thunder, hail;
tremblings, pulsations, agitations of the earth; storms and hurricanes at
sea; together with sad complaints amongst the people, broaching of
religions, changes in governments, and ruins of commonwealths.
We had a sad instance of this lately, said Epistemon, at the death of that
valiant and learned knight, William du Bellay; during whose life France
enjoyed so much happiness, that all the rest of the world looked upon it
with envy, sought friendship with it, and stood in awe of its power; but
soon after his decease it hath for a considerable time been the scorn of
the rest of the world.
Thus, said Pantagruel, Anchises being dead at Drepani in Sicily, Aeneas was
dreadfully tossed and endangered by a storm; and perhaps for the same
reason Herod, that tyrant and cruel King of Judaea, finding himself near
the pangs of a horrid kind of death--for he died of a phthiriasis, devoured
by vermin and lice; as before him died L. Sylla, Pherecydes the Syrian, the
preceptor of Pythagoras, the Greek poet Alcmaeon, and others--and
foreseeing that the Jews would make bonfires at his death, caused all the
nobles and magistrates to be summoned to his seraglio out of all the
cities, towns, and castles of Judaea, fraudulently pretending that he had
some things of moment to impart to them. They made their personal
appearance; whereupon he caused them all to be shut up in the hippodrome of
the seraglio; then said to his sister Salome and Alexander her husband: I
am certain that the Jews will rejoice at my death; but if you will observe
and perform what I tell you, my funeral shall be honourable, and there will
be a general mourning. As soon as you see me dead, let my guards, to whom
I have already given strict commission to that purpose, kill all the
noblemen and magistrates that are secured in the hippodrome. By these
means all Jewry shall, in spite of themselves, be obliged to mourn and
lament, and foreigners will imagine it to be for my death, as if some
heroic soul had left her body. A desperate tyrant wished as much when he
said, When I die, let earth and fire be mixed together; which was as good
as to say, let the whole world perish. Which saying the tyrant Nero
altered, saying, While I live, as Suetonius affirms it. This detestable
saying, of which Cicero, lib. De Finib., and Seneca, lib. 2, De Clementia,
make mention, is ascribed to the Emperor Tiberius by Dion Nicaeus and
Suidas.
Pantagruel's discourse of the decease of heroic souls; and of the dreadful
prodigies that happened before the death of the late Lord de Langey.
I would not, continued Pantagruel, have missed the storm that hath thus
disordered us, were I also to have missed the relation of these things told
us by this good Macrobius. Neither am I unwilling to believe what he said
of a comet that appears in the sky some days before such a decease. For
some of those souls are so noble, so precious, and so heroic that heaven
gives us notice of their departing some days before it happens. And as a
prudent physician, seeing by some symptoms that his patient draws towards
his end, some days before gives notice of it to his wife, children,
kindred, and friends, that, in that little time he hath yet to live, they
may admonish him to settle all things in his family, to tutor and instruct
his children as much as he can, recommend his relict to his friends in her
widowhood, and declare what he knows to be necessary about a provision for
the orphans; that he may not be surprised by death without making his will,
and may take care of his soul and family; in the same manner the heavens,
as it were joyful for the approaching reception of those blessed souls,
seem to make bonfires by those comets and blazing meteors, which they at
the same time kindly design should prognosticate to us here that in a few
days one of those venerable souls is to leave her body and this terrestrial
globe. Not altogether unlike this was what was formerly done at Athens by
the judges of the Areopagus. For when they gave their verdict to cast or
clear the culprits that were tried before them, they used certain notes
according to the substance of the sentences; by Theta signifying
condemnation to death; by T, absolution; by A, ampliation or a demur, when
the case was not sufficiently examined. Thus having publicly set up those
letters, they eased the relations and friends of the prisoners, and such
others as desired to know their doom, of their doubts. Likewise by these
comets, as in ethereal characters, the heavens silently say to us, Make
haste, mortals, if you would know or learn of the blessed souls anything
concerning the public good or your private interest; for their catastrophe
is near, which being past, you will vainly wish for them afterwards.
The good-natured heavens still do more; and that mankind may be declared
unworthy of the enjoyment of those renowned souls, they fright and astonish
us with prodigies, monsters, and other foreboding signs that thwart the
order of nature.
Of this we had an instance several days before the decease of the heroic
soul of the learned and valiant Chevalier de Langey, of whom you have
already spoken. I remember it, said Epistemon; and my heart still trembles
within me when I think on the many dreadful prodigies that we saw five or
six days before he died. For the Lords D'Assier, Chemant, one-eyed Mailly,
St. Ayl, Villeneufue-la-Guyart, Master Gabriel, physician of Savillan,
Rabelais, Cohuau, Massuau, Majorici, Bullou, Cercu, alias Bourgmaistre,
Francis Proust, Ferron, Charles Girard, Francis Bourre, and many other
friends and servants to the deceased, all dismayed, gazed on each other
without uttering one word; yet not without foreseeing that France would in
a short time be deprived of a knight so accomplished and necessary for its
glory and protection, and that heaven claimed him again as its due. By the
tufted tip of my cowl, cried Friar John, I am e'en resolved to become a
scholar before I die. I have a pretty good headpiece of my own, you must
own. Now pray give me leave to ask you a civil question. Can these same
heroes or demigods you talk of die? May I never be damned if I was not so
much a lobcock as to believe they had been immortal, like so many fine
angels. Heaven forgive me! but this most reverend father, Macroby, tells
us they die at last. Not all, returned Pantagruel.
The Stoics held them all to be mortal, except one, who alone is immortal,
impassible, invisible. Pindar plainly saith that there is no more thread,
that is to say, no more life, spun from the distaff and flax of the
hard-hearted Fates for the goddesses Hamadryades than there is for those
trees that are preserved by them, which are good, sturdy, downright oaks;
whence they derived their original, according to the opinion of Callimachus
and Pausanias in Phoci. With whom concurs Martianus Capella. As for the
demigods, fauns, satyrs, sylvans, hobgoblins, aegipanes, nymphs, heroes, and
demons, several men have, from the total sum, which is the result of the
divers ages calculated by Hesiod, reckoned their life to be 9720 years; that
sum consisting of four special numbers orderly arising from one, the same
added together and multiplied by four every way amounts to forty; these
forties, being reduced into triangles by five times, make up the total of
the aforesaid number. See Plutarch, in his book about the Cessation of
Oracles.
This, said Friar John, is not matter of breviary; I may believe as little
or as much of it as you and I please. I believe, said Pantagruel, that all
intellectual souls are exempted from Atropos's scissors. They are all
immortal, whether they be of angels, or demons, or human; yet I will tell
you a story concerning this that is very strange, but is written and
affirmed by several learned historians.
How Pantagruel related a very sad story of the death of the heroes.
Epitherses, the father of Aemilian the rhetorician, sailing from Greece to
Italy in a ship freighted with divers goods and passengers, at night the
wind failed 'em near the Echinades, some islands that lie between the Morea
and Tunis, and the vessel was driven near Paxos. When they were got
thither, some of the passengers being asleep, others awake, the rest eating
and drinking, a voice was heard that called aloud, Thamous! which cry
surprised them all. This same Thamous was their pilot, an Egyptian by
birth, but known by name only to some few travellers. The voice was heard
a second time calling Thamous, in a frightful tone; and none making answer,
but trembling and remaining silent, the voice was heard a third time, more
dreadful than before.
This caused Thamous to answer: Here am I; what dost thou call me for?
What wilt thou have me do? Then the voice, louder than before, bid him
publish when he should come to Palodes, that the great god Pan was dead.
Epitherses related that all the mariners and passengers, having heard this,
were extremely amazed and frighted; and that, consulting among themselves
whether they had best conceal or divulge what the voice had enjoined,
Thamous said his advice was that if they happened to have a fair wind they
should proceed without mentioning a word on't, but if they chanced to be
becalmed he would publish what he had heard. Now when they were near
Palodes they had no wind, neither were they in any current. Thamous then
getting up on the top of the ship's forecastle, and casting his eyes on the
shore, said that he had been commanded to proclaim that the great god Pan
was dead. The words were hardly out of his mouth, when deep groans, great
lamentations, and doleful shrieks, not of one person, but of many together,
were heard from the land.
The news of this--many being present then--was soon spread at Rome;
insomuch that Tiberius, who was then emperor, sent for this Thamous, and
having heard him gave credit to his words. And inquiring of the learned in
his court and at Rome who was that Pan, he found by their relation that he
was the son of Mercury and Penelope, as Herodotus and Cicero in his third
book of the Nature of the Gods had written before.
For my part, I understand it of that great Saviour of the faithful who was
shamefully put to death at Jerusalem by the envy and wickedness of the
doctors, priests, and monks of the Mosaic law. And methinks my
interpretation is not improper; for he may lawfully be said in the Greek
tongue to be Pan, since he is our all. For all that we are, all that we
live, all that we have, all that we hope, is him, by him, from him, and in
him. He is the good Pan, the great shepherd, who, as the loving shepherd
Corydon affirms, hath not only a tender love and affection for his sheep,
but also for their shepherds. At his death, complaints, sighs, fears, and
lamentations were spread through the whole fabric of the universe, whether
heavens, land, sea, or hell.
The time also concurs with this interpretation of mine; for this most good,
most mighty Pan, our only Saviour, died near Jerusalem during the reign of
Tiberius Caesar.
Pantagruel, having ended this discourse, remained silent and full of
contemplation. A little while after we saw the tears flow out of his eyes
as big as ostrich's eggs. God take me presently if I tell you one single
syllable of a lie in the matter.
How Pantagruel sailed by the Sneaking Island, where Shrovetide reigned.
The jovial fleet being refitted and repaired, new stores taken in, the
Macreons over and above satisfied and pleased with the money spent there by
Pantagruel, our men in better humour than they used to be, if possible, we
merrily put to sea the next day, near sunset, with a delicious fresh gale.
Xenomanes showed us afar off the Sneaking Island, where reigned Shrovetide,
of whom Pantagruel had heard much talk formerly; for that reason he would
gladly have seen him in person, had not Xenomanes advised him to the
contrary; first, because this would have been much out of our way, and then
for the lean cheer which he told us was to be found at that prince's court,
and indeed all over the island.
You can see nothing there for your money, said he, but a huge greedy-guts,
a tall woundy swallower of hot wardens and mussels; a long-shanked
mole-catcher; an overgrown bottler of hay; a mossy-chinned demi-giant, with
a double shaven crown, of lantern breed; a very great loitering noddy-peaked
youngster, banner-bearer to the fish-eating tribe, dictator of mustard-land,
flogger of little children, calciner of ashes, father and foster-father to
physicians, swarming with pardons, indulgences, and stations; a very honest
man; a good catholic, and as brimful of devotion as ever he can hold.
He weeps the three-fourth parts of the day, and never assists at any
weddings; but, give the devil his due, he is the most industrious
larding-stick and skewer-maker in forty kingdoms.
About six years ago, as I passed by Sneaking-land, I brought home a large
skewer from thence, and made a present of it to the butchers of Quande, who
set a great value upon them, and that for a cause. Some time or other, if
ever we live to come back to our own country, I will show you two of them
fastened on the great church porch. His usual food is pickled coats of
mail, salt helmets and head-pieces, and salt sallets; which sometimes makes
him piss pins and needles. As for his clothing, 'tis comical enough o'
conscience, both for make and colour; for he wears grey and cold, nothing
before, and nought behind, with the sleeves of the same.
You will do me a kindness, said Pantagruel, if, as you have described his
clothes, food, actions, and pastimes, you will also give me an account of
his shape and disposition in all his parts. Prithee do, dear cod, said
Friar John, for I have found him in my breviary, and then follow the
movable holy days. With all my heart, answered Xenomanes; we may chance to
hear more of him as we touch at the Wild Island, the dominions of the squab
Chitterlings, his enemies, against whom he is eternally at odds; and were
it not for the help of the noble Carnival, their protector and good
neighbour, this meagre-looked lozelly Shrovetide would long before this
have made sad work among them, and rooted them out of their habitation.
Are these same Chitterlings, said Friar John, male or female, angels or
mortals, women or maids? They are, replied Xenomanes, females in sex,
mortal in kind, some of them maids, others not. The devil have me, said
Friar John, if I ben't for them. What a shameful disorder in nature, is it
not, to make war against women? Let's go back and hack the villain to
pieces. What! meddle with Shrovetide? cried Panurge, in the name of
Beelzebub, I am not yet so weary of my life. No, I'm not yet so mad as
that comes to. Quid juris? Suppose we should find ourselves pent up
between the Chitterlings and Shrovetide? between the anvil and the hammers?
Shankers and buboes! stand off! godzooks, let us make the best of our way.
I bid you good night, sweet Mr. Shrovetide; I recommend to you the
Chitterlings, and pray don't forget the puddings.
How Shrovetide is anatomized and described by Xenomanes.
As for the inward parts of Shrovetide, said Xenomanes; his brain is (at
least, it was in my time) in bigness, colours, substance, and strength,
much like the left cod of a he hand-worm.
The ventricles of his said brain, The stomach, like a belt.
like an auger. The pylorus, like a pitchfork.
The worm-like excrescence, like The windpipe, like an oyster-
a Christmas-box. knife.
The membranes, like a monk's The throat, like a pincushion
cowl. stuffed with oakum.
The funnel, like a mason's chisel. The lungs, like a prebend's
The fornix, like a casket. fur-gown.
The glandula pinealis, like a bag- The heart, like a cope.
pipe. The mediastine, like an earthen
The rete mirabile, like a gutter. cup.
The dug-like processus, like a The pleura, like a crow's bill.
patch. The arteries, like a watch-coat.
The tympanums, like a whirli- The midriff, like a montero-cap.
gig. The liver, like a double-tongued
The rocky bones, like a goose- mattock.
wing. The veins, like a sash-window.
The nape of the neck, like a paper The spleen, like a catcall.
lantern. The guts, like a trammel.
The nerves, like a pipkin. The gall, like a cooper's adze.
The uvula, like a sackbut. The entrails, like a gauntlet.
The palate, like a mitten. The mesentery, like an abbot's
The spittle, like a shuttle. mitre.
The almonds, like a telescope. The hungry gut, like a button.
The bridge of his nose, like a The blind gut, like a breastplate.
wheelbarrow. The colon, like a bridle.
The head of the larynx, like a The arse-gut, like a monk's
vintage-basket. leathern bottle.
The kidneys, like a trowel. The ligaments, like a tinker's
The loins, like a padlock. budget.
The ureters, like a pothook. The bones, like three-cornered
The emulgent veins, like two cheesecakes.
gilliflowers. The marrow, like a wallet.
The spermatic vessels, like a The cartilages, like a field-
cully-mully-puff. tortoise, alias a mole.
The parastata, like an inkpot. The glandules in the mouth, like
The bladder, like a stone-bow. a pruning-knife.
The neck, like a mill-clapper. The animal spirits, like swingeing
The mirach, or lower parts of the fisticuffs.
belly, like a high-crowned hat. The blood-fermenting, like a
The siphach, or its inner rind, multiplication of flirts on the
like a wooden cuff. nose.
The muscles, like a pair of bellows. The urine, like a figpecker.
The tendons, like a hawking- The sperm, like a hundred
glove. ten-penny nails.
And his nurse told me, that being married to Mid-lent, he only begot a good
number of local adverbs and certain double fasts.
His memory he had like a scarf. His undertakings, like the ballast
His common sense, like a buzzing of a galleon.
of bees. His understanding, like a torn
His imagination, like the chime breviary.
of a set of bells. His notions, like snails crawling
His thoughts, like a flight of star- out of strawberries.
lings. His will, like three filberts in a
His conscience, like the unnest- porringer.
ling of a parcel of young His desire, like six trusses of hay.
herons. His judgment, like a shoeing-
His deliberations, like a set of horn.
organs. His discretion, like the truckle of
His repentance, like the carriage a pulley.
of a double cannon. His reason, like a cricket.
Shrovetide's outward parts anatomized.
Shrovetide, continued Xenomanes, is somewhat better proportioned in his
outward parts, excepting the seven ribs which he had over and above the
common shape of men.
His toes were like a virginal on The peritoneum, or caul wherein
an organ. his bowels were wrapped, like
His nails, like a gimlet. a billiard-table.
His feet, like a guitar. His back, like an overgrown rack-
His heels, like a club. bent crossbow.
The soles of his feet, like a cru- The vertebrae, or joints of his
cible. backbone, like a bagpipe.
His legs, like a hawk's lure. His ribs, like a spinning-wheel.
His knees, like a joint-stool. His brisket, like a canopy.
His thighs, like a steel cap. His shoulder-blades, like a mortar.
His hips, like a wimble. His breast, like a game at nine-
His belly as big as a tun, buttoned pins.
after the old fashion, with a His paps, like a hornpipe.
girdle riding over the middle His armpits, like a chequer.
of his bosom. His shoulders, like a hand-barrow.
His navel, like a cymbal. His arms, like a riding-hood.
His groin, like a minced pie. His fingers, like a brotherhood's
His member, like a slipper. andirons.
His purse, like an oil cruet. The fibulae, or lesser bones of his
His genitals, like a joiner's planer. legs, like a pair of stilts.
Their erecting muscles, like a His shin-bones, like sickles.
racket. His elbows, like a mouse-trap.
The perineum, like a flageolet. His hands, like a curry-comb.
His arse-hole, like a crystal look- His neck, like a talboy.
ing-glass. His throat, like a felt to distil hip-
His bum, like a harrow. pocras.
The knob in his throat, like a His loins, like a butter-pot.
barrel, where hanged two His jaws, like a caudle cup.
brazen wens, very fine and His teeth, like a hunter's staff.
harmonious, in the shape of an Of such colt's teeth as his,
hourglass. you will find one at Colonges
His beard, like a lantern. les Royaux in Poitou, and
His chin, like a mushroom. two at La Brosse in Xaintonge,
His ears, like a pair of gloves. on the cellar door.
His nose, like a buskin. His tongue, like a jew's-harp.
His nostrils, like a forehead cloth. His mouth, like a horse-cloth.
His eyebrows, like a dripping-pan. His face embroidered like a mule's
On his left brow was a mark of pack-saddle.
the shape and bigness of an His head contrived like a still.
urinal. His skull, like a pouch.
His eyelids, like a fiddle. The suturae, or seams of his skull,
His eyes, like a comb-box. like the annulus piscatoris, or
His optic nerves, like a tinder- the fisher's signet.
box. His skin, like a gabardine.
His forehead, like a false cup. His epidermis, or outward skin,
His temples, like the cock of a like a bolting-cloth.
cistern. His hair, like a scrubbing-brush.
His cheeks, like a pair of wooden His fur, such as above said.
shoes.
A continuation of Shrovetide's countenance.
'Tis a wonderful thing, continued Xenomanes, to hear and see the state of
Shrovetide.
If he chanced to spit, it was whole When he trembled, it was large
basketsful of goldfinches. venison pasties.
If he blowed his nose, it was When he did sweat, it was old
pickled grigs. ling with butter sauce.
When he wept, it was ducks with When he belched, it was bushels
onion sauce. of oysters.
When he sneezed, it was whole When he muttered, it was lawyers'
tubfuls of mustard. revels.
When he coughed, it was boxes When he hopped about, it was
of marmalade. letters of licence and protec-
When he sobbed, it was water- tions.
cresses. When he stepped back, it was
When he yawned, it was potfuls sea cockle-shells.
of pickled peas. When he slabbered, it was com-
When he sighed, it was dried mon ovens.
neats' tongues. When he was hoarse, it was an
When he whistled, it was a whole entry of morrice-dancers.
scuttleful of green apes. When he broke wind, it was dun
When he snored, it was a whole cows' leather spatterdashes.
panful of fried beans. When he funked, it was washed-
When he frowned, it was soused leather boots.
hogs' feet. When he scratched himself, it
When he spoke, it was coarse was new proclamations.
brown russet cloth; so little When he sung, it was peas in
it was like crimson silk, with cods.
which Parisatis desired that When he evacuated, it was mush-
the words of such as spoke to rooms and morilles.
her son Cyrus, King of Persia, When he puffed, it was cabbages
should be interwoven. with oil, alias caules amb'olif.
When he blowed, it was indulg- When he talked, it was the last
ence money-boxes. year's snow.
When he winked, it was buttered When he dreamt, it was of a
buns. cock and a bull.
When he grumbled, it was March When he gave nothing, so much
cats. for the bearer.
When he nodded, it was iron- If he thought to himself, it was
bound waggons. whimsies and maggots.
When he made mouths, it was If he dozed, it was leases of lands.
broken staves.
What is yet more strange, he used to work doing nothing, and did nothing
though he worked; caroused sleeping, and slept carousing, with his eyes
open, like the hares in our country, for fear of being taken napping by the
Chitterlings, his inveterate enemies; biting he laughed, and laughing bit;
eat nothing fasting, and fasted eating nothing; mumbled upon suspicion,
drank by imagination, swam on the tops of high steeples, dried his clothes
in ponds and rivers, fished in the air, and there used to catch decumane
lobsters; hunted at the bottom of the herring-pond, and caught there
ibexes, stamboucs, chamois, and other wild goats; used to put out the eyes
of all the crows which he took sneakingly; feared nothing but his own
shadow and the cries of fat kids; used to gad abroad some days, like a
truant schoolboy; played with the ropes of bells on festival days of
saints; made a mallet of his fist, and writ on hairy parchment
prognostications and almanacks with his huge pin-case.
Is that the gentleman? said Friar John. He is my man; this is the very
fellow I looked for. I will send him a challenge immediately. This is,
said Pantagruel, a strange and monstrous sort of man, if I may call him a
man. You put me in mind of the form and looks of Amodunt and Dissonance.
How were they made? said Friar John. May I be peeled like a raw onion if
ever I heard a word of them. I'll tell you what I read of them in some
ancient apologues, replied Pantagruel.
Physis--that is to say, Nature--at her first burthen begat Beauty and
Harmony without carnal copulation, being of herself very fruitful and
prolific. Antiphysis, who ever was the counter part of Nature,
immediately, out of a malicious spite against her for her beautiful and
honourable productions, in opposition begot Amodunt and Dissonance by
copulation with Tellumon. Their heads were round like a football, and not
gently flatted on both sides, like the common shape of men. Their ears
stood pricked up like those of asses; their eyes, as hard as those of
crabs, and without brows, stared out of their heads, fixed on bones like
those of our heels; their feet were round like tennis-balls; their arms and
hands turned backwards towards their shoulders; and they walked on their
heads, continually turning round like a ball, topsy-turvy, heels over head.
Yet--as you know that apes esteem their young the handsomest in the world
--Antiphysis extolled her offspring, and strove to prove that their shape
was handsomer and neater than that of the children of Physis, saying that
thus to have spherical heads and feet, and walk in a circular manner,
wheeling round, had something in it of the perfection of the divine power,
which makes all beings eternally turn in that fashion; and that to have our
feet uppermost, and the head below them, was to imitate the Creator of the
universe; the hair being like the roots, and the legs like the branches of
man; for trees are better planted by their roots than they could be by their
branches. By this demonstration she implied that her children were much
more to be praised for being like a standing tree, than those of Physis,
that made a figure of a tree upside down. As for the arms and hands, she
pretended to prove that they were more justly turned towards the shoulders,
because that part of the body ought not to be without defence, while the
forepart is duly fenced with teeth, which a man cannot only use to chew, but
also to defend himself against those things that offend him. Thus, by the
testimony and astipulation of the brute beasts, she drew all the witless
herd and mob of fools into her opinion, and was admired by all brainless and
nonsensical people.
Since that, she begot the hypocritical tribes of eavesdropping dissemblers,
superstitious pope-mongers, and priest-ridden bigots, the frantic
Pistolets, (the demoniacal Calvins, impostors of Geneva,) the scrapers of
benefices, apparitors with the devil in them, and other grinders and
squeezers of livings, herb-stinking hermits, gulligutted dunces of the
cowl, church vermin, false zealots, devourers of the substance of men, and
many more other deformed and ill-favoured monsters, made in spite of
nature.
How Pantagruel discovered a monstrous physeter, or whirlpool, near the Wild
Island.
About sunset, coming near the Wild Island, Pantagruel spied afar off a huge
monstrous physeter (a sort of whale, which some call a whirlpool), that
came right upon us, neighing, snorting, raised above the waves higher than
our main-tops, and spouting water all the way into the air before itself,
like a large river falling from a mountain. Pantagruel showed it to the
pilot and to Xenomanes.
By the pilot's advice the trumpets of the Thalamege were sounded to warn
all the fleet to stand close and look to themselves. This alarm being
given, all the ships, galleons, frigates, brigantines, according to their
naval discipline, placed themselves in the order and figure of an Y
(upsilon), the letter of Pythagoras, as cranes do in their flight, and like
an acute angle, in whose cone and basis the Thalamege placed herself ready
to fight smartly. Friar John with the grenadiers got on the forecastle.
Poor Panurge began to cry and howl worse than ever. Babille-babou, said
he, shrugging up his shoulders, quivering all over with fear, there will be
the devil upon dun. This is a worse business than that t'other day. Let
us fly, let us fly; old Nick take me if it is not Leviathan, described by
the noble prophet Moses in the life of patient Job. It will swallow us
all, ships and men, shag, rag, and bobtail, like a dose of pills. Alas! it
will make no more of us, and we shall hold no more room in its hellish
jaws, than a sugarplum in an ass's throat. Look, look, 'tis upon us; let
us wheel off, whip it away, and get ashore. I believe 'tis the very
individual sea-monster that was formerly designed to devour Andromeda; we
are all undone. Oh! for some valiant Perseus here now to kill the dog.
I'll do its business presently, said Pantagruel; fear nothing. Ods-belly,
said Panurge, remove the cause of my fear then. When the devil would you
have a man be afraid but when there is so much cause? If your destiny be
such as Friar John was saying a while ago, replied Pantagruel, you ought to
be afraid of Pyroeis, Eous, Aethon, and Phlegon, the sun's coach-horses,
that breathe fire at the nostrils; and not of physeters, that spout nothing
but water at the snout and mouth. Their water will not endanger your life;
and that element will rather save and preserve than hurt or endanger you.
Ay, ay, trust to that, and hang me, quoth Panurge; yours is a very pretty
fancy. Ods-fish! did I not give you a sufficient account of the elements'
transmutation, and the blunders that are made of roast for boiled, and
boiled for roast? Alas! here 'tis; I'll go hide myself below. We are dead
men, every mother's son of us. I see upon our main-top that merciless hag
Atropos, with her scissors new ground, ready to cut our threads all at one
snip. Oh! how dreadful and abominable thou art; thou hast drowned a good
many beside us, who never made their brags of it. Did it but spout good,
brisk, dainty, delicious white wine, instead of this damned bitter salt
water, one might better bear with it, and there would be some cause to be
patient; like that English lord, who being doomed to die, and had leave to
choose what kind of death he would, chose to be drowned in a butt of
malmsey. Here it is. Oh, oh! devil! Sathanas! Leviathan! I cannot
abide to look upon thee, thou art so abominably ugly. Go to the bar, go
take the pettifoggers.
How the monstrous physeter was slain by Pantagruel.
The physeter, coming between the ships and the galleons, threw water by
whole tuns upon them, as if it had been the cataracts of the Nile in
Ethiopia. On the other side, arrows, darts, gleaves, javelins, spears,
harping-irons, and partizans, flew upon it like hail. Friar John did not
spare himself in it. Panurge was half dead for fear. The artillery roared
and thundered like mad, and seemed to gall it in good earnest, but did but
little good; for the great iron and brass cannon-shot entering its skin
seemed to melt like tiles in the sun.
Pantagruel then, considering the weight and exigency of the matter,
stretched out his arms and showed what he could do. You tell us, and it is
recorded, that Commudus, the Roman emperor, could shoot with a bow so
dexterously that at a good distance he would let fly an arrow through a
child's fingers and never touch them. You also tell us of an Indian
archer, who lived when Alexander the Great conquered India, and was so
skilful in drawing the bow, that at a considerable distance he would shoot
his arrows through a ring, though they were three cubits long, and their
iron so large and weighty that with them he used to pierce steel cutlasses,
thick shields, steel breastplates, and generally what he did hit, how firm,
resisting, hard, and strong soever it were. You also tell us wonders of
the industry of the ancient Franks, who were preferred to all others in
point of archery; and when they hunted either black or dun beasts, used to
rub the head of their arrows with hellebore, because the flesh of the
venison struck with such an arrow was more tender, dainty, wholesome, and
delicious--paring off, nevertheless, the part that was touched round about.
You also talk of the Parthians, who used to shoot backwards more
dexterously than other nations forwards; and also celebrate the skill of
the Scythians in that art, who sent once to Darius, King of Persia, an
ambassador that made him a present of a bird, a frog, a mouse, and five
arrows, without speaking one word; and being asked what those presents
meant, and if he had commission to say anything, answered that he had not;
which puzzled and gravelled Darius very much, till Gobrias, one of the
seven captains that had killed the magi, explained it, saying to Darius:
By these gifts and offerings the Scythians silently tell you that except
the Persians like birds fly up to heaven, or like mice hide themselves near
the centre of the earth, or like frogs dive to the very bottom of ponds and
lakes, they shall be destroyed by the power and arrows of the Scythians.
The noble Pantagruel was, without comparison, more admirable yet in the art
of shooting and darting; for with his dreadful piles and darts, nearly
resembling the huge beams that support the bridges of Nantes, Saumur,
Bergerac, and at Paris the millers' and the changers' bridges, in length,
size, weight, and iron-work, he at a mile's distance would open an oyster
and never touch the edges; he would snuff a candle without putting it out;
would shoot a magpie in the eye; take off a boot's under-sole, or a
riding-hood's lining, without soiling them a bit; turn over every leaf
of Friar John's breviary, one after another, and not tear one.
With such darts, of which there was good store in the ship, at the first
blow he ran the physeter in at the forehead so furiously that he pierced
both its jaws and tongue; so that from that time to this it no more opened
its guttural trapdoor, nor drew and spouted water. At the second blow he
put out its right eye, and at the third its left; and we had all the
pleasure to see the physeter bearing those three horns in its forehead,
somewhat leaning forwards in an equilateral triangle.
Meanwhile it turned about to and fro, staggering and straying like one
stunned, blinded, and taking his leave of the world. Pantagruel, not
satisfied with this, let fly another dart, which took the monster under the
tail likewise sloping; then with three other on the chine, in a
perpendicular line, divided its flank from the tail to the snout at an
equal distance. Then he larded it with fifty on one side, and after that,
to make even work, he darted as many on its other side; so that the body of
the physeter seemed like the hulk of a galleon with three masts, joined by
a competent dimension of its beams, as if they had been the ribs and
chain-wales of the keel; which was a pleasant sight. The physeter then
giving up the ghost, turned itself upon its back, as all dead fishes do; and
being thus overturned, with the beams and darts upside down in the sea, it
seemed a scolopendra or centipede, as that serpent is described by the
ancient sage Nicander.
How Pantagruel went on shore in the Wild Island, the ancient abode of the
Chitterlings.
The boat's crew of the ship Lantern towed the physeter ashore on the
neighbouring shore, which happened to be the Wild Island, to make an
anatomical dissection of its body and save the fat of its kidneys, which,
they said, was very useful and necessary for the cure of a certain
distemper, which they called want of money. As for Pantagruel, he took no
manner of notice of the monster; for he had seen many such, nay, bigger, in
the Gallic ocean. Yet he condescended to land in the Wild Island, to dry
and refresh some of his men (whom the physeter had wetted and bedaubed), at
a small desert seaport towards the south, seated near a fine pleasant
grove, out of which flowed a delicious brook of fresh, clear, and purling
water. Here they pitched their tents and set up their kitchens; nor did
they spare fuel.
Everyone having shifted as they thought fit, Friar John rang the bell, and
the cloth was immediately laid, and supper brought in. Pantagruel eating
cheerfully with his men, much about the second course perceived certain
little sly Chitterlings clambering up a high tree near the pantry, as still
as so many mice. Which made him ask Xenomanes what kind of creatures these
were, taking them for squirrels, weasels, martins, or ermines. They are
Chitterlings, replied Xenomanes. This is the Wild Island of which I spoke
to you this morning; there hath been an irreconcilable war this long time
between them and Shrovetide, their malicious and ancient enemy. I believe
that the noise of the guns which we fired at the physeter hath alarmed
them, and made them fear their enemy was come with his forces to surprise
them, or lay the island waste, as he hath often attempted to do; though he
still came off but bluely, by reason of the care and vigilance of the
Chitterlings, who (as Dido said to Aeneas's companions that would have
landed at Carthage without her leave or knowledge) were forced to watch and
stand upon their guard, considering the malice of their enemy and the
neighbourhood of his territories.
Pray, dear friend, said Pantagruel, if you find that by some honest means
we may bring this war to an end, and reconcile them together, give me
notice of it; I will use my endeavours in it with all my heart, and spare
nothing on my side to moderate and accommodate the points in dispute
between both parties.
That's impossible at this time, answered Xenomanes. About four years ago,
passing incognito by this country, I endeavoured to make a peace, or at
least a long truce among them; and I had certainly brought them to be good
friends and neighbours if both one and the other parties would have yielded
to one single article. Shrovetide would not include in the treaty of peace
the wild puddings nor the highland sausages, their ancient gossips and
confederates. The Chitterlings demanded that the fort of Cacques might be
under their government, as is the Castle of Sullouoir, and that a parcel of
I don't know what stinking villains, murderers, robbers, that held it then,
should be expelled. But they could not agree in this, and the terms that
were offered seemed too hard to either party. So the treaty broke off, and
nothing was done. Nevertheless, they became less severe, and gentler
enemies than they were before; but since the denunciation of the national
Council of Chesil, whereby they were roughly handled, hampered, and cited;
whereby also Shrovetide was declared filthy, beshitten, and berayed, in
case he made any league or agreement with them; they are grown wonderfully
inveterate, incensed, and obstinate against one another, and there is no
way to remedy it. You might sooner reconcile cats and rats, or hounds and
hares together.
How the wild Chitterlings laid an ambuscado for Pantagruel.
While Xenomanes was saying this, Friar John spied twenty or thirty young
slender-shaped Chitterlings posting as fast as they could towards their
town, citadel, castle, and fort of Chimney, and said to Pantagruel, I smell
a rat; there will be here the devil upon two sticks, or I am much out.
These worshipful Chitterlings may chance to mistake you for Shrovetide,
though you are not a bit like him. Let us once in our lives leave our
junketing for a while, and put ourselves in a posture to give 'em a
bellyful of fighting, if they would be at that sport. There can be no
false Latin in this, said Xenomanes; Chitterlings are still Chitterlings,
always double-hearted and treacherous.
Pantagruel then arose from table to visit and scour the thicket, and
returned presently; having discovered, on the left, an ambuscade of squab
Chitterlings; and on the right, about half a league from thence, a large
body of huge giant-like armed Chitterlings ranged in battalia along a
little hill, and marching furiously towards us at the sound of bagpipes,
sheep's paunches, and bladders, the merry fifes and drums, trumpets, and
clarions, hoping to catch us as Moss caught his mare. By the conjecture of
seventy-eight standards which we told, we guessed their number to be two
and forty thousand, at a modest computation.
Their order, proud gait, and resolute looks made us judge that they were
none of your raw, paltry links, but old warlike Chitterlings and Sausages.
From the foremost ranks to the colours they were all armed cap-a-pie with
small arms, as we reckoned them at a distance, yet very sharp and
case-hardened. Their right and left wings were lined with a great number of
forest puddings, heavy pattipans, and horse sausages, all of them tall and
proper islanders, banditti, and wild.
Pantagruel was very much daunted, and not without cause; though Epistemon
told him that it might be the use and custom of the Chitterlingonians to
welcome and receive thus in arms their foreign friends, as the noble kings
of France are received and saluted at their first coming into the chief
cities of the kingdom after their advancement to the crown. Perhaps, said
he, it may be the usual guard of the queen of the place, who, having notice
given her by the junior Chitterlings of the forlorn hope whom you saw on
the tree, of the arrival of your fine and pompous fleet, hath judged that
it was without doubt some rich and potent prince, and is come to visit you
in person.
Pantagruel, little trusting to this, called a council, to have their advice
at large in this doubtful case. He briefly showed them how this way of
reception with arms had often, under colour of compliment and friendship,
been fatal. Thus, said he, the Emperor Antonius Caracalla at one time
destroyed the citizens of Alexandria, and at another time cut off the
attendants of Artabanus, King of Persia, under colour of marrying his
daughter, which, by the way, did not pass unpunished, for a while after
this cost him his life.
Thus Jacob's children destroyed the Sichemites, to revenge the rape of
their sister Dinah. By such another hypocritical trick Gallienus, the
Roman emperor, put to death the military men in Constantinople. Thus,
under colour of friendship, Antonius enticed Artavasdes, King of Armenia;
then, having caused him to be bound in heavy chains and shackled, at last
put him to death.
We find a thousand such instances in history; and King Charles VI. is
justly commended for his prudence to this day, in that, coming back
victorious over the Ghenters and other Flemings to his good city of Paris,
and when he came to Bourget, a league from thence, hearing that the
citizens with their mallets--whence they got the name of Maillotins--were
marched out of town in battalia, twenty thousand strong, he would not go
into the town till they had laid down their arms and retired to their
respective homes; though they protested to him that they had taken arms
with no other design than to receive him with the greater demonstration of
honour and respect.
How Pantagruel sent for Colonel Maul-chitterling and Colonel Cut-pudding;
with a discourse well worth your hearing about the names of places and
persons.
The resolution of the council was that, let things be how they would, it
behoved the Pantagruelists to stand upon their guard. Therefore Carpalin
and Gymnast were ordered by Pantagruel to go for the soldiers that were on
board the Cup galley, under the command of Colonel Maul-chitterling, and
those on board the Vine-tub frigate, under the command of Colonel
Cut-pudding the younger. I will ease Gymnast of that trouble, said Panurge,
who wanted to be upon the run; you may have occasion for him here. By
this worthy frock of mine, quoth Friar John, thou hast a mind to slip thy
neck out of the collar and absent thyself from the fight, thou
white-livered son of a dunghill! Upon my virginity thou wilt never come
back. Well, there can be no great loss in thee; for thou wouldst do nothing
here but howl, bray, weep, and dishearten the good soldiers. I will
certainly come back, said Panurge, Friar John, my ghostly father, and
speedily too; do but take care that these plaguy Chitterlings do not board
our ships. All the while you will be a-fighting I will pray heartily for
your victory, after the example of the valiant captain and guide of the
people of Israel, Moses. Having said this, he wheeled off.
Then said Epistemon to Pantagruel: The denomination of these two colonels
of yours, Maul-chitterling and Cut-pudding, promiseth us assurance,
success, and victory, if those Chitterlings should chance to set upon us.
You take it rightly, said Pantagruel, and it pleaseth me to see you foresee
and prognosticate our victory by the names of our colonels.
This way of foretelling by names is not new; it was in old times celebrated
and religiously observed by the Pythagoreans. Several great princes and
emperors have formerly made good use of it. Octavianus Augustus, second
emperor of the Romans, meeting on a day a country fellow named Eutychus
--that is, fortunate--driving an ass named Nicon--that is, in Greek,
Victorian--moved by the signification of the ass's and ass-driver's names,
remained assured of all prosperity and victory.
The Emperor Vespasian being once all alone at prayers in the temple of
Serapis, at the sight and unexpected coming of a certain servant of his
named Basilides--that is, royal--whom he had left sick a great way behind,
took hopes and assurance of obtaining the empire of the Romans. Regilian
was chosen emperor by the soldiers for no other reason but the
signification of his name. See the Cratylus of the divine Plato. (By my
thirst, I will read it, said Rhizotome; I hear you so often quote it.) See
how the Pythagoreans, by reason of the names and numbers, conclude that
Patroclus was to fall by the hand of Hector; Hector by Achilles; Achilles
by Paris; Paris by Philoctetes. I am quite lost in my understanding when I
reflect upon the admirable invention of Pythagoras, who by the number,
either even or odd, of the syllables of every name, would tell you of what
side a man was lame, hulch-backed, blind, gouty, troubled with the palsy,
pleurisy, or any other distemper incident to humankind; allotting even
numbers to the left (Motteux reads--'even numbers to the Right, and odd
ones to the Left.'), and odd ones to the right side of the body.
Indeed, said Epistemon, I saw this way of syllabizing tried at Xaintes at a
general procession, in the presence of that good, virtuous, learned and
just president, Brian Vallee, Lord of Douhait. When there went by a man or
woman that was either lame, blind of one eye, or humpbacked, he had an
account brought him of his or her name; and if the syllables of the name
were of an odd number, immediately, without seeing the persons, he declared
them to be deformed, blind, lame, or crooked of the right side; and of the
left, if they were even in number; and such indeed we ever found them.
By this syllabical invention, said Pantagruel, the learned have affirmed
that Achilles kneeling was wounded by the arrow of Paris in the right heel,
for his name is of odd syllables (here we ought to observe that the
ancients used to kneel the right foot); and that Venus was also wounded
before Troy in the left hand, for her name in Greek is Aphrodite, of four
syllables; Vulcan lamed of his left foot for the same reason; Philip, King
of Macedon, and Hannibal, blind of the right eye; not to speak of
sciaticas, broken bellies, and hemicranias, which may be distinguished by
this Pythagorean reason.
But returning to names: do but consider how Alexander the Great, son of
King Philip, of whom we spoke just now, compassed his undertaking merely by
the interpretation of a name. He had besieged the strong city of Tyre, and
for several weeks battered it with all his power; but all in vain. His
engines and attempts were still baffled by the Tyrians, which made him
finally resolve to raise the siege, to his great grief; foreseeing the
great stain which such a shameful retreat would be to his reputation. In
this anxiety and agitation of mind he fell asleep and dreamed that a satyr
was come into his tent, capering, skipping, and tripping it up and down,
with his goatish hoofs, and that he strove to lay hold on him. But the
satyr still slipped from him, till at last, having penned him up into a
corner, he took him. With this he awoke, and telling his dream to the
philosophers and sages of his court, they let him know that it was a
promise of victory from the gods, and that he should soon be master of
Tyre; the word satyros divided in two being sa Tyros, and signifying Tyre
is thine; and in truth, at the next onset, he took the town by storm, and
by a complete victory reduced that stubborn people to subjection.
On the other hand, see how, by the signification of one word, Pompey fell
into despair. Being overcome by Caesar at the battle of Pharsalia, he had
no other way left to escape but by flight; which attempting by sea, he
arrived near the island of Cyprus, and perceived on the shore near the city
of Paphos a beautiful and stately palace; now asking the pilot what was the
name of it, he told him that it was called kakobasilea, that is, evil king;
which struck such a dread and terror in him that he fell into despair, as
being assured of losing shortly his life; insomuch that his complaints,
sighs, and groans were heard by the mariners and other passengers. And
indeed, a while after, a certain strange peasant, called Achillas, cut off
his head.
To all these examples might be added what happened to L. Paulus Emilius
when the senate elected him imperator, that is, chief of the army which
they sent against Perses, King of Macedon. That evening returning home to
prepare for his expedition, and kissing a little daughter of his called
Trasia, she seemed somewhat sad to him. What is the matter, said he, my
chicken? Why is my Trasia thus sad and melancholy? Daddy, replied the
child, Persa is dead. This was the name of a little bitch which she loved
mightily. Hearing this, Paulus took assurance of a victory over Perses.
If time would permit us to discourse of the sacred Hebrew writ, we might
find a hundred noted passages evidently showing how religiously they
observed proper names and their significations.
He had hardly ended this discourse, when the two colonels arrived with
their soldiers, all well armed and resolute. Pantagruel made them a short
speech, entreating them to behave themselves bravely in case they were
attacked; for he could not yet believe that the Chitterlings were so
treacherous; but he bade them by no means to give the first offence, giving
them Carnival for the watchword.
How Chitterlings are not to be slighted by men.
You shake your empty noddles now, jolly topers, and do not believe what I
tell you here, any more than if it were some tale of a tub. Well, well, I
cannot help it. Believe it if you will; if you won't, let it alone. For
my part, I very well know what I say. It was in the Wild Island, in our
voyage to the Holy Bottle. I tell you the time and place; what would you
have more? I would have you call to mind the strength of the ancient
giants that undertook to lay the high mountain Pelion on the top of Ossa,
and set among those the shady Olympus, to dash out the gods' brains,
unnestle them, and scour their heavenly lodgings. Theirs was no small
strength, you may well think, and yet they were nothing but Chitterlings
from the waist downwards, or at least serpents, not to tell a lie for the
matter.
The serpent that tempted Eve, too, was of the Chitterling kind, and yet it
is recorded of him that he was more subtle than any beast of the field.
Even so are Chitterlings. Nay, to this very hour they hold in some
universities that this same tempter was the Chitterling called Ithyphallus,
into which was transformed bawdy Priapus, arch-seducer of females in
paradise, that is, a garden, in Greek.
Pray now tell me who can tell but that the Swiss, now so bold and warlike,
were formerly Chitterlings? For my part, I would not take my oath to the
contrary. The Himantopodes, a nation very famous in Ethiopia, according to
Pliny's description, are Chitterlings, and nothing else. If all this will
not satisfy your worships, or remove your incredulity, I would have you
forthwith (I mean drinking first, that nothing be done rashly) visit
Lusignan, Parthenay, Vouant, Mervant, and Ponzauges in Poitou. There you
will find a cloud of witnesses, not of your affidavit-men of the right
stamp, but credible time out of mind, that will take their corporal oath,
on Rigome's knuckle-bone, that Melusina their founder or foundress, which
you please, was woman from the head to the prick-purse, and thence
downwards was a serpentine Chitterling, or if you'll have it otherwise, a
Chitterlingdized serpent. She nevertheless had a genteel and noble gait,
imitated to this very day by your hop-merchants of Brittany, in their
paspie and country dances.
What do you think was the cause of Erichthonius's being the first inventor
of coaches, litters, and chariots? Nothing but because Vulcan had begot
him with Chitterlingdized legs, which to hide he chose to ride in a litter,
rather than on horseback; for Chitterlings were not yet in esteem at that
time.
The Scythian nymph, Ora, was likewise half woman and half Chitterling, and
yet seemed so beautiful to Jupiter that nothing could serve him but he must
give her a touch of his godship's kindness; and accordingly he had a brave
boy by her, called Colaxes; and therefore I would have you leave off
shaking your empty noddles at this, as if it were a story, and firmly
believe that nothing is truer than the gospel.
How Friar John joined with the cooks to fight the Chitterlings.
Friar John seeing these furious Chitterlings thus boldly march up, said to
Pantagruel, Here will be a rare battle of hobby-horses, a pretty kind of
puppet-show fight, for aught I see. Oh! what mighty honour and wonderful
glory will attend our victory! I would have you only be a bare spectator
of this fight, and for anything else leave me and my men to deal with them.
What men? said Pantagruel. Matter of breviary, replied Friar John. How
came Potiphar, who was head-cook of Pharaoh's kitchens, he that bought
Joseph, and whom the said Joseph might have made a cuckold if he had not
been a Joseph; how came he, I say, to be made general of all the horse in
the kingdom of Egypt? Why was Nabuzardan, King Nebuchadnezzar's head-cook,
chosen to the exclusion of all other captains to besiege and destroy
Jerusalem? I hear you, replied Pantagruel. By St. Christopher's whiskers,
said Friar John, I dare lay a wager that it was because they had formerly
engaged Chitterlings, or men as little valued; whom to rout, conquer, and
destroy, cooks are without comparison more fit than cuirassiers and
gendarmes armed at all points, or all the horse and foot in the world.
You put me in mind, said Pantagruel, of what is written amongst the
facetious and merry sayings of Cicero. During the more than civil wars
between Caesar and Pompey, though he was much courted by the first, he
naturally leaned more to the side of the latter. Now one day hearing that
the Pompeians in a certain rencontre had lost a great many men, he took a
fancy to visit their camp. There he perceived little strength, less
courage, but much disorder. From that time, foreseeing that things would
go ill with them, as it since happened, he began to banter now one and then
another, and be very free of his cutting jests; so some of Pompey's
captains, playing the good fellows to show their assurance, told him, Do
you see how many eagles we have yet? (They were then the device of the
Romans in war.) They might be of use to you, replied Cicero, if you had to
do with magpies.
Thus, seeing we are to fight Chitterlings, pursued Pantagruel, you infer
thence that it is a culinary war, and have a mind to join with the cooks.
Well, do as you please, I'll stay here in the meantime, and wait for the
event of the rumpus.
Friar John went that very moment among the sutlers, into the cooks' tents,
and told them in a pleasing manner: I must see you crowned with honour and
triumph this day, my lads; to your arms are reserved such achievements as
never yet were performed within the memory of man. Ods-belly, do they make
nothing of the valiant cooks? Let us go fight yonder fornicating
Chitterlings! I'll be your captain. But first let's drink, boys. Come
on! let us be of good cheer. Noble captain, returned the kitchen tribe,
this was spoken like yourself; bravely offered. Huzza! we are all at your
excellency's command, and we live and die by you. Live, live, said Friar
John, a God's name; but die by no means. That is the Chitterlings' lot;
they shall have their bellyful of it. Come on then, let us put ourselves
in order; Nabuzardan's the word.
How Friar John fitted up the sow; and of the valiant cooks that went into
it.
Then, by Friar John's order, the engineers and their workmen fitted up the
great sow that was in the ship Leathern Bottle. It was a wonderful
machine, so contrived that, by means of large engines that were round about
it in rows, it throw'd forked iron bars and four-squared steel bolts; and
in its hold two hundred men at least could easily fight, and be sheltered.
It was made after the model of the sow of Riole, by the means of which
Bergerac was retaken from the English in the reign of Charles the Sixth.
Here are the names of the noble and valiant cooks who went into the sow, as
the Greeks did into the Trojan horse:
Sour-sauce. Crisp-pig. Carbonado.
Sweet-meat. Greasy-slouch. Sop-in-pan.
Greedy-gut. Fat-gut. Pick-fowl.
Liquorice-chops. Bray-mortar. Mustard-pot.
Soused-pork. Lick-sauce. Hog's-haslet.
Slap-sauce. Hog's-foot. Chopped-phiz.
Cock-broth. Hodge-podge. Gallimaufry.
Slipslop.
All these noble cooks in their coat-of-arms did bear, in a field gules, a
larding-pin vert, charged with a chevron argent.
Lard, hog's-lard. Pinch-lard. Snatch-lard.
Nibble-lard. Top-lard. Gnaw-lard.
Filch-lard. Pick-lard. Scrape-lard.
Fat-lard. Save-lard. Chew-lard.
Gaillard (by syncope) born near Rambouillet. The said culinary doctor's
name was Gaillardlard, in the same manner as you use to say idolatrous for
idololatrous.
Stiff-lard. Cut-lard. Waste-lard.
Watch-lard. Mince-lard. Ogle-lard.
Sweet-lard. Dainty-lard. Weigh-lard.
Eat-lard. Fresh-lard. Gulch-lard.
Snap-lard. Rusty-lard. Eye-lard.
Catch-lard.
Names unknown among the Marranes and Jews.
Ballocky. Thirsty. Porridge-pot.
Pick-sallat. Kitchen-stuff. Lick-dish.
Broil-rasher. Verjuice. Salt-gullet.
Coney-skin. Save-dripping. Snail-dresser.
Dainty-chops. Watercress. Soup-monger.
Pie-wright. Scrape-turnip. Brewis-belly.
Pudding-pan. Trivet. Chine-picker.
Toss-pot. Monsieur Ragout. Suck-gravy.
Mustard-sauce. Crack-pipkin. Macaroon.
Claret-sauce. Scrape-pot. Skewer-maker.
Swill-broth.
Smell-smock. He was afterwards taken from the kitchen and removed to
chamber-practice, for the service of the noble Cardinal Hunt-venison.
Rot-roast. Hog's gullet. Fox-tail.
Dish-clout. Sirloin. Fly-flap.
Save-suet. Spit-mutton. Old Grizzle.
Fire-fumbler. Fritter-frier. Ruff-belly.
Pillicock. Flesh-smith. Saffron-sauce.
Long-tool. Cram-gut. Strutting-tom.
Prick-pride. Tuzzy-mussy. Slashed-snout.
Prick-madam. Jacket-liner. Smutty-face.
Pricket. Guzzle-drink.
Mondam, that first invented madam's sauce, and for that discovery was thus
called in the Scotch-French dialect.
Loblolly. Sloven. Trencher-man.
Slabber-chops. Swallow-pitcher. Goodman Goosecap.
Scum-pot. Wafer-monger. Munch-turnip.
Gully-guts. Snap-gobbet. Pudding-bag.
Rinse-pot. Scurvy-phiz. Pig-sticker.
Drink-spiller.
Robert. He invented Robert's sauce, so good and necessary for roasted
coneys, ducks, fresh pork, poached eggs, salt fish, and a thousand other
such dishes.
Cold-eel. Frying-pan. Big-snout.
Thornback. Man of dough. Lick-finger.
Gurnard. Sauce-doctor. Tit-bit.
Grumbling-gut. Waste-butter. Sauce-box.
Alms-scrip. Shitbreech. All-fours.
Taste-all. Thick-brawn. Whimwham.
Scrap-merchant. Tom T--d. Baste-roast.
Belly-timberman. Mouldy-crust. Gaping-hoyden.
Hashee. Hasty. Calf's-pluck.
Frig-palate. Red-herring. Leather-breeches.
Powdering-tub. Cheesecake.
All these noble cooks went into the sow, merry, cheery, hale, brisk, old
dogs at mischief, and ready to fight stoutly. Friar John ever and anon
waving his huge scimitar, brought up the rear, and double-locked the doors
on the inside.
How Pantagruel broke the Chitterlings at the knees.
The Chitterlings advanced so near that Pantagruel perceived that they
stretched their arms and already began to charge their lances, which caused
him to send Gymnast to know what they meant, and why they thus, without the
least provocation, came to fall upon their old trusty friends, who had
neither said nor done the least ill thing to them. Gymnast being advanced
near their front, bowed very low, and said to them as loud as ever he
could: We are friends, we are friends; all, all of us your friends, yours,
and at your command; we are for Carnival, your old confederate. Some have
since told me that he mistook, and said cavernal instead of carnival.
Whatever it was, the word was no sooner out of his mouth but a huge little
squab Sausage, starting out of the front of their main body, would have
griped him by the collar. By the helmet of Mars, said Gymnast, I will
swallow thee; but thou shalt only come in in chips and slices; for, big as
thou art, thou couldst never come in whole. This spoke, he lugs out his
trusty sword, Kiss-mine-arse (so he called it) with both his fists, and cut
the Sausage in twain. Bless me, how fat the foul thief was! it puts me in
mind of the huge bull of Berne, that was slain at Marignan when the drunken
Swiss were so mauled there. Believe me, it had little less than four
inches' lard on its paunch.
The Sausage's job being done, a crowd of others flew upon Gymnast, and had
most scurvily dragged him down when Pantagruel with his men came up to his
relief. Then began the martial fray, higgledy-piggledy. Maul-chitterling
did maul chitterlings; Cut-pudding did cut puddings; Pantagruel did break
the Chitterlings at the knees; Friar John played at least in sight within
his sow, viewing and observing all things; when the Pattipans that lay in
ambuscade most furiously sallied out upon Pantagruel.
Friar John, who lay snug all this while, by that time perceiving the rout
and hurlyburly, set open the doors of his sow and sallied out with his
merry Greeks, some of them armed with iron spits, others with andirons,
racks, fire-shovels, frying-pans, kettles, grid-irons, oven forks, tongs,
dripping pans, brooms, iron pots, mortars, pestles, all in battle array,
like so many housebreakers, hallooing and roaring out all together most
frightfully, Nabuzardan, Nabuzardan, Nabuzardan. Thus shouting and hooting
they fought like dragons, and charged through the Pattipans and Sausages.
The Chitterlings perceiving this fresh reinforcement, and that the others
would be too hard for 'em, betook themselves to their heels, scampering off
with full speed, as if the devil had come for them. Friar John, with an
iron crow, knocked them down as fast as hops; his men, too, were not
sparing on their side. Oh, what a woeful sight it was! the field was all
over strewed with heaps of dead or wounded Chitterlings; and history
relates that had not heaven had a hand in it, the Chitterling tribe had
been totally routed out of the world by the culinary champions. But there
happened a wonderful thing, you may believe as little or as much of it as
you please.
From the north flew towards us a huge, fat, thick, grizzly swine, with long
and large wings, like those of a windmill; its plumes red crimson, like
those of a phenicoptere (which in Languedoc they call flaman); its eyes
were red, and flaming like a carbuncle; its ears green, like a Prasin
emerald; its teeth like a topaz; its tail long and black, like jet; its
feet white, diaphanous and transparent like a diamond, somewhat broad, and
of the splay kind, like those of geese, and as Queen Dick's used to be at
Toulouse in the days of yore. About its neck it wore a gold collar, round
which were some Ionian characters, whereof I could pick out but two words,
US ATHENAN, hog-teaching Minerva.
The sky was clear before; but at that monster's appearance it changed so
mightily for the worse that we were all amazed at it. As soon as the
Chitterlings perceived the flying hog, down they all threw their weapons
and fell on their knees, lifting up their hands joined together, without
speaking one word, in a posture of adoration. Friar John and his party
kept on mincing, felling, braining, mangling, and spitting the Chitterlings
like mad; but Pantagruel sounded a retreat, and all hostility ceased.
The monster having several times hovered backwards and forwards between the
two armies, with a tail-shot voided above twenty-seven butts of mustard on
the ground; then flew away through the air, crying all the while, Carnival,
Carnival, Carnival.
How Pantagruel held a treaty with Niphleseth, Queen of the Chitterlings.
The monster being out of sight, and the two armies remaining silent,
Pantagruel demanded a parley with the lady Niphleseth, Queen of the
Chitterlings, who was in her chariot by the standards; and it was easily
granted. The queen alighted, courteously received Pantagruel, and was glad
to see him. Pantagruel complained to her of this breach of peace; but she
civilly made her excuse, telling him that a false information had caused
all this mischief; her spies having brought her word that Shrovetide, their
mortal foe, was landed, and spent his time in examining the urine of
physeters.
She therefore entreated him to pardon them their offence, telling him that
sir-reverence was sooner found in Chitterlings than gall; and offering, for
herself and all her successors, to hold of him and his the whole island and
country; to obey him in all his commands, be friends to his friends, and
foes to his foes; and also to send every year, as an acknowledgment of
their homage, a tribute of seventy-eight thousand royal Chitterlings, to
serve him at his first course at table six months in the year; which was
punctually performed. For the next day she sent the aforesaid quantity of
royal Chitterlings to the good Gargantua, under the conduct of young
Niphleseth, infanta of the island.
The good Gargantua made a present of them to the great King of Paris. But
by change of air, and for want of mustard (the natural balsam and restorer
of Chitterlings), most of them died. By the great king's particular grant
they were buried in heaps in a part of Paris to this day called La Rue
pavee d'Andouilles, the street paved with Chitterlings. At the request of
the ladies at his court young Niphleseth was preserved, honourably used,
and since that married to heart's content; and was the mother of many
children, for which heaven be praised.
Pantagruel civilly thanked the queen, forgave all offences, refused the
offer she had made of her country, and gave her a pretty little knife.
After that he asked several nice questions concerning the apparition of
that flying hog. She answered that it was the idea of Carnival, their
tutelary god in time of war, first founder and original of all the
Chitterling race; for which reason he resembled a hog, for Chitterlings
drew their extraction from hogs.
Pantagruel asking to what purpose and curative indication he had voided so
much mustard on the earth, the queen replied that mustard was their
sanc-greal and celestial balsam, of which, laying but a little in the wounds
of the fallen Chitterlings, in a very short time the wounded were healed and
the dead restored to life. Pantagruel held no further discourse with the
queen, but retired a-shipboard. The like did all the boon companions, with
their implements of destruction and their huge sow.
How Pantagruel went into the island of Ruach.
Two days after we arrived at the island of Ruach; and I swear to you, by
the celestial hen and chickens, that I found the way of living of the
people so strange and wonderful that I can't, for the heart's blood of me,
half tell it you. They live on nothing but wind, eat nothing but wind, and
drink nothing but wind. They have no other houses but weathercocks. They
sow no other seeds but the three sorts of windflowers, rue, and herbs that
may make one break wind to the purpose; these scour them off carefully.
The common sort of people to feed themselves make use of feather, paper, or
linen fans, according to their abilities. As for the rich, they live by
the means of windmills.
When they would have some noble treat, the tables are spread under one or
two windmills. There they feast as merry as beggars, and during the meal
their whole talk is commonly of the goodness, excellency, salubrity, and
rarity of winds; as you, jolly topers, in your cups philosophize and argue
upon wines. The one praises the south-east, the other the south-west; this
the west and by south, and this the east and by north; another the west,
and another the east; and so of the rest. As for lovers and amorous
sparks, no gale for them like a smock-gale. For the sick they use bellows
as we use clysters among us.
Oh! said to me a little diminutive swollen bubble, that I had now but a
bladderful of that same Languedoc wind which they call Cierce. The famous
physician, Scurron, passing one day by this country, was telling us that it
is so strong that it will make nothing of overturning a loaded waggon. Oh!
what good would it not do my Oedipodic leg. The biggest are not the best;
but, said Panurge, rather would I had here a large butt of that same good
Languedoc wine that grows at Mirevaux, Canteperdrix, and Frontignan.
I saw a good likely sort of a man there, much resembling Ventrose, tearing
and fuming in a grievous fret with a tall burly groom and a pimping little
page of his, laying them on, like the devil, with a buskin. Not knowing
the cause of his anger, at first I thought that all this was by the
doctor's advice, as being a thing very healthy to the master to be in a
passion and to his man to be banged for it. But at last I heard him taxing
his man with stealing from him, like a rogue as he was, the better half of
a large leathern bag of an excellent southerly wind, which he had carefully
laid up, like a hidden reserve, against the cold weather.
They neither exonerate, dung, piss, nor spit in that island; but, to make
amends, they belch, fizzle, funk, and give tail-shots in abundance. They
are troubled with all manner of distempers; and, indeed, all distempers are
engendered and proceed from ventosities, as Hippocrates demonstrates, lib.
De Flatibus. But the most epidemical among them is the wind-cholic. The
remedies which they use are large clysters, whereby they void store of
windiness. They all die of dropsies and tympanies, the men farting and the
women fizzling; so that their soul takes her leave at the back-door.
Some time after, walking in the island, we met three hairbrained airy
fellows, who seemed mightily puffed up, and went to take their pastime and
view the plovers, who live on the same diet as themselves, and abound in
the island. I observed that, as your true topers when they travel carry
flasks, leathern bottles, and small runlets along with them, so each of
them had at his girdle a pretty little pair of bellows. If they happened
to want wind, by the help of those pretty bellows they immediately drew
some, fresh and cool, by attraction and reciprocal expulsion; for, as you
well know, wind essentially defined is nothing but fluctuating and agitated
air.
A while after, we were commanded, in the king's name, not to receive for
three hours any man or woman of the country on board our ships; some having
stolen from him a rousing fart, of the very individual wind which old
goodman Aeolus the snorer gave Ulysses to conduct his ship whenever it
should happen to be becalmed. Which fart the king kept religiously, like
another sanc-greal, and performed a world of wonderful cures with it in
many dangerous diseases, letting loose and distributing to the patient only
as much of it as might frame a virginal fart; which is, if you must know,
what our sanctimonials, alias nuns, in their dialect call ringing
backwards.
How small rain lays a high wind.
Pantagruel commended their government and way of living, and said to their
hypenemian mayor: If you approve Epicurus's opinion, placing the summum
bonum in pleasure (I mean pleasure that's easy and free from toil), I
esteem you happy; for your food being wind, costs you little or nothing,
since you need but blow. True, sir, returned the mayor; but, alas! nothing
is perfect here below; for too often when we are at table, feeding on some
good blessed wind of God as on celestial manna, merry as so many friars,
down drops on a sudden some small rain, which lays our wind, and so robs us
of it. Thus many a meal's lost for want of meat.
Just so, quoth Panurge, Jenin Toss-pot of Quinquenais, evacuating some wine
of his own burning on his wife's posteriors, laid the ill-fumed wind that
blowed out of their centre as out of some magisterial Aeolipile. Here is a
kind of a whim on that subject which I made formerly:
One evening when Toss-pot had been at his butts,
And Joan his fat spouse crammed with turnips her guts,
Together they pigged, nor did drink so besot him
But he did what was done when his daddy begot him.
Now when to recruit he'd fain have been snoring,
Joan's back-door was filthily puffing and roaring;
So for spite he bepissed her, and quickly did find
That a very small rain lays a very high wind.
We are also plagued yearly with a very great calamity, cried the mayor; for
a giant called Wide-nostrils, who lives in the island of Tohu, comes hither
every spring to purge, by the advice of his physicians, and swallows us,
like so many pills, a great number of windmills, and of bellows also, at
which his mouth waters exceedingly.
Now this is a sad mortification to us here, who are fain to fast over three
or four whole Lents every year for this, besides certain petty Lents, ember
weeks, and other orison and starving tides. And have you no remedy for
this? asked Pantagruel. By the advice of our Mezarims, replied the mayor,
about the time that he uses to give us a visit, we garrison our windmills
with good store of cocks and hens. The first time that the greedy thief
swallowed them, they had like to have done his business at once; for they
crowed and cackled in his maw, and fluttered up and down athwart and along
in his stomach, which threw the glutton into a lipothymy cardiac passion
and dreadful and dangerous convulsions, as if some serpent, creeping in at
his mouth, had been frisking in his stomach.
Here is a comparative as altogether incongruous and impertinent, cried
Friar John, interrupting them; for I have formerly heard that if a serpent
chance to get into a man's stomach it will not do him the least hurt, but
will immediately get out if you do but hang the patient by the heels and
lay a panful of warm milk near his mouth. You were told this, said
Pantagruel, and so were those who gave you this account; but none ever saw
or read of such a cure. On the contrary, Hippocrates, in his fifth book of
Epidem, writes that such a case happening in his time the patient presently
died of a spasm and convulsion.
Besides the cocks and hens, said the mayor, continuing his story, all the
foxes in the country whipped into Wide-nostril's mouth, posting after the
poultry; which made such a stir with Reynard at their heels, that he
grievously fell into fits each minute of an hour.
At last, by the advice of a Baden enchanter, at the time of the paroxysm he
used to flay a fox by way of antidote and counter-poison. Since that he
took better advice, and eases himself with taking a clyster made with a
decoction of wheat and barley corns, and of livers of goslings; to the
first of which the poultry run, and the foxes to the latter. Besides, he
swallows some of your badgers or fox-dogs by the way of pills and boluses.
This is our misfortune.
Cease to fear, good people, cried Pantagruel; this huge Wide-nostrils, this
same swallower of windmills, is no more, I will assure you; he died, being
stifled and choked with a lump of fresh butter at the mouth of a hot oven,
by the advice of his physicians.
How Pantagruel went ashore in the island of Pope-Figland.
The next morning we arrived at the island of Pope-figs; formerly a rich and
free people, called the Gaillardets, but now, alas! miserably poor, and
under the yoke of the Papimen. The occasion of it was this:
On a certain yearly high holiday, the burgomaster, syndics, and topping
rabbies of the Gaillardets chanced to go into the neighbouring island
Papimany to see the festival and pass away the time. Now one of them
having espied the pope's picture (with the sight of which, according to a
laudable custom, the people were blessed on high-offering holidays), made
mouths at it, and cried, A fig for it! as a sign of manifest contempt and
derision. To be revenged of this affront, the Papimen, some days after,
without giving the others the least warning, took arms, and surprised,
destroyed, and ruined the whole island of the Gaillardets; putting the men
to the sword, and sparing none but the women and children, and those too
only on condition to do what the inhabitants of Milan were condemned to by
the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.
These had rebelled against him in his absence, and ignominiously turned the
empress out of the city, mounting her a-horseback on a mule called Thacor,
with her breech foremost towards the old jaded mule's head, and her face
turned towards the crupper. Now Frederick being returned, mastered them,
and caused so careful a search to be made that he found out and got the
famous mule Thacor. Then the hangman by his order clapped a fig into the
mule's jimcrack, in the presence of the enslaved cits that were brought
into the middle of the great market-place, and proclaimed in the emperor's
name, with trumpets, that whosoever of them would save his own life should
publicly pull the fig out with his teeth, and after that put it in again in
the very individual cranny whence he had draw'd it without using his hands,
and that whoever refused to do this should presently swing for it and die
in his shoes. Some sturdy fools, standing upon their punctilio, chose
honourably to be hanged rather than submit to so shameful and abominable a
disgrace; and others, less nice in point of ceremony, took heart of grace,
and even resolved to have at the fig, and a fig for't, rather than make a
worse figure with a hempen collar, and die in the air at so short warning.
Accordingly, when they had neatly picked out the fig with their teeth from
old Thacor's snatch-blatch, they plainly showed it the headsman, saying,
Ecco lo fico, Behold the fig!
By the same ignominy the rest of these poor distressed Gaillardets saved
their bacon, becoming tributaries and slaves, and the name of Pope-figs was
given them, because they said, A fig for the pope's image. Since this, the
poor wretches never prospered, but every year the devil was at their doors,
and they were plagued with hail, storms, famine, and all manner of woes, as
an everlasting punishment for the sin of their ancestors and relations.
Perceiving the misery and calamity of that generation, we did not care to
go further up into the country, contenting ourselves with going into a
little chapel near the haven to take some holy water. It was dilapidated
and ruined, wanting also a cover--like Saint Peter at Rome. When we were
in, as we dipped our fingers in the sanctified cistern, we spied in the
middle of that holy pickle a fellow muffled up with stoles, all under
water, like a diving duck, except the tip of his snout to draw his breath.
About him stood three priests, true shavelings, clean shorn and polled, who
were muttering strange words to the devils out of a conjuring book.
Pantagruel was not a little amazed at this, and inquiring what kind of
sport these were at, was told that for three years last past the plague had
so dreadfully raged in the island that the better half of it had been
utterly depopulated, and the lands lay fallow and unoccupied. Now, the
mortality being over, this same fellow who had crept into the holy tub,
having a large piece of ground, chanced to be sowing it with white winter
wheat at the very minute of an hour that a kind of a silly sucking devil,
who could not yet write or read, or hail and thunder, unless it were on
parsley or coleworts, and got leave of his master Lucifer to go into this
island of Pope-figs, where the devils were very familiar with the men and
women, and often went to take their pastime.
This same devil being got thither, directed his discourse to the
husbandman, and asked him what he was doing. The poor man told him that he
was sowing the ground with corn to help him to subsist the next year. Ay,
but the ground is none of thine, Mr. Plough-jobber, cried the devil, but
mine; for since the time that you mocked the pope all this land has been
proscribed, adjudged, and abandoned to us. However, to sow corn is not my
province; therefore I will give thee leave to sow the field, that is to
say, provided we share the profit. I will, replied the farmer. I mean,
said the devil, that of what the land shall bear, two lots shall be made,
one of what shall grow above ground, the other of what shall be covered
with earth. The right of choosing belongs to me; for I am a devil of noble
and ancient race; thou art a base clown. I therefore choose what shall lie
under ground, take thou what shall be above. When dost thou reckon to
reap, hah? About the middle of July, quoth the farmer. Well, said the
devil, I'll not fail thee then; in the meantime, slave as thou oughtest.
Work, clown, work. I am going to tempt to the pleasing sin of whoring the
nuns of Dryfart, the sham saints of the cowl, and the gluttonish crew. I
am more than sure of these. They need but meet, and the job is done; true
fire and tinder, touch and take; down falls nun, and up gets friar.
How a junior devil was fooled by a husbandman of Pope-Figland.
In the middle of July the devil came to the place aforesaid with all his
crew at his heels, a whole choir of the younger fry of hell; and having met
the farmer, said to him, Well, clodpate, how hast thou done since I went?
Thou and I must share the concern. Ay, master devil, quoth the clown; it
is but reason we should. Then he and his men began to cut and reap the
corn; and, on the other side, the devil's imps fell to work, grubbing up
and pulling out the stubble by the root.
The countryman had his corn thrashed, winnowed it, put in into sacks, and
went with it to market. The same did the devil's servants, and sat them
down there by the man to sell their straw. The countryman sold off his
corn at a good rate, and with the money filled an old kind of a demi-buskin
which was fastened to his girdle. But the devil a sou the devils took; far
from taking handsel, they were flouted and jeered by the country louts.
Market being over, quoth the devil to the farmer, Well, clown, thou hast
choused me once, it is thy fault; chouse me twice, 'twill be mine. Nay,
good sir devil, replied the farmer; how can I be said to have choused you,
since it was your worship that chose first? The truth is, that by this
trick you thought to cheat me, hoping that nothing would spring out of the
earth for my share, and that you should find whole underground the corn
which I had sowed, and with it tempt the poor and needy, the close
hypocrite, or the covetous griper; thus making them fall into your snares.
But troth, you must e'en go to school yet; you are no conjurer, for aught I
see; for the corn that was sow'd is dead and rotten, its corruption having
caused the generation of that which you saw me sell. So you chose the
worst, and therefore are cursed in the gospel. Well, talk no more of it,
quoth the devil; what canst thou sow our field with for next year? If a
man would make the best of it, answered the ploughman, 'twere fit he sow it
with radish. Now, cried the devil, thou talkest like an honest fellow,
bumpkin. Well, sow me good store of radish, I'll see and keep them safe
from storms, and will not hail a bit on them. But hark ye me, this time I
bespeak for my share what shall be above ground; what's under shall be
thine. Drudge on, looby, drudge on. I am going to tempt heretics; their
souls are dainty victuals when broiled in rashers and well powdered. My
Lord Lucifer has the griping in the guts; they'll make a dainty warm dish
for his honour's maw.
When the season of radishes was come, our devil failed not to meet in the
field, with a train of rascally underlings, all waiting devils, and finding
there the farmer and his men, he began to cut and gather the leaves of the
radishes. After him the farmer with his spade dug up the radishes, and
clapped them up into pouches. This done, the devil, the farmer, and their
gangs, hied them to market, and there the farmer presently made good money
of his radishes; but the poor devil took nothing; nay, what was worse, he
was made a common laughing-stock by the gaping hoidens. I see thou hast
played me a scurvy trick, thou villainous fellow, cried the angry devil; at
last I am fully resolved even to make an end of the business betwixt thee
and myself about the ground, and these shall be the terms: we will
clapperclaw each other, and whoever of us two shall first cry Hold, shall
quit his share of the field, which shall wholly belong to the conqueror. I
fix the time for this trial of skill on this day seven-night; assure
thyself that I'll claw thee off like a devil. I was going to tempt your
fornicators, bailiffs, perplexers of causes, scriveners, forgers of deeds,
two-handed counsellors, prevaricating solicitors, and other such vermin;
but they were so civil as to send me word by an interpreter that they are
all mine already. Besides, our master Lucifer is so cloyed with their
souls that he often sends them back to the smutty scullions and slovenly
devils of his kitchen, and they scarce go down with them, unless now and
then, when they are high-seasoned.
Some say there is no breakfast like a student's, no dinner like a lawyer's,
no afternoon's nunchion like a vine-dresser's, no supper like a
tradesman's, no second supper like a serving-wench's, and none of these
meals equal to a frockified hobgoblin's. All this is true enough.
Accordingly, at my Lord Lucifer's first course, hobgoblins, alias imps in
cowls, are a standing dish. He willingly used to breakfast on students;
but, alas! I do not know by what ill luck they have of late years joined
the Holy Bible to their studies; so the devil a one we can get down among
us; and I verily believe that unless the hypocrites of the tribe of Levi
help us in it, taking from the enlightened book-mongers their St. Paul,
either by threats, revilings, force, violence, fire, and faggot, we shall
not be able to hook in any more of them to nibble at below. He dines
commonly on counsellors, mischief-mongers, multipliers of lawsuits, such as
wrest and pervert right and law and grind and fleece the poor; he never
fears to want any of these. But who can endure to be wedded to a dish?
He said t'other day, at a full chapter, that he had a great mind to eat the
soul of one of the fraternity of the cowl that had forgot to speak for
himself in his sermon, and he promised double pay and a large pension to
anyone that should bring him such a titbit piping hot. We all went
a-hunting after such a rarity, but came home without the prey; for they all
admonish the good women to remember their convent. As for afternoon
nunchions, he has left them off since he was so woefully griped with the
colic; his fosterers, sutlers, charcoal-men, and boiling cooks having been
sadly mauled and peppered off in the northern countries.
His high devilship sups very well on tradesmen, usurers, apothecaries,
cheats, coiners, and adulterers of wares. Now and then, when he is on the
merry pin, his second supper is of serving-wenches who, after they have by
stealth soaked their faces with their master's good liquor, fill up the
vessel with it at second hand, or with other stinking water.
Well, drudge on, boor, drudge on; I am going to tempt the students of
Trebisonde to leave father and mother, forego for ever the established and
common rule of living, disclaim and free themselves from obeying their
lawful sovereign's edicts, live in absolute liberty, proudly despise
everyone, laugh at all mankind, and taking the fine jovial little cap of
poetic licence, become so many pretty hobgoblins.
How the devil was deceived by an old woman of Pope-Figland.
The country lob trudged home very much concerned and thoughtful, you may
swear; insomuch that his good woman, seeing him thus look moping, weened
that something had been stolen from him at market; but when she had heard
the cause of his affliction and seen his budget well lined with coin, she
bade him be of good cheer, assuring him that he would be never the worse
for the scratching bout in question; wishing him only to leave her to
manage that business, and not trouble his head about it; for she had
already contrived how to bring him off cleverly. Let the worst come to the
worst, said the husbandman, it will be but a scratch; for I'll yield at the
first stroke, and quit the field. Quit a fart, replied the wife; he shall
have none of the field. Rely upon me, and be quiet; let me alone to deal
with him. You say he is a pimping little devil, that is enough; I will
soon make him give up the field, I will warrant you. Indeed, had he been a
great devil, it had been somewhat.
The day that we landed in the island happened to be that which the devil
had fixed for the combat. Now the countryman having, like a good Catholic,
very fairly confessed himself, and received betimes in the morning, by the
advice of the vicar had hid himself, all but the snout, in the holy-water
pot, in the posture in which we found him; and just as they were telling us
this story, news came that the old woman had fooled the devil and gained
the field. You may not be sorry, perhaps, to hear how this happened.
The devil, you must know, came to the poor man's door, and rapping there,
cried, So ho! ho, the house! ho, clodpate! where art thou? Come out with a
vengeance; come out with a wannion; come out and be damned; now for
clawing. Then briskly and resolutely entering the house, and not finding
the countryman there, he spied his wife lying on the ground, piteously
weeping and howling. What is the matter? asked the devil. Where is he?
what does he? Oh! that I knew where he is, replied threescore and five;
the wicked rogue, the butcherly dog, the murderer! He has spoiled me; I am
undone; I die of what he has done me. How, cried the devil, what is it?
I'll tickle him off for you by-and-by. Alas! cried the old dissembler, he
told me, the butcher, the tyrant, the tearer of devils told me that he had
made a match to scratch with you this day, and to try his claws he did but
just touch me with his little finger here betwixt the legs, and has spoiled
me for ever. Oh! I am a dead woman; I shall never be myself again; do but
see! Nay, and besides, he talked of going to the smith's to have his
pounces sharpened and pointed. Alas! you are undone, Mr. Devil; good sir,
scamper quickly, I am sure he won't stay; save yourself, I beseech you.
While she said this she uncovered herself up to the chin, after the manner
in which the Persian women met their children who fled from the fight, and
plainly showed her what do ye call them. The frightened devil, seeing the
enormous solution of the continuity in all its dimensions, blessed himself,
and cried out, Mahon, Demiourgon, Megaera, Alecto, Persephone! 'slife,
catch me here when he comes! I am gone! 'sdeath, what a gash! I resign
him the field.
Having heard the catastrophe of the story, we retired a-shipboard, not
being willing to stay there any longer. Pantagruel gave to the poor's box
of the fabric of the church eighteen thousand good royals, in commiseration
of the poverty of the people and the calamity of the place.
How Pantagruel went ashore at the island of Papimany.
Having left the desolate island of the Pope-figs, we sailed for the space
of a day very fairly and merrily, and made the blessed island of Papimany.
As soon as we had dropt anchor in the road, before we had well moored our
ship with ground-tackle, four persons in different garbs rowed towards us
in a skiff. One of them was dressed like a monk in his frock,
draggle-tailed, and booted; the other like a falconer, with a lure, and a
long-winged hawk on his fist; the third like a solicitor, with a large bag,
full of informations, subpoenas, breviates, bills, writs, cases, and other
implements of pettifogging; the fourth looked like one of your vine-barbers
about Ocleans, with a jaunty pair of canvas trousers, a dosser, and a
pruning knife at his girdle.
As soon as the boat had clapped them on board, they all with one voice
asked, Have you seen him, good passengers, have you seen him? Who? asked
Pantagruel. You know who, answered they. Who is it? asked Friar John.
'Sblood and 'ounds, I'll thrash him thick and threefold. This he said
thinking that they inquired after some robber, murderer, or church-breaker.
Oh, wonderful! cried the four; do not you foreign people know the one?
Sirs, replied Epistemon, we do not understand those terms; but if you will
be pleased to let us know who you mean, we will tell you the truth of the
matter without any more ado. We mean, said they, he that is. Did you ever
see him? He that is, returned Pantagruel, according to our theological
doctrine, is God, who said to Moses, I am that I am. We never saw him, nor
can he be beheld by mortal eyes. We mean nothing less than that supreme
God who rules in heaven, replied they; we mean the god on earth. Did you
ever see him? Upon my honour, replied Carpalin, they mean the pope. Ay,
ay, answered Panurge; yea, verily, gentlemen, I have seen three of them,
whose sight has not much bettered me. How! cried they, our sacred
decretals inform us that there never is more than one living. I mean
successively, one after the other, returned Panurge; otherwise I never saw
more than one at a time.
O thrice and four times happy people! cried they; you are welcome, and more
than double welcome! They then kneeled down before us and would have
kissed our feet, but we would not suffer it, telling them that should the
pope come thither in his own person, 'tis all they could do to him. No,
certainly, answered they, for we have already resolved upon the matter. We
would kiss his bare arse without boggling at it, and eke his two pounders;
for he has a pair of them, the holy father, that he has; we find it so by
our fine decretals, otherwise he could not be pope. So that, according to
our subtle decretaline philosophy, this is a necessary consequence: he is
pope; therefore he has genitories, and should genitories no more be found
in the world, the world could no more have a pope.
While they were talking thus, Pantagruel inquired of one of the coxswain's
crew who those persons were. He answered that they were the four estates
of the island, and added that we should be made as welcome as princes,
since we had seen the pope. Panurge having been acquainted with this by
Pantagruel, said to him in his ear, I swear and vow, sir, 'tis even so; he
that has patience may compass anything. Seeing the pope had done us no
good; now, in the devil's name, 'twill do us a great deal. We then went
ashore, and the whole country, men, women, and children, came to meet us as
in a solemn procession. Our four estates cried out to them with a loud
voice, They have seen him! they have seen him! they have seen him! That
proclamation being made, all the mob kneeled before us, lifting up their
hands towards heaven, and crying, O happy men! O most happy! and this
acclamation lasted above a quarter of an hour.
Then came the Busby (!) of the place, with all his pedagogues, ushers, and
schoolboys, whom he magisterially flogged, as they used to whip children in
our country formerly when some criminal was hanged, that they might
remember it. This displeased Pantagruel, who said to them, Gentlemen, if
you do not leave off whipping these poor children, I am gone. The people
were amazed, hearing his stentorian voice; and I saw a little hump with
long fingers say to the hypodidascal, What, in the name of wonder! do all
those that see the pope grow as tall as yon huge fellow that threatens us?
Ah! how I shall think time long till I have seen him too, that I may grow
and look as big. In short, the acclamations were so great that Homenas (so
they called their bishop) hastened thither on an unbridled mule with green
trappings, attended by his apposts (as they said) and his supposts, or
officers bearing crosses, banners, standards, canopies, torches, holy-water
pots, &c. He too wanted to kiss our feet (as the good Christian Valfinier
did to Pope Clement), saying that one of their hypothetes, that's one of
the scavengers, scourers, and commentators of their holy decretals, had
written that, in the same manner as the Messiah, so long and so much
expected by the Jews, at last appeared among them; so, on some happy day of
God, the pope would come into that island; and that, while they waited for
that blessed time, if any who had seen him at Rome or elsewhere chanced to
come among them, they should be sure to make much of them, feast them
plentifully, and treat them with a great deal of reverence. However, we
civilly desired to be excused.
How Homenas, Bishop of Papimany, showed us the Uranopet decretals.
Homenas then said to us: 'Tis enjoined us by our holy decretals to visit
churches first and taverns after. Therefore, not to decline that fine
institution, let us go to church; we will afterwards go and feast
ourselves. Man of God, quoth Friar John, do you go before, we'll follow
you. You spoke in the matter properly, and like a good Christian; 'tis
long since we saw any such. For my part, this rejoices my mind very much,
and I verily believe that I shall have the better stomach after it. Well,
'tis a happy thing to meet with good men! Being come near the gate of the
church, we spied a huge thick book, gilt, and covered all over with
precious stones, as rubies, emeralds, (diamonds,) and pearls, more, or at
least as valuable as those which Augustus consecrated to Jupiter
Capitolinus. This book hanged in the air, being fastened with two thick
chains of gold to the zoophore of the porch. We looked on it and admired
it. As for Pantagruel, he handled it and dandled it and turned it as he
pleased, for he could reach it without straining; and he protested that
whenever he touched it, he was seized with a pleasant tickling at his
fingers' end, new life and activity in his arms, and a violent temptation
in his mind to beat one or two sergeants, or such officers, provided they
were not of the shaveling kind. Homenas then said to us, The law was
formerly given to the Jews by Moses, written by God himself. At Delphos,
before the portal of Apollo's temple, this sentence, GNOTHI SEAUTON, was
found written with a divine hand. And some time after it, EI was also
seen, and as divinely written and transmitted from heaven. Cybele's image
was brought out of heaven, into a field called Pessinunt, in Phrygia; so
was that of Diana to Tauris, if you will believe Euripides; the oriflamme,
or holy standard, was transmitted out of heaven to the noble and most
Christian kings of France, to fight against the unbelievers. In the reign
of Numa Pompilius, second King of the Romans, the famous copper buckler
called Ancile was seen to descend from heaven. At Acropolis, near Athens,
Minerva's statue formerly fell from the empyreal heaven. In like manner
the sacred decretals which you see were written with the hand of an angel
of the cherubim kind. You outlandish people will hardly believe this, I
fear. Little enough, of conscience, said Panurge. And then, continued
Homenas, they were miraculously transmitted to us here from the very heaven
of heavens; in the same manner as the river Nile is called Diipetes by
Homer, the father of all philosophy--the holy decretals always excepted.
Now, because you have seen the pope, their evangelist and everlasting
protector, we will give you leave to see and kiss them on the inside, if
you think meet. But then you must fast three days before, and canonically
confess; nicely and strictly mustering up and inventorizing your sins,
great and small, so thick that one single circumstance of them may not
escape you; as our holy decretals, which you see, direct. This will take
up some time. Man of God, answered Panurge, we have seen and descried
decrees, and eke decretals enough o' conscience; some on paper, other on
parchment, fine and gay like any painted paper lantern, some on vellum,
some in manuscript, and others in print; so you need not take half these
pains to show us these. We'll take the goodwill for the deed, and thank
you as much as if we had. Ay, marry, said Homenas, but you never saw these
that are angelically written. Those in your country are only transcripts
from ours; as we find it written by one of our old decretaline scholiasts.
For me, do not spare me; I do not value the labour, so I may serve you. Do
but tell me whether you will be confessed and fast only three short little
days of God? As for shriving, answered Panurge, there can be no great harm
in't; but this same fasting, master of mine, will hardly down with us at
this time, for we have so very much overfasted ourselves at sea that the
spiders have spun their cobwebs over our grinders. Do but look on this
good Friar John des Entomeures (Homenas then courteously demi-clipped him
about the neck), some moss is growing in his throat for want of bestirring
and exercising his chaps. He speaks the truth, vouched Friar John; I have
so much fasted that I'm almost grown hump-shouldered. Come, then, let's go
into the church, said Homenas; and pray forgive us if for the present we do
not sing you a fine high mass. The hour of midday is past, and after it
our sacred decretals forbid us to sing mass, I mean your high and lawful
mass. But I'll say a low and dry one for you. I had rather have one
moistened with some good Anjou wine, cried Panurge; fall to, fall to your
low mass, and despatch. Ods-bodikins, quoth Friar John, it frets me to the
guts that I must have an empty stomach at this time of day; for, had I
eaten a good breakfast and fed like a monk, if he should chance to sing us
the Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, I had then brought thither bread and
wine for the traits passes (those that are gone before). Well, patience;
pull away, and save tide; short and sweet, I pray you, and this for a
cause.
How Homenas showed us the archetype, or representation of a pope.
Mass being mumbled over, Homenas took a huge bundle of keys out of a trunk
near the head altar, and put thirty-two of them into so many keyholes; put
back so many springs; then with fourteen more mastered so many padlocks,
and at last opened an iron window strongly barred above the said altar.
This being done, in token of great mystery he covered himself with wet
sackcloth, and drawing a curtain of crimson satin, showed us an image
daubed over, coarsely enough, to my thinking; then he touched it with a
pretty long stick, and made us all kiss the part of the stick that had
touched the image. After this he said unto us, What think you of this
image? It is the likeness of a pope, answered Pantagruel; I know it by the
triple crown, his furred amice, his rochet, and his slipper. You are in
the right, said Homenas; it is the idea of that same good god on earth
whose coming we devoutly await, and whom we hope one day to see in this
country. O happy, wished-for, and much-expected day! and happy, most happy
you, whose propitious stars have so favoured you as to let you see the
living and real face of this good god on earth! by the single sight of
whose picture we obtain full remission of all the sins which we remember
that we have committed, as also a third part and eighteen quarantaines of
the sins which we have forgot; and indeed we only see it on high annual
holidays.
This caused Pantagruel to say that it was a work like those which Daedalus
used to make, since, though it were deformed and ill drawn, nevertheless
some divine energy, in point of pardons, lay hid and concealed in it.
Thus, said Friar John, at Seuille, the rascally beggars being one evening
on a solemn holiday at supper in the spital, one bragged of having got six
blancs, or twopence halfpenny; another eight liards, or twopence; a third,
seven caroluses, or sixpence; but an old mumper made his vaunts of having
got three testons, or five shillings. Ah, but, cried his comrades, thou
hast a leg of God; as if, continued Friar John, some divine virtue could
lie hid in a stinking ulcerated rotten shank. Pray, said Pantagruel, when
you are for telling us some such nauseous tale, be so kind as not to forget
to provide a basin, Friar John; I'll assure you, I had much ado to forbear
bringing up my breakfast. Fie! I wonder a man of your coat is not ashamed
to use thus the sacred name of God in speaking of things so filthy and
abominable! fie, I say. If among your monking tribes such an abuse of
words is allowed, I beseech you leave it there, and do not let it come out
of the cloisters. Physicians, said Epistemon, thus attribute a kind of
divinity to some diseases. Nero also extolled mushrooms, and, in a Greek
proverb, termed them divine food, because with them he had poisoned
Claudius his predecessor. But methinks, gentlemen, this same picture is
not over-like our late popes. For I have seen them, not with their
pallium, amice, or rochet on, but with helmets on their heads, more like
the top of a Persian turban; and while the Christian commonwealth was in
peace, they alone were most furiously and cruelly making war. This must
have been then, returned Homenas, against the rebellious, heretical
Protestants; reprobates who are disobedient to the holiness of this good
god on earth. 'Tis not only lawful for him to do so, but it is enjoined
him by the sacred decretals; and if any dare transgress one single iota
against their commands, whether they be emperors, kings, dukes, princes, or
commonwealths, he is immediately to pursue them with fire and sword, strip
them of all their goods, take their kingdoms from them, proscribe them,
anathematize them, and destroy not only their bodies, those of their
children, relations, and others, but damn also their souls to the very
bottom of the most hot and burning cauldron in hell. Here, in the devil's
name, said Panurge, the people are no heretics; such as was our
Raminagrobis, and as they are in Germany and England. You are Christians
of the best edition, all picked and culled, for aught I see. Ay, marry are
we, returned Homenas, and for that reason we shall all be saved. Now let
us go and bless ourselves with holy water, and then to dinner.
Table-talk in praise of the decretals.
Now, topers, pray observe that while Homenas was saying his dry mass, three
collectors, or licensed beggars of the church, each of them with a large
basin, went round among the people, with a loud voice: Pray remember the
blessed men who have seen his face. As we came out of the temple they
brought their basins brimful of Papimany chink to Homenas, who told us that
it was plentifully to feast with; and that, of this contribution and
voluntary tax, one part should be laid out in good drinking, another in
good eating, and the remainder in both, according to an admirable
exposition hidden in a corner of their holy decretals; which was performed
to a T, and that at a noted tavern not much unlike that of Will's at
Amiens. Believe me, we tickled it off there with copious cramming and
numerous swilling.
I made two notable observations at that dinner: the one, that there was
not one dish served up, whether of cabrittas, capons, hogs (of which latter
there is great plenty in Papimany), pigeons, coneys, leverets, turkeys, or
others, without abundance of magistral stuff; the other, that every course,
and the fruit also, were served up by unmarried females of the place, tight
lasses, I'll assure you, waggish, fair, good-conditioned, and comely,
spruce, and fit for business. They were all clad in fine long white albs,
with two girts; their hair interwoven with narrow tape and purple ribbon,
stuck with roses, gillyflowers, marjoram, daffadowndillies, thyme, and
other sweet flowers.
At every cadence they invited us to drink and bang it about, dropping us
neat and genteel courtesies; nor was the sight of them unwelcome to all the
company; and as for Friar John, he leered on them sideways, like a cur that
steals a capon. When the first course was taken off, the females
melodiously sung us an epode in the praise of the sacrosanct decretals; and
then the second course being served up, Homenas, joyful and cheery, said to
one of the she-butlers, Light here, Clerica. Immediately one of the girls
brought him a tall-boy brimful of extravagant wine. He took fast hold of
it, and fetching a deep sigh, said to Pantagruel, My lord, and you, my good
friends, here's t'ye, with all my heart; you are all very welcome. When he
had tipped that off, and given the tall-boy to the pretty creature, he
lifted up his voice and said, O most holy decretals, how good is good wine
found through your means! This is the best jest we have had yet, observed
Panurge. But it would still be a better, said Pantagruel, if they could
turn bad wine into good.
O seraphic Sextum! continued Homenas, how necessary are you not to the
salvation of poor mortals! O cherubic Clementinae! how perfectly the
perfect institution of a true Christian is contained and described in you!
O angelical Extravagantes! how many poor souls that wander up and down in
mortal bodies through this vale of misery would perish were it not for you!
When, ah! when shall this special gift of grace be bestowed on mankind, as
to lay aside all other studies and concerns, to use you, to peruse you, to
understand you, to know you by heart, to practise you, to incorporate you,
to turn you into blood, and incentre you into the deepest ventricles of
their brains, the inmost marrow of their bones, and most intricate
labyrinth of their arteries? Then, ah! then, and no sooner than then, nor
otherwise than thus, shall the world be happy! While the old man was thus
running on, Epistemon rose and softly said to Panurge: For want of a
close-stool, I must even leave you for a moment or two; this stuff has
unbunged the orifice of my mustard-barrel; but I'll not tarry long.
Then, ah! then, continued Homenas, no hail, frost, ice, snow, overflowing,
or vis major; then plenty of all earthly goods here below. Then
uninterrupted and eternal peace through the universe, an end of all wars,
plunderings, drudgeries, robbing, assassinates, unless it be to destroy
these cursed rebels the heretics. Oh! then, rejoicing, cheerfulness,
jollity, solace, sports, and delicious pleasures, over the face of the
earth. Oh! what great learning, inestimable erudition, and god-like
precepts are knit, linked, rivetted, and mortised in the divine chapters of
these eternal decretals!
Oh! how wonderfully, if you read but one demi-canon, short paragraph, or
single observation of these sacrosanct decretals, how wonderfully, I say,
do you not perceive to kindle in your hearts a furnace of divine love,
charity towards your neighbour (provided he be no heretic), bold contempt
of all casual and sublunary things, firm content in all your affections,
and ecstatic elevation of soul even to the third heaven.
A continuation of the miracles caused by the decretals.
Wisely, brother Timothy, quoth Panurge, did am, did am; he says blew; but,
for my part, I believe as little of it as I can. For one day by chance I
happened to read a chapter of them at Poictiers, at the most
decretalipotent Scotch doctor's, and old Nick turn me into bumfodder, if
this did not make me so hide-bound and costive, that for four or five days
I hardly scumbered one poor butt of sir-reverence; and that, too, was full
as dry and hard, I protest, as Catullus tells us were those of his
neighbour Furius:
Nec toto decies cacas in anno,
Atque id durius est faba, et lapillis:
Quod tu si manibus teras, fricesque,
Non unquam digitum inquinare posses.
Oh, ho! cried Homenas; by'r lady, it may be you were then in the state of
mortal sin, my friend. Well turned, cried Panurge; this was a new strain,
egad.
One day, said Friar John, at Seuille, I had applied to my posteriors, by
way of hind-towel, a leaf of an old Clementinae which our rent-gatherer,
John Guimard, had thrown out into the green of our cloister. Now the devil
broil me like a black pudding, if I wasn't so abominably plagued with
chaps, chawns, and piles at the fundament, that the orifice of my poor
nockandroe was in a most woeful pickle for I don't know how long. By'r our
lady, cried Homenas, it was a plain punishment of God for the sin that you
had committed in beraying that sacred book, which you ought rather to have
kissed and adored; I say with an adoration of latria, or of hyperdulia at
least. The Panormitan never told a lie in the matter.
Saith Ponocrates: At Montpelier, John Chouart having bought of the monks
of St. Olary a delicate set of decretals, written on fine large parchment
of Lamballe, to beat gold between the leaves, not so much as a piece that
was beaten in them came to good, but all were dilacerated and spoiled.
Mark this! cried Homenas; 'twas a divine punishment and vengeance.
At Mans, said Eudemon, Francis Cornu, apothecary, had turned an old set of
Extravagantes into waste paper. May I never stir, if whatever was lapped
up in them was not immediately corrupted, rotten, and spoiled; incense,
pepper, cloves, cinnamon, saffron, wax, cassia, rhubarb, tamarinds, all
drugs and spices, were lost without exception. Mark, mark, quoth Homenas,
an effect of divine justice! This comes of putting the sacred Scriptures
to such profane uses.
At Paris, said Carpalin, Snip Groignet the tailor had turned an old
Clementinae into patterns and measures, and all the clothes that were cut
on them were utterly spoiled and lost; gowns, hoods, cloaks, cassocks,
jerkins, jackets, waistcoats, capes, doublets, petticoats, corps de robes,
farthingales, and so forth. Snip, thinking to cut a hood, would cut you
out a codpiece; instead of a cassock he would make you a high-crowned hat;
for a waistcoat he'd shape you out a rochet; on the pattern of a doublet
he'd make you a thing like a frying-pan. Then his journeymen having
stitched it up did jag it and pink it at the bottom, and so it looked like
a pan to fry chestnuts. Instead of a cape he made a buskin; for a
farthingale he shaped a montero cap; and thinking to make a cloak, he'd cut
out a pair of your big out-strouting Swiss breeches, with panes like the
outside of a tabor. Insomuch that Snip was condemned to make good the
stuffs to all his customers; and to this day poor Cabbage's hair grows
through his hood and his arse through his pocket-holes. Mark, an effect of
heavenly wrath and vengeance! cried Homenas.
At Cahusac, said Gymnast, a match being made by the lords of Estissac and
Viscount Lausun to shoot at a mark, Perotou had taken to pieces a set of
decretals and set one of the leaves for the white to shoot at. Now I sell,
nay, I give and bequeath for ever and aye, the mould of my doublet to
fifteen hundred hampers full of black devils, if ever any archer in the
country (though they are singular marksmen in Guienne) could hit the white.
Not the least bit of the holy scribble was contaminated or touched; nay,
and Sansornin the elder, who held stakes, swore to us, figues dioures, hard
figs (his greatest oath), that he had openly, visibly, and manifestly seen
the bolt of Carquelin moving right to the round circle in the middle of the
white; and that just on the point, when it was going to hit and enter, it
had gone aside above seven foot and four inches wide of it towards the
bakehouse.
Miracle! cried Homenas, miracle! miracle! Clerica, come wench, light,
light here. Here's to you all, gentlemen; I vow you seem to me very sound
Christians. While he said this, the maidens began to snicker at his elbow,
grinning, giggling, and twittering among themselves. Friar John began to
paw, neigh, and whinny at the snout's end, as one ready to leap, or at
least to play the ass, and get up and ride tantivy to the devil like a
beggar on horseback.
Methinks, said Pantagruel, a man might have been more out of danger near
the white of which Gymnast spoke than was formerly Diogenes near another.
How is that? asked Homenas; what was it? Was he one of our decretalists?
Rarely fallen in again, egad, said Epistemon, returning from stool; I see
he will hook his decretals in, though by the head and shoulders.
Diogenes, said Pantagruel, one day for pastime went to see some archers
that shot at butts, one of whom was so unskilful, that when it was his turn
to shoot all the bystanders went aside, lest he should mistake them for the
mark. Diogenes had seen him shoot extremely wide of it; so when the other
was taking aim a second time, and the people removed at a great distance to
the right and left of the white, he placed himself close by the mark,
holding that place to be the safest, and that so bad an archer would
certainly rather hit any other.
One of the Lord d'Estissac's pages at last found out the charm, pursued
Gymnast, and by his advice Perotou put in another white made up of some
papers of Pouillac's lawsuit, and then everyone shot cleverly.
At Landerousse, said Rhizotome, at John Delif's wedding were very great
doings, as 'twas then the custom of the country. After supper several
farces, interludes, and comical scenes were acted; they had also several
morris-dancers with bells and tabors, and divers sorts of masks and mummers
were let in. My schoolfellows and I, to grace the festival to the best of
our power (for fine white and purple liveries had been given to all of us
in the morning), contrived a merry mask with store of cockle-shells, shells
of snails, periwinkles, and such other. Then for want of cuckoo-pint, or
priest-pintle, lousebur, clote, and paper, we made ourselves false faces
with the leaves of an old Sextum that had been thrown by and lay there for
anyone that would take it up, cutting out holes for the eyes, nose, and
mouth. Now, did you ever hear the like since you were born? When we had
played our little boyish antic tricks, and came to take off our sham faces,
we appeared more hideous and ugly than the little devils that acted the
Passion at Douay; for our faces were utterly spoiled at the places which
had been touched by those leaves. One had there the small-pox; another,
God's token, or the plague-spot; a third, the crinckums; a fourth, the
measles; a fifth, botches, pushes, and carbuncles; in short, he came off
the least hurt who only lost his teeth by the bargain. Miracle! bawled out
Homenas, miracle!
Hold, hold! cried Rhizotome; it is not yet time to clap. My sister Kate
and my sister Ren had put the crepines of their hoods, their ruffles,
snuffekins, and neck-ruffs new washed, starched, and ironed, into that very
book of decretals; for, you must know, it was covered with thick boards and
had strong clasps. Now, by the virtue of God--Hold, interrupted Homenas,
what god do you mean? There is but one, answered Rhizotome. In heaven, I
grant, replied Homenas; but we have another here on earth, do you see? Ay,
marry have we, said Rhizotome; but on my soul I protest I had quite forgot
it. Well then, by the virtue of god the pope, their pinners, neck-ruffs,
bib, coifs, and other linen turned as black as a charcoal-man's sack.
Miracle! cried Homenas. Here, Clerica, light me here; and prithee, girl,
observe these rare stories. How comes it to pass then, asked Friar John,
that people say,
Ever since decrees had tails,
And gendarmes lugged heavy mails,
Since each monk would have a horse,
All went here from bad to worse.
I understand you, answered Homenas; this is one of the quirks and little
satires of the new-fangled heretics.
How by the virtue of the decretals, gold is subtilely drawn out of France
to Rome.
I would, said Epistemon, it had cost me a pint of the best tripe that ever
can enter into gut, so we had but compared with the original the dreadful
chapters, Execrabilis, De multa, Si plures; De annatis per totum; Nisi
essent; Cum ad monasterium; Quod delectio; Mandatum; and certain others,
that draw every year out of France to Rome four hundred thousand ducats and
more.
Do you make nothing of this? asked Homenas. Though, methinks, after all,
it is but little, if we consider that France, the most Christian, is the
only nurse the see of Rome has. However, find me in the whole world a
book, whether of philosophy, physic, law, mathematics, or other humane
learning, nay, even, by my God, of the Holy Scripture itself, will draw as
much money thence? None, none, psha, tush, blurt, pish; none can. You may
look till your eyes drop out of your head, nay, till doomsday in the
afternoon, before you can find another of that energy; I'll pass my word
for that.
Yet these devilish heretics refuse to learn and know it. Burn 'em, tear
'em, nip 'em with hot pincers, drown 'em, hang 'em, spit 'em at the
bunghole, pelt 'em, paut 'em, bruise 'em, beat 'em, cripple 'em, dismember
'em, cut 'em, gut 'em, bowel 'em, paunch 'em, thrash 'em, slash 'em, gash
'em, chop 'em, slice 'em, slit 'em, carve 'em, saw 'em, bethwack 'em, pare
'em, hack 'em, hew 'em, mince 'em, flay 'em, boil 'em, broil 'em, roast
'em, toast 'em, bake 'em, fry 'em, crucify 'em, crush 'em, squeeze 'em,
grind 'em, batter 'em, burst 'em, quarter 'em, unlimb 'em, behump 'em,
bethump 'em, belam 'em, belabour 'em, pepper 'em, spitchcock 'em, and
carbonade 'em on gridirons, these wicked heretics! decretalifuges,
decretalicides, worse than homicides, worse than patricides,
decretalictones of the devil of hell.
As for you other good people, I must earnestly pray and beseech you to
believe no other thing, to think on, say, undertake, or do no other thing,
than what's contained in our sacred decretals and their corollaries, this
fine Sextum, these fine Clementinae, these fine Extravagantes. O deific
books! So shall you enjoy glory, honour, exaltation, wealth, dignities,
and preferments in this world; be revered and dreaded by all, preferred,
elected, and chosen above all men.
For there is not under the cope of heaven a condition of men out of which
you'll find persons fitter to do and handle all things than those who by
divine prescience, eternal predestination, have applied themselves to the
study of the holy decretals.
Would you choose a worthy emperor, a good captain, a fit general in time of
war, one that can well foresee all inconveniences, avoid all dangers,
briskly and bravely bring his men on to a breach or attack, still be on
sure grounds, always overcome without loss of his men, and know how to make
a good use of his victory? Take me a decretist. No, no, I mean a
decretalist. Ho, the foul blunder, whispered Epistemon.
Would you, in time of peace, find a man capable of wisely governing the
state of a commonwealth, of a kingdom, of an empire, of a monarchy;
sufficient to maintain the clergy, nobility, senate, and commons in wealth,
friendship, unity, obedience, virtue, and honesty? Take a decretalist.
Would you find a man who, by his exemplary life, eloquence, and pious
admonitions, may in a short time, without effusion of human blood, conquer
the Holy Land, and bring over to the holy Church the misbelieving Turks,
Jews, Tartars, Muscovites, Mamelukes, and Sarrabonites? Take me a
decretalist.
What makes, in many countries, the people rebellious and depraved, pages
saucy and mischievous, students sottish and duncical? Nothing but that
their governors and tutors were not decretalists.
But what, on your conscience, was it, do you think, that established,
confirmed, and authorized those fine religious orders with whom you see the
Christian world everywhere adorned, graced, and illustrated, as the
firmament is with its glorious stars? The holy decretals.
What was it that founded, underpropped, and fixed, and now maintains,
nourishes, and feeds the devout monks and friars in convents, monasteries,
and abbeys; so that did they not daily and mightily pray without ceasing,
the world would be in evident danger of returning to its primitive chaos?
The sacred decretals.
What makes and daily increases the famous and celebrated patrimony of St.
Peter in plenty of all temporal, corporeal, and spiritual blessings? The
holy decretals.
What made the holy apostolic see and pope of Rome, in all times, and at
this present, so dreadful in the universe, that all kings, emperors,
potentates, and lords, willing, nilling, must depend upon him, hold of him,
be crowned, confirmed, and authorized by him, come thither to strike sail,
buckle, and fall down before his holy slipper, whose picture you have seen?
The mighty decretals of God.
I will discover you a great secret. The universities of your world have
commonly a book, either open or shut, in their arms and devices; what book
do you think it is? Truly, I do not know, answered Pantagruel; I never
read it. It is the decretals, said Homenas, without which the privileges
of all universities would soon be lost. You must own that I have taught
you this; ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
Here Homenas began to belch, to fart, to funk, to laugh, to slaver, and to
sweat; and then he gave his huge greasy four-cornered cap to one of the
lasses, who clapped it on her pretty head with a great deal of joy, after
she had lovingly bussed it, as a sure token that she should be first
married. Vivat, cried Epistemon, fifat, bibat, pipat.
O apocalyptic secret! continued Homenas; light, light, Clerica; light here
with double lanterns. Now for the fruit, virgins.
I was saying, then, that giving yourselves thus wholly to the study of the
holy decretals, you will gain wealth and honour in this world. I add, that
in the next you will infallibly be saved in the blessed kingdom of heaven,
whose keys are given to our good god and decretaliarch. O my good god,
whom I adore and never saw, by thy special grace open unto us, at the point
of death at least, this most sacred treasure of our holy Mother Church,
whose protector, preserver, butler, chief-larder, administrator, and
disposer thou art; and take care, I beseech thee, O lord, that the precious
works of supererogation, the goodly pardons, do not fail us in time of
need; so that the devils may not find an opportunity to gripe our precious
souls, and the dreadful jaws of hell may not swallow us. If we must pass
through purgatory thy will be done. It is in thy power to draw us out of
it when thou pleasest. Here Homenas began to shed huge hot briny tears, to
beat his breast, and kiss his thumbs in the shape of a cross.
How Homenas gave Pantagruel some bon-Christian pears.
Epistemon, Friar John, and Panurge, seeing this doleful catastrophe, began,
under the cover of their napkins, to cry Meeow, meeow, meeow; feigning to
wipe their eyes all the while as if they had wept. The wenches were doubly
diligent, and brought brimmers of Clementine wine to every one, besides
store of sweetmeats; and thus the feasting was revived.
Before we arose from table, Homenas gave us a great quantity of fair large
pears, saying, Here, my good friends, these are singular good pears. You
will find none such anywhere else, I dare warrant. Every soil bears not
everything, you know. India alone boasts black ebony; the best incense is
produced in Sabaea; the sphragitid earth at Lemnos; so this island is the
only place where such fine pears grow. You may, if you please, make
seminaries with their pippins in your country.
I like their taste extremely, said Pantagruel. If they were sliced, and
put into a pan on the fire with wine and sugar, I fancy they would be very
wholesome meat for the sick, as well as for the healthy. Pray what do you
call 'em? No otherwise than you have heard, replied Homenas. We are a
plain downright sort of people, as God would have it, and call figs, figs;
plums, plums; and pears, pears. Truly, said Pantagruel, if I live to go
home--which I hope will be speedily, God willing--I'll set off and graff
some in my garden in Touraine, by the banks of the Loire, and will call
them bon-Christian or good-Christian pears, for I never saw better
Christians than are these good Papimans. I would like him two to one
better yet, said Friar John, would he but give us two or three cartloads of
yon buxom lasses. Why, what would you do with them? cried Homenas. Quoth
Friar John, No harm, only bleed the kind-hearted souls straight between the
two great toes with certain clever lancets of the right stamp; by which
operation good Christian children would be inoculated upon them, and the
breed be multiplied in our country, in which there are not many over-good,
the more's the pity.
Nay, verily, replied Homenas, we cannot do this; for you would make them
tread their shoes awry, crack their pipkins, and spoil their shapes. You
love mutton, I see; you will run at sheep. I know you by that same nose
and hair of yours, though I never saw your face before. Alas! alas! how
kind you are! And would you indeed damn your precious soul? Our decretals
forbid this. Ah, I wish you had them at your finger's-end. Patience, said
Friar John; but, si tu non vis dare, praesta, quaesumus. Matter of
breviary. As for that, I defy all the world, and I fear no man that wears
a head and a hood, though he were a crystalline, I mean a decretaline
doctor.
Dinner being over, we took our leave of the right reverend Homenas, and of
all the good people, humbly giving thanks; and, to make them amends for
their kind entertainment, promised them that, at our coming to Rome, we
would make our applications so effectually to the pope that he would
speedily be sure to come to visit them in person. After this we went
o'board.
Pantagruel, by an act of generosity, and as an acknowledgment of the sight
of the pope's picture, gave Homenas nine pieces of double friezed cloth of
gold to be set before the grates of the window. He also caused the church
box for its repairs and fabric to be quite filled with double crowns of
gold; and ordered nine hundred and fourteen angels to be delivered to each
of the lasses who had waited at table, to buy them husbands when they could
get them.
How Pantagruel, being at sea, heard various unfrozen words.
When we were at sea, junketting, tippling, discoursing, and telling
stories, Pantagruel rose and stood up to look out; then asked us, Do you
hear nothing, gentlemen? Methinks I hear some people talking in the air,
yet I can see nobody. Hark! According to his command we listened, and
with full ears sucked in the air as some of you suck oysters, to find if we
could hear some sound scattered through the sky; and to lose none of it,
like the Emperor Antoninus some of us laid their hands hollow next to their
ears; but all this would not do, nor could we hear any voice. Yet
Pantagruel continued to assure us he heard various voices in the air, some
of men, and some of women.
At last we began to fancy that we also heard something, or at least that
our ears tingled; and the more we listened, the plainer we discerned the
voices, so as to distinguish articulate sounds. This mightily frightened
us, and not without cause; since we could see nothing, yet heard such
various sounds and voices of men, women, children, horses, &c., insomuch
that Panurge cried out, Cods-belly, there is no fooling with the devil; we
are all beshit, let's fly. There is some ambuscado hereabouts. Friar
John, art thou here my love? I pray thee, stay by me, old boy. Hast thou
got thy swindging tool? See that it do not stick in thy scabbard; thou
never scourest it half as it should be. We are undone. Hark! They are
guns, gad judge me. Let's fly, I do not say with hands and feet, as Brutus
said at the battle of Pharsalia; I say, with sails and oars. Let's whip it
away. I never find myself to have a bit of courage at sea; in cellars and
elsewhere I have more than enough. Let's fly and save our bacon. I do not
say this for any fear that I have; for I dread nothing but danger, that I
don't; I always say it that shouldn't. The free archer of Baignolet said
as much. Let us hazard nothing, therefore, I say, lest we come off bluely.
Tack about, helm a-lee, thou son of a bachelor. Would I were now well in
Quinquenais, though I were never to marry. Haste away, let's make all the
sail we can. They'll be too hard for us; we are not able to cope with
them; they are ten to our one, I'll warrant you. Nay, and they are on
their dunghill, while we do not know the country. They will be the death
of us. We'll lose no honour by flying. Demosthenes saith that the man
that runs away may fight another day. At least let us retreat to the
leeward. Helm a-lee; bring the main-tack aboard, haul the bowlines, hoist
the top-gallants. We are all dead men; get off, in the devil's name, get
off.
Pantagruel, hearing the sad outcry which Panurge made, said, Who talks of
flying? Let's first see who they are; perhaps they may be friends. I can
discover nobody yet, though I can see a hundred miles round me. But let's
consider a little. I have read that a philosopher named Petron was of
opinion that there were several worlds that touched each other in an
equilateral triangle; in whose centre, he said, was the dwelling of truth;
and that the words, ideas, copies, and images of all things past and to
come resided there; round which was the age; and that with success of time
part of them used to fall on mankind like rheums and mildews, just as the
dew fell on Gideon's fleece, till the age was fulfilled.
I also remember, continued he, that Aristotle affirms Homer's words to be
flying, moving, and consequently animated. Besides, Antiphanes said that
Plato's philosophy was like words which, being spoken in some country
during a hard winter, are immediately congealed, frozen up, and not heard;
for what Plato taught young lads could hardly be understood by them when
they were grown old. Now, continued he, we should philosophize and search
whether this be not the place where those words are thawed.
You would wonder very much should this be the head and lyre of Orpheus.
When the Thracian women had torn him to pieces they threw his head and lyre
into the river Hebrus, down which they floated to the Euxine sea as far as
the island of Lesbos; the head continually uttering a doleful song, as it
were lamenting the death of Orpheus, and the lyre, with the wind's impulse
moving its strings and harmoniously accompanying the voice. Let's see if
we cannot discover them hereabouts.
How among the frozen words Pantagruel found some odd ones.
The skipper made answer: Be not afraid, my lord; we are on the confines of
the Frozen Sea, on which, about the beginning of last winter, happened a
great and bloody fight between the Arimaspians and the Nephelibates. Then
the words and cries of men and women, the hacking, slashing, and hewing of
battle-axes, the shocking, knocking, and jolting of armours and harnesses,
the neighing of horses, and all other martial din and noise, froze in the
air; and now, the rigour of the winter being over, by the succeeding
serenity and warmth of the weather they melt and are heard.
By jingo, quoth Panurge, the man talks somewhat like. I believe him. But
couldn't we see some of 'em? I think I have read that, on the edge of the
mountain on which Moses received the Judaic law, the people saw the voices
sensibly. Here, here, said Pantagruel, here are some that are not yet
thawed. He then threw us on the deck whole handfuls of frozen words, which
seemed to us like your rough sugar-plums, of many colours, like those used
in heraldry; some words gules (this means also jests and merry sayings),
some vert, some azure, some black, some or (this means also fair words);
and when we had somewhat warmed them between our hands, they melted like
snow, and we really heard them, but could not understand them, for it was a
barbarous gibberish. One of them only, that was pretty big, having been
warmed between Friar John's hands, gave a sound much like that of chestnuts
when they are thrown into the fire without being first cut, which made us
all start. This was the report of a field-piece in its time, cried Friar
John.
Panurge prayed Pantagruel to give him some more; but Pantagruel told him
that to give words was the part of a lover. Sell me some then, I pray you,
cried Panurge. That's the part of a lawyer, returned Pantagruel. I would
sooner sell you silence, though at a dearer rate; as Demosthenes formerly
sold it by the means of his argentangina, or silver squinsy.
However, he threw three or four handfuls of them on the deck; among which I
perceived some very sharp words, and some bloody words, which the pilot
said used sometimes to go back and recoil to the place whence they came,
but it was with a slit weasand. We also saw some terrible words, and some
others not very pleasant to the eye.
When they had been all melted together, we heard a strange noise, hin, hin,
hin, hin, his, tick, tock, taack, bredelinbrededack, frr, frr, frr, bou,
bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, track, track, trr, trr, trr, trrr,
trrrrrr, on, on, on, on, on, on, ououououon, gog, magog, and I do not know
what other barbarous words, which the pilot said were the noise made by the
charging squadrons, the shock and neighing of horses.
Then we heard some large ones go off like drums and fifes, and others like
clarions and trumpets. Believe me, we had very good sport with them. I
would fain have saved some merry odd words, and have preserved them in oil,
as ice and snow are kept, and between clean straw. But Pantagruel would
not let me, saying that 'tis a folly to hoard up what we are never like to
want or have always at hand, odd, quaint, merry, and fat words of gules
never being scarce among all good and jovial Pantagruelists.
Panurge somewhat vexed Friar John, and put him in the pouts; for he took
him at his word while he dreamed of nothing less. This caused the friar to
threaten him with such a piece of revenge as was put upon G. Jousseaume,
who having taken the merry Patelin at his word when he had overbid himself
in some cloth, was afterwards fairly taken by the horns like a bullock by
his jovial chapman, whom he took at his word like a man. Panurge, well
knowing that threatened folks live long, bobbed and made mouths at him in
token of derision, then cried, Would I had here the word of the Holy
Bottle, without being thus obliged to go further in pilgrimage to her.
How Pantagruel went ashore at the dwelling of Gaster, the first master of
arts in the world.
That day Pantagruel went ashore in an island which, for situation and
governor, may be said not to have its fellow. When you just come into it,
you find it rugged, craggy, and barren, unpleasant to the eye, painful to
the feet, and almost as inaccessible as the mountain of Dauphine, which is
somewhat like a toadstool, and was never climbed as any can remember by any
but Doyac, who had the charge of King Charles the Eighth's train of
artillery.
This same Doyac with strange tools and engines gained that mountain's top,
and there he found an old ram. It puzzled many a wise head to guess how it
got thither. Some said that some eagle or great horncoot, having carried
it thither while it was yet a lambkin, it had got away and saved itself
among the bushes.
As for us, having with much toil and sweat overcome the difficult ways at
the entrance, we found the top of the mountain so fertile, healthful, and
pleasant, that I thought I was then in the true garden of Eden, or earthly
paradise, about whose situation our good theologues are in such a quandary
and keep such a pother.
As for Pantagruel, he said that here was the seat of Arete--that is as much
as to say, virtue--described by Hesiod. This, however, with submission to
better judgments. The ruler of this place was one Master Gaster, the first
master of arts in this world. For, if you believe that fire is the great
master of arts, as Tully writes, you very much wrong him and yourself;
alas! Tully never believed this. On the other side, if you fancy Mercury
to be the first inventor of arts, as our ancient Druids believed of old,
you are mightily beside the mark. The satirist's sentence, that affirms
Master Gaster to be the master of all arts, is true. With him peacefully
resided old goody Penia, alias Poverty, the mother of the ninety-nine
Muses, on whom Porus, the lord of Plenty, formerly begot Love, that noble
child, the mediator of heaven and earth, as Plato affirms in Symposio.
We were all obliged to pay our homage and swear allegiance to that mighty
sovereign; for he is imperious, severe, blunt, hard, uneasy, inflexible;
you cannot make him believe, represent to him, or persuade him anything.
He does not hear; and as the Egyptians said that Harpocrates, the god of
silence, named Sigalion in Greek, was astome, that is, without a mouth, so
Gaster was created without ears, even like the image of Jupiter in Candia.
He only speaks by signs, but those signs are more readily obeyed by
everyone than the statutes of senates or commands of monarchs. Neither
will he admit the least let or delay in his summons. You say that when a
lion roars all the beasts at a considerable distance round about, as far as
his roar can be heard, are seized with a shivering. This is written, it is
true, I have seen it. I assure you that at Master Gaster's command the very
heavens tremble, and all the earth shakes. His command is called, Do this
or die. Needs must when the devil drives; there's no gainsaying of it.
The pilot was telling us how, on a certain time, after the manner of the
members that mutinied against the belly, as Aesop describes it, the whole
kingdom of the Somates went off into a direct faction against Gaster,
resolving to throw off his yoke; but they soon found their mistake, and
most humbly submitted, for otherwise they had all been famished.
What company soever he is in, none dispute with him for precedence or
superiority; he still goes first, though kings, emperors, or even the pope,
were there. So he held the first place at the council of Basle; though
some will tell you that the council was tumultuous by the contention and
ambition of many for priority.
Everyone is busied and labours to serve him, and indeed, to make amends for
this, he does this good to mankind, as to invent for them all arts,
machines, trades, engines, and crafts; he even instructs brutes in arts
which are against their nature, making poets of ravens, jackdaws,
chattering jays, parrots, and starlings, and poetesses of magpies, teaching
them to utter human language, speak, and sing; and all for the gut. He
reclaims and tames eagles, gerfalcons, falcons gentle, sakers, lanners,
goshawks, sparrowhawks, merlins, haggards, passengers, wild rapacious
birds; so that, setting them free in the air whenever he thinks fit, as
high and as long as he pleases, he keeps them suspended, straying, flying,
hovering, and courting him above the clouds. Then on a sudden he makes
them stoop, and come down amain from heaven next to the ground; and all for
the gut.
Elephants, lions, rhinoceroses, bears, horses, mares, and dogs, he teaches
to dance, prance, vault, fight, swim, hide themselves, fetch and carry what
he pleases; and all for the gut.
Salt and fresh-water fish, whales, and the monsters of the main, he brings
them up from the bottom of the deep; wolves he forces out of the woods,
bears out of the rocks, foxes out of their holes, and serpents out of the
ground, and all for the gut.
In short, he is so unruly, that in his rage he devours all men and beasts;
as was seen among the Vascons, when Q. Metellus besieged them in the
Sertorian wars, among the Saguntines besieged by Hannibal; among the Jews
besieged by the Romans, and six hundred more; and all for the gut. When
his regent Penia takes a progress, wherever she moves all senates are shut
up, all statutes repealed, all orders and proclamations vain; she knows,
obeys, and has no law. All shun her, in every place choosing rather to
expose themselves to shipwreck at sea, and venture through fire, rocks,
caves, and precipices, than be seized by that most dreadful tormentor.
How, at the court of the master of ingenuity, Pantagruel detested the
Engastrimythes and the Gastrolaters.
At the court of that great master of ingenuity, Pantagruel observed two
sorts of troublesome and too officious apparitors, whom he very much
detested. The first were called Engastrimythes; the others, Gastrolaters.
The first pretended to be descended of the ancient race of Eurycles, and
for this brought the authority of Aristophanes in his comedy called the
Wasps; whence of old they were called Euryclians, as Plato writes, and
Plutarch in his book of the Cessation of Oracles. In the holy decrees, 26,
qu. 3, they are styled Ventriloqui; and the same name is given them in
Ionian by Hippocrates, in his fifth book of Epid., as men who speak from
the belly. Sophocles calls them Sternomantes. These were soothsayers,
enchanters, cheats, who gulled the mob, and seemed not to speak and give
answers from the mouth, but from the belly.
Such a one, about the year of our Lord 1513, was Jacoba Rodogina, an
Italian woman of mean extract; from whose belly we, as well as an infinite
number of others at Ferrara and elsewhere, have often heard the voice of
the evil spirit speak, low, feeble, and small, indeed, but yet very
distinct, articulate, and intelligible, when she was sent for out of
curiosity by the lords and princes of the Cisalpine Gaul. To remove all
manner of doubt, and be assured that this was not a trick, they used to
have her stripped stark naked, and caused her mouth and nose to be stopped.
This evil spirit would be called Curled-pate, or Cincinnatulo, seeming
pleased when any called him by that name, at which he was always ready to
answer. If any spoke to him of things past or present, he gave pertinent
answers, sometimes to the amazement of the hearers; but if of things to
come, then the devil was gravelled, and used to lie as fast as a dog can
trot. Nay, sometimes he seemed to own his ignorance, instead of an answer
letting out a rousing fart, or muttering some words with barbarous and
uncouth inflexions, and not to be understood.
As for the Gastrolaters, they stuck close to one another in knots and
gangs. Some of them merry, wanton, and soft as so many milk-sops; others
louring, grim, dogged, demure, and crabbed; all idle, mortal foes to
business, spending half their time in sleeping and the rest in doing
nothing, a rent-charge and dead unnecessary weight on the earth, as Hesiod
saith; afraid, as we judged, of offending or lessening their paunch.
Others were masked, disguised, and so oddly dressed that it would have done
you good to have seen them.
There's a saying, and several ancient sages write, that the skill of nature
appears wonderful in the pleasure which she seems to have taken in the
configuration of sea-shells, so great is their variety in figures, colours,
streaks, and inimitable shapes. I protest the variety we perceived in the
dresses of the gastrolatrous coquillons was not less. They all owned
Gaster for their supreme god, adored him as a god, offered him sacrifices
as to their omnipotent deity, owned no other god, served, loved, and
honoured him above all things.
You would have thought that the holy apostle spoke of those when he said
(Phil. chap. 3), Many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you
even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is
destruction, whose God is their belly. Pantagruel compared them to the
Cyclops Polyphemus, whom Euripides brings in speaking thus: I only
sacrifice to myself--not to the gods--and to this belly of mine, the
greatest of all the gods.
Of the ridiculous statue Manduce; and how and what the Gastrolaters
sacrifice to their ventripotent god.
While we fed our eyes with the sight of the phizzes and actions of these
lounging gulligutted Gastrolaters, we on a sudden heard the sound of a
musical instrument called a bell; at which all of them placed themselves in
rank and file as for some mighty battle, everyone according to his office,
degree, and seniority.
In this order they moved towards Master Gaster, after a plump, young,
lusty, gorbellied fellow, who on a long staff fairly gilt carried a wooden
statue, grossly carved, and as scurvily daubed over with paint; such a one
as Plautus, Juvenal, and Pomp. Festus describe it. At Lyons during the
Carnival it is called Maschecroute or Gnawcrust; they call'd this Manduce.
It was a monstrous, ridiculous, hideous figure, fit to fright little
children; its eyes were bigger than its belly, and its head larger than all
the rest of its body; well mouth-cloven however, having a goodly pair of
wide, broad jaws, lined with two rows of teeth, upper tier and under tier,
which, by the magic of a small twine hid in the hollow part of the golden
staff, were made to clash, clatter, and rattle dreadfully one against
another; as they do at Metz with St. Clement's dragon.
Coming near the Gastrolaters I saw they were followed by a great number of
fat waiters and tenders, laden with baskets, dossers, hampers, dishes,
wallets, pots, and kettles. Then, under the conduct of Manduce, and
singing I do not know what dithyrambics, crepalocomes, and epenons, opening
their baskets and pots, they offered their god:
White hippocras, Fricassees, nine Cold loins of veal,
with dry toasts. sorts. with spice.
White bread. Monastical brewis. Zinziberine.
Brown bread. Gravy soup. Beatille pies.
Carbonadoes, six Hotch-pots. Brewis.
sorts. Soft bread. Marrow-bones, toast,
Brawn. Household bread. and cabbage.
Sweetbreads. Capirotadoes. Hashes.
Eternal drink intermixed. Brisk delicate white wine led the van; claret
and champagne followed, cool, nay, as cold as the very ice, I say, filled
and offered in large silver cups. Then they offered:
Chitterlings, gar- Chines and peas. Hams.
nished with mus- Hog's haslets. Brawn heads.
tard. Scotch collops. Powdered venison,
Sausages. Puddings. with turnips.
Neats' tongues. Cervelats. Pickled olives.
Hung beef. Bologna sausages.
All this associated with sempiternal liquor. Then they housed within his
muzzle:
Legs of mutton, with Ribs of pork, with Caponets.
shallots. onion sauce. Caviare and toast.
Olias. Roast capons, basted Fawns, deer.
Lumber pies, with with their own Hares, leverets.
hot sauce. dripping. Plovers.
Partridges and young Flamingoes. Herons, and young
partridges. Cygnets. herons.
Dwarf-herons. A reinforcement of Olives.
Teals. vinegar intermixed. Thrushes.
Duckers. Venison pasties. Young sea-ravens.
Bitterns. Lark pies. Geese, goslings.
Shovellers. Dormice pies. Queests.
Curlews. Cabretto pasties. Widgeons.
Wood-hens. Roebuck pasties. Mavises.
Coots, with leeks. Pigeon pies. Grouses.
Fat kids. Kid pasties. Turtles.
Shoulders of mutton, Capon pies. Doe-coneys.
with capers. Bacon pies. Hedgehogs.
Sirloins of beef. Soused hog's feet. Snites.
Breasts of veal. Fried pasty-crust. Then large puffs.
Pheasants and phea- Forced capons. Thistle-finches.
sant poots. Parmesan cheese. Whore's farts.
Peacocks. Red and pale hip- Fritters.
Storks. pocras. Cakes, sixteen sorts.
Woodcocks. Gold-peaches. Crisp wafers.
Snipes. Artichokes. Quince tarts.
Ortolans. Dry and wet sweet- Curds and cream.
Turkey cocks, hen meats, seventy- Whipped cream.
turkeys, and turkey eight sorts. Preserved mirabo-
poots. Boiled hens, and fat lans.
Stock-doves, and capons marinated. Jellies.
wood-culvers. Pullets, with eggs. Welsh barrapyclids.
Pigs, with wine sauce. Chickens. Macaroons.
Blackbirds, ousels, and Rabbits, and sucking Tarts, twenty sorts.
rails. rabbits. Lemon cream, rasp-
Moorhens. Quails, and young berry cream, &c.
Bustards, and bustard quails. Comfits, one hundred
poots. Pigeons, squabs, and colours.
Fig-peckers. squeakers. Cream wafers.
Young Guinea hens. Fieldfares. Cream cheese.
Vinegar brought up the rear to wash the mouth, and for fear of the squinsy;
also toasts to scour the grinders.
What the Gastrolaters sacrificed to their god on interlarded fish-days.
Pantagruel did not like this pack of rascally scoundrels with their
manifold kitchen sacrifices, and would have been gone had not Epistemon
prevailed with him to stay and see the end of the farce. He then asked the
skipper what the idle lobcocks used to sacrifice to their gorbellied god on
interlarded fish-days. For his first course, said the skipper, they gave
him:
Caviare. tops, bishop's-cods, Red herrings.
Botargoes. celery, chives, ram- Pilchards.
Fresh butter. pions, jew's-ears (a Anchovies.
Pease soup. sort of mushrooms Fry of tunny.
Spinach. that sprout out of Cauliflowers.
Fresh herrings, full old elders), spara- Beans.
roed. gus, wood-bind, Salt salmon.
Salads, a hundred and a world of Pickled grigs.
varieties, of cres- others. Oysters in the shell.
ses, sodden hop-
Then he must drink, or the devil would gripe him at the throat; this,
therefore, they take care to prevent, and nothing is wanting. Which being
done, they give him lampreys with hippocras sauce:
Gurnards. Thornbacks. Fried oysters.
Salmon trouts. Sleeves. Cockles.
Barbels, great and Sturgeons. Prawns.
small. Sheath-fish. Smelts.
Roaches. Mackerels. Rock-fish.
Cockerels. Maids. Gracious lords.
Minnows. Plaice. Sword-fish.
Skate-fish. Sharplings. Soles.
Lamprels. Tunnies. Mussels.
Jegs. Silver eels. Lobsters.
Pickerels. Chevins. Great prawns.
Golden carps. Crayfish. Dace.
Burbates. Pallours. Bleaks.
Salmons. Shrimps. Tenches.
Salmon-peels. Congers. Ombres.
Dolphins. Porpoises. Fresh cods.
Barn trouts. Bases. Dried melwels.
Miller's-thumbs. Shads. Darefish.
Precks. Murenes, a sort of Fausens, and grigs.
Bret-fish. lampreys. Eel-pouts.
Flounders. Graylings. Tortoises.
Sea-nettles. Smys. Serpents, i.e. wood-
Mullets. Turbots. eels.
Gudgeons. Trout, not above a Dories.
Dabs and sandings. foot long. Moor-game.
Haddocks. Salmons. Perches.
Carps. Meagers. Loaches.
Pikes. Sea-breams. Crab-fish.
Bottitoes. Halibuts. Snails and whelks.
Rochets. Dog's tongue, or kind Frogs.
Sea-bears. fool.
If, when he had crammed all this down his guttural trapdoor, he did not
immediately make the fish swim again in his paunch, death would pack him
off in a trice. Special care is taken to antidote his godship with
vine-tree syrup. Then is sacrificed to him haberdines, poor-jack,
minglemangled, mismashed, &c.
Eggs fried, beaten, sliced, roasted in Green-fish.
buttered, poached, the embers, tossed Sea-batts.
hardened, boiled, in the chimney, &c. Cod's sounds.
broiled, stewed, Stock-fish. Sea-pikes.
Which to concoct and digest the more easily, vinegar is multiplied. For
the latter part of their sacrifices they offer:
Rice milk, and hasty Stewed prunes, and Raisins.
pudding. baked bullace. Dates.
Buttered wheat, and Pistachios, or fistic Chestnut and wal-
flummery. nuts. nuts.
Water-gruel, and Figs. Filberts.
milk-porridge. Almond butter. Parsnips.
Frumenty and bonny Skirret root. Artichokes.
clamber. White-pot.
Perpetuity of soaking with the whole.
It was none of their fault, I will assure you, if this same god of theirs
was not publicly, preciously, and plentifully served in the sacrifices,
better yet than Heliogabalus's idol; nay, more than Bel and the Dragon in
Babylon, under King Belshazzar. Yet Gaster had the manners to own that he
was no god, but a poor, vile, wretched creature. And as King Antigonus,
first of the name, when one Hermodotus (as poets will flatter, especially
princes) in some of his fustian dubbed him a god, and made the sun adopt
him for his son, said to him: My lasanophore (or, in plain English, my
groom of the close-stool) can give thee the lie; so Master Gaster very
civilly used to send back his bigoted worshippers to his close-stool, to
see, smell, taste, philosophize, and examine what kind of divinity they
could pick out of his sir-reverence.
How Gaster invented means to get and preserve corn.
Those gastrolatrous hobgoblins being withdrawn, Pantagruel carefully minded
the famous master of arts, Gaster. You know that, by the institution of
nature, bread has been assigned him for provision and food; and that, as an
addition to this blessing, he should never want the means to get bread.
Accordingly, from the beginning he invented the smith's art, and husbandry
to manure the ground, that it might yield him corn; he invented arms and
the art of war to defend corn; physic and astronomy, with other parts of
mathematics which might be useful to keep corn a great number of years in
safety from the injuries of the air, beasts, robbers, and purloiners; he
invented water, wind, and handmills, and a thousand other engines to grind
corn and to turn it into meal; leaven to make the dough ferment, and the
use of salt to give it a savour; for he knew that nothing bred more
diseases than heavy, unleavened, unsavoury bread.
He found a way to get fire to bake it; hour-glasses, dials, and clocks to
mark the time of its baking; and as some countries wanted corn, he
contrived means to convey some out of one country into another.
He had the wit to pimp for asses and mares, animals of different species,
that they might copulate for the generation of a third, which we call
mules, more strong and fit for hard service than the other two. He
invented carts and waggons to draw him along with greater ease; and as seas
and rivers hindered his progress, he devised boats, galleys, and ships (to
the astonishment of the elements) to waft him over to barbarous, unknown,
and far distant nations, thence to bring, or thither to carry corn.
Besides, seeing that when he had tilled the ground, some years the corn
perished in it for want of rain in due season, in others rotted or was
drowned by its excess, sometimes spoiled by hail, eat by worms in the ear,
or beaten down by storms, and so his stock was destroyed on the ground; we
were told that ever since the days of yore he has found out a way to
conjure the rain down from heaven only with cutting certain grass, common
enough in the field, yet known to very few, some of which was then shown
us. I took it to be the same as the plant, one of whose boughs being
dipped by Jove's priest in the Agrian fountain on the Lycian mountain in
Arcadia, in time of drought raised vapours which gathered into clouds, and
then dissolved into rain that kindly moistened the whole country.
Our master of arts was also said to have found a way to keep the rain up in
the air, and make it to fall into the sea; also to annihilate the hail,
suppress the winds, and remove storms as the Methanensians of Troezene used
to do. And as in the fields thieves and plunderers sometimes stole and
took by force the corn and bread which others had toiled to get, he
invented the art of building towns, forts, and castles, to hoard and secure
that staff of life. On the other hand, finding none in the fields, and
hearing that it was hoarded up and secured in towns, forts, and castles,
and watched with more care than ever were the golden pippins of the
Hesperides, he turned engineer, and found ways to beat, storm, and demolish
forts and castles with machines and warlike thunderbolts, battering-rams,
ballists, and catapults, whose shapes were shown to us, not over-well
understood by our engineers, architects, and other disciples of Vitruvius;
as Master Philibert de l'Orme, King Megistus's principal architect, has
owned to us.
And seeing that sometimes all these tools of destruction were baffled by
the cunning subtlety or the subtle cunning (which you please) of
fortifiers, he lately invented cannons, field-pieces, culverins, bombards,
basiliskos, murdering instruments that dart iron, leaden, and brazen balls,
some of them outweighing huge anvils. This by the means of a most dreadful
powder, whose hellish compound and effect has even amazed nature, and made
her own herself outdone by art, the Oxydracian thunders, hails, and storms
by which the people of that name immediately destroyed their enemies in the
field being but mere potguns to these. For one of our great guns when used
is more dreadful, more terrible, more diabolical, and maims, tears, breaks,
slays, mows down, and sweeps away more men, and causes a greater
consternation and destruction than a hundred thunderbolts.
How Gaster invented an art to avoid being hurt or touched by cannon-balls.
Gaster having secured himself with his corn within strongholds, has
sometimes been attacked by enemies; his fortresses, by that thrice
threefold cursed instrument, levelled and destroyed; his dearly beloved
corn and bread snatched out of his mouth and sacked by a titanic force;
therefore he then sought means to preserve his walls, bastions, rampiers,
and sconces from cannon-shot, and to hinder the bullets from hitting him,
stopping them in their flight, or at least from doing him or the besieged
walls any damage. He showed us a trial of this which has been since used
by Fronton, and is now common among the pastimes and harmless recreations
of the Thelemites. I will tell you how he went to work, and pray for the
future be a little more ready to believe what Plutarch affirms to have
tried. Suppose a herd of goats were all scampering as if the devil drove
them, do but put a bit of eringo into the mouth of the hindmost nanny, and
they will all stop stock still in the time you can tell three.
Thus Gaster, having caused a brass falcon to be charged with a sufficient
quantity of gunpowder well purged from its sulphur, and curiously made up
with fine camphor, he then had a suitable ball put into the piece, with
twenty-four little pellets like hail-shot, some round, some pearl fashion;
then taking his aim and levelling it at a page of his, as if he would have
hit him on the breast. About sixty strides off the piece, halfway between
it and the page in a right line, he hanged on a gibbet by a rope a very
large siderite or iron-like stone, otherwise called herculean, formerly
found on Ida in Phrygia by one Magnes, as Nicander writes, and commonly
called loadstone; then he gave fire to the prime on the piece's touch-hole,
which in an instant consuming the powder, the ball and hail-shot were with
incredible violence and swiftness hurried out of the gun at its muzzle,
that the air might penetrate to its chamber, where otherwise would have
been a vacuum, which nature abhors so much, that this universal machine,
heaven, air, land, and sea, would sooner return to the primitive chaos than
admit the least void anywhere. Now the ball and small shot, which
threatened the page with no less than quick destruction, lost their
impetuosity and remained suspended and hovering round the stone; nor did
any of them, notwithstanding the fury with which they rushed, reach the
page.
Master Gaster could do more than all this yet, if you will believe me; for
he invented a way how to cause bullets to fly backwards, and recoil on
those that sent them with as great a force, and in the very numerical
parallel for which the guns were planted. And indeed, why should he have
thought this difficult? seeing the herb ethiopis opens all locks
whatsoever, and an echinus or remora, a silly weakly fish, in spite of all
the winds that blow from the thirty-two points of the compass, will in the
midst of a hurricane make you the biggest first-rate remain stock still, as
if she were becalmed or the blustering tribe had blown their last. Nay,
and with the flesh of that fish, preserved with salt, you may fish gold out
of the deepest well that was ever sounded with a plummet; for it will
certainly draw up the precious metal, since Democritus affirmed it.
Theophrastus believed and experienced that there was an herb at whose
single touch an iron wedge, though never so far driven into a huge log of
the hardest wood that is, would presently come out; and it is this same
herb your hickways, alias woodpeckers, use, when with some mighty axe
anyone stops up the hole of their nests, which they industriously dig and
make in the trunk of some sturdy tree. Since stags and hinds, when deeply
wounded with darts, arrows, and bolts, if they do but meet the herb called
dittany, which is common in Candia, and eat a little of it, presently the
shafts come out and all is well again; even as kind Venus cured her beloved
byblow Aeneas when he was wounded on the right thigh with an arrow by
Juturna, Turnus's sister. Since the very wind of laurels, fig-trees, or
sea-calves makes the thunder sheer off insomuch that it never strikes them.
Since at the sight of a ram, mad elephants recover their former senses.
Since mad bulls coming near wild fig-trees, called caprifici, grow tame,
and will not budge a foot, as if they had the cramp. Since the venomous
rage of vipers is assuaged if you but touch them with a beechen bough.
Since also Euphorion writes that in the isle of Samos, before Juno's temple
was built there, he has seen some beasts called neades, whose voice made
the neighbouring places gape and sink into a chasm and abyss. In short,
since elders grow of a more pleasing sound, and fitter to make flutes, in
such places where the crowing of cocks is not heard, as the ancient sages
have writ and Theophrastus relates; as if the crowing of a cock dulled,
flattened, and perverted the wood of the elder, as it is said to astonish
and stupify with fear that strong and resolute animal, a lion. I know that
some have understood this of wild elder, that grows so far from towns or
villages that the crowing of cocks cannot reach near it; and doubtless that
sort ought to be preferred to the stenching common elder that grows about
decayed and ruined places; but others have understood this in a higher
sense, not literal, but allegorical, according to the method of the
Pythagoreans, as when it was said that Mercury's statue could not be made
of every sort of wood; to which sentence they gave this sense, that God is
not to be worshipped in a vulgar form, but in a chosen and religious
manner. In the same manner, by this elder which grows far from places
where cocks are heard, the ancients meant that the wise and studious ought
not to give their minds to trivial or vulgar music, but to that which is
celestial, divine, angelical, more abstracted, and brought from remoter
parts, that is, from a region where the crowing of cocks is not heard; for,
to denote a solitary and unfrequented place, we say cocks are never heard
to crow there.
How Pantagruel fell asleep near the island of Chaneph, and of the problems
proposed to be solved when he waked.
The next day, merrily pursuing our voyage, we came in sight of the island
of Chaneph, where Pantagruel's ship could not arrive, the wind chopping
about, and then failing us so that we were becalmed, and could hardly get
ahead, tacking about from starboard to larboard, and larboard to starboard,
though to our sails we added drabblers.
With this accident we were all out of sorts, moping, drooping,
metagrabolized, as dull as dun in the mire, in C sol fa ut flat, out of
tune, off the hinges, and I-don't-know-howish, without caring to speak one
single syllable to each other.
Pantagruel was taking a nap, slumbering and nodding on the quarter-deck by
the cuddy, with an Heliodorus in his hand; for still it was his custom to
sleep better by book than by heart.
Epistemon was conjuring, with his astrolabe, to know what latitude we were
in.
Friar John was got into the cook-room, examining, by the ascendant of the
spits and the horoscope of ragouts and fricassees, what time of day it
might then be.
Panurge (sweet baby!) held a stalk of Pantagruelions, alias hemp, next his
tongue, and with it made pretty bubbles and bladders.
Gymnast was making tooth-pickers with lentisk.
Ponocrates, dozing, dozed, and dreaming, dreamed; tickled himself to make
himself laugh, and with one finger scratched his noddle where it did not
itch.
Carpalin, with a nutshell and a trencher of verne (that's a card in
Gascony), was making a pretty little merry windmill, cutting the card
longways into four slips, and fastening them with a pin to the convex of
the nut, and its concave to the tarred side of the gunnel of the ship.
Eusthenes, bestriding one of the guns, was playing on it with his fingers
as if it had been a trump-marine.
Rhizotome, with the soft coat of a field tortoise, alias ycleped a mole,
was making himself a velvet purse.
Xenomanes was patching up an old weather-beaten lantern with a hawk's
jesses.
Our pilot (good man!) was pulling maggots out of the seamen's noses.
At last Friar John, returning from the forecastle, perceived that
Pantagruel was awake. Then breaking this obstinate silence, he briskly and
cheerfully asked him how a man should kill time, and raise good weather,
during a calm at sea.
Panurge, whose belly thought his throat cut, backed the motion presently,
and asked for a pill to purge melancholy.
Epistemon also came on, and asked how a man might be ready to bepiss
himself with laughing when he has no heart to be merry.
Gymnast, arising, demanded a remedy for a dimness of eyes.
Ponocrates, after he had a while rubbed his noddle and shaken his ears,
asked how one might avoid dog-sleep. Hold! cried Pantagruel, the
Peripatetics have wisely made a rule that all problems, questions, and
doubts which are offered to be solved ought to be certain, clear, and
intelligible. What do you mean by dog-sleep? I mean, answered Ponocrates,
to sleep fasting in the sun at noonday, as the dogs do.
Rhizotome, who lay stooping on the pump, raised his drowsy head, and lazily
yawning, by natural sympathy set almost everyone in the ship a-yawning too;
then he asked for a remedy against oscitations and gapings.
Xenomanes, half puzzled, and tired out with new-vamping his antiquated
lantern, asked how the hold of the stomach might be so well ballasted and
freighted from the keel to the main hatch, with stores well stowed, that
our human vessels might not heel or be walt, but well trimmed and stiff.
Carpalin, twirling his diminutive windmill, asked how many motions are to
be felt in nature before a gentleman may be said to be hungry.
Eusthenes, hearing them talk, came from between decks, and from the capstan
called out to know why a man that is fasting, bit by a serpent also
fasting, is in greater danger of death than when man and serpent have eat
their breakfasts;--why a man's fasting-spittle is poisonous to serpents and
venomous creatures.
One single solution may serve for all your problems, gentlemen, answered
Pantagruel; and one single medicine for all such symptoms and accidents.
My answer shall be short, not to tire you with a long needless train of
pedantic cant. The belly has no ears, nor is it to be filled with fair
words; you shall be answered to content by signs and gestures. As formerly
at Rome, Tarquin the Proud, its last king, sent an answer by signs to his
son Sextus, who was among the Gabii at Gabii. (Saying this, he pulled the
string of a little bell, and Friar John hurried away to the cook-room.)
The son having sent his father a messenger to know how he might bring the
Gabii under a close subjection, the king, mistrusting the messenger, made
him no answer, and only took him into his privy garden, and in his presence
with his sword lopped off the heads of the tall poppies that were there.
The express returned without any other despatch, yet having related to the
prince what he had seen his father do, he easily understood that by those
signs he advised him to cut off the heads of the chief men in the town, the
better to keep under the rest of the people.
How Pantagruel gave no answer to the problems.
Pantagruel then asked what sort of people dwelt in that damned island.
They are, answered Xenomanes, all hypocrites, holy mountebanks, tumblers of
beads, mumblers of ave-marias, spiritual comedians, sham saints, hermits,
all of them poor rogues who, like the hermit of Lormont between Blaye and
Bordeaux, live wholly on alms given them by passengers. Catch me there if
you can, cried Panurge; may the devil's head-cook conjure my bumgut into a
pair of bellows if ever you find me among them! Hermits, sham saints,
living forms of mortification, holy mountebanks, avaunt! in the name of
your father Satan, get out of my sight! When the devil's a hog, you shall
eat bacon. I shall not forget yet awhile our fat Concilipetes of Chesil.
O that Beelzebub and Astaroth had counselled them to hang themselves out of
the way, and they had done't! we had not then suffered so much by devilish
storms as we did for having seen 'em. Hark ye me, dear rogue, Xenomanes,
my friend, I prithee are these hermits, hypocrites, and eavesdroppers maids
or married? Is there anything of the feminine gender among them? Could a
body hypocritically take there a small hypocritical touch? Will they lie
backwards, and let out their fore-rooms? There's a fine question to be
asked, cried Pantagruel. Yes, yes, answered Xenomanes; you may find there
many goodly hypocritesses, jolly spiritual actresses, kind hermitesses,
women that have a plaguy deal of religion; then there's the copies of 'em,
little hypocritillons, sham sanctitos, and hermitillons. Foh! away with
them, cried Friar John; a young saint, an old devil! (Mark this, an old
saying, and as true a one as, a young whore, an old saint.) Were there not
such, continued Xenomanes, the isle of Chaneph, for want of a
multiplication of progeny, had long ere this been desert and desolate.
Pantagruel sent them by Gymnast in the pinnace seventy-eight thousand fine
pretty little gold half-crowns, of those that are marked with a lantern.
After this he asked, What's o'clock? Past nine, answered Epistemon. It is
then the best time to go to dinner, said Pantagruel; for the sacred line so
celebrated by Aristophanes in his play called Concionatrices is at hand,
never failing when the shadow is decempedal.
Formerly, among the Persians, dinner-time was at a set hour only for kings;
as for all others, their appetite and their belly was their clock; when
that chimed, they thought it time to go to dinner. So we find in Plautus a
certain parasite making a heavy do, and sadly railing at the inventors of
hour-glasses and dials as being unnecessary things, there being no clock
more regular than the belly.
Diogenes being asked at what times a man ought to eat, answered, The rich
when he is hungry, the poor when he has anything to eat. Physicians more
properly say that the canonical hours are,
To rise at five, to dine at nine,
To sup at five, to sleep at nine.
The famous king Petosiris's magic was different,--Here the officers for the
gut came in, and got ready the tables and cupboards; laid the cloth, whose
sight and pleasant smell were very comfortable; and brought plates,
napkins, salts, tankards, flagons, tall-boys, ewers, tumblers, cups,
goblets, basins, and cisterns.
Friar John, at the head of the stewards, sewers, yeomen of the pantry, and
of the mouth, tasters, carvers, cupbearers, and cupboard-keepers, brought
four stately pasties, so huge that they put me in mind of the four bastions
at Turin. Ods-fish, how manfully did they storm them! What havoc did they
make with the long train of dishes that came after them! How bravely did
they stand to their pan-puddings, and paid off their dust! How merrily did
they soak their noses!
The fruit was not yet brought in, when a fresh gale at west and by north
began to fill the main-course, mizen-sail, fore-sail, tops, and
top-gallants; for which blessing they all sung divers hymns of thanks and
praise.
When the fruit was on the table, Pantagruel asked, Now tell me, gentlemen,
are your doubts fully resolved or no? I gape and yawn no more, answered
Rhizotome. I sleep no longer like a dog, said Ponocrates. I have cleared
my eyesight, said Gymnast. I have broke my fast, said Eusthenes; so that
for this whole day I shall be secure from the danger of my spittle.
Asps. Black wag leg-flies. Domeses.
Amphisbenes. Spanish flies. Dryinades.
Anerudutes. Catoblepes. Dragons.
Abedissimons. Horned snakes. Elopes.
Alhartrafz. Caterpillars. Enhydrides.
Ammobates. Crocodiles. Falvises.
Apimaos. Toads. Galeotes.
Alhatrabans. Nightmares. Harmenes.
Aractes. Mad dogs. Handons.
Asterions. Colotes. Icles.
Alcharates. Cychriodes. Jarraries.
Arges. Cafezates. Ilicines.
Spiders. Cauhares. Pharaoh's mice.
Starry lizards. Snakes. Kesudures.
Attelabes. Cuhersks, two- Sea-hares.
Ascalabotes. tongued adders. Chalcidic newts.
Haemorrhoids. Amphibious ser- Footed serpents.
Basilisks. pents. Manticores.
Fitches. Cenchres. Molures.
Sucking water- Cockatrices. Mouse-serpents.
snakes. Dipsades. Shrew-mice.
Miliares. Salamanders. Stinkfish.
Megalaunes. Slowworms. Stuphes.
Spitting-asps. Stellions. Sabrins.
Porphyri. Scorpenes. Blood-sucking flies.
Pareades. Scorpions. Hornfretters.
Phalanges. Hornworms. Scolopendres.
Penphredons. Scalavotins. Tarantulas.
Pinetree-worms. Solofuidars. Blind worms.
Ruteles. Deaf-asps. Tetragnathias.
Worms. Horseleeches. Teristales.
Rhagions. Salt-haters. Vipers, &c.
Rhaganes. Rot-serpents.
How Pantagruel passed the time with his servants.
In what hierarchy of such venomous creatures do you place Panurge's future
spouse? asked Friar John. Art thou speaking ill of women, cried Panurge,
thou mangy scoundrel, thou sorry, noddy-peaked shaveling monk? By the
cenomanic paunch and gixy, said Epistemon, Euripides has written, and makes
Andromache say it, that by industry, and the help of the gods, men had
found remedies against all poisonous creatures; but none was yet found
against a bad wife.
This flaunting Euripides, cried Panurge, was gabbling against women every
foot, and therefore was devoured by dogs, as a judgment from above; as
Aristophanes observes. Let's go on. Let him speak that is next. I can
leak now like any stone-horse, said then Epistemon. I am, said Xenomanes,
full as an egg and round as a hoop; my ship's hold can hold no more, and
will now make shift to bear a steady sail. Said Carpalin, A truce with
thirst, a truce with hunger; they are strong, but wine and meat are
stronger. I'm no more in the dumps cried Panurge; my heart's a pound
lighter. I'm in the right cue now, as brisk as a body-louse, and as merry
as a beggar. For my part, I know what I do when I drink; and it is a true
thing (though 'tis in your Euripides) that is said by that jolly toper
Silenus of blessed memory, that--
The man's emphatically mad,
Who drinks the best, yet can be sad.
We must not fail to return our humble and hearty thanks to the Being who,
with this good bread, this cool delicious wine, these good meats and rare
dainties, removes from our bodies and minds these pains and perturbations,
and at the same time fills us with pleasure and with food.
But methinks, sir, you did not give an answer to Friar John's question;
which, as I take it, was how to raise good weather. Since you ask no more
than this easy question, answered Pantagruel, I'll strive to give you
satisfaction; and some other time we'll talk of the rest of the problems,
if you will.
Well then, Friar John asked how good weather might be raised. Have we not
raised it? Look up and see our full topsails. Hark how the wind whistles
through the shrouds, what a stiff gale it blows. Observe the rattling of
the tacklings, and see the sheets that fasten the mainsail behind; the
force of the wind puts them upon the stretch. While we passed our time
merrily, the dull weather also passed away; and while we raised the glasses
to our mouths, we also raised the wind by a secret sympathy in nature.
Thus Atlas and Hercules clubbed to raise and underprop the falling sky, if
you'll believe the wise mythologists, but they raised it some half an inch
too high, Atlas to entertain his guest Hercules more pleasantly, and
Hercules to make himself amends for the thirst which some time before had
tormented him in the deserts of Africa. Your good father, said Friar John,
interrupting him, takes care to free many people from such an
inconveniency; for I have been told by many venerable doctors that his
chief-butler, Turelupin, saves above eighteen hundred pipes of wine yearly
to make servants, and all comers and goers, drink before they are a-dry.
As the camels and dromedaries of a caravan, continued Pantagruel, use to
drink for the thirst that's past, for the present, and for that to come, so
did Hercules; and being thus excessively raised, this gave new motion to
the sky, which is that of titubation and trepidation, about which our
crackbrained astrologers make such a pother. This, said Panurge, makes the
saying good:
While jolly companions carouse it together,
A fig for the storm, it gives way to good weather.
Nay, continued Pantagruel, some will tell you that we have not only
shortened the time of the calm, but also much disburthened the ship; not
like Aesop's basket, by easing it of the provision, but by breaking our
fasts; and that a man is more terrestrial and heavy when fasting than when
he has eaten and drank, even as they pretend that he weighs more dead than
living. However it is, you will grant they are in the right who take their
morning's draught and breakfast before a long journey; then say that the
horses will perform the better, and that a spur in the head is worth two in
the flank; or, in the same horse dialect--
That a cup in the pate
Is a mile in the gate.
Don't you know that formerly the Amycleans worshipped the noble Bacchus
above all other gods, and gave him the name of Psila, which in the Doric
dialect signifies wings; for, as the birds raise themselves by a towering
flight with their wings above the clouds, so, with the help of soaring
Bacchus, the powerful juice of the grape, our spirits are exalted to a
pitch above themselves, our bodies are more sprightly, and their earthly
parts become soft and pliant.
How, by Pantagruel's order, the Muses were saluted near the isle of
Ganabim.
This fair wind and as fine talk brought us in sight of a high land, which
Pantagruel discovering afar off, showed it Xenomanes, and asked him, Do you
see yonder to the leeward a high rock with two tops, much like Mount
Parnassus in Phocis? I do plainly, answered Xenomanes; 'tis the isle of
Ganabim. Have you a mind to go ashore there? No, returned Pantagruel.
You do well, indeed, said Xenomanes; for there is nothing worth seeing in
the place. The people are all thieves; yet there is the finest fountain in
the world, and a very large forest towards the right top of the mountain.
Your fleet may take in wood and water there.
He that spoke last, spoke well, quoth Panurge; let us not by any means be
so mad as to go among a parcel of thieves and sharpers. You may take my
word for't, this place is just such another as, to my knowledge, formerly
were the islands of Sark and Herm, between the smaller and the greater
Britain; such as was the Poneropolis of Philip in Thrace; islands of
thieves, banditti, picaroons, robbers, ruffians, and murderers, worse than
raw-head and bloody-bones, and full as honest as the senior fellows of the
college of iniquity, the very outcasts of the county gaol's common-side.
As you love yourself, do not go among 'em. If you go you'll come off but
bluely, if you come off at all. If you will not believe me, at least
believe what the good and wise Xenomanes tells you; for may I never stir if
they are not worse than the very cannibals; they would certainly eat us
alive. Do not go among 'em, I pray you; it were safer to take a journey to
hell. Hark! by Cod's body, I hear 'em ringing the alarm-bell most
dreadfully, as the Gascons about Bordeaux used formerly to do against the
commissaries and officers for the tax on salt, or my ears tingle. Let's
sheer off.
Believe me, sir, said Friar John, let's rather land; we will rid the world
of that vermin, and inn there for nothing. Old Nick go with thee for me,
quoth Panurge. This rash hairbrained devil of a friar fears nothing, but
ventures and runs on like a mad devil as he is, and cares not a rush what
becomes of others; as if everyone was a monk, like his friarship. A pox on
grinning honour, say I. Go to, returned the friar, thou mangy noddy-peak!
thou forlorn druggle-headed sneaksby! and may a million of black devils
anatomize thy cockle brain. The hen-hearted rascal is so cowardly that he
berays himself for fear every day. If thou art so afraid, dunghill, do not
go; stay here and be hanged; or go and hide thy loggerhead under Madam
Proserpine's petticoat.
Panurge hearing this, his breech began to make buttons; so he slunk in in
an instant, and went to hide his head down in the bread-room among the
musty biscuits and the orts and scraps of broken bread.
Pantagruel in the meantime said to the rest: I feel a pressing retraction
in my soul, which like a voice admonishes me not to land there. Whenever I
have felt such a motion within me I have found myself happy in avoiding
what it directed me to shun, or in undertaking what it prompted me to do;
and I never had occasion to repent following its dictates.
As much, said Epistemon, is related of the daemon of Socrates, so
celebrated among the Academics. Well then, sir, said Friar John, while the
ship's crew water have you a mind to have good sport? Panurge is got down
somewhere in the hold, where he is crept into some corner, and lurks like a
mouse in a cranny. Let 'em give the word for the gunner to fire yon gun
over the round-house on the poop; this will serve to salute the Muses of
this Anti-parnassus; besides, the powder does but decay in it. You are in
the right, said Pantagruel; here, give the word for the gunner.
The gunner immediately came, and was ordered by Pantagruel to fire that
gun, and then charge it with fresh powder, which was soon done. The
gunners of the other ships, frigates, galleons, and galleys of the fleet,
hearing us fire, gave every one a gun to the island; which made such a
horrid noise that you would have sworn heaven had been tumbling about our
ears.
How Panurge berayed himself for fear; and of the huge cat Rodilardus, which
he took for a puny devil.
Panurge, like a wild, addle-pated, giddy-goat, sallies out of the
bread-room in his shirt, with nothing else about him but one of his
stockings, half on, half off, about his heel, like a rough-footed pigeon;
his hair and beard all bepowdered with crumbs of bread in which he had been
over head and ears, and a huge and mighty puss partly wrapped up in his
other stocking. In this equipage, his chaps moving like a monkey's who's
a-louse-hunting, his eyes staring like a dead pig's, his teeth chattering,
and his bum quivering, the poor dog fled to Friar John, who was then sitting
by the chain-wales of the starboard side of the ship, and prayed him
heartily to take pity on him and keep him in the safeguard of his trusty
bilbo; swearing, by his share of Papimany, that he had seen all hell broke
loose.
Woe is me, my Jacky, cried he, my dear Johnny, my old crony, my brother, my
ghostly father! all the devils keep holiday, all the devils keep their
feast to-day, man. Pork and peas choke me if ever thou sawest such
preparations in thy life for an infernal feast. Dost thou see the smoke of
hell's kitchens? (This he said, showing him the smoke of the gunpowder
above the ships.) Thou never sawest so many damned souls since thou wast
born; and so fair, so bewitching they seem, that one would swear they are
Stygian ambrosia. I thought at first, God forgive me! that they had been
English souls; and I don't know but that this morning the isle of Horses,
near Scotland, was sacked, with all the English who had surprised it, by
the lords of Termes and Essay.
Friar John, at the approach of Panurge, was entertained with a kind of
smell that was not like that of gunpowder, nor altogether so sweet as musk;
which made him turn Panurge about, and then he saw that his shirt was
dismally bepawed and berayed with fresh sir-reverence. The retentive
faculty of the nerve which restrains the muscle called sphincter ('tis the
arse-hole, an it please you) was relaxated by the violence of the fear
which he had been in during his fantastic visions. Add to this the
thundering noise of the shooting, which seems more dreadful between decks
than above. Nor ought you to wonder at such a mishap; for one of the
symptoms and accidents of fear is, that it often opens the wicket of the
cupboard wherein second-hand meat is kept for a time. Let's illustrate
this noble theme with some examples.
Messer Pantolfe de la Cassina of Siena, riding post from Rome, came to
Chambery, and alighting at honest Vinet's took one of the pitchforks in the
stable; then turning to the innkeeper, said to him, Da Roma in qua io non
son andato del corpo. Di gratia piglia in mano questa forcha, et fa mi
paura. (I have not had a stool since I left Rome. I pray thee take this
pitchfork and fright me.) Vinet took it, and made several offers as if he
would in good earnest have hit the signor, but all in vain; so the Sienese
said to him, Si tu non fai altramente, tu non fai nulla; pero sforzati di
adoperarli piu guagliardamente. (If thou dost not go another way to work,
thou hadst as good do nothing; therefore try to bestir thyself more
briskly.) With this, Vinet lent him such a swinging stoater with the
pitchfork souse between the neck and the collar of his jerkin, that down
fell signor on the ground arsyversy, with his spindle shanks wide
straggling over his poll. Then mine host sputtering, with a full-mouthed
laugh, said to his guest, By Beelzebub's bumgut, much good may it do you,
Signore Italiano. Take notice this is datum Camberiaci, given at Chambery.
'Twas well the Sienese had untrussed his points and let down his drawers;
for this physic worked with him as soon as he took it, and as copious was
the evacuation as that of nine buffaloes and fourteen missificating
arch-lubbers. Which operation being over, the mannerly Sienese courteously
gave mine host a whole bushel of thanks, saying to him, Io ti ringratio, bel
messere; cosi facendo tu m' ai esparmiata la speza d'un servitiale. (I
thank thee, good landlord; by this thou hast e'en saved me the expense of a
clyster.)
I'll give you another example of Edward V., King of England. Master
Francis Villon, being banished France, fled to him, and got so far into his
favour as to be privy to all his household affairs. One day the king,
being on his close-stool, showed Villon the arms of France, and said to
him, Dost thou see what respect I have for thy French kings? I have none
of their arms anywhere but in this backside, near my close-stool.
Ods-life, said the buffoon, how wise, prudent, and careful of your health
your highness is! How carefully your learned doctor, Thomas Linacre, looks
after you! He saw that now you grow old you are inclined to be somewhat
costive, and every day were fain to have an apothecary, I mean a suppository
or clyster, thrust into your royal nockandroe; so he has, much to the
purpose, induced you to place here the arms of France; for the very sight of
them puts you into such a dreadful fright that you immediately let fly as
much as would come from eighteen squattering bonasi of Paeonia. And if they
were painted in other parts of your house, by jingo, you would presently
conskite yourself wherever you saw them. Nay, had you but here a picture of
the great oriflamme of France, ods-bodikins, your tripes and bowels would be
in no small danger of dropping out at the orifice of your posteriors. But
henh, henh, atque iterum henh.
A silly cockney am I not,
As ever did from Paris come?
And with a rope and sliding knot
My neck shall know what weighs my bum.
A cockney of short reach, I say, shallow of judgment and judging shallowly,
to wonder that you should cause your points to be untrussed in your chamber
before you come into this closet. By'r lady, at first I thought your
close-stool had stood behind the hangings of your bed; otherwise it seemed
very odd to me you should untruss so far from the place of evacuation. But
now I find I was a gull, a wittol, a woodcock, a mere ninny, a dolt-head, a
noddy, a changeling, a calf-lolly, a doddipoll. You do wisely, by the
mass, you do wisely; for had you not been ready to clap your hind face on
the mustard-pot as soon as you came within sight of these arms--mark ye me,
cop's body--the bottom of your breeches had supplied the office of a
close-stool.
Friar John, stopping the handle of his face with his left hand, did, with
the forefinger of the right, point out Panurge's shirt to Pantagruel, who,
seeing him in this pickle, scared, appalled, shivering, raving, staring,
berayed, and torn with the claws of the famous cat Rodilardus, could not
choose but laugh, and said to him, Prithee what wouldst thou do with this
cat? With this cat? quoth Panurge; the devil scratch me if I did not think
it had been a young soft-chinned devil, which, with this same stocking
instead of mitten, I had snatched up in the great hutch of hell as
thievishly as any sizar of Montague college could have done. The devil
take Tybert! I feel it has all bepinked my poor hide, and drawn on it to
the life I don't know how many lobsters' whiskers. With this he threw his
boar-cat down.
Go, go, said Pantagruel, be bathed and cleaned, calm your fears, put on a
clean shift, and then your clothes. What! do you think I am afraid? cried
Panurge. Not I, I protest. By the testicles of Hercules, I am more
hearty, bold, and stout, though I say it that should not, than if I had
swallowed as many flies as are put into plumcakes and other paste at Paris
from Midsummer to Christmas. But what's this? Hah! oh, ho! how the devil
came I by this? Do you call this what the cat left in the malt, filth,
dirt, dung, dejection, faecal matter, excrement, stercoration,
sir-reverence, ordure, second-hand meats, fumets, stronts, scybal, or
spyrathe? 'Tis Hibernian saffron, I protest. Hah, hah, hah! 'tis Irish
saffron, by Shaint Pautrick, and so much for this time. Selah. Let's
drink.
| 64,689 | Book 4 | https://web.archive.org/web/20180420203406/http://www.gradesaver.com/gargantua-and-pantagruel/study-guide/summary-book-4 | The fourth book begins where the third book left off. Pantagruel, Panurge, Epistemon, Friar John, and all the other companions prepare the eleven ships for the voyage to The Oracle of the Holy Bottle in Lantern Land. Pantagruel names his flagship the Thalamege, and each of the other ten ships is identified by items hung on the stern of each ship, and these items signify different aspects of the mission or they are charms meant to attract good fortune during the mission. Pantagruel and his companions plan to leave from the port of Thalassa, and they have chartered a route that will take them around Africa and up by India within four months. After traveling for several months by sea, Pantagruel and his companions finally make their way to the island of Medamothy. On this peculiar island, all of Pantagruel's companions purchase unique items. Pantagruel himself purchases three unicorns, tapestries that relate the story of Achilles' adventurers, beautiful paintings, and a beast known as a tarand, which is as big as a bull with the head of a deer and has fur that changes color based on its surroundings. It is on the island of Medamothy where Pantagruel receives word from his father via one of his father's servants, Malicorne, who was able to arrive so quickly, because he rode on a smaller ship, the Chelidonia, which is capable of faster speeds. Malicorne brings good tidings from his father as well as a letter. Malicorne also provides Pantagruel with a pigeon so that Pantagruel may send his father a simple message through the use of attaching a colored ribbon to the leg of the pigeon. According to their prearranged code, a black ribbon would imply that something horrible has occurred, whereas a white ribbon would explain that all was well. Having experienced no tragedies upon the voyage thus far, Pantagruel attaches a white ribbon to the leg of the pigeon, and lets it fly homeward to his father. Pantagruel also writes to his father, thanking his father for his thoughtfulness in sending a messenger to him. Within his letter, Pantagruel also explains that he will be sending back several curious items that he has recently purchased, including the unicorns, the Achilles tapestry, and the strange tarand beast. Pantagruel wishes his father well in the letter, and implies that he will write to his father as often as possible concerning the adventures of the voyage to the oracle. Pantagruel then sends the letter along with the curious items to his father by giving them over to Malicorne. As Pantagruel and his companions set out away from the island of Medamothy, they meet a ship with passengers returning from Lantern Land. As they mingle with these other passengers, a sheep merchant by the name of Dingdong notices that Panurge does not wear a codpiece, and that he has metal spectacles attached to his hat. Dingdong whispers to those near him about how Panurge has a cuckold's medal on his head, which of course starts a rather heated argument between Dingdong and Panurge. The two are forced to stop the fight, though, in order to maintain morale of the ship. As an attempt to smooth things over with the sheep merchant, Panurge offers to purchase one of Dingdong's sheep. Dingdong babbles on about the quality of his sheep, how they will be sold to royal houses, how their wool will be made into luxurious fabrics, and so on. As he babbles on, Panurge repeatedly asks how much he wants for one of the sheep. Finally, one of the other sheep merchants insists that Dingdong stop giving Panurge a difficult time and simply sell him a sheep. Dingdong agrees, and then he makes the transaction. After finally getting Dingdong to sell one of his sheep, Panurge picks up his new sheep, and throws it over the edge of the ship and into the water. Hearing their fellow sheep in the water, the rest of the sheep follow the sound and they all run over the edge of the ship and into the ocean where they will no doubt drown. Dingdong and his fellow sheep merchants try to stop the sheep, but they have no luck in the matter, and instead they get pulled over the edge by the sheep, where they too fall into the ocean and drown. Panurge asks Friar John for his opinion on the matter of what just occurred, and Friar John replies that Panurge should not have paid the man if this was his plan all along, because now the drowned man has his money. Panurge says that the payment was worth the fun, and then Panurge goes on to explain how that when he is wronged by someone, he will gladly take vengeance upon them, and the vengeance will be far greater than the initial offense. Although Panurge just murdered several people and killed a bunch of sheep, no one says anything negative about the whole situation. Friar John does say that Panurge has damned himself like an old devil, but it seems to be a passing comment, and not a serious accusation. The next island they sail to is the island of Ennasin. Upon talking with the locals, Pantagruel and his companions learn that everyone on this island is related to one another either closely or distantly. They have not allowed marriage with outsiders for some time, although the people of the island seem to have no problem with Pantagruel his companions visiting. As they walk around the island, they listen to how the men and women talk to one another. Pantagruel and his friends notice that the people of the island don't use such terms as mother, father, brother, sister etc. Instead, when they refer to one another, they use complementary terms, such as pear and cheese, or they use opposing terms to signify their dislike for one another. Depending on the relationship between the people, the terms can be highly sexualized. As they journey on, they sail to the island of Chely to meet with King St. Panigon. During this visit, there is much pomp and circumstance going on. Friar John manages to avoid the ceremonies and instead chooses to sneak away into the kitchens to fill his face whilst everyone else deals with the formalities of the visit. Upon Friar John's return to the ship, his companions question him about where he went. He explains that he did not want to deal with the formalities of royalty, and instead preferred to find food in the kitchens. They then discuss who belongs in the kitchen, and Friar John points out that the higher members of royalty tend to avoid the kitchens, for kitchens are places of servitude. Monks, on the other hand, always seem to be found in kitchens. The next island is noted as the land of Pettifogging. In this inhospitable land, the biggest vocation is that of the catchpoles, who are people hired to serve writs and other legal papers. By doing this job, however, the catchpoles risk being beaten and abused by the people receiving the served papers. Thus, as Pantagruel and his friends describe, the catchpoles are paid to be beaten, or else they will starve. Panurge relates the story of the Lord of Basche, a man who was trying to avoid such catchpoles, and so he paid and instructed his staff to put on a fake wedding whenever one of these catchpoles arrived. His reasoning for the fake wedding was because the custom of this region was to punch people at the close of the nuptials to remind everyone of the date of the event. Therefore, through this tableau, the Lord of Basche's servants could beat up the catchpole without being held accountable for the violent act. They perform this stunt on three different occasions, but during the third time, the catchpole got the upper hand, and he actually beats most of the servants fairly well. Unlike the catchpoles who came before, this third catchpole walks away on his own accord, beaten, but still able to move. After passing the island full of catchpoles, they arrive at the islands of Tohu and Bohu. Here, Pantagruel and his companions hoped to capture some fresh food, unfortunately there's not much left on the island, because of the giant Wide-nostrils. Under the guidance of his physicians, Wide-nostrils has been inhaling and swallowing up all manner of items on these islands as well as surrounding islands. He apparently enjoys swallowing windmills the most. Lately, however, Wide-nostrils had been suffering from strange indigestion pains. His physicians recommended that he heat butter on a stove and swallow it to lubricate his intestines. Upon following his doctor's orders, though, Wide-nostrils choked on the butter and died. His death had been fairly recent, as the people on the islands of Tohu and Bohu explain to Pantagruel and his associates. They move on and make their way to the next island, but as they do so, Friar John notices that his dear friend, Pantagruel, seems to be in a state of melancholy. Before Friar John can discover what troubles Pantagruel, a massive storm hits the ship. During the storm, Pantagruel ties himself to the mast. Friar John and the others strip down and start working the lines and the sails in an attempt to try to keep the ship afloat. Panurge, however, becomes overwhelmed with the fear that he will drown, and he starts ranting hysterically. Friar John tries to shame Panurge into proper action, but Panurge's fear is too powerful. After fighting the storm for some time, they all begin to fear that the storm will overtake them. Some of the companions start to consider their own mortality. Others, such as Friar John, challenge the gods of the sea and the tempest. Panurge tries to bargain with God, begging that God stop the storm. Panurge also offers anyone riches untold if they could get him safely to shore. Just as everyone seems to give up hope, Pantagruel spots land. The storm begins to clear away and everyone feels relieved once again. After the storm has passed and everyone is safe, Panurge acts as if he was never afraid. He even pretends that he provided more than his fair share of help during the storm, even though he did nothing but cry and sob the entire time. Friar John cannot stand by and listen to such lies, and he openly accuses Panurge of cowardice. Pantagruel explains that he would never tolerate his servants acting cowardly during such a conflict. Nevertheless, Pantagruel does not punish Panurge for the way he acted. All of the other supporting characters, though, comment on how Panurge acted cowardly, whereas they did their best to fight the storm. On the island of the Macreons, Pantagruel and his companions meet with the good Macrobius. Macrobius tells Pantagruel and his companions about how the ancient heroes died fighting the great monsters of the region, and how certain astronomical signs, such as comets, foretold of the events. Pantagruel then relates a historical story about how Thamous, the pilot of a large ship, was steering his ship toward port when a ghostly voice called for him three times. He answered after the third time, and the voice told him that he must publish the announcement of the death of Pan. Uncertain if the voice was real, Thamous decides he will only make the announcement if his ship is becalmed prior to getting into port. The ship gets close to land, and just then the wind dies completely and all the currents stop pushing his ship forward, so he cries out the announcement, and all the people on the nearby shores hear of Pan's death, and a great sadness fills the land. Pantagruel then makes the allegorical connection between Pan, the kind and mighty shepherd, and Jesus Christ. Both Pan and Christ are noted as being killed in the same fashion, and supposedly died around the same time. Pantagruel and his companions bid farewell to the good Macrobius and set sail for the next stop on their long journey. As they pass by the Sneaking Island, Xenomanes tells everyone about Shrovetide, the sovereign of the Sneaking Island. Xenomanes describes Shrovetide as a young ruler, but a ruler who is both paranoid and shrewd. Shrovetide's island is known for producing beautiful skewers that are sold throughout the world. Apparently, Shrovetide and his people are always at war with the Chitterlings, who reside on the Wild Island. Xenomanes continues to describe Shrovetide further with an enormous list of similes that depict every part of Shrovetide's body, but those similes are not very favorable. After passing the Sneaking Island, Pantagruel sees a monster in the ocean near the Wild Island. As they get closer, they realize that the monster is a whale, also known as a physeter. The narrator describes this particular whale to have three horns. Pantagruel decides that his fleet of eleven ships will go after this monster and kill it. The battle is difficult, but sure enough, they manage to slay the beast and bring the whale to the shore of the Wild Island. As Pantagruel's servants begin to cut up the whale, Pantagruel and his close companions begin to walk around the shore of the island. Immediately they notice that they have been spotted by the wild Chitterlings, and it appears that these natives are preparing to launch a full-scale attack on Pantagruel and his followers. Once again, Panurge acts cowardly as he tries to get himself away from the potential oncoming battle. He even volunteers to go and worn the soldiers on the ships. Friar John openly accuses Panurge of cowardice. Pantagruel, once again, ignores Panurge's cowardly actions, and instead Pantagruel focuses on making a plan. He does not wish to start a battle, but Pantagruel will not be caught off guard either. He decides to make sure the morale of his soldiers is high by requesting that two of his ships' commanders, Colonel Maul-chitterling and Colonel Cut-pudding the younger, join them on the beach for the potential battle, along with the soldiers whom each colonel commands over. Epistemon complements Pantagruel on his clever choice to choose these specific commanders, since their names describe what they wish to accomplish, should they enter into battle with the Chitterlings, . Both the commanders arrive with their soldiers, and Pantagruel explains that they must prepare for battle. The Chitterlings are described in several different ways. Since many of the Chitterlings are female, they are described as snake-like temptresses and tempters. Of course, this is a metaphorical description. Physically, they look like anthropomorphic sausages. Thus, since they look like food, Friar John convinces all the cooks to join him in the battle. As Friar John enlists the cooks, he goes over their names, and all of their names are linked closely to their cooking vocation. For example: "Sour-sauce. Crisp-pig. Carbonado. Sweet-meat," etc. Friar John gets all of the cooks ready to go inside of a great machine known as the Sow. Similar to the Trojan horse, soldiers can get inside of the Sow. Much like a modern-day tank, the soldiers inside of the Sow can shoot out bolts and other ranged weaponry. Friar John plans to have all the cooks inside of the Sow to go to war against the Chitterlings. The Chitterlings build their lines of defense, and then start the battle. Pantagruel and his companions fight the Chitterlings and cut them to pieces, forcing them to retreat. As the Chitterlings begin to retreat, a gigantic, flying, winged-pig with crimson feathers appears. If flies between the armies calling out the word, "Carnival," again and again. As the giant pig flies overhead, mustard falls out of it, and the mustard lands in heaps on the ground. After a short while, the giant pig flies away. With the battle over, Pantagruel and his companions seek out the leader of the Chitterlings, Queen Niphleseth. They converse with the Queen and discover that the Chitterlings started the battle due to false intelligence reports. The Chitterlings were under the impression that Pantagruel and his companions were allies of Shrovetide. The Queen makes all formal apologies and offers to send tribute to Pantagruel's country, along with 78,000 Chitterlings to serve for a period of six months every year. The following day, she sends the first lot of Chitterlings along with her daughter, young Niphleseth, to Pantagruel's homeland. After she does so, Pantagruel explains that it will not be necessary to send so many Chitterlings every year, nor will they be required to pay tribute on a regular basis. He also forgives all actions taken against him and his soldiers. Pantagruel then asks the Queen about the giant pig that flew in the sky after the battle. The Queen explains that Carnival, their patron God, who looks like a giant hog himself, created the flying pig as a way to protect his people, which is why the flying pig cries out Carnival's name. Pantagruel then inquires why mustard falls out of the flying pig. The Queen then states that, for Chitterlings, mustard acts as a magical balm that cures the sick and raises the dead. Unfortunately, the cure of mustard only works on Chitterlings. Sailing away from Queen Niphleseth and the Wild Island, Pantagruel and his companions arrive at the island of Ruach. On this island, the people do not eat food, and instead they feast upon different types of wind. To produce their food, they have even made massive windmills. The wind eaters of Ruach relate to Pantagruel about the problems they have experienced with their diet, especially since the giant Wide-nostrils swallows up their windmills and destroys other parts of their island. Pantagruel announces that they need not worry about Wide-nostrils any longer, for the giant recently died after choking on hot butter. As Pantagruel and his compatriots sail on, they come to the island of Pope-Figland. By talking to the locals, they learn the history of the island's name. Many years ago, the people of the island were called Gaillardets. One day, three Gaillardets went to visit the neighboring island of Papimany during a religious celebration. The Gaillardets mocked the image of the Papimen's Pope by saying "a fig to it." The next day, the Papimen armies overtook the Gaillardets homelands and killed practically everyone, save the women and children. Of the people who were spared, the Papimen gave them a shameful challenge that was identical to what Emperor Frederick Barbarossa did to the people of Milan. The leader of the Papimen placed a fig within the anal crevice of a donkey so that part of the fig was sticking out. He then challenged the survivors that if any of them wanted to live that they would have to remove the fig and then put it back in place without using their hands. Most of the people took part in the shameful act and became slaves to the Papimen people. The Gaillardets' island was then renamed Pope-Figland, as a reminder of their actions against the Papimen. While learning about the island's history, Pantagruel and his friends see a fountain pool where a man is submerged all the way up to his nostrils. Standing around him are three priests, and they are reading a book to try and remove any devil from possessing the man. One of the people nearby explains to Pantagruel and his friends why the man is submerged in the fountain. A few seasons previously, the man, who happens to be a farmer and a plowman, was in his field throwing corn seeds out in the dirt. The farmer had not had much luck farming this piece of land, but he was desperate to make the corn grow. Just then, a devil appears and makes a deal that he will protect the land so that the corn grows, provided that upon the harvest day the devil can keep everything under the dirt while the farmer keeps everything above the dirt. The farmer agrees, and the devil protects the land. Come harvest, the farmer and his workers arrive just as the devil and his workers arrive. The farmer and his crew work together and harvest everything above land, which is all the healthy stocks of corn, whereas the devil and his group get nothing save the dirt chaff. Both groups go to market, but the devil is unable to tempt anyone into buying his product. The devil thought he was being clever, because he thought he would gain all the corn that the farmer had thrown under the dirt. Clearly, this devil did not understand how plants grow. The devil then offers the farmer a second deal similar to the first, but this time the devil explains that everything above ground will belong to him come harvest time, and that everything below ground will belong to the farmer. The devil then asks the farmer what he plans to grow, to which the farmer cleverly responds that he will grow radishes. Again, harvest time happens, and the farmer gets all of the delicious underground radishes, while the devil gets all the worthless leaves. Once again, the devil cannot tempt anyone to buy his wares. Upset at how he has lost out on the first two deals, the devil offers a third and final deal to the farmer. He claims that whoever wins the third challenge will also win complete ownership of the field. The farmer agrees, and so the devil explains that the third challenge will be a clawing match. The farmer goes home in a panic, since he is uncertain of how he will win the day. His wife sees that he is upset and asks him what is going on. He explains everything and believes he is doomed. She assures him that she has a plan to beat the devil. She does not share her plan with her husband, though, so the farmer goes to the priests, confesses everything that has happened, and begs for help. To save his soul, the priests have submerged him in a pool of water and are saying prayers to ward off devil possession. The day when the clawing match was to take place happens to coincide with the day that Pantagruel and his friends have arrived. Just as they finish hearing the story about why the farmer is now submerged in water, they receive word from members of the town that the farmer's wife has beaten the devil. The way she did so was quite clever. She waited at the house for the devil to arrive, and placed herself in a heap on the ground, making sure to cry like a child. When the devil arrived, she told him that her husband had been practicing his clawing on her, and that he had clawed her up so bad that she will surely die. She then said that her husband was out sharpening his claws for the battle. At first the devil does not believe her, but then the woman holds up her skirts so that the devil can see her vaginal region, which to this unknowledgeable devil looks as if someone has ripped her open. Fearful that the farmer will rip him open, the devil runs away in defeat. Pantagruel and his companions leave the island of Pope-Figland and make way to the neighboring island of Papimany. On this island, Pantagruel and his compatriots discover that people are devout Christian zealots who praise all things related to the Pope, since they see the Pope as the living God on earth. They ask Pantagruel and his companions if they have ever been in the presence of the Pope. As a member royalty, Pantagruel has had the privilege of meeting the Pope, as have many of his companions, so the people of Papimany treats Pantagruel and his friends with the utmost respect. They are then welcomed to the island by Homenas, Bishop of Papimany. From the Bishop, they learn of the Papimen's extreme devotion and how they keep holy relics and holy books treasured under lock and key. To view such items requires people to fast for three days and give confession, as a show of worthiness. Panurge explains that they have been fasting all throughout their voyage, and are thus prepared. The bishop believes Panurge, and thus he shows Pantagruel and his companions all the holy relics, including images of the Pope as well as the holy books, known as decretals, which provide all the infinite knowledge that anyone would ever need. After viewing such holy items, and since the bishop believes that Pantagruel and his companions have been fasting for days, he offers them a great feast in honor of their visit and religious devotion. While feasting, everyone discusses stories about how people who are disrespectful to holy relics and holy books are severely punished, while those who respect such artifacts are eternally blessed. In exchange for blessing the island with their presence, Homenas gives Pantagruel pears that only grow on the island. Homenas claims they are the best pears in the world. Pantagruel explains that he will take a cutting home, if he is allowed, and grow these pears and call them good-Christian pears. Upon leaving the island of Papimany, Pantagruel's fleet of ships sails toward the frozen sea. While there, Pantagruel starts to hear people talking, although he cannot see anyone. Everyone else quiets down to listen closely, but they don't hear anything at first. After listening for a while, Pantagruel's companion start to hear something, although they cannot make out what they hear. They then learn that a battle between the Arimaspians and the Nephelibates had taken place in this region of the frozen sea, so Pantagruel and his friends surmise that perhaps the words they are hearing are from those groups of people. Somehow, Pantagruel reaches out and finds the frozen words, grabs them up, and brings them onto the ship's deck. Everyone starts warming up the frozen words and hears all manner of phrases, although the words are gibberish. By the tones of the words, they can determine that some of the words are beautiful, while others are said in hatred. Some words are reminiscent of the sounds of fighting, and other words are the sounds of screaming. Although some of the people on the ship, including Panurge and the unnamed narrator, wish to keep the words, Pantagruel advises against it, and so all the words are set free. Pantagruel and his companion sail away from the frozen sea and arrive at a new island that is supposed to be where the dwelling of Gaster resides. Gaster is known as the first Master of Arts in the world. Pantagruel goes to shore to meet Gaster. It is unclear whether Gaster is a giant, a demigod, or something else, for he has no doubt lived a long time and he has the brilliance and ability to create things far beyond the capabilities of regular people. While on the island, Pantagruel discovers that there are two groups of natives living there, including the Engastrimythes and the Gastrolaters. The first is a group of cheats and charlatans, the second is a group of thugs who walk around the island in gangs and dress up in strange elaborate costumes. The Gastrolaters have made Gaster into their god. They have also built crude statues to him, and they sacrifice exorbitant amounts of food and drink in his honor. Gaster does not want to be a God, and he often refuses many of the sacrifices. According to the stories, Gaster created all of the arts of agriculture, animal husbandry, cooking, civilization, architecture, war, and so many other arts. His purpose for creating these arts started out as a survival technique. He needed food, so he had to figure out how to grow corn; hence, he created agriculture. He then had to find ways to turn the corn into different types of food, store the food, protect the food, and protect the people who were protecting the food. Thus, all of the arts were created for improving the survival rate of people. Pantagruel then learns about how Gaster perfected some of his art forms. For instance, Gaster supposedly found ways to prevent people from being shot by bullets or cannonballs. To avoid gunshot or cannonballs, Gaster explains that one need only place iron-like stone, known as herculean, between yourself and your enemies. The narrator explains that the bullets and cannonballs will stop and hover near the stone. Supposedly, Gaster also invented a way to stop bullets and reverse their trajectory completely, however, the narrator does not provide an explanation of this technique, and instead discusses at length how all manner of herbs and other regular items can do extraordinary things, if applied in the right fashion. As Pantagruel and his comrades spend most of their time sailing, there is a lot of dead time where there is nothing to do. On one such occasion, each of Pantagruel's friends tried to busy themselves with different activities, but by doing so they all became lethargic and bored. Pantagruel takes a nap during this time, but when he rises, each of his friends ask him all manner of questions, including when should one eat, how to avoid boredom, and when should one sleep. Pantagruel provides religious maxims concerning when to sleep and when to eat, but he does not provide an answer for how to eradicate boredom. Pantagruel passes the time with his friends by chatting, talking about local lore, and asking each other questions. When they see the isle of Ganabim, Xenomanes explains that it is not a good place to visit, since it is filled with thieves. He does acknowledge that parts of the island would be suitable for stocking up on wood and water, though. On the isle, however, they can see a mountain that looks like Parnassus, where supposedly the Muses lived. Although Pantagruel has a strong feeling that he should not to visit the island, he at least wants to pay tribute to the Muses, and so he orders his ships to fire cannons as tribute. During such time, Panurge has gone under decks, once again overcome with fear. He and Friar John had gotten into an argument earlier, and Friar John chastised him for his cowardly inclinations, which made Panurge run away and sulk below decks. While Panurge was sulking, the cannon salute to the Muses went off. Panurge panics, for he believes that they have entered into a new battle. Half dressed, Panurge severely soils himself, and gets in a fight with one of the ship's cats, Rodilardus, who Panurge mistook for a small devil. Panurge runs to Friar John and begs him to save his soul. At this point, Panurge is rambling, stained in his own feces, and covered with cat scratches. Friar John points this all out to Pantagruel, and Pantagruel finally has to deal with situation of Panurge's cowardice. Pantagruel politely instructs Panurge to go clean up and calm himself. Briefly, Panurge acts as if he was never afraid in the first place, and he claims that the feces on his back is not his own, but that it belongs to the ship's cat. Here the fourth book ends rather abruptly. | Once again, the point of view of the story has changed to an unnamed narrator. In the second book, the narrator introduces himself as a servant to Pantagruel, and at some point eventually gives his name as Alcofribas. It is unclear if Alcofribas remains the narrator throughout books three, four, and five. If he were the servant of Pantagruel, then, presumably, he would focus his perspective on everything in relationship to his master. The third book, however, focuses more on Panurge. In this fourth installment, the focus shifts periodically. Most of the time, the point of view focuses on what Pantagruel does throughout the voyage, but then the point of view shifts to Panurge's exploits, and at times to the actions of Friar John. If Alcofribas is indeed the narrator of both the third and fourth books, then he stands in the role of the bystander who has the ability to watch the nobility at all times. Thus, from his perspective, as a virtually invisible servant, Alcofribas can watch every event that goes on, and then provide the readers with an exposition. In addition, depending on Alcofribas's level of skill as a writer and observer, he might be writing about the exploits of the voyage as a favor to Pantagruel. When Pantagruel writes a letter to his father, he explains that he will keep a journal of their adventures for his father to read at a later time. Although Pantagruel seems like the type of person who would want to write such a journal himself, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that he may have asked his servant, this narrator, to also keep an account of the activities during the voyage. Throughout this fourth installment of the series, Pantagruel and his companions come into contact with a full array of real and mythical creatures. From the very start of the journey, Pantagruel and his followers arrive at the island of Medamothy, where literally everything imaginable and unimaginable is for sale. Wes Williams argues that the creatures found for sale on the island, including the unicorns and the color-changing tarand, are "adynata: impossible objects, derived for the most part from Pliny's Natural History, books 8 and 10, where they figure such creatures as lie beyond credible representation" . Williams posits that Rabelais includes this episode so early in the fourth book as a way to explain to the reader that this journey will explore many unknown elements. In fact, as the journey progresses, the inhabitants of the islands become more and more peculiar. Granted, some islanders are not so different from people living in the known Western world, but other inhabitants, such as the Chitterlings of the Wild Island and the wind eaters of the island of Ruach, appear so extraordinary that one would certainly question their existence. But, as Williams suggests, starting the journey off by visiting the island of Medamothy, a place full of oddities and curiosities, sets the stage for literally anything to occur throughout the fourth book, including a giant flying pig that spurts mustard. Probably one of the most fascinating aspects of this story is the comedic imagery throughout the voyage. Early on, Panurge gets into an argument with a sheep merchant. Both Panurge and the merchant are reprimanded for their argument and are forced to make amends. Panurge offers to buy one of the merchant's sheep to prove he is truly remorseful. The sheep merchant babbles excessively about the value of his sheep. Although he is but a lowly merchant, he has the opportunity to waste Panurge's time, and he makes full use of that opportunity. Finally, though, he does sell Panurge one of the sheep. Panurge takes his purchased sheep and promptly throws it overboard, causing all the other sheep to follow it into the ocean, and all the sheep merchants are pulled into the ocean by their flock, thus drowning all the sheep and the sheep merchants in one fell swoop. Although this is a grotesque and gruesome image, the dark comedy shows through nonetheless. Eyewitnesses describe other comedic images in the story, in a more indirect manner. For instance, the giant, Wide-nostrils, supposedly dies by choking on melted butter. Another example would be the farmer's wife who manages to trick an unknowledgeable devil into believing that the slit of her vaginal opening was caused by the powerful claws of her husband, whom the devil was going to battle in a clawing match. Of all the comedic imagery, the scenes during the battle with the Chitterlings on Wild Island demonstrate the most vivid examples of personification and contextual foreshadowing. The inhabitants of this island, the Chitterlings, are literally described as walking sausages. These food items made from pork have been personified into male and female warriors, but since they are still walking sausages, they can easily be ripped in half and cut to pieces. Fortunately, thanks to the comedy Rabelais infuses into this story, the Chitterlings need not die from being cut in half. The savior is mustard sauce, for everyone knows that even the worst sausage can be improved with a little bit of mustard. As if the culinary humor was not blatant enough, Rabelais adds the image of a gigantic flying pig with crimson red plumage. While this creature that defies all reason flies over the battlefield, it spurts out mustard to save the fallen soldiers. Although the events on this island rank under the category of bizarre, the island's very name provided contextual foreshadowing to warn outsiders that this is a wild space. The term "wild" has many interpretations. Some people may identify wild to mean disorderly. The fact that these personified sausages defy death through the aid of mustard certainly suggests that the normal laws of order and biology no longer apply. As the opening framework of the story indicates that the characters will meet different people and face difficult challenges, the framework of the voyage itself also signifies that the characters will be tested and, as a result of those tests, some characters will change dramatically. Compared to who he was in the second book, Panurge is almost a different character by the end of the fourth book. Of the challenges he faces during this portion of the story, the first challenge is that of the storm. His failure to find his courage during the storm marks the downfall of his character throughout the rest of the story. When the storm hits, Pantagruel ties himself to the mast while Friar John and Epistemon help the crew with the rigging and the sails. Friar John calls out to Panurge, begging that he help them, but Panurge remains frozen in his fear. As he cries like a child, Panurge begs God or anyone listening to bring him safely to dry land. As soon as the storm stops, and after everyone is on dry land, Panurge feigns as if he was never afraid and he pretends that he helped the crew during the storm. Friar John refuses to listen to Panurge's lies, and blatantly calls him a coward. Having failed his first test of the voyage, Panurge continues to falter and spiral downwards. For instance, when it appears that Pantagruel and his companions will have to do battle with the Chitterlings on Wild Island, Panurge offers to go to warn the soldiers on the ships, but he only makes this offer so that he can run away from the battle. Likewise, at the end of the story, while pouting below decks, Panurge hears the sound of cannon fire, which makes him believe that they have once again entered into battle. In this final test of his courage, Panurge soils himself in his own feces and mistakes a cat for a small demon. Truly, Panurge, the once quick-witted, womanizing, master thief and scam artist from the second book has hit rock bottom as he continues to sail on this voyage in his search for answers about cuckoldry after marriage. | 5,218 | 1,329 | [
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5,658 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/27.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Lord Jim/section_26_part_0.txt | Lord Jim.chapter 27 | chapter 27 | null | {"name": "Chapter 27", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-27", "summary": "Jim's attack on Ali is successful, and after the battle, he becomes a legendary island leader. We also learn that Jim's servant, Tamb' Itam, was very brave during the battle. Now the people of Patusan seem to think that Jim has supernatural powers, which Marlow notes.", "analysis": ""} | 'Already the legend had gifted him with supernatural powers. Yes, it
was said, there had been many ropes cunningly disposed, and a strange
contrivance that turned by the efforts of many men, and each gun went
up tearing slowly through the bushes, like a wild pig rooting its way in
the undergrowth, but . . . and the wisest shook their heads. There was
something occult in all this, no doubt; for what is the strength of
ropes and of men's arms? There is a rebellious soul in things which must
be overcome by powerful charms and incantations. Thus old Sura--a very
respectable householder of Patusan--with whom I had a quiet chat one
evening. However, Sura was a professional sorcerer also, who attended
all the rice sowings and reapings for miles around for the purpose of
subduing the stubborn souls of things. This occupation he seemed to
think a most arduous one, and perhaps the souls of things are more
stubborn than the souls of men. As to the simple folk of outlying
villages, they believed and said (as the most natural thing in the
world) that Jim had carried the guns up the hill on his back--two at a
time.
'This would make Jim stamp his foot in vexation and exclaim with an
exasperated little laugh, "What can you do with such silly beggars? They
will sit up half the night talking bally rot, and the greater the lie
the more they seem to like it." You could trace the subtle influence of
his surroundings in this irritation. It was part of his captivity. The
earnestness of his denials was amusing, and at last I said, "My dear
fellow, you don't suppose _I_ believe this." He looked at me quite
startled. "Well, no! I suppose not," he said, and burst into a Homeric
peal of laughter. "Well, anyhow the guns were there, and went off all
together at sunrise. Jove! You should have seen the splinters fly," he
cried. By his side Dain Waris, listening with a quiet smile, dropped his
eyelids and shuffled his feet a little. It appears that the success in
mounting the guns had given Jim's people such a feeling of confidence
that he ventured to leave the battery under charge of two elderly Bugis
who had seen some fighting in their day, and went to join Dain Waris and
the storming party who were concealed in the ravine. In the small hours
they began creeping up, and when two-thirds of the way up, lay in the
wet grass waiting for the appearance of the sun, which was the agreed
signal. He told me with what impatient anguishing emotion he watched the
swift coming of the dawn; how, heated with the work and the climbing,
he felt the cold dew chilling his very bones; how afraid he was he
would begin to shiver and shake like a leaf before the time came for
the advance. "It was the slowest half-hour in my life," he declared.
Gradually the silent stockade came out on the sky above him. Men
scattered all down the slope were crouching amongst the dark stones and
dripping bushes. Dain Waris was lying flattened by his side. "We
looked at each other," Jim said, resting a gentle hand on his friend's
shoulder. "He smiled at me as cheery as you please, and I dared not stir
my lips for fear I would break out into a shivering fit. 'Pon my word,
it's true! I had been streaming with perspiration when we took cover--so
you may imagine . . ." He declared, and I believe him, that he had no
fears as to the result. He was only anxious as to his ability to repress
these shivers. He didn't bother about the result. He was bound to get to
the top of that hill and stay there, whatever might happen. There could
be no going back for him. Those people had trusted him implicitly. Him
alone! His bare word. . . .
'I remember how, at this point, he paused with his eyes fixed upon me.
"As far as he knew, they never had an occasion to regret it yet,"
he said. "Never. He hoped to God they never would. Meantime--worse
luck!--they had got into the habit of taking his word for anything and
everything. I could have no idea! Why, only the other day an old fool he
had never seen in his life came from some village miles away to find
out if he should divorce his wife. Fact. Solemn word. That's the sort
of thing. . . He wouldn't have believed it. Would I? Squatted on the
verandah chewing betel-nut, sighing and spitting all over the place for
more than an hour, and as glum as an undertaker before he came out with
that dashed conundrum. That's the kind of thing that isn't so funny as
it looks. What was a fellow to say?--Good wife?--Yes. Good wife--old
though. Started a confounded long story about some brass pots. Been
living together for fifteen years--twenty years--could not tell. A long,
long time. Good wife. Beat her a little--not much--just a little, when
she was young. Had to--for the sake of his honour. Suddenly in her old
age she goes and lends three brass pots to her sister's son's wife, and
begins to abuse him every day in a loud voice. His enemies jeered at
him; his face was utterly blackened. Pots totally lost. Awfully cut up
about it. Impossible to fathom a story like that; told him to go home,
and promised to come along myself and settle it all. It's all very well
to grin, but it was the dashedest nuisance! A day's journey through the
forest, another day lost in coaxing a lot of silly villagers to get at
the rights of the affair. There was the making of a sanguinary shindy
in the thing. Every bally idiot took sides with one family or the other,
and one half of the village was ready to go for the other half with
anything that came handy. Honour bright! No joke! . . . Instead of
attending to their bally crops. Got him the infernal pots back of
course--and pacified all hands. No trouble to settle it. Of course not.
Could settle the deadliest quarrel in the country by crooking his little
finger. The trouble was to get at the truth of anything. Was not sure
to this day whether he had been fair to all parties. It worried him. And
the talk! Jove! There didn't seem to be any head or tail to it. Rather
storm a twenty-foot-high old stockade any day. Much! Child's play to
that other job. Wouldn't take so long either. Well, yes; a funny set
out, upon the whole--the fool looked old enough to be his grandfather.
But from another point of view it was no joke. His word decided
everything--ever since the smashing of Sherif Ali. An awful
responsibility," he repeated. "No, really--joking apart, had it been
three lives instead of three rotten brass pots it would have been the
same. . . ."
'Thus he illustrated the moral effect of his victory in war. It was in
truth immense. It had led him from strife to peace, and through death
into the innermost life of the people; but the gloom of the land spread
out under the sunshine preserved its appearance of inscrutable, of
secular repose. The sound of his fresh young voice--it's extraordinary
how very few signs of wear he showed--floated lightly, and passed away
over the unchanged face of the forests like the sound of the big guns
on that cold dewy morning when he had no other concern on earth but
the proper control of the chills in his body. With the first slant of
sun-rays along these immovable tree-tops the summit of one hill wreathed
itself, with heavy reports, in white clouds of smoke, and the other
burst into an amazing noise of yells, war-cries, shouts of anger, of
surprise, of dismay. Jim and Dain Waris were the first to lay their
hands on the stakes. The popular story has it that Jim with a touch
of one finger had thrown down the gate. He was, of course, anxious
to disclaim this achievement. The whole stockade--he would insist on
explaining to you--was a poor affair (Sherif Ali trusted mainly to the
inaccessible position); and, anyway, the thing had been already knocked
to pieces and only hung together by a miracle. He put his shoulder to it
like a little fool and went in head over heels. Jove! If it hadn't been
for Dain Waris, a pock-marked tattooed vagabond would have pinned him
with his spear to a baulk of timber like one of Stein's beetles. The
third man in, it seems, had been Tamb' Itam, Jim's own servant. This was
a Malay from the north, a stranger who had wandered into Patusan, and
had been forcibly detained by Rajah Allang as paddler of one of the
state boats. He had made a bolt of it at the first opportunity, and
finding a precarious refuge (but very little to eat) amongst the Bugis
settlers, had attached himself to Jim's person. His complexion was very
dark, his face flat, his eyes prominent and injected with bile. There
was something excessive, almost fanatical, in his devotion to his
"white lord." He was inseparable from Jim like a morose shadow. On state
occasions he would tread on his master's heels, one hand on the haft
of his kriss, keeping the common people at a distance by his truculent
brooding glances. Jim had made him the headman of his establishment, and
all Patusan respected and courted him as a person of much influence. At
the taking of the stockade he had distinguished himself greatly by the
methodical ferocity of his fighting. The storming party had come on so
quick--Jim said--that notwithstanding the panic of the garrison, there
was a "hot five minutes hand-to-hand inside that stockade, till some
bally ass set fire to the shelters of boughs and dry grass, and we all
had to clear out for dear life."
'The rout, it seems, had been complete. Doramin, waiting immovably in
his chair on the hillside, with the smoke of the guns spreading slowly
above his big head, received the news with a deep grunt. When informed
that his son was safe and leading the pursuit, he, without another
sound, made a mighty effort to rise; his attendants hurried to his help,
and, held up reverently, he shuffled with great dignity into a bit of
shade, where he laid himself down to sleep, covered entirely with a
piece of white sheeting. In Patusan the excitement was intense. Jim told
me that from the hill, turning his back on the stockade with its embers,
black ashes, and half-consumed corpses, he could see time after time the
open spaces between the houses on both sides of the stream fill suddenly
with a seething rush of people and get empty in a moment. His ears
caught feebly from below the tremendous din of gongs and drums; the wild
shouts of the crowd reached him in bursts of faint roaring. A lot of
streamers made a flutter as of little white, red, yellow birds amongst
the brown ridges of roofs. "You must have enjoyed it," I murmured,
feeling the stir of sympathetic emotion.
'"It was . . . it was immense! Immense!" he cried aloud, flinging his
arms open. The sudden movement startled me as though I had seen him bare
the secrets of his breast to the sunshine, to the brooding forests, to
the steely sea. Below us the town reposed in easy curves upon the banks
of a stream whose current seemed to sleep. "Immense!" he repeated for a
third time, speaking in a whisper, for himself alone.
'Immense! No doubt it was immense; the seal of success upon his words,
the conquered ground for the soles of his feet, the blind trust of
men, the belief in himself snatched from the fire, the solitude of his
achievement. All this, as I've warned you, gets dwarfed in the telling.
I can't with mere words convey to you the impression of his total and
utter isolation. I know, of course, he was in every sense alone of his
kind there, but the unsuspected qualities of his nature had brought him
in such close touch with his surroundings that this isolation seemed
only the effect of his power. His loneliness added to his stature. There
was nothing within sight to compare him with, as though he had been one
of those exceptional men who can be only measured by the greatness of
their fame; and his fame, remember, was the greatest thing around for
many a day's journey. You would have to paddle, pole, or track a long
weary way through the jungle before you passed beyond the reach of its
voice. Its voice was not the trumpeting of the disreputable goddess we
all know--not blatant--not brazen. It took its tone from the stillness
and gloom of the land without a past, where his word was the one truth
of every passing day. It shared something of the nature of that
silence through which it accompanied you into unexplored depths, heard
continuously by your side, penetrating, far-reaching--tinged with wonder
and mystery on the lips of whispering men.' | 2,058 | Chapter 27 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-27 | Jim's attack on Ali is successful, and after the battle, he becomes a legendary island leader. We also learn that Jim's servant, Tamb' Itam, was very brave during the battle. Now the people of Patusan seem to think that Jim has supernatural powers, which Marlow notes. | null | 46 | 1 | [
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161 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/50.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Sense and Sensibility/section_49_part_0.txt | Sense and Sensibility.chapter 50 | chapter 50 | null | {"name": "Chapter 50", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210421140324/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/sense-and-sensibility/summary/chapter-50", "summary": "After working on his mother via letters for a while, Edward is allowed back into the Ferrars fold. She deems him her only son , and allows him to marry Elinor. However, even though he's back in the family, it doesn't mean he gets everything he was originally meant to have - Robert still receives his thousand pounds a year. Edward receives a sum of ten thousand pounds, just as Fanny did when she got married. Edward and Elinor are pleased as punch, as they didn't expect that much. Now that they have an income, and a home provided by Colonel Brandon, they have everything they could possibly need. The pair is married in the fall at Barton church, then they move to Delaford. Mrs. Jennings comes to visit ASAP, and everyone is quite content. The only thing they could wish for is for Marianne and Colonel Brandon to get married. Everyone comes to visit Edward and Elinor, from Mrs. Ferrars to Fanny and John. John, embarrassingly, says that he's pleased for Elinor, but he clearly would have preferred having Colonel Brandon for a brother-in-law. Even though Mrs. Ferrars comes to visit, she's not a huge fan of Elinor. Against all odds, Robert and Lucy are restored to favor, and the treacherous Lucy becomes her mother-in-law's favorite. Lucy's self-interested actions come to light; she clearly lured Robert into marrying her under the guise of discussing her relationship with Edward. Robert is proud that he stole Lucy from his brother, but in fact, she manipulated both of them. Soon Lucy becomes essential to Mrs. Ferrars, as much so as John and Fanny. The Ferrars family politics are mysterious to everyone outside of the fold; despite being slighted by his mom, Edward is still happy with his circumstances. Elinor is also perfectly happy - she and Edward are close to her mother and sisters, who come to visit Delaford constantly. Mrs. Dashwood also wants desperately to marry Marianne to Colonel Brandon. Everyone is for this marriage - how could Marianne not go for it? Marianne, having come so far in her views and beliefs, has transformed completely. She slowly gives in to the steady affection of Colonel Brandon, and marries him. Now, everyone is totally happy. Marianne is completely in love with her new husband, and he with her. Willoughby is made unhappy by news of Marianne's marriage, and doubly unhappy by the fact that Mrs. Smith forgives him - doesn't this mean that she would have also forgiven him if he'd married Marianne? It turns out he could have been both happy and rich, if he'd only been more faithful to his emotions. However, we shouldn't feel too bad... he's doing OK. However, Marianne continues to be his vision of a perfect woman. Mrs. Dashwood stays at Barton Cottage, where Margaret has grown old enough to dance, flirt, and have a suitor . Between Barton and Delaford, everything is right in the world.", "analysis": ""} |
After a proper resistance on the part of Mrs. Ferrars, just so violent
and so steady as to preserve her from that reproach which she always
seemed fearful of incurring, the reproach of being too amiable, Edward
was admitted to her presence, and pronounced to be again her son.
Her family had of late been exceedingly fluctuating. For many years of
her life she had had two sons; but the crime and annihilation of Edward
a few weeks ago, had robbed her of one; the similar annihilation of
Robert had left her for a fortnight without any; and now, by the
resuscitation of Edward, she had one again.
In spite of his being allowed once more to live, however, he did not
feel the continuance of his existence secure, till he had revealed his
present engagement; for the publication of that circumstance, he
feared, might give a sudden turn to his constitution, and carry him off
as rapidly as before. With apprehensive caution therefore it was
revealed, and he was listened to with unexpected calmness. Mrs.
Ferrars at first reasonably endeavoured to dissuade him from marrying
Miss Dashwood, by every argument in her power;--told him, that in Miss
Morton he would have a woman of higher rank and larger fortune;--and
enforced the assertion, by observing that Miss Morton was the daughter
of a nobleman with thirty thousand pounds, while Miss Dashwood was only
the daughter of a private gentleman with no more than THREE; but when
she found that, though perfectly admitting the truth of her
representation, he was by no means inclined to be guided by it, she
judged it wisest, from the experience of the past, to submit--and
therefore, after such an ungracious delay as she owed to her own
dignity, and as served to prevent every suspicion of good-will, she
issued her decree of consent to the marriage of Edward and Elinor.
What she would engage to do towards augmenting their income was next to
be considered; and here it plainly appeared, that though Edward was now
her only son, he was by no means her eldest; for while Robert was
inevitably endowed with a thousand pounds a-year, not the smallest
objection was made against Edward's taking orders for the sake of two
hundred and fifty at the utmost; nor was anything promised either for
the present or in future, beyond the ten thousand pounds, which had
been given with Fanny.
It was as much, however, as was desired, and more than was expected, by
Edward and Elinor; and Mrs. Ferrars herself, by her shuffling excuses,
seemed the only person surprised at her not giving more.
With an income quite sufficient to their wants thus secured to them,
they had nothing to wait for after Edward was in possession of the
living, but the readiness of the house, to which Colonel Brandon, with
an eager desire for the accommodation of Elinor, was making
considerable improvements; and after waiting some time for their
completion, after experiencing, as usual, a thousand disappointments
and delays from the unaccountable dilatoriness of the workmen, Elinor,
as usual, broke through the first positive resolution of not marrying
till every thing was ready, and the ceremony took place in Barton
church early in the autumn.
The first month after their marriage was spent with their friend at the
Mansion-house; from whence they could superintend the progress of the
Parsonage, and direct every thing as they liked on the spot;--could
chuse papers, project shrubberies, and invent a sweep. Mrs. Jennings's
prophecies, though rather jumbled together, were chiefly fulfilled; for
she was able to visit Edward and his wife in their Parsonage by
Michaelmas, and she found in Elinor and her husband, as she really
believed, one of the happiest couples in the world. They had in fact
nothing to wish for, but the marriage of Colonel Brandon and Marianne,
and rather better pasturage for their cows.
They were visited on their first settling by almost all their relations
and friends. Mrs. Ferrars came to inspect the happiness which she was
almost ashamed of having authorised; and even the Dashwoods were at the
expense of a journey from Sussex to do them honour.
"I will not say that I am disappointed, my dear sister," said John, as
they were walking together one morning before the gates of Delaford
House, "THAT would be saying too much, for certainly you have been one
of the most fortunate young women in the world, as it is. But, I
confess, it would give me great pleasure to call Colonel Brandon
brother. His property here, his place, his house, every thing is in
such respectable and excellent condition!--and his woods!--I have not
seen such timber any where in Dorsetshire, as there is now standing in
Delaford Hanger!--And though, perhaps, Marianne may not seem exactly
the person to attract him--yet I think it would altogether be advisable
for you to have them now frequently staying with you, for as Colonel
Brandon seems a great deal at home, nobody can tell what may
happen--for, when people are much thrown together, and see little of
anybody else--and it will always be in your power to set her off to
advantage, and so forth;--in short, you may as well give her a
chance--You understand me."--
But though Mrs. Ferrars DID come to see them, and always treated them
with the make-believe of decent affection, they were never insulted by
her real favour and preference. THAT was due to the folly of Robert,
and the cunning of his wife; and it was earned by them before many
months had passed away. The selfish sagacity of the latter, which had
at first drawn Robert into the scrape, was the principal instrument of
his deliverance from it; for her respectful humility, assiduous
attentions, and endless flatteries, as soon as the smallest opening was
given for their exercise, reconciled Mrs. Ferrars to his choice, and
re-established him completely in her favour.
The whole of Lucy's behaviour in the affair, and the prosperity which
crowned it, therefore, may be held forth as a most encouraging instance
of what an earnest, an unceasing attention to self-interest, however
its progress may be apparently obstructed, will do in securing every
advantage of fortune, with no other sacrifice than that of time and
conscience. When Robert first sought her acquaintance, and privately
visited her in Bartlett's Buildings, it was only with the view imputed
to him by his brother. He merely meant to persuade her to give up the
engagement; and as there could be nothing to overcome but the affection
of both, he naturally expected that one or two interviews would settle
the matter. In that point, however, and that only, he erred;--for
though Lucy soon gave him hopes that his eloquence would convince her
in TIME, another visit, another conversation, was always wanted to
produce this conviction. Some doubts always lingered in her mind when
they parted, which could only be removed by another half hour's
discourse with himself. His attendance was by this means secured, and
the rest followed in course. Instead of talking of Edward, they came
gradually to talk only of Robert,--a subject on which he had always
more to say than on any other, and in which she soon betrayed an
interest even equal to his own; and in short, it became speedily
evident to both, that he had entirely supplanted his brother. He was
proud of his conquest, proud of tricking Edward, and very proud of
marrying privately without his mother's consent. What immediately
followed is known. They passed some months in great happiness at
Dawlish; for she had many relations and old acquaintances to cut--and
he drew several plans for magnificent cottages;--and from thence
returning to town, procured the forgiveness of Mrs. Ferrars, by the
simple expedient of asking it, which, at Lucy's instigation, was
adopted. The forgiveness, at first, indeed, as was reasonable,
comprehended only Robert; and Lucy, who had owed his mother no duty and
therefore could have transgressed none, still remained some weeks
longer unpardoned. But perseverance in humility of conduct and
messages, in self-condemnation for Robert's offence, and gratitude for
the unkindness she was treated with, procured her in time the haughty
notice which overcame her by its graciousness, and led soon afterwards,
by rapid degrees, to the highest state of affection and influence.
Lucy became as necessary to Mrs. Ferrars, as either Robert or Fanny;
and while Edward was never cordially forgiven for having once intended
to marry her, and Elinor, though superior to her in fortune and birth,
was spoken of as an intruder, SHE was in every thing considered, and
always openly acknowledged, to be a favourite child. They settled in
town, received very liberal assistance from Mrs. Ferrars, were on the
best terms imaginable with the Dashwoods; and setting aside the
jealousies and ill-will continually subsisting between Fanny and Lucy,
in which their husbands of course took a part, as well as the frequent
domestic disagreements between Robert and Lucy themselves, nothing
could exceed the harmony in which they all lived together.
What Edward had done to forfeit the right of eldest son, might have
puzzled many people to find out; and what Robert had done to succeed to
it, might have puzzled them still more. It was an arrangement,
however, justified in its effects, if not in its cause; for nothing
ever appeared in Robert's style of living or of talking to give a
suspicion of his regretting the extent of his income, as either leaving
his brother too little, or bringing himself too much;--and if Edward
might be judged from the ready discharge of his duties in every
particular, from an increasing attachment to his wife and his home, and
from the regular cheerfulness of his spirits, he might be supposed no
less contented with his lot, no less free from every wish of an
exchange.
Elinor's marriage divided her as little from her family as could well
be contrived, without rendering the cottage at Barton entirely useless,
for her mother and sisters spent much more than half their time with
her. Mrs. Dashwood was acting on motives of policy as well as pleasure
in the frequency of her visits at Delaford; for her wish of bringing
Marianne and Colonel Brandon together was hardly less earnest, though
rather more liberal than what John had expressed. It was now her
darling object. Precious as was the company of her daughter to her,
she desired nothing so much as to give up its constant enjoyment to her
valued friend; and to see Marianne settled at the mansion-house was
equally the wish of Edward and Elinor. They each felt his sorrows, and
their own obligations, and Marianne, by general consent, was to be the
reward of all.
With such a confederacy against her--with a knowledge so intimate of
his goodness--with a conviction of his fond attachment to herself,
which at last, though long after it was observable to everybody
else--burst on her--what could she do?
Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate. She was born to
discover the falsehood of her own opinions, and to counteract, by her
conduct, her most favourite maxims. She was born to overcome an
affection formed so late in life as at seventeen, and with no sentiment
superior to strong esteem and lively friendship, voluntarily to give
her hand to another!--and THAT other, a man who had suffered no less
than herself under the event of a former attachment, whom, two years
before, she had considered too old to be married,--and who still sought
the constitutional safeguard of a flannel waistcoat!
But so it was. Instead of falling a sacrifice to an irresistible
passion, as once she had fondly flattered herself with expecting,--instead
of remaining even for ever with her mother, and finding her only
pleasures in retirement and study, as afterwards in her more calm and
sober judgment she had determined on,--she found herself at nineteen,
submitting to new attachments, entering on new duties, placed in a new
home, a wife, the mistress of a family, and the patroness of a village.
Colonel Brandon was now as happy, as all those who best loved him,
believed he deserved to be;--in Marianne he was consoled for every past
affliction;--her regard and her society restored his mind to animation,
and his spirits to cheerfulness; and that Marianne found her own
happiness in forming his, was equally the persuasion and delight of
each observing friend. Marianne could never love by halves; and her
whole heart became, in time, as much devoted to her husband, as it had
once been to Willoughby.
Willoughby could not hear of her marriage without a pang; and his
punishment was soon afterwards complete in the voluntary forgiveness of
Mrs. Smith, who, by stating his marriage with a woman of character, as
the source of her clemency, gave him reason for believing that had he
behaved with honour towards Marianne, he might at once have been happy
and rich. That his repentance of misconduct, which thus brought its
own punishment, was sincere, need not be doubted;--nor that he long
thought of Colonel Brandon with envy, and of Marianne with regret. But
that he was for ever inconsolable, that he fled from society, or
contracted an habitual gloom of temper, or died of a broken heart, must
not be depended on--for he did neither. He lived to exert, and
frequently to enjoy himself. His wife was not always out of humour,
nor his home always uncomfortable; and in his breed of horses and dogs,
and in sporting of every kind, he found no inconsiderable degree of
domestic felicity.
For Marianne, however--in spite of his incivility in surviving her
loss--he always retained that decided regard which interested him in
every thing that befell her, and made her his secret standard of
perfection in woman;--and many a rising beauty would be slighted by him
in after-days as bearing no comparison with Mrs. Brandon.
Mrs. Dashwood was prudent enough to remain at the cottage, without
attempting a removal to Delaford; and fortunately for Sir John and Mrs.
Jennings, when Marianne was taken from them, Margaret had reached an
age highly suitable for dancing, and not very ineligible for being
supposed to have a lover.
Between Barton and Delaford, there was that constant communication
which strong family affection would naturally dictate;--and among the
merits and the happiness of Elinor and Marianne, let it not be ranked
as the least considerable, that though sisters, and living almost
within sight of each other, they could live without disagreement
between themselves, or producing coolness between their husbands.
THE END
| 2,256 | Chapter 50 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210421140324/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/sense-and-sensibility/summary/chapter-50 | After working on his mother via letters for a while, Edward is allowed back into the Ferrars fold. She deems him her only son , and allows him to marry Elinor. However, even though he's back in the family, it doesn't mean he gets everything he was originally meant to have - Robert still receives his thousand pounds a year. Edward receives a sum of ten thousand pounds, just as Fanny did when she got married. Edward and Elinor are pleased as punch, as they didn't expect that much. Now that they have an income, and a home provided by Colonel Brandon, they have everything they could possibly need. The pair is married in the fall at Barton church, then they move to Delaford. Mrs. Jennings comes to visit ASAP, and everyone is quite content. The only thing they could wish for is for Marianne and Colonel Brandon to get married. Everyone comes to visit Edward and Elinor, from Mrs. Ferrars to Fanny and John. John, embarrassingly, says that he's pleased for Elinor, but he clearly would have preferred having Colonel Brandon for a brother-in-law. Even though Mrs. Ferrars comes to visit, she's not a huge fan of Elinor. Against all odds, Robert and Lucy are restored to favor, and the treacherous Lucy becomes her mother-in-law's favorite. Lucy's self-interested actions come to light; she clearly lured Robert into marrying her under the guise of discussing her relationship with Edward. Robert is proud that he stole Lucy from his brother, but in fact, she manipulated both of them. Soon Lucy becomes essential to Mrs. Ferrars, as much so as John and Fanny. The Ferrars family politics are mysterious to everyone outside of the fold; despite being slighted by his mom, Edward is still happy with his circumstances. Elinor is also perfectly happy - she and Edward are close to her mother and sisters, who come to visit Delaford constantly. Mrs. Dashwood also wants desperately to marry Marianne to Colonel Brandon. Everyone is for this marriage - how could Marianne not go for it? Marianne, having come so far in her views and beliefs, has transformed completely. She slowly gives in to the steady affection of Colonel Brandon, and marries him. Now, everyone is totally happy. Marianne is completely in love with her new husband, and he with her. Willoughby is made unhappy by news of Marianne's marriage, and doubly unhappy by the fact that Mrs. Smith forgives him - doesn't this mean that she would have also forgiven him if he'd married Marianne? It turns out he could have been both happy and rich, if he'd only been more faithful to his emotions. However, we shouldn't feel too bad... he's doing OK. However, Marianne continues to be his vision of a perfect woman. Mrs. Dashwood stays at Barton Cottage, where Margaret has grown old enough to dance, flirt, and have a suitor . Between Barton and Delaford, everything is right in the world. | null | 492 | 1 | [
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110 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/10.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_1_part_10.txt | Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter x | chapter x | null | {"name": "Chapter X", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase1-chapter1-11", "summary": "Tess soon finds company in the other servants. After a few months, the town holds a fair and celebrations run late. Tess doesn't drink because she has seen the sad affects of alcohol on her own family and gets tired of waiting for her drunken friends. After first declining his offer, Tess is forced to accept a ride home with Alec on horseback after the drunken revelers turn on Tess after she laughs at Car Darch, who used to be involved with Alec. Although she rides away triumphantly from the drunken others, they realize that Tess has merely jumped \"out of the frying-pan into the fire\"", "analysis": ""} |
Every village has its idiosyncrasy, its constitution, often its own
code of morality. The levity of some of the younger women in and
about Trantridge was marked, and was perhaps symptomatic of the
choice spirit who ruled The Slopes in that vicinity. The place had
also a more abiding defect; it drank hard. The staple conversation
on the farms around was on the uselessness of saving money; and
smock-frocked arithmeticians, leaning on their ploughs or hoes, would
enter into calculations of great nicety to prove that parish relief
was a fuller provision for a man in his old age than any which could
result from savings out of their wages during a whole lifetime.
The chief pleasure of these philosophers lay in going every Saturday
night, when work was done, to Chaseborough, a decayed market-town two
or three miles distant; and, returning in the small hours of the next
morning, to spend Sunday in sleeping off the dyspeptic effects of the
curious compounds sold to them as beer by the monopolizers of the
once-independent inns.
For a long time Tess did not join in the weekly pilgrimages. But
under pressure from matrons not much older than herself--for a
field-man's wages being as high at twenty-one as at forty, marriage
was early here--Tess at length consented to go. Her first experience
of the journey afforded her more enjoyment than she had expected,
the hilariousness of the others being quite contagious after her
monotonous attention to the poultry-farm all the week. She went again
and again. Being graceful and interesting, standing moreover on the
momentary threshold of womanhood, her appearance drew down upon her
some sly regards from loungers in the streets of Chaseborough; hence,
though sometimes her journey to the town was made independently, she
always searched for her fellows at nightfall, to have the protection
of their companionship homeward.
This had gone on for a month or two when there came a Saturday in
September, on which a fair and a market coincided; and the pilgrims
from Trantridge sought double delights at the inns on that account.
Tess's occupations made her late in setting out, so that her comrades
reached the town long before her. It was a fine September evening,
just before sunset, when yellow lights struggle with blue shades in
hairlike lines, and the atmosphere itself forms a prospect without
aid from more solid objects, except the innumerable winged insects
that dance in it. Through this low-lit mistiness Tess walked
leisurely along.
She did not discover the coincidence of the market with the fair till
she had reached the place, by which time it was close upon dusk. Her
limited marketing was soon completed; and then as usual she began to
look about for some of the Trantridge cottagers.
At first she could not find them, and she was informed that most of
them had gone to what they called a private little jig at the house
of a hay-trusser and peat-dealer who had transactions with their
farm. He lived in an out-of-the-way nook of the townlet, and in
trying to find her course thither her eyes fell upon Mr d'Urberville
standing at a street corner.
"What--my Beauty? You here so late?" he said.
She told him that she was simply waiting for company homeward.
"I'll see you again," said he over her shoulder as she went on down
the back lane.
Approaching the hay-trussers, she could hear the fiddled notes of
a reel proceeding from some building in the rear; but no sound of
dancing was audible--an exceptional state of things for these parts,
where as a rule the stamping drowned the music. The front door being
open she could see straight through the house into the garden at the
back as far as the shades of night would allow; and nobody appearing
to her knock, she traversed the dwelling and went up the path to the
outhouse whence the sound had attracted her.
It was a windowless erection used for storage, and from the open door
there floated into the obscurity a mist of yellow radiance, which at
first Tess thought to be illuminated smoke. But on drawing nearer
she perceived that it was a cloud of dust, lit by candles within the
outhouse, whose beams upon the haze carried forward the outline of
the doorway into the wide night of the garden.
When she came close and looked in she beheld indistinct forms
racing up and down to the figure of the dance, the silence of their
footfalls arising from their being overshoe in "scroff"--that is
to say, the powdery residuum from the storage of peat and other
products, the stirring of which by their turbulent feet created the
nebulosity that involved the scene. Through this floating, fusty
_debris_ of peat and hay, mixed with the perspirations and warmth of
the dancers, and forming together a sort of vegeto-human pollen, the
muted fiddles feebly pushed their notes, in marked contrast to the
spirit with which the measure was trodden out. They coughed as
they danced, and laughed as they coughed. Of the rushing couples
there could barely be discerned more than the high lights--the
indistinctness shaping them to satyrs clasping nymphs--a multiplicity
of Pans whirling a multiplicity of Syrinxes; Lotis attempting to
elude Priapus, and always failing.
At intervals a couple would approach the doorway for air, and
the haze no longer veiling their features, the demigods resolved
themselves into the homely personalities of her own next-door
neighbours. Could Trantridge in two or three short hours have
metamorphosed itself thus madly!
Some Sileni of the throng sat on benches and hay-trusses by the wall;
and one of them recognized her.
"The maids don't think it respectable to dance at The Flower-de-Luce,"
he explained. "They don't like to let everybody see which be their
fancy-men. Besides, the house sometimes shuts up just when their
jints begin to get greased. So we come here and send out for
liquor."
"But when be any of you going home?" asked Tess with some anxiety.
"Now--a'most directly. This is all but the last jig."
She waited. The reel drew to a close, and some of the party were in
the mind of starting. But others would not, and another dance was
formed. This surely would end it, thought Tess. But it merged in
yet another. She became restless and uneasy; yet, having waited so
long, it was necessary to wait longer; on account of the fair the
roads were dotted with roving characters of possibly ill intent; and,
though not fearful of measurable dangers, she feared the unknown.
Had she been near Marlott she would have had less dread.
"Don't ye be nervous, my dear good soul," expostulated, between his
coughs, a young man with a wet face and his straw hat so far back
upon his head that the brim encircled it like the nimbus of a saint.
"What's yer hurry? To-morrow is Sunday, thank God, and we can sleep
it off in church-time. Now, have a turn with me?"
She did not abhor dancing, but she was not going to dance here. The
movement grew more passionate: the fiddlers behind the luminous
pillar of cloud now and then varied the air by playing on the wrong
side of the bridge or with the back of the bow. But it did not
matter; the panting shapes spun onwards.
They did not vary their partners if their inclination were to stick
to previous ones. Changing partners simply meant that a satisfactory
choice had not as yet been arrived at by one or other of the pair,
and by this time every couple had been suitably matched. It was then
that the ecstasy and the dream began, in which emotion was the matter
of the universe, and matter but an adventitious intrusion likely to
hinder you from spinning where you wanted to spin.
Suddenly there was a dull thump on the ground: a couple had fallen,
and lay in a mixed heap. The next couple, unable to check its
progress, came toppling over the obstacle. An inner cloud of dust
rose around the prostrate figures amid the general one of the room,
in which a twitching entanglement of arms and legs was discernible.
"You shall catch it for this, my gentleman, when you get home!" burst
in female accents from the human heap--those of the unhappy partner
of the man whose clumsiness had caused the mishap; she happened
also to be his recently married wife, in which assortment there was
nothing unusual at Trantridge as long as any affection remained
between wedded couples; and, indeed, it was not uncustomary in their
later lives, to avoid making odd lots of the single people between
whom there might be a warm understanding.
A loud laugh from behind Tess's back, in the shade of the garden,
united with the titter within the room. She looked round, and saw
the red coal of a cigar: Alec d'Urberville was standing there alone.
He beckoned to her, and she reluctantly retreated towards him.
"Well, my Beauty, what are you doing here?"
She was so tired after her long day and her walk that she confided
her trouble to him--that she had been waiting ever since he saw her
to have their company home, because the road at night was strange to
her. "But it seems they will never leave off, and I really think I
will wait no longer."
"Certainly do not. I have only a saddle-horse here to-day; but come
to The Flower-de-Luce, and I'll hire a trap, and drive you home with
me."
Tess, though flattered, had never quite got over her original
mistrust of him, and, despite their tardiness, she preferred to walk
home with the work-folk. So she answered that she was much obliged
to him, but would not trouble him. "I have said that I will wait for
'em, and they will expect me to now."
"Very well, Miss Independence. Please yourself... Then I shall not
hurry... My good Lord, what a kick-up they are having there!"
He had not put himself forward into the light, but some of them
had perceived him, and his presence led to a slight pause and a
consideration of how the time was flying. As soon as he had re-lit
a cigar and walked away the Trantridge people began to collect
themselves from amid those who had come in from other farms, and
prepared to leave in a body. Their bundles and baskets were gathered
up, and half an hour later, when the clock-chime sounded a quarter
past eleven, they were straggling along the lane which led up the
hill towards their homes.
It was a three-mile walk, along a dry white road, made whiter
to-night by the light of the moon.
Tess soon perceived as she walked in the flock, sometimes with this
one, sometimes with that, that the fresh night air was producing
staggerings and serpentine courses among the men who had partaken too
freely; some of the more careless women also were wandering in their
gait--to wit, a dark virago, Car Darch, dubbed Queen of Spades, till
lately a favourite of d'Urberville's; Nancy, her sister, nicknamed
the Queen of Diamonds; and the young married woman who had already
tumbled down. Yet however terrestrial and lumpy their appearance
just now to the mean unglamoured eye, to themselves the case was
different. They followed the road with a sensation that they were
soaring along in a supporting medium, possessed of original and
profound thoughts, themselves and surrounding nature forming
an organism of which all the parts harmoniously and joyously
interpenetrated each other. They were as sublime as the moon and
stars above them, and the moon and stars were as ardent as they.
Tess, however, had undergone such painful experiences of this kind in
her father's house that the discovery of their condition spoilt the
pleasure she was beginning to feel in the moonlight journey. Yet she
stuck to the party, for reasons above given.
In the open highway they had progressed in scattered order; but now
their route was through a field-gate, and the foremost finding a
difficulty in opening it, they closed up together.
This leading pedestrian was Car the Queen of Spades, who carried a
wicker-basket containing her mother's groceries, her own draperies,
and other purchases for the week. The basket being large and heavy,
Car had placed it for convenience of porterage on the top of her
head, where it rode on in jeopardized balance as she walked with
arms akimbo.
"Well--whatever is that a-creeping down thy back, Car Darch?" said
one of the group suddenly.
All looked at Car. Her gown was a light cotton print, and from the
back of her head a kind of rope could be seen descending to some
distance below her waist, like a Chinaman's queue.
"'Tis her hair falling down," said another.
No; it was not her hair: it was a black stream of something oozing
from her basket, and it glistened like a slimy snake in the cold
still rays of the moon.
"'Tis treacle," said an observant matron.
Treacle it was. Car's poor old grandmother had a weakness for the
sweet stuff. Honey she had in plenty out of her own hives, but
treacle was what her soul desired, and Car had been about to give her
a treat of surprise. Hastily lowering the basket the dark girl found
that the vessel containing the syrup had been smashed within.
By this time there had arisen a shout of laughter at the
extraordinary appearance of Car's back, which irritated the dark
queen into getting rid of the disfigurement by the first sudden means
available, and independently of the help of the scoffers. She rushed
excitedly into the field they were about to cross, and flinging
herself flat on her back upon the grass, began to wipe her gown
as well as she could by spinning horizontally on the herbage and
dragging herself over it upon her elbows.
The laughter rang louder; they clung to the gate, to the posts,
rested on their staves, in the weakness engendered by their
convulsions at the spectacle of Car. Our heroine, who had hitherto
held her peace, at this wild moment could not help joining in with
the rest.
It was a misfortune--in more ways than one. No sooner did the dark
queen hear the soberer richer note of Tess among those of the other
work-people than a long-smouldering sense of rivalry inflamed her to
madness. She sprang to her feet and closely faced the object of her
dislike.
"How darest th' laugh at me, hussy!" she cried.
"I couldn't really help it when t'others did," apologized Tess,
still tittering.
"Ah, th'st think th' beest everybody, dostn't, because th' beest
first favourite with He just now! But stop a bit, my lady, stop a
bit! I'm as good as two of such! Look here--here's at 'ee!"
To Tess's horror the dark queen began stripping off the bodice of
her gown--which for the added reason of its ridiculed condition she
was only too glad to be free of--till she had bared her plump neck,
shoulders, and arms to the moonshine, under which they looked as
luminous and beautiful as some Praxitelean creation, in their
possession of the faultless rotundities of a lusty country-girl.
She closed her fists and squared up at Tess.
"Indeed, then, I shall not fight!" said the latter majestically; "and
if I had know you was of that sort, I wouldn't have so let myself
down as to come with such a whorage as this is!"
The rather too inclusive speech brought down a torrent of
vituperation from other quarters upon fair Tess's unlucky head,
particularly from the Queen of Diamonds, who having stood in the
relations to d'Urberville that Car had also been suspected of, united
with the latter against the common enemy. Several other women also
chimed in, with an animus which none of them would have been so
fatuous as to show but for the rollicking evening they had passed.
Thereupon, finding Tess unfairly browbeaten, the husbands and lovers
tried to make peace by defending her; but the result of that attempt
was directly to increase the war.
Tess was indignant and ashamed. She no longer minded the loneliness
of the way and the lateness of the hour; her one object was to get
away from the whole crew as soon as possible. She knew well enough
that the better among them would repent of their passion next day.
They were all now inside the field, and she was edging back to rush
off alone when a horseman emerged almost silently from the corner of
the hedge that screened the road, and Alec d'Urberville looked round
upon them.
"What the devil is all this row about, work-folk?" he asked.
The explanation was not readily forthcoming; and, in truth, he did
not require any. Having heard their voices while yet some way off he
had ridden creepingly forward, and learnt enough to satisfy himself.
Tess was standing apart from the rest, near the gate. He bent over
towards her. "Jump up behind me," he whispered, "and we'll get shot
of the screaming cats in a jiffy!"
She felt almost ready to faint, so vivid was her sense of the crisis.
At almost any other moment of her life she would have refused such
proffered aid and company, as she had refused them several times
before; and now the loneliness would not of itself have forced her
to do otherwise. But coming as the invitation did at the particular
juncture when fear and indignation at these adversaries could be
transformed by a spring of the foot into a triumph over them, she
abandoned herself to her impulse, climbed the gate, put her toe upon
his instep, and scrambled into the saddle behind him. The pair were
speeding away into the distant gray by the time that the contentious
revellers became aware of what had happened.
The Queen of Spades forgot the stain on her bodice, and stood
beside the Queen of Diamonds and the new-married, staggering young
woman--all with a gaze of fixity in the direction in which the
horse's tramp was diminishing into silence on the road.
"What be ye looking at?" asked a man who had not observed the
incident.
"Ho-ho-ho!" laughed dark Car.
"Hee-hee-hee!" laughed the tippling bride, as she steadied herself on
the arm of her fond husband.
"Heu-heu-heu!" laughed dark Car's mother, stroking her moustache as
she explained laconically: "Out of the frying-pan into the fire!"
Then these children of the open air, whom even excess of alcohol
could scarce injure permanently, betook themselves to the field-path;
and as they went there moved onward with them, around the shadow of
each one's head, a circle of opalized light, formed by the moon's
rays upon the glistening sheet of dew. Each pedestrian could see
no halo but his or her own, which never deserted the head-shadow,
whatever its vulgar unsteadiness might be; but adhered to it, and
persistently beautified it; till the erratic motions seemed an
inherent part of the irradiation, and the fumes of their breathing
a component of the night's mist; and the spirit of the scene, and
of the moonlight, and of Nature, seemed harmoniously to mingle with
the spirit of wine.
| 2,993 | Chapter X | https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase1-chapter1-11 | Tess soon finds company in the other servants. After a few months, the town holds a fair and celebrations run late. Tess doesn't drink because she has seen the sad affects of alcohol on her own family and gets tired of waiting for her drunken friends. After first declining his offer, Tess is forced to accept a ride home with Alec on horseback after the drunken revelers turn on Tess after she laughs at Car Darch, who used to be involved with Alec. Although she rides away triumphantly from the drunken others, they realize that Tess has merely jumped "out of the frying-pan into the fire" | null | 106 | 1 | [
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44,747 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/42.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_41_part_0.txt | The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 12 | part 2, chapter 12 | null | {"name": "Part 2, Chapter 12", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-12", "summary": "Mathilde praises Julien in front of her brother and Croisenois, the guy who wants to marry her. They tell her to be careful, since people like Julien would have them all killed if they had their way. Pretty soon, all the young men around the de La Mole house band together to destroy Mathilde's opinion of Julien. One day, Julien follows Mathilde and the group of young men into the garden and hears Mathilde passionately defending him. Now he knows there must be something between them.", "analysis": ""} | CHAPTER XLII
IS HE A DANTON?
The need of anxiety. These words summed up the character
of my aunt, the beautiful Marguerite de Valois, who was
soon to marry the King of Navarre whom we see reigning
at present in France under the name of Henry IV. The
need of staking something was the key to the character
of this charming princess; hence her quarrels and
reconciliations with her brothers from the time when she
was sixteen. Now, what can a young girl stake? The most
precious thing she has: her reputation, the esteem of a
lifetime.
_Memoirs of the Duke d' Angouleme._
_the natural son of Charles IX_.
"There is no contract to sign for Julien and me, there is no notary;
everything is on the heroic plane, everything is the child of chance.
Apart from the noble birth which he lacks, it is the love of Marguerite
de Valois for the young La Mole, the most distinguished man of the
time, over again. Is it my fault that the young men of the court are
such great advocates of the conventional, and turn pale at the mere
idea of the slightest adventure which is a little out of the ordinary?
A little journey in Greece or Africa represents the highest pitch of
their audacity, and moreover they can only march in troops. As soon as
they find themselves alone they are frightened, not of the Bedouin's
lance, but of ridicule and that fear makes them mad.
"My little Julien on the other hand only likes to act alone. This
unique person never thinks for a minute of seeking help or support in
others! He despises others, and that is why I do not despise him.
"If Julien were noble as well as poor, my love would simply be a vulgar
piece of stupidity, a sheer mesalliance; I would have nothing to do
with it; it would be absolutely devoid of the characteristic traits of
grand passion--the immensity of the difficulty to be overcome and the
black uncertainty cf the result."
Mademoiselle de la Mole was so engrossed in these pretty arguments that
without realising what she was doing, she praised Julien to the marquis
de Croisenois and her brother on the following day. Her eloquence went
so far that it provoked them.
"You be careful of this young man who has so much energy," exclaimed
her brother; "if we have another revolution he will have us all
guillotined."
She was careful not to answer, but hastened to rally her brother and
the marquis de Croisenois on the apprehension which energy caused them.
"It is at bottom simply the fear of meeting the unexpected, the fear of
being non-plussed in the presence of the unexpected--"
"Always, always, gentlemen, the fear of ridicule, a monster which had
the misfortune to die in 1816."
"Ridicule has ceased to exist in a country where there are two
parties," M. de la Mole was fond of saying.
His daughter had understood the idea.
"So, gentlemen," she would say to Julien's enemies, "you will be
frightened all your life and you will be told afterwards,
"Ce n'etait pas un loup, ce n'en etait que l'ombre."
Matilde soon left them. Her brother's words horrified her; they
occasioned her much anxiety, but the day afterwards she regarded them
as tantamount to the highest praise.
"His energy frightens them in this age where all energy is dead. I will
tell him my brother's phrase. I want to see what answer he will make.
But I will choose one of the moments when his eyes are shining. Then he
will not be able to lie to me.
"He must be a Danton!" she added after a long and vague reverie. "Well,
suppose the revolution begins again, what figures will Croisenois and
my brother cut then? It is settled in advance: Sublime resignation.
They will be heroic sheep who will allow their throats to be cut
without saying a word. Their one fear when they die will still be the
fear of being bad form. If a Jacobin came to arrest my little Julien he
would blow his brains out, however small a chance he had of escaping.
He is not frightened of doing anything in bad form."
These last words made her pensive; they recalled painful memories and
deprived her of all her boldness. These words reminded her of the jests
of MM. de Caylus, Croisenois, de Luz and her brother; these gentlemen
joined in censuring Julien for his priestly demeanour, which they said
was humble and hypocritical.
"But," she went on suddenly with her eyes gleaming with joy, "the very
bitterness and the very frequency of their jests prove in spite of
themselves that he is the most distinguished man whom we have seen this
winter. What matter his defects and the things which they make fun of?
He has the element of greatness and they are shocked by it. Yes, they,
the very men who are so good and so charitable in other matters. It is
a fact that he is poor and that he has studied in order to be a priest;
they are the heads of a squadron and never had any need of studying;
they found it less trouble.
"In spite of all the handicap of his everlasting black suit and of that
priestly expression which he must wear, poor boy, if he isn't to die of
hunger, his merit frightens them, nothing could be clearer. And as for
that priest-like expression, why he no longer has it after we have been
alone for some moments, and after those gentlemen have evolved what
they imagine to be a subtle and impromptu epigram, is not their first
look towards Julien? I have often noticed it. And yet they know well
that he never speaks to them unless he is questioned. I am the only one
whom he speaks to. He thinks I have a lofty soul. He only answers the
points they raise sufficiently to be polite. He immediately reverts
into respectfulness. But with me he will discuss things for whole
hours, he is not certain of his ideas so long as I find the slightest
objection to them. There has not been a single rifle-shot fired all
this winter; words have been the only means of attracting attention.
Well, my father, who is a superior man and will carry the fortunes of
our house very far, respects Julien. Every one else hates him, no one
despises him except my mother's devout friends."
The Comte de Caylus had or pretended to have a great passion for
horses; he passed his life in his stables and often breakfasted there.
This great passion, together with his habit of never laughing, won for
him much respect among his friends: he was the eagle of the little
circle.
As soon as they had reassembled the following day behind madame de la
Mole's armchair, M. de Caylus, supported by Croisenois and by Norbert,
began in Julien's absence to attack sharply the high opinion which
Mathilde entertained for Julien. He did this without any provocation,
and almost the very minute that he caught sight of mademoiselle de la
Mole. She tumbled to the subtlety immediately and was delighted with it.
"So there they are all leagued together," she said to herself, "against
a man of genius who has not ten louis a year to bless himself with and
who cannot answer them except in so far as he is questioned. They are
frightened of him, black coat and all. But how would things stand if he
had epaulettes?"
She had never been more brilliant, hardly had Caylus and his allies
opened their attack than she riddled them with sarcastic jests. When
the fire of these brilliant officers was at length extinguished she
said to M. de Caylus,
"Suppose that some gentleman in the Franche-Comte mountains finds out
to-morrow that Julien is his natural son and gives him a name and
some thousands of francs, why in six months he will be an officer of
hussars like you, gentlemen, in six weeks he will have moustaches like
you gentlemen. And then his greatness of character will no longer be
an object of ridicule. I shall then see you reduced, monsieur the
future duke, to this stale and bad argument, the superiority of the
court nobility over the provincial nobility. But where will you be
if I choose to push you to extremities and am mischievous enough to
make Julien's father a Spanish duke, who was a prisoner of war at
Besancon in the time of Napoleon, and who out of conscientious scruples
acknowledges him on his death bed?" MM. de Caylus, and de Croisenois
found all these assumptions of illegitimacy in rather bad taste. That
was all they saw in Mathilde's reasoning.
His sister's words were so clear that Norbert, in spite of his
submissiveness, assumed a solemn air, which one must admit did not
harmonise very well with his amiable, smiling face. He ventured to say
a few words.
"Are you ill? my dear," answered Mathilde with a little air of
seriousness. "You must be very bad to answer jests by moralizing."
"Moralizing from you! Are you soliciting a job as prefect?"
Mathilde soon forgot the irritation of the comte de Caylus, the bad
temper of Norbert, and the taciturn despair of M. de Croisenois. She
had to decide one way or the other a fatal question which had just
seized upon her soul.
"Julien is sincere enough with me," she said to herself, "a man at
his age, in a inferior position, and rendered unhappy as he is by an
extraordinary ambition, must have need of a woman friend. I am perhaps
that friend, but I see no sign of love in him. Taking into account the
audacity of his character he would surely have spoken to me about his
love."
This uncertainty and this discussion with herself which henceforth
monopolised Mathilde's time, and in connection with which she found new
arguments each time that Julien spoke to her, completely routed those
fits of boredom to which she had been so liable.
Daughter as she was of a man of intellect who might become a minister,
mademoiselle de la Mole had been when in the convent of the Sacred
Heart, the object of the most excessive flattery. This misfortune can
never be compensated for. She had been persuaded that by reason of all
her advantages of birth, fortune, etc., she ought to be happier than
any one else. This is the cause of the boredom of princes and of all
their follies.
Mathilde had not escaped the deadly influence of this idea. However
intelligent one may be, one cannot at the age of ten be on one's guard
against the flatteries of a whole convent, which are apparently so well
founded.
From the moment that she had decided that she loved Julien, she
was no longer bored. She congratulated herself every day on having
deliberately decided to indulge in a grand passion. "This amusement
is very dangerous," she thought. "All the better, all the better, a
thousand times. Without a grand passion I should be languishing in
boredom during the finest time of my life, the years from sixteen
to twenty. I have already wasted my finest years: all my pleasure
consisted in being obliged to listen to the silly arguments of my
mother's friends who when at Coblentz in 1792 were not quite so strict,
so they say, as their words of to-day."
It was while Mathilde was a prey to these great fits of uncertainty
that Julien was baffled by those long looks of hers which lingered upon
him. He noticed, no doubt, an increased frigidity in the manner of
comte Norbert, and a fresh touch of haughtiness in the manner of MM. de
Caylus, de Luz and de Croisenois. He was accustomed to that. He would
sometimes be their victim in this way at the end of an evening when, in
view of the position he occupied, he had been unduly brilliant. Had it
not been for the especial welcome with which Mathilde would greet him,
and the curiosity with which all this society inspired him, he would
have avoided following these brilliant moustachioed young men into the
garden, when they accompanied mademoiselle de La Mole there, in the
hour after dinner.
"Yes," Julien would say to himself, "it is impossible for me to deceive
myself, mademoiselle de la Mole looks at me in a very singular way.
But even when her fine blue open eyes are fixed on me, wide open with
the most abandon, I always detect behind them an element of scrutiny,
self-possession and malice. Is it possible that this may be love? But
how different to madame de Renal's looks!"
One evening after dinner Julien, who had followed M. de la Mole into
his study, was rapidly walking back to the garden. He approached
Mathilde's circle without any warning, and caught some words pronounced
in a very loud voice. She was teasing her brother. Julien heard his
name distinctly pronounced twice. He appeared. There was immediately
a profound silence and abortive efforts were made to dissipate it.
Mademoiselle de la Mole and her brother were too animated to find
another topic of conversation. MM. de Caylus, de Croisenois, de Luz,
and one of their friends, manifested an icy coldness to Julien. He went
away.
| 2,179 | Part 2, Chapter 12 | https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-12 | Mathilde praises Julien in front of her brother and Croisenois, the guy who wants to marry her. They tell her to be careful, since people like Julien would have them all killed if they had their way. Pretty soon, all the young men around the de La Mole house band together to destroy Mathilde's opinion of Julien. One day, Julien follows Mathilde and the group of young men into the garden and hears Mathilde passionately defending him. Now he knows there must be something between them. | null | 86 | 1 | [
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44,747 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/23.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_22_part_0.txt | The Red and the Black.part 1.chapter 23 | part 1, chapter 23 | null | {"name": "Part 1, Chapter 23", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-23", "summary": "Two days after their first visit, the de Renals return to Verrieres. This time, Madame acts aloof towards Julien, who wonders if there is some other new man in her life. Julien soon finds out that Madame and her husband have been discussing an old mansion in Verrieres that's about to go up for public auction. Julien attends the auction. The old mansion gets rented to a friend of Monsieur de Renals, and for some reason, everyone in the room looks at Julien as though he has conspired to help his boss rent the house to the man he wants. The truth is, though, that the house has gone to a man for a price that Monsieur de Renal doesn't approve of. When he gets back to Julien's place, he sends Julien back home to the de Renal house with the children. A man shows up at the door named Signor Geronimo. He delivers a letter to Monsieur de Renal and stays for dinner. He's a really charming and funny man, and he quickly improves the spirits of everyone in the house. Julien thinks about how much he'd rather be a travelling singer than someone like Monsieur de Renal. Meanwhile, the whole town of Verrieres gossips about Madame de Renal's affair with Julien. Hearing this, Father Chelan summons Julien and tells him to leave Verrieres for a year. His options are to go into business with his buddy Fouqe or to go to a seminary to study to become a priest. Julien visits Madame again before leaving. She gives him a lock of her hair and begs him to make sure her children turn out well if she ever dies. Julien promises Madame that three days after he leaves, he'll come back at night to visit her. And yes, we're talking about a sexy rendezvous here. Monsieur Renal gets a moment alone with Madame and tells her he can't take it anymore. He's going to the casino to throw the anonymous letters about Madame in Monsieur Valenod's face. Madame is worried that the two will have a duel and one will die. Worse yet, she'll be responsible. She convinces her husband that he actually needs to be nicer to Valenod than ever. They also decide that the best thing for Julien is for him to leave town and go into a priest's seminary in the nearby town of Besancon. The next day, Monsieur de Renal gets another insulting anonymous letter. Julien agrees to go into the seminary instead of taking a job with Valenod. Madame falls into depression at the thought that she won't see Julien again. She is emotionally cold the last time they see one another.", "analysis": ""} | CHAPTER XXIII
SORROWS OF AN OFFICIAL
Il piacere di alzar la testa tutto l'anno, e ben pagato
da certi quarti d'ora che bisogna passar.--_Casti_.
Let us leave this petty man to his petty fears; why did he take a man
of spirit into his household when he needed someone with the soul
of a valet? Why can't he select his staff? The ordinary trend of
the nineteenth century is that when a noble and powerful individual
encounters a man of spirit, he kills him, exiles him and imprisons him,
or so humiliates him that the other is foolish enough to die of grief.
In this country it so happens that it is not merely the man of spirit
who suffers. The great misfortunes of the little towns of France and of
representative governments, like that of New York, is that they find
it impossible to forget the existence of individuals like M. de Renal.
It is these men who make public opinion in a town of twenty thousand
inhabitants, and public opinion is terrible in a country which has a
charter of liberty. A man, though of a naturally noble and generous
disposition, who would have been your friend in the natural course of
events, but who happens to live a hundred leagues off, judges you by
the public opinion of your town which is made by those fools who have
chanced to be born noble, rich and conservative. Unhappy is the man who
distinguishes himself.
Immediately after dinner they left for Vergy, but the next day but
one Julien saw the whole family return to Verrieres. An hour had not
passed before he discovered to his great surprise that Madame de Renal
had some mystery up her sleeve. Whenever he came into the room she
would break off her conversation with her husband and would almost
seem to desire that he should go away. Julien did not need to be given
this hint twice. He became cold and reserved. Madame de Renal noticed
it and did not ask for an explanation. "Is she going to give me a
successor," thought Julien. "And to think of her being so familiar
with me the day before yesterday, but that is how these great ladies
are said to act. It's just like kings. One never gets any more warning
than the disgraced minister who enters his house to find his letter of
dismissal." Julien noticed that these conversations which left off so
abruptly at his approach, often dealt with a big house which belonged
to the municipality of Verrieres, a house which though old was large
and commodious and situated opposite the church in the most busy
commercial district of the town. "What connection can there be between
this house and a new lover," said Julien to himself. In his chagrin he
repeated to himself the pretty verses of Francis I. which seemed novel
to him, for Madame de Renal had only taught him them a month before:
Souvent femme varie
Bien fol est qui s'y fie.
M. de Renal took the mail to Besancon. This journey was a matter of two
hours. He seemed extremely harassed. On his return he threw a big grey
paper parcel on the table.
"Here's that silly business," he said to his wife. An hour afterwards
Julien saw the bill-poster carrying the big parcel. He followed him
eagerly. "I shall learn the secret at the first street corner." He
waited impatiently behind the bill-poster who was smearing the back of
the poster with his big brush. It had scarcely been put in its place
before Julien's curiosity saw the detailed announcement of the putting
up for public auction of that big old house whose name had figured so
frequently in M. de Renal's conversations with his wife. The auction of
the lease was announced for to-morrow at two o'clock in the Town Hall
after the extinction of the third fire. Julien was very disappointed.
He found the time a little short. How could there be time to apprise
all the other would-be purchasers. But, moreover, the bill, which was
dated a fortnight back, and which he read again in its entirety in
three distinct places, taught him nothing.
He went to visit the house which was to let. The porter, who had not
seen him approach, was saying mysteriously to a neighbour:
"Pooh, pooh, waste of time. M. Maslon has promised him that he shall
have it for three hundred francs; and, as the mayor kicked, he has been
summoned to the bishop's palace by M. the Grand Vicar de Frilair."
Julien's arrival seemed very much to disconcert the two friends who
did not say another word. Julien made a point of being present at the
auction of the lease.
There was a crowd in the badly-lighted hall, but everybody kept
quizzing each other in quite a singular way. All eyes were fixed on a
table where Julien perceived three little lighted candle-ends on a tin
plate. The usher was crying out "Three hundred francs, gentlemen."
"Three hundred francs, that's a bit too thick," said a man to his
neighbour in a low voice. Julien was between the two of them. "It's
worth more than eight hundred, I will raise the bidding." "It's cutting
off your nose to spite your face. What will you gain by putting M.
Maslon, M. Valenod, the Bishop, this terrible Grand Vicar de Frilair
and the whole gang on your track."
"Three hundred and twenty francs," shouted out the other.
"Damned brute," answered his neighbour. "Why here we have a spy of the
mayor," he added, designating Julien.
Julien turned sharply round to punish this remark, but the two,
Franc-comtois, were no longer paying any attention to him. Their
coolness gave him back his own. At that moment the last candle-end
went out and the usher's drawling voice awarded the house to M. de St.
Giraud of the office of the prefecture of ---- for a term of nine years
and for a rent of 320 francs.
As soon as the mayor had left the hall, the gossip began again.
"Here's thirty francs that Grogeot's recklessness is landing the
municipality in for," said one--"But," answered another, "M. de Saint
Giraud will revenge himself on Grogeot."
"How monstrous," said a big man on Julien's left. "A house which I
myself would have given eight hundred francs for my factory, and I
would have got a good bargain."
"Pooh!" answered a young manufacturer, "doesn't M. de St. Giraud belong
to the congregation? Haven't his four children got scholarships? poor
man! The community of Verrieres must give him five hundred francs over
and above his salary, that is all."
"And to say that the mayor was not able to stop it," remarked a third.
"For he's an ultra he is, I'm glad to say, but he doesn't steal."
"Doesn't he?" answered another. "Suppose it's simply a mere game of
'snap'[1] then. Everything goes into a big common purse, and everything
is divided up at the end of the year. But here's that little Sorel,
let's go away."
Julien got home in a very bad temper. He found Madame de Renal very sad.
"You come from the auction?" she said to him.
"Yes, madam, where I had the honour of passing for a spy of M. the
Mayor."
"If he had taken my advice, he would have gone on a journey."
At this moment Monsieur de Renal appeared: he looked very dismal. The
dinner passed without a single word. Monsieur de Renal ordered Julien
to follow the children to Vergy.
Madame de Renal endeavoured to console her husband.
"You ought to be used to it, my dear."
That evening they were seated in silence around the domestic hearth.
The crackle of the burnt pinewood was their only distraction. It
was one of those moments of silence which happen in the most united
families. One of the children cried out gaily,
"Somebody's ringing, somebody's ringing!"
"Zounds! supposing it's Monsieur de Saint Giraud who has come under
the pretext of thanking me," exclaimed the mayor. "I will give him a
dressing down. It is outrageous. It is Valenod to whom he'll feel under
an obligation, and it is I who get compromised. What shall I say if
those damned Jacobin journalists get hold of this anecdote, and turn me
into a M. Nonante Cinque."
A very good-looking man, with big black whiskers, entered at this
moment, preceded by the servant.
"Monsieur the mayor, I am Signor Geronimo. Here is a letter which M.
the Chevalier de Beauvoisis, who is attached to the Embassy of Naples,
gave me for you on my departure. That is only nine days ago, added
Signor Geronimo, gaily looking at Madame de Renal. Your cousin, and my
good friend, Signor de Beauvoisis says that you know Italian, Madame."
The Neapolitan's good humour changed this gloomy evening into a very
gay one. Madame de Renal insisted upon giving him supper. She put the
whole house on the go. She wanted to free Julien at any price from the
imputation of espionage which she had heard already twice that day.
Signor Geronimo was an excellent singer, excellent company, and had
very gay qualities which, at any rate in France, are hardly compatible
with each other. After dinner he sang a little duet with Madame de
Renal, and told some charming tales. At one o'clock in the morning the
children protested, when Julien suggested that they should go to bed.
"Another of those stories," said the eldest.
"It is my own, Signorino," answered Signor Geronimo.
"Eight years ago I was, like you, a young pupil of the Naples
Conservatoire. I mean I was your age, but I did not have the honour to
be the son of the distinguished mayor of the pretty town of Verrieres."
This phrase made M. de Renal sigh, and look at his wife.
"Signor Zingarelli," continued the young singer, somewhat exaggerating
his action, and thus making the children burst into laughter, "Signor
Zingarelli was an excellent though severe master. He is not popular at
the Conservatoire, but he insists on the pretence being kept up that he
is. I went out as often as I could. I used to go to the little Theatre
de San Carlino, where I used to hear divine music. But heavens! the
question was to scrape together the eight sous which were the price of
admission to the parterre? An enormous sum," he said, looking at the
children and watching them laugh. "Signor Giovannone, director of the
San Carlino, heard me sing. I was sixteen. 'That child is a treasure,'
he said.
"'Would you like me to engage you, my dear boy?' he said.
"'And how much will you give me?'
"'Forty ducats a month.' That is one hundred and sixty francs,
gentlemen. I thought the gates of heaven had opened.
"'But,' I said to Giovannone, 'how shall I get the strict Zingarelli to
let me go out?'
"'_Lascia fare a me_.'"
"Leave it to me," exclaimed the eldest of the children.
"Quite right, my young sir. Signor Giovannone he says to me, 'First
sign this little piece of paper, my dear friend.' I sign.
"He gives me three ducats. I had never seen so much money. Then he told
me what I had to do.
"Next day I asked the terrible Zingarelli for an audience. His old
valet ushered me in.
"'What do you want of me, you naughty boy?' said Zingarelli.
"'Maestro,' I said, 'I repent of all my faults. I will never go out of
the Conservatoire by passing through the iron grill. I will redouble my
diligence.'
"'If I were not frightened of spoiling the finest bass voice I have
ever heard, I would put you in prison for a fortnight on bread and
water, you rascal.'
"'Maestro,' I answered, 'I will be the model boy of the whole school,
_credete a me_, but I would ask one favour of you. If anyone comes and
asks permission for me to sing outside, refuse. As a favour, please say
that you cannot let me.'
"'And who the devil do you think is going to ask for a ne'er-do-well
like you? Do you think I should ever allow you to leave the
Conservatoire? Do you want to make fun of me? Clear out! Clear out!' he
said, trying to give me a kick, 'or look out for prison and dry bread.'"
One thing astonished Julien. The solitary weeks passed at Verrieres in
de Renal's house had been a period of happiness for him. He had only
experienced revulsions and sad thoughts at the dinners to which he had
been invited. And was he not able to read, write and reflect, without
being distracted, in this solitary house? He was not distracted every
moment from his brilliant reveries by the cruel necessity of studying
the movement of a false soul in order to deceive it by intrigue and
hypocrisy.
"To think of happiness being so near to me--the expense of a life
like that is small enough. I could have my choice of either marrying
Mademoiselle Elisa or of entering into partnership with Fouque. But it
is only the traveller who has just scaled a steep mountain and sits
down on the summit who finds a perfect pleasure in resting. Would he be
happy if he had to rest all the time?"
Madame de Renal's mind had now reached a state of desperation. In spite
of her resolutions, she had explained to Julien all the details of the
auction. "He will make me forget all my oaths!" she thought.
She would have sacrificed her life without hesitation to save that
of her husband if she had seen him in danger. She was one of those
noble, romantic souls who find a source of perpetual remorse equal to
that occasioned by the actual perpetration of a crime, in seeing the
possibility of a generous action and not doing it. None the less, there
were deadly days when she was not able to banish the imagination of
the excessive happiness which she would enjoy if she suddenly became a
widow, and were able to marry Julien.
He loved her sons much more than their father did; in spite of his
strict justice they were devoted to him. She quite realised that if
she married Julien, it would be necessary to leave that Vergy, whose
shades were so dear to her. She pictured herself living at Paris, and
continuing to give her sons an education which would make them admired
by everyone. Her children, herself, and Julien! They would be all
perfectly happy!
Strange result of marriage such as the nineteenth century has made it!
The boredom of matrimonial life makes love fade away inevitably, when
love has preceded the marriage. But none the less, said a philosopher,
married life soon reduces those people who are sufficiently rich
not to have to work, to a sense of being utterly bored by all quiet
enjoyments. And among women, it is only arid souls whom it does not
predispose to love.
The philosopher's reflection makes me excuse Madame de Renal, but she
was not excused in Verrieres, and without her suspecting it, the whole
town found its sole topic of interest in the scandal of her intrigue.
As a result of this great affair, the autumn was less boring than usual.
The autumn and part of the winter passed very quickly. It was necessary
to leave the woods of Vergy. Good Verrieres society began to be
indignant at the fact that its anathemas made so little impression on
Monsieur de Renal. Within eight days, several serious personages who
made up for their habitual gravity of demeanour by their pleasure in
fulfilling missions of this kind, gave him the most cruel suspicions,
at the same time utilising the most measured terms.
M. Valenod, who was playing a deep game, had placed Elisa in an
aristocratic family of great repute, where there were five women.
Elisa, fearing, so she said, not to find a place during the winter, had
only asked from this family about two-thirds of what she had received
in the house of the mayor. The girl hit upon the excellent idea of
going to confession at the same time to both the old cure Chelan,
and also to the new one, so as to tell both of them in detail about
Julien's amours.
The day after his arrival, the abbe Chelan summoned Julien to him at
six o'clock in the morning.
"I ask you nothing," he said. "I beg you, and if needs be I insist,
that you either leave for the Seminary of Besancon, or for your friend
Fouque, who is always ready to provide you with a splendid future. I
have seen to everything and have arranged everything, but you must
leave, and not come back to Verrieres for a year."
Julien did not answer. He was considering whether his honour ought to
regard itself offended at the trouble which Chelan, who, after all, was
not his father, had taken on his behalf.
"I shall have the honour of seeing you again to-morrow at the same
hour," he said finally to the cure.
Chelan, who reckoned on carrying so young a man by storm, talked a
great deal. Julien, cloaked in the most complete humbleness, both of
demeanour and expression, did not open his lips.
Eventually he left, and ran to warn Madame de Renal whom he found in
despair. Her husband had just spoken to her with a certain amount of
frankness. The weakness of his character found support in the prospect
of the legacy, and had decided him to treat her as perfectly innocent.
He had just confessed to her the strange state in which he had found
public opinion in Verrieres. The public was wrong; it had been misled
by jealous tongues. But, after all, what was one to do?
Madame de Renal was, for the moment, under the illusion that Julien
would accept the offer of Valenod and stay at Verrieres. But she was no
longer the simple, timid woman that she had been the preceding year.
Her fatal passion and remorse had enlightened her. She soon realised
the painful truth (while at the same time she listened to her husband),
that at any rate a temporary separation had become essential.
When he is far from me, Julien will revert to those ambitious projects
which are so natural when one has no money. And I, Great God! I am so
rich, and my riches are so useless for my happiness. He will forget
me. Loveable as he is, he will be loved, and he will love. You unhappy
woman. What can I complain of? Heaven is just. I was not virtuous
enough to leave off the crime. Fate robs me of my judgment. I could
easily have bribed Elisa if I had wanted to; nothing was easier. I did
not take the trouble to reflect for a moment. The mad imagination of
love absorbed all my time. I am ruined.
When Julien apprised Madame de Renal of the terrible news of his
departure, he was struck with one thing. He did not find her put
forward any selfish objections. She was evidently making efforts not to
cry.
"We have need of firmness, my dear." She cut off a strand of her hair.
"I do no know what I shall do," she said to him, "but promise me if I
die, never to forget my children. Whether you are far or near, try to
make them into honest men. If there is a new revolution, all the nobles
will have their throats cut. Their father will probably emigrate,
because of that peasant on the roof who got killed. Watch over my
family. Give me your hand. Adieu, my dear. These are our last moments.
Having made this great sacrifice, I hope I shall have the courage to
consider my reputation in public."
Julien had been expecting despair. The simplicity of this farewell
touched him.
"No, I am not going to receive your farewell like this. I will leave
you now, as you yourself wish it. But three days after my departure I
will come back to see you at night."
Madame de Renal's life was changed. So Julien really loved her, since
of his own accord he had thought of seeing her again. Her awful grief
became changed into one of the keenest transports of joy which she had
felt in her whole life. Everything became easy for her. The certainty
of seeing her lover deprived these last moments of their poignancy.
From that moment, both Madame de Renal's demeanour and the expression
of her face were noble, firm, and perfectly dignified.
M. de Renal soon came back. He was beside himself. He eventually
mentioned to his wife the anonymous letter which he had received two
months before.
"I will take it to the Casino, and shew everybody that it has been sent
by that brute Valenod, whom I took out of the gutter and made into one
of the richest tradesmen in Verrieres. I will disgrace him publicly,
and then I will fight him. This is too much."
"Great Heavens! I may become a widow," thought Madame de Renal, and
almost at the same time she said to herself,
"If I do not, as I certainly can, prevent this duel, I shall be the
murderess of my own husband."
She had never expended so much skill in honoring his vanity. Within
two hours she made him see, and always by virtue of reasons which he
discovered himself, that it was necessary to show more friendship than
ever to M. Valenod, and even to take Elisa back into the household.
Madame de Renal had need of courage to bring herself to see again the
girl who was the cause of her unhappiness. But this idea was one of
Julien's. Finally, having been put on the track three or four times,
M. de Renal arrived spontaneously at the conclusion, disagreeable
though it was from the financial standpoint, that the most painful
thing that could happen to him would be that Julien, in the middle of
the effervescence of popular gossip throughout Verrieres, should stay
in the town as the tutor of Valenod's children. It was obviously to
Julien's interest to accept the offer of the director of the workhouse.
Conversely, it was essential for M. de Renal's prestige that Julien
should leave Verrieres to enter the seminary of Besancon or that of
Dijon. But how to make him decide on that course? And then how is he
going to live?
M. de Renal, seeing a monetary sacrifice looming in the distance,
was in deeper despair than his wife. As for her, she felt after this
interview in the position of a man of spirit who, tired of life, has
taken a dose of stramonium. He only acts mechanically so to speak, and
takes no longer any interest in anything. In this way, Louis XIV. came
to say on his death-bed, "When I was king." An admirable epigram.
Next morning, M. de Renal received quite early an anonymous letter.
It was written in a most insulting style, and the coarsest words
applicable to his position occurred on every line. It was the work of
some jealous subordinate. This letter made him think again of fighting
a duel with Valenod. Soon his courage went as far as the idea of
immediate action. He left the house alone, went to the armourer's and
got some pistols which he loaded.
"Yes, indeed," he said to himself, "even though the strict
administration of the Emperor Napoleon were to become fashionable
again, I should not have one sou's worth of jobbery to reproach myself
with; at the outside, I have shut my eyes, and I have some good letters
in my desk which authorise me to do so."
Madame de Renal was terrified by her husband's cold anger. It recalled
to her the fatal idea of widowhood which she had so much trouble in
repelling. She closeted herself with him. For several hours she talked
to him in vain. The new anonymous letter had decided him. Finally she
succeeded in transforming the courage which had decided him to box
Valenod's ears, into the courage of offering six hundred francs to
Julien, which would keep him for one year in a seminary.
M. de Renal cursed a thousand times the day that he had had the
ill-starred idea of taking a tutor into his house, and forgot the
anonymous letter.
He consoled himself a little by an idea which he did not tell his
wife. With the exercise of some skill, and by exploiting the romantic
ideas of the young man, he hoped to be able to induce him to refuse M.
Valenod's offer at a cheaper price.
Madame de Renal had much more trouble in proving to Julien that
inasmuch as he was sacrificing the post of six hundred francs a year
in order to enable her husband to keep up appearances, he need have no
shame about accepting the compensation. But Julien would say each time,
"I have never thought for a moment of accepting that offer. You have
made me so used to a refined life that the coarseness of those people
would kill me."
Cruel necessity bent Julien's will with its iron hand. His pride gave
him the illusion that he only accepted the sum offered by M. de Renal
as a loan, and induced him to give him a promissory note, repayable in
five years with interest.
Madame de Renal had, of course, many thousands of francs which had been
concealed in the little mountain cave.
She offered them to him all a tremble, feeling only too keenly that
they would be angrily refused.
"Do you wish," said Julien to her, "to make the memory of our love
loathsome?"
Finally Julien left Verrieres. M. de Renal was very happy, but when
the fatal moment came to accept money from him the sacrifice proved
beyond Julien's strength. He refused point blank. M. de Renal embraced
him around the neck with tears in his eyes. Julien had asked him for
a testimonial of good conduct, and his enthusiasm could find no terms
magnificent enough in which to extol his conduct.
Our hero had five louis of savings and he reckoned on asking Fouque for
an equal sum.
He was very moved. But one league from Verrieres, where he left so much
that was dear to him, he only thought of the happiness of seeing the
capital of a great military town like Besancon.
During the short absence of three days, Madame de Renal was the victim
of one of the cruellest deceptions to which love is liable. Her life
was tolerable, because between her and extreme unhappiness there was
still that last interview which she was to have with Julien.
Finally during the night of the third day, she heard from a distance
the preconcerted signal. Julien, having passed through a thousand
dangers, appeared before her. In this moment she only had one
thought--"I see him for the last time." Instead of answering the
endearments of her lover, she seemed more dead than alive. If she
forced herself to tell him that she loved him, she said it with an
embarrassed air which almost proved the contrary. Nothing could rid her
of the cruel idea of eternal separation. The suspicious Julien thought
for the moment that he was already forgotten. His pointed remarks to
this effect were only answered by great tears which flowed down in
silence, and by some hysterical pressings of the hand.
"But," Julien would answer his mistress's cold protestations, "Great
Heavens! How can you expect me to believe you? You would show one
hundred times more sincere affection to Madame Derville to a mere
acquaintance."
Madame de Renal was petrified, and at a loss for an answer.
"It is impossible to be more unhappy. I hope I am going to die. I feel
my heart turn to ice."
Those were the longest answers which he could obtain.
When the approach of day rendered it necessary for him to leave Madame
de Renal, her tears completely ceased. She saw him tie a knotted rope
to the window without saying a word, and without returning her kisses.
It was in vain that Julien said to her.
"So now we have reached the state of affairs which you wished for
so much. Henceforward you will live without remorse. The slightest
indisposition of your children will no longer make you see them in the
tomb."
"I am sorry that you cannot kiss Stanislas," she said coldly.
Julien finished by being profoundly impressed by the cold embraces of
this living corpse. He could think of nothing else for several leagues.
His soul was overwhelmed, and before passing the mountain, and while
he could still see the church tower of Verrieres he turned round
frequently.
[1] C'est pigeon qui vole. A reference to a contemporary animal game
with a pun on the word "vole."
| 4,453 | Part 1, Chapter 23 | https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-23 | Two days after their first visit, the de Renals return to Verrieres. This time, Madame acts aloof towards Julien, who wonders if there is some other new man in her life. Julien soon finds out that Madame and her husband have been discussing an old mansion in Verrieres that's about to go up for public auction. Julien attends the auction. The old mansion gets rented to a friend of Monsieur de Renals, and for some reason, everyone in the room looks at Julien as though he has conspired to help his boss rent the house to the man he wants. The truth is, though, that the house has gone to a man for a price that Monsieur de Renal doesn't approve of. When he gets back to Julien's place, he sends Julien back home to the de Renal house with the children. A man shows up at the door named Signor Geronimo. He delivers a letter to Monsieur de Renal and stays for dinner. He's a really charming and funny man, and he quickly improves the spirits of everyone in the house. Julien thinks about how much he'd rather be a travelling singer than someone like Monsieur de Renal. Meanwhile, the whole town of Verrieres gossips about Madame de Renal's affair with Julien. Hearing this, Father Chelan summons Julien and tells him to leave Verrieres for a year. His options are to go into business with his buddy Fouqe or to go to a seminary to study to become a priest. Julien visits Madame again before leaving. She gives him a lock of her hair and begs him to make sure her children turn out well if she ever dies. Julien promises Madame that three days after he leaves, he'll come back at night to visit her. And yes, we're talking about a sexy rendezvous here. Monsieur Renal gets a moment alone with Madame and tells her he can't take it anymore. He's going to the casino to throw the anonymous letters about Madame in Monsieur Valenod's face. Madame is worried that the two will have a duel and one will die. Worse yet, she'll be responsible. She convinces her husband that he actually needs to be nicer to Valenod than ever. They also decide that the best thing for Julien is for him to leave town and go into a priest's seminary in the nearby town of Besancon. The next day, Monsieur de Renal gets another insulting anonymous letter. Julien agrees to go into the seminary instead of taking a job with Valenod. Madame falls into depression at the thought that she won't see Julien again. She is emotionally cold the last time they see one another. | null | 448 | 1 | [
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1,232 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/1232-chapters/13.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/The Prince/section_11_part_0.txt | The Prince.chapter 13 | chapter 13 | null | {"name": "Chapter 13", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201108110625/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/p/the-prince/summary-and-analysis/chapter-13", "summary": "Auxiliaries are troops sent by another ruler to help you. Just as with mercenaries, if they lose, you are ruined, and if they win, you are in their power. Auxiliaries come to you as a united body trained to obey others. Mercenaries are less dangerous, because they are not united behind their leaders. A wise prince would rather lose his own troops than win with someone else's, because a victory with borrowed troops is not really a victory. A principality that does not have its own army is not really secure, because it depends on fortune, not its own strength. Nothing is weaker than a reputation for power that is not based on your own strength.", "analysis": "Machiavelli views auxiliaries, troops loaned by another ruler, as even more destructive than mercenaries. While mercenaries are only self-interested, auxiliaries are actually loyal to someone else, namely a rival prince who may use them to conquer you. Using forces that belong to someone else puts you in that person's power. Returning once again to his theme that the only real strength is self-sufficiency, Machiavelli remarks that it is better to lose with one's own troops than to win with the strength of others, because that victory belongs to them. Unless a prince can field an army of his own citizens or subjects, he has no real power. Virtu, a prince's own strength, is always preferable to relying on luck or the favor of others. Glossary Julius Pope Julius II tried to take Ferrara, allied with the French, in 1510. Julius probably allied with Spain more out of fear of French power in Italy than out of specific desire to conquer Ferrara. Constantinople former name for Istanbul. Christian capital of the Byzantine Empire. During a period of civil war, the emperor asked Ottoman Turkish forces to intervene. Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. David the great king of the Israelites, only a young shepherd boy when he fought for King Saul against the Philistine giant, Goliath. David's refusal of Saul's armor appears in I Samuel 17:38-40. Charles VIII King of France. His royal ordinances established permanent infantry and cavalry in the French army. His successor Louis XII reversed this policy. Goths Germanic people who invaded and conquered most of the Roman Empire."} |
Auxiliaries, which are the other useless arm, are employed when a prince
is called in with his forces to aid and defend, as was done by Pope
Julius in the most recent times; for he, having, in the enterprise
against Ferrara, had poor proof of his mercenaries, turned to
auxiliaries, and stipulated with Ferdinand, King of Spain,(*) for his
assistance with men and arms. These arms may be useful and good
in themselves, but for him who calls them in they are always
disadvantageous; for losing, one is undone, and winning, one is their
captive.
And although ancient histories may be full of examples, I do not wish
to leave this recent one of Pope Julius the Second, the peril of which
cannot fail to be perceived; for he, wishing to get Ferrara, threw
himself entirely into the hands of the foreigner. But his good fortune
brought about a third event, so that he did not reap the fruit of his
rash choice; because, having his auxiliaries routed at Ravenna, and
the Switzers having risen and driven out the conquerors (against all
expectation, both his and others), it so came to pass that he did
not become prisoner to his enemies, they having fled, nor to his
auxiliaries, he having conquered by other arms than theirs.
The Florentines, being entirely without arms, sent ten thousand
Frenchmen to take Pisa, whereby they ran more danger than at any other
time of their troubles.
The Emperor of Constantinople,(*) to oppose his neighbours, sent ten
thousand Turks into Greece, who, on the war being finished, were not
willing to quit; this was the beginning of the servitude of Greece to
the infidels.
Therefore, let him who has no desire to conquer make use of these arms,
for they are much more hazardous than mercenaries, because with them the
ruin is ready made; they are all united, all yield obedience to others;
but with mercenaries, when they have conquered, more time and better
opportunities are needed to injure you; they are not all of one
community, they are found and paid by you, and a third party, which you
have made their head, is not able all at once to assume enough authority
to injure you. In conclusion, in mercenaries dastardy is most dangerous;
in auxiliaries, valour. The wise prince, therefore, has always avoided
these arms and turned to his own; and has been willing rather to lose
with them than to conquer with the others, not deeming that a real
victory which is gained with the arms of others.
I shall never hesitate to cite Cesare Borgia and his actions. This duke
entered the Romagna with auxiliaries, taking there only French soldiers,
and with them he captured Imola and Forli; but afterwards, such forces
not appearing to him reliable, he turned to mercenaries, discerning less
danger in them, and enlisted the Orsini and Vitelli; whom presently,
on handling and finding them doubtful, unfaithful, and dangerous, he
destroyed and turned to his own men. And the difference between one
and the other of these forces can easily be seen when one considers
the difference there was in the reputation of the duke, when he had the
French, when he had the Orsini and Vitelli, and when he relied on his
own soldiers, on whose fidelity he could always count and found it ever
increasing; he was never esteemed more highly than when every one saw
that he was complete master of his own forces.
I was not intending to go beyond Italian and recent examples, but I am
unwilling to leave out Hiero, the Syracusan, he being one of those I
have named above. This man, as I have said, made head of the army by the
Syracusans, soon found out that a mercenary soldiery, constituted like
our Italian condottieri, was of no use; and it appearing to him that he
could neither keep them not let them go, he had them all cut to pieces,
and afterwards made war with his own forces and not with aliens.
I wish also to recall to memory an instance from the Old Testament
applicable to this subject. David offered himself to Saul to fight with
Goliath, the Philistine champion, and, to give him courage, Saul armed
him with his own weapons; which David rejected as soon as he had them
on his back, saying he could make no use of them, and that he wished to
meet the enemy with his sling and his knife. In conclusion, the arms of
others either fall from your back, or they weigh you down, or they bind
you fast.
Charles the Seventh,(*) the father of King Louis the Eleventh,(+) having
by good fortune and valour liberated France from the English, recognized
the necessity of being armed with forces of his own, and he established
in his kingdom ordinances concerning men-at-arms and infantry.
Afterwards his son, King Louis, abolished the infantry and began to
enlist the Switzers, which mistake, followed by others, is, as is now
seen, a source of peril to that kingdom; because, having raised the
reputation of the Switzers, he has entirely diminished the value of
his own arms, for he has destroyed the infantry altogether; and his
men-at-arms he has subordinated to others, for, being as they are so
accustomed to fight along with Switzers, it does not appear that they
can now conquer without them. Hence it arises that the French cannot
stand against the Switzers, and without the Switzers they do not come
off well against others. The armies of the French have thus become
mixed, partly mercenary and partly national, both of which arms together
are much better than mercenaries alone or auxiliaries alone, but much
inferior to one's own forces. And this example proves it, for the
kingdom of France would be unconquerable if the ordinance of Charles had
been enlarged or maintained.
But the scanty wisdom of man, on entering into an affair which looks
well at first, cannot discern the poison that is hidden in it, as I have
said above of hectic fevers. Therefore, if he who rules a principality
cannot recognize evils until they are upon him, he is not truly wise;
and this insight is given to few. And if the first disaster to the Roman
Empire(*) should be examined, it will be found to have commenced only
with the enlisting of the Goths; because from that time the vigour of
the Roman Empire began to decline, and all that valour which had raised
it passed away to others.
(*) "Many speakers to the House the other night in the
debate on the reduction of armaments seemed to show a most
lamentable ignorance of the conditions under which the
British Empire maintains its existence. When Mr Balfour
replied to the allegations that the Roman Empire sank under
the weight of its military obligations, he said that this
was 'wholly unhistorical.' He might well have added that the
Roman power was at its zenith when every citizen
acknowledged his liability to fight for the State, but that
it began to decline as soon as this obligation was no longer
recognized."--Pall Mall Gazette, 15th May 1906.
I conclude, therefore, that no principality is secure without having its
own forces; on the contrary, it is entirely dependent on good fortune,
not having the valour which in adversity would defend it. And it has
always been the opinion and judgment of wise men that nothing can be so
uncertain or unstable as fame or power not founded on its own strength.
And one's own forces are those which are composed either of subjects,
citizens, or dependents; all others are mercenaries or auxiliaries. And
the way to make ready one's own forces will be easily found if the rules
suggested by me shall be reflected upon, and if one will consider
how Philip, the father of Alexander the Great, and many republics and
princes have armed and organized themselves, to which rules I entirely
commit myself.
| 1,273 | Chapter 13 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201108110625/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/p/the-prince/summary-and-analysis/chapter-13 | Auxiliaries are troops sent by another ruler to help you. Just as with mercenaries, if they lose, you are ruined, and if they win, you are in their power. Auxiliaries come to you as a united body trained to obey others. Mercenaries are less dangerous, because they are not united behind their leaders. A wise prince would rather lose his own troops than win with someone else's, because a victory with borrowed troops is not really a victory. A principality that does not have its own army is not really secure, because it depends on fortune, not its own strength. Nothing is weaker than a reputation for power that is not based on your own strength. | Machiavelli views auxiliaries, troops loaned by another ruler, as even more destructive than mercenaries. While mercenaries are only self-interested, auxiliaries are actually loyal to someone else, namely a rival prince who may use them to conquer you. Using forces that belong to someone else puts you in that person's power. Returning once again to his theme that the only real strength is self-sufficiency, Machiavelli remarks that it is better to lose with one's own troops than to win with the strength of others, because that victory belongs to them. Unless a prince can field an army of his own citizens or subjects, he has no real power. Virtu, a prince's own strength, is always preferable to relying on luck or the favor of others. Glossary Julius Pope Julius II tried to take Ferrara, allied with the French, in 1510. Julius probably allied with Spain more out of fear of French power in Italy than out of specific desire to conquer Ferrara. Constantinople former name for Istanbul. Christian capital of the Byzantine Empire. During a period of civil war, the emperor asked Ottoman Turkish forces to intervene. Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. David the great king of the Israelites, only a young shepherd boy when he fought for King Saul against the Philistine giant, Goliath. David's refusal of Saul's armor appears in I Samuel 17:38-40. Charles VIII King of France. His royal ordinances established permanent infantry and cavalry in the French army. His successor Louis XII reversed this policy. Goths Germanic people who invaded and conquered most of the Roman Empire. | 116 | 264 | [
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28,054 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/49.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_48_part_0.txt | The Brothers Karamazov.book 8.chapter 4 | book 8, chapter 4 | null | {"name": "Book 8, Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-8-chapter-4", "summary": "Suspicious that Grushenka may have headed off to his father's house, Dmitri goes there. He sneaks into his father's yard over a garden wall. From his post outside his father's bedroom window, Dmitri can see Fyodor, all dressed up, his head still in bandages from when Dmitri beat him up. To test whether Grushenka is there, Dmitri gives the secret tapping signal on the window. Fyodor immediately rushes to the window, calling for Grushenka. The narrative abruptly breaks off with Dmitri pulling the brass pestle from his pocket...and...Grigory wakes up. Suddenly we're seeing things from Grigory's point of view. Grigory remembers that the garden gate is still unlocked, so he goes off to lock it. He notices a man running and grabs his leg as the man tries to jump the wall. He feels a blow and falls unconscious. The narrative shifts back here to Dmitri's point of view, who throws the pestle onto the grass. Dmitri tries to stop the blood flowing from Grigory's head wound, but gives up and heads straight back to Grushenka's, where a servant's nephew tells him that she headed off to Mokroye a couple of hours ago.", "analysis": ""} | Chapter IV. In The Dark
Where was he running? "Where could she be except at Fyodor Pavlovitch's?
She must have run straight to him from Samsonov's, that was clear now. The
whole intrigue, the whole deceit was evident." ... It all rushed whirling
through his mind. He did not run to Marya Kondratyevna's. "There was no
need to go there ... not the slightest need ... he must raise no alarm ...
they would run and tell directly.... Marya Kondratyevna was clearly in the
plot, Smerdyakov too, he too, all had been bought over!"
He formed another plan of action: he ran a long way round Fyodor
Pavlovitch's house, crossing the lane, running down Dmitrovsky Street,
then over the little bridge, and so came straight to the deserted alley at
the back, which was empty and uninhabited, with, on one side the hurdle
fence of a neighbor's kitchen-garden, on the other the strong high fence,
that ran all round Fyodor Pavlovitch's garden. Here he chose a spot,
apparently the very place, where according to the tradition, he knew
Lizaveta had once climbed over it: "If she could climb over it," the
thought, God knows why, occurred to him, "surely I can." He did in fact
jump up, and instantly contrived to catch hold of the top of the fence.
Then he vigorously pulled himself up and sat astride on it. Close by, in
the garden stood the bath-house, but from the fence he could see the
lighted windows of the house too.
"Yes, the old man's bedroom is lighted up. She's there!" and he leapt from
the fence into the garden. Though he knew Grigory was ill and very likely
Smerdyakov, too, and that there was no one to hear him, he instinctively
hid himself, stood still, and began to listen. But there was dead silence
on all sides and, as though of design, complete stillness, not the
slightest breath of wind.
"And naught but the whispering silence," the line for some reason rose to
his mind. "If only no one heard me jump over the fence! I think not."
Standing still for a minute, he walked softly over the grass in the
garden, avoiding the trees and shrubs. He walked slowly, creeping
stealthily at every step, listening to his own footsteps. It took him five
minutes to reach the lighted window. He remembered that just under the
window there were several thick and high bushes of elder and whitebeam.
The door from the house into the garden on the left-hand side, was shut;
he had carefully looked on purpose to see, in passing. At last he reached
the bushes and hid behind them. He held his breath. "I must wait now," he
thought, "to reassure them, in case they heard my footsteps and are
listening ... if only I don't cough or sneeze."
He waited two minutes. His heart was beating violently, and, at moments,
he could scarcely breathe. "No, this throbbing at my heart won't stop," he
thought. "I can't wait any longer." He was standing behind a bush in the
shadow. The light of the window fell on the front part of the bush.
"How red the whitebeam berries are!" he murmured, not knowing why. Softly
and noiselessly, step by step, he approached the window, and raised
himself on tiptoe. All Fyodor Pavlovitch's bedroom lay open before him. It
was not a large room, and was divided in two parts by a red screen,
"Chinese," as Fyodor Pavlovitch used to call it. The word "Chinese"
flashed into Mitya's mind, "and behind the screen, is Grushenka," thought
Mitya. He began watching Fyodor Pavlovitch, who was wearing his new
striped-silk dressing-gown, which Mitya had never seen, and a silk cord
with tassels round the waist. A clean, dandified shirt of fine linen with
gold studs peeped out under the collar of the dressing-gown. On his head
Fyodor Pavlovitch had the same red bandage which Alyosha had seen.
"He has got himself up," thought Mitya.
His father was standing near the window, apparently lost in thought.
Suddenly he jerked up his head, listened a moment, and hearing nothing
went up to the table, poured out half a glass of brandy from a decanter
and drank it off. Then he uttered a deep sigh, again stood still a moment,
walked carelessly up to the looking-glass on the wall, with his right hand
raised the red bandage on his forehead a little, and began examining his
bruises and scars, which had not yet disappeared.
"He's alone," thought Mitya, "in all probability he's alone."
Fyodor Pavlovitch moved away from the looking-glass, turned suddenly to
the window and looked out. Mitya instantly slipped away into the shadow.
"She may be there behind the screen. Perhaps she's asleep by now," he
thought, with a pang at his heart. Fyodor Pavlovitch moved away from the
window. "He's looking for her out of the window, so she's not there. Why
should he stare out into the dark? He's wild with impatience." ... Mitya
slipped back at once, and fell to gazing in at the window again. The old
man was sitting down at the table, apparently disappointed. At last he put
his elbow on the table, and laid his right cheek against his hand. Mitya
watched him eagerly.
"He's alone, he's alone!" he repeated again. "If she were here, his face
would be different."
Strange to say, a queer, irrational vexation rose up in his heart that she
was not here. "It's not that she's not here," he explained to himself,
immediately, "but that I can't tell for certain whether she is or not."
Mitya remembered afterwards that his mind was at that moment exceptionally
clear, that he took in everything to the slightest detail, and missed no
point. But a feeling of misery, the misery of uncertainty and indecision,
was growing in his heart with every instant. "Is she here or not?" The
angry doubt filled his heart, and suddenly, making up his mind, he put out
his hand and softly knocked on the window frame. He knocked the signal the
old man had agreed upon with Smerdyakov, twice slowly and then three times
more quickly, the signal that meant "Grushenka is here!"
The old man started, jerked up his head, and, jumping up quickly, ran to
the window. Mitya slipped away into the shadow. Fyodor Pavlovitch opened
the window and thrust his whole head out.
"Grushenka, is it you? Is it you?" he said, in a sort of trembling half-
whisper. "Where are you, my angel, where are you?" He was fearfully
agitated and breathless.
"He's alone." Mitya decided.
"Where are you?" cried the old man again; and he thrust his head out
farther, thrust it out to the shoulders, gazing in all directions, right
and left. "Come here, I've a little present for you. Come, I'll show
you...."
"He means the three thousand," thought Mitya.
"But where are you? Are you at the door? I'll open it directly."
And the old man almost climbed out of the window, peering out to the
right, where there was a door into the garden, trying to see into the
darkness. In another second he would certainly have run out to open the
door without waiting for Grushenka's answer.
Mitya looked at him from the side without stirring. The old man's profile
that he loathed so, his pendent Adam's apple, his hooked nose, his lips
that smiled in greedy expectation, were all brightly lighted up by the
slanting lamplight falling on the left from the room. A horrible fury of
hatred suddenly surged up in Mitya's heart: "There he was, his rival, the
man who had tormented him, had ruined his life!" It was a rush of that
sudden, furious, revengeful anger of which he had spoken, as though
foreseeing it, to Alyosha, four days ago in the arbor, when, in answer to
Alyosha's question, "How can you say you'll kill our father?" "I don't
know, I don't know," he had said then. "Perhaps I shall not kill him,
perhaps I shall. I'm afraid he'll suddenly be so loathsome to me at that
moment. I hate his double chin, his nose, his eyes, his shameless grin. I
feel a personal repulsion. That's what I'm afraid of, that's what may be
too much for me." ... This personal repulsion was growing unendurable.
Mitya was beside himself, he suddenly pulled the brass pestle out of his
pocket.
-------------------------------------
"God was watching over me then," Mitya himself said afterwards. At that
very moment Grigory waked up on his bed of sickness. Earlier in the
evening he had undergone the treatment which Smerdyakov had described to
Ivan. He had rubbed himself all over with vodka mixed with a secret, very
strong decoction, had drunk what was left of the mixture while his wife
repeated a "certain prayer" over him, after which he had gone to bed.
Marfa Ignatyevna had tasted the stuff, too, and, being unused to strong
drink, slept like the dead beside her husband.
But Grigory waked up in the night, quite suddenly, and, after a moment's
reflection, though he immediately felt a sharp pain in his back, he sat up
in bed. Then he deliberated again, got up and dressed hurriedly. Perhaps
his conscience was uneasy at the thought of sleeping while the house was
unguarded "in such perilous times." Smerdyakov, exhausted by his fit, lay
motionless in the next room. Marfa Ignatyevna did not stir. "The stuff's
been too much for the woman," Grigory thought, glancing at her, and
groaning, he went out on the steps. No doubt he only intended to look out
from the steps, for he was hardly able to walk, the pain in his back and
his right leg was intolerable. But he suddenly remembered that he had not
locked the little gate into the garden that evening. He was the most
punctual and precise of men, a man who adhered to an unchangeable routine,
and habits that lasted for years. Limping and writhing with pain he went
down the steps and towards the garden. Yes, the gate stood wide open.
Mechanically he stepped into the garden. Perhaps he fancied something,
perhaps caught some sound, and, glancing to the left he saw his master's
window open. No one was looking out of it then.
"What's it open for? It's not summer now," thought Grigory, and suddenly,
at that very instant he caught a glimpse of something extraordinary before
him in the garden. Forty paces in front of him a man seemed to be running
in the dark, a sort of shadow was moving very fast.
"Good Lord!" cried Grigory beside himself, and forgetting the pain in his
back, he hurried to intercept the running figure. He took a short cut,
evidently he knew the garden better; the flying figure went towards the
bath-house, ran behind it and rushed to the garden fence. Grigory
followed, not losing sight of him, and ran, forgetting everything. He
reached the fence at the very moment the man was climbing over it. Grigory
cried out, beside himself, pounced on him, and clutched his leg in his two
hands.
Yes, his foreboding had not deceived him. He recognized him, it was he,
the "monster," the "parricide."
"Parricide!" the old man shouted so that the whole neighborhood could
hear, but he had not time to shout more, he fell at once, as though struck
by lightning.
Mitya jumped back into the garden and bent over the fallen man. In Mitya's
hands was a brass pestle, and he flung it mechanically in the grass. The
pestle fell two paces from Grigory, not in the grass but on the path, in a
most conspicuous place. For some seconds he examined the prostrate figure
before him. The old man's head was covered with blood. Mitya put out his
hand and began feeling it. He remembered afterwards clearly, that he had
been awfully anxious to make sure whether he had broken the old man's
skull, or simply stunned him with the pestle. But the blood was flowing
horribly; and in a moment Mitya's fingers were drenched with the hot
stream. He remembered taking out of his pocket the clean white
handkerchief with which he had provided himself for his visit to Madame
Hohlakov, and putting it to the old man's head, senselessly trying to wipe
the blood from his face and temples. But the handkerchief was instantly
soaked with blood.
"Good heavens! what am I doing it for?" thought Mitya, suddenly pulling
himself together. "If I have broken his skull, how can I find out now? And
what difference does it make now?" he added, hopelessly. "If I've killed
him, I've killed him.... You've come to grief, old man, so there you must
lie!" he said aloud. And suddenly turning to the fence, he vaulted over it
into the lane and fell to running--the handkerchief soaked with blood he
held, crushed up in his right fist, and as he ran he thrust it into the
back pocket of his coat. He ran headlong, and the few passers-by who met
him in the dark, in the streets, remembered afterwards that they had met a
man running that night. He flew back again to the widow Morozov's house.
Immediately after he had left it that evening, Fenya had rushed to the
chief porter, Nazar Ivanovitch, and besought him, for Christ's sake, "not
to let the captain in again to-day or to-morrow." Nazar Ivanovitch
promised, but went upstairs to his mistress who had suddenly sent for him,
and meeting his nephew, a boy of twenty, who had recently come from the
country, on the way up told him to take his place, but forgot to mention
"the captain." Mitya, running up to the gate, knocked. The lad instantly
recognized him, for Mitya had more than once tipped him. Opening the gate
at once, he let him in, and hastened to inform him with a good-humored
smile that "Agrafena Alexandrovna is not at home now, you know."
"Where is she then, Prohor?" asked Mitya, stopping short.
"She set off this evening, some two hours ago, with Timofey, to Mokroe."
"What for?" cried Mitya.
"That I can't say. To see some officer. Some one invited her and horses
were sent to fetch her."
Mitya left him, and ran like a madman to Fenya.
| 2,210 | Book 8, Chapter 4 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-8-chapter-4 | Suspicious that Grushenka may have headed off to his father's house, Dmitri goes there. He sneaks into his father's yard over a garden wall. From his post outside his father's bedroom window, Dmitri can see Fyodor, all dressed up, his head still in bandages from when Dmitri beat him up. To test whether Grushenka is there, Dmitri gives the secret tapping signal on the window. Fyodor immediately rushes to the window, calling for Grushenka. The narrative abruptly breaks off with Dmitri pulling the brass pestle from his pocket...and...Grigory wakes up. Suddenly we're seeing things from Grigory's point of view. Grigory remembers that the garden gate is still unlocked, so he goes off to lock it. He notices a man running and grabs his leg as the man tries to jump the wall. He feels a blow and falls unconscious. The narrative shifts back here to Dmitri's point of view, who throws the pestle onto the grass. Dmitri tries to stop the blood flowing from Grigory's head wound, but gives up and heads straight back to Grushenka's, where a servant's nephew tells him that she headed off to Mokroye a couple of hours ago. | null | 193 | 1 | [
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28,054 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/16.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_15_part_0.txt | The Brothers Karamazov.book 3.chapter 3 | book 3, chapter 3 | null | {"name": "Book 3, Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-3-chapter-3", "summary": "Alyosha decides to take a shortcut over to Katerina Ivanovna's even though she intimidates him. To get to Katerina's, he has to cut through his father's neighbors' garden. These neighbors are an old woman and her daughter, a former chambermaid used to working in grand homes. As Alyosha gets to the garden, he's astonished to see his brother Dmitri inside. Dmitri waves him over. Alyosha asks him why he's whispering, and Dmitri shouts out that he's got a secret. But Dmitri's voice quickly goes down to a whisper again as he asks Alyosha to follow him to a gazebo in the center of the garden. In the gazebo, Alyosha notices that Dmitri has been hitting the cognac pretty hard. Dmitri starts to ramble, spouting off a mixture of German and Russian poetry and proclaiming himself to be the lowest, basest sensualist - as only a Karamazov could be.", "analysis": ""} | Chapter III. The Confession Of A Passionate Heart--In Verse
Alyosha remained for some time irresolute after hearing the command his
father shouted to him from the carriage. But in spite of his uneasiness he
did not stand still. That was not his way. He went at once to the kitchen
to find out what his father had been doing above. Then he set off,
trusting that on the way he would find some answer to the doubt tormenting
him. I hasten to add that his father's shouts, commanding him to return
home "with his mattress and pillow" did not frighten him in the least. He
understood perfectly that those peremptory shouts were merely "a flourish"
to produce an effect. In the same way a tradesman in our town who was
celebrating his name-day with a party of friends, getting angry at being
refused more vodka, smashed up his own crockery and furniture and tore his
own and his wife's clothes, and finally broke his windows, all for the
sake of effect. Next day, of course, when he was sober, he regretted the
broken cups and saucers. Alyosha knew that his father would let him go
back to the monastery next day, possibly even that evening. Moreover, he
was fully persuaded that his father might hurt any one else, but would not
hurt him. Alyosha was certain that no one in the whole world ever would
want to hurt him, and, what is more, he knew that no one could hurt him.
This was for him an axiom, assumed once for all without question, and he
went his way without hesitation, relying on it.
But at that moment an anxiety of a different sort disturbed him, and
worried him the more because he could not formulate it. It was the fear of
a woman, of Katerina Ivanovna, who had so urgently entreated him in the
note handed to him by Madame Hohlakov to come and see her about something.
This request and the necessity of going had at once aroused an uneasy
feeling in his heart, and this feeling had grown more and more painful all
the morning in spite of the scenes at the hermitage and at the Father
Superior's. He was not uneasy because he did not know what she would speak
of and what he must answer. And he was not afraid of her simply as a
woman. Though he knew little of women, he had spent his life, from early
childhood till he entered the monastery, entirely with women. He was
afraid of that woman, Katerina Ivanovna. He had been afraid of her from
the first time he saw her. He had only seen her two or three times, and
had only chanced to say a few words to her. He thought of her as a
beautiful, proud, imperious girl. It was not her beauty which troubled
him, but something else. And the vagueness of his apprehension increased
the apprehension itself. The girl's aims were of the noblest, he knew
that. She was trying to save his brother Dmitri simply through generosity,
though he had already behaved badly to her. Yet, although Alyosha
recognized and did justice to all these fine and generous sentiments, a
shiver began to run down his back as soon as he drew near her house.
He reflected that he would not find Ivan, who was so intimate a friend,
with her, for Ivan was certainly now with his father. Dmitri he was even
more certain not to find there, and he had a foreboding of the reason. And
so his conversation would be with her alone. He had a great longing to run
and see his brother Dmitri before that fateful interview. Without showing
him the letter, he could talk to him about it. But Dmitri lived a long way
off, and he was sure to be away from home too. Standing still for a
minute, he reached a final decision. Crossing himself with a rapid and
accustomed gesture, and at once smiling, he turned resolutely in the
direction of his terrible lady.
He knew her house. If he went by the High Street and then across the
market-place, it was a long way round. Though our town is small, it is
scattered, and the houses are far apart. And meanwhile his father was
expecting him, and perhaps had not yet forgotten his command. He might be
unreasonable, and so he had to make haste to get there and back. So he
decided to take a short cut by the back-way, for he knew every inch of the
ground. This meant skirting fences, climbing over hurdles, and crossing
other people's back-yards, where every one he met knew him and greeted
him. In this way he could reach the High Street in half the time.
He had to pass the garden adjoining his father's, and belonging to a
little tumbledown house with four windows. The owner of this house, as
Alyosha knew, was a bedridden old woman, living with her daughter, who had
been a genteel maid-servant in generals' families in Petersburg. Now she
had been at home a year, looking after her sick mother. She always dressed
up in fine clothes, though her old mother and she had sunk into such
poverty that they went every day to Fyodor Pavlovitch's kitchen for soup
and bread, which Marfa gave readily. Yet, though the young woman came up
for soup, she had never sold any of her dresses, and one of these even had
a long train--a fact which Alyosha had learned from Rakitin, who always
knew everything that was going on in the town. He had forgotten it as soon
as he heard it, but now, on reaching the garden, he remembered the dress
with the train, raised his head, which had been bowed in thought, and came
upon something quite unexpected.
Over the hurdle in the garden, Dmitri, mounted on something, was leaning
forward, gesticulating violently, beckoning to him, obviously afraid to
utter a word for fear of being overheard. Alyosha ran up to the hurdle.
"It's a good thing you looked up. I was nearly shouting to you," Mitya
said in a joyful, hurried whisper. "Climb in here quickly! How splendid
that you've come! I was just thinking of you!"
Alyosha was delighted too, but he did not know how to get over the hurdle.
Mitya put his powerful hand under his elbow to help him jump. Tucking up
his cassock, Alyosha leapt over the hurdle with the agility of a bare-
legged street urchin.
"Well done! Now come along," said Mitya in an enthusiastic whisper.
"Where?" whispered Alyosha, looking about him and finding himself in a
deserted garden with no one near but themselves. The garden was small, but
the house was at least fifty paces away.
"There's no one here. Why do you whisper?" asked Alyosha.
"Why do I whisper? Deuce take it!" cried Dmitri at the top of his voice.
"You see what silly tricks nature plays one. I am here in secret, and on
the watch. I'll explain later on, but, knowing it's a secret, I began
whispering like a fool, when there's no need. Let us go. Over there. Till
then be quiet. I want to kiss you.
Glory to God in the world,
Glory to God in me ...
I was just repeating that, sitting here, before you came."
The garden was about three acres in extent, and planted with trees only
along the fence at the four sides. There were apple-trees, maples, limes
and birch-trees. The middle of the garden was an empty grass space, from
which several hundredweight of hay was carried in the summer. The garden
was let out for a few roubles for the summer. There were also plantations
of raspberries and currants and gooseberries laid out along the sides; a
kitchen garden had been planted lately near the house.
Dmitri led his brother to the most secluded corner of the garden. There,
in a thicket of lime-trees and old bushes of black currant, elder,
snowball-tree, and lilac, there stood a tumble-down green summer-house,
blackened with age. Its walls were of lattice-work, but there was still a
roof which could give shelter. God knows when this summer-house was built.
There was a tradition that it had been put up some fifty years before by a
retired colonel called von Schmidt, who owned the house at that time. It
was all in decay, the floor was rotting, the planks were loose, the
woodwork smelled musty. In the summer-house there was a green wooden table
fixed in the ground, and round it were some green benches upon which it
was still possible to sit. Alyosha had at once observed his brother's
exhilarated condition, and on entering the arbor he saw half a bottle of
brandy and a wineglass on the table.
"That's brandy," Mitya laughed. "I see your look: 'He's drinking again!'
Distrust the apparition.
Distrust the worthless, lying crowd,
And lay aside thy doubts.
I'm not drinking, I'm only 'indulging,' as that pig, your Rakitin, says.
He'll be a civil councilor one day, but he'll always talk about
'indulging.' Sit down. I could take you in my arms, Alyosha, and press you
to my bosom till I crush you, for in the whole world--in reality--in re-al-
i-ty--(can you take it in?) I love no one but you!"
He uttered the last words in a sort of exaltation.
"No one but you and one 'jade' I have fallen in love with, to my ruin. But
being in love doesn't mean loving. You may be in love with a woman and yet
hate her. Remember that! I can talk about it gayly still. Sit down here by
the table and I'll sit beside you and look at you, and go on talking. You
shall keep quiet and I'll go on talking, for the time has come. But on
reflection, you know, I'd better speak quietly, for here--here--you can
never tell what ears are listening. I will explain everything; as they
say, 'the story will be continued.' Why have I been longing for you? Why
have I been thirsting for you all these days, and just now? (It's five
days since I've cast anchor here.) Because it's only to you I can tell
everything; because I must, because I need you, because to-morrow I shall
fly from the clouds, because to-morrow life is ending and beginning. Have
you ever felt, have you ever dreamt of falling down a precipice into a
pit? That's just how I'm falling, but not in a dream. And I'm not afraid,
and don't you be afraid. At least, I am afraid, but I enjoy it. It's not
enjoyment though, but ecstasy. Damn it all, whatever it is! A strong
spirit, a weak spirit, a womanish spirit--whatever it is! Let us praise
nature: you see what sunshine, how clear the sky is, the leaves are all
green, it's still summer; four o'clock in the afternoon and the stillness!
Where were you going?"
"I was going to father's, but I meant to go to Katerina Ivanovna's first."
"To her, and to father! Oo! what a coincidence! Why was I waiting for you?
Hungering and thirsting for you in every cranny of my soul and even in my
ribs? Why, to send you to father and to her, Katerina Ivanovna, so as to
have done with her and with father. To send an angel. I might have sent
any one, but I wanted to send an angel. And here you are on your way to
see father and her."
"Did you really mean to send me?" cried Alyosha with a distressed
expression.
"Stay! You knew it! And I see you understand it all at once. But be quiet,
be quiet for a time. Don't be sorry, and don't cry."
Dmitri stood up, thought a moment, and put his finger to his forehead.
"She's asked you, written to you a letter or something, that's why you're
going to her? You wouldn't be going except for that?"
"Here is her note." Alyosha took it out of his pocket. Mitya looked
through it quickly.
"And you were going the back-way! Oh, gods, I thank you for sending him by
the back-way, and he came to me like the golden fish to the silly old
fishermen in the fable! Listen, Alyosha, listen, brother! Now I mean to
tell you everything, for I must tell some one. An angel in heaven I've
told already; but I want to tell an angel on earth. You are an angel on
earth. You will hear and judge and forgive. And that's what I need, that
some one above me should forgive. Listen! If two people break away from
everything on earth and fly off into the unknown, or at least one of them,
and before flying off or going to ruin he comes to some one else and says,
'Do this for me'--some favor never asked before that could only be asked on
one's deathbed--would that other refuse, if he were a friend or a brother?"
"I will do it, but tell me what it is, and make haste," said Alyosha.
"Make haste! H'm!... Don't be in a hurry, Alyosha, you hurry and worry
yourself. There's no need to hurry now. Now the world has taken a new
turning. Ah, Alyosha, what a pity you can't understand ecstasy. But what
am I saying to him? As though you didn't understand it. What an ass I am!
What am I saying? 'Be noble, O man!'--who says that?"
Alyosha made up his mind to wait. He felt that, perhaps, indeed, his work
lay here. Mitya sank into thought for a moment, with his elbow on the
table and his head in his hand. Both were silent.
"Alyosha," said Mitya, "you're the only one who won't laugh. I should like
to begin--my confession--with Schiller's _Hymn to Joy_, _An die Freude_! I
don't know German, I only know it's called that. Don't think I'm talking
nonsense because I'm drunk. I'm not a bit drunk. Brandy's all very well,
but I need two bottles to make me drunk:
Silenus with his rosy phiz
Upon his stumbling ass.
But I've not drunk a quarter of a bottle, and I'm not Silenus. I'm not
Silenus, though I am strong,(1) for I've made a decision once for all.
Forgive me the pun; you'll have to forgive me a lot more than puns to-day.
Don't be uneasy. I'm not spinning it out. I'm talking sense, and I'll come
to the point in a minute. I won't keep you in suspense. Stay, how does it
go?"
He raised his head, thought a minute, and began with enthusiasm:
"Wild and fearful in his cavern
Hid the naked troglodyte,
And the homeless nomad wandered
Laying waste the fertile plain.
Menacing with spear and arrow
In the woods the hunter strayed....
Woe to all poor wretches stranded
On those cruel and hostile shores!
"From the peak of high Olympus
Came the mother Ceres down,
Seeking in those savage regions
Her lost daughter Proserpine.
But the Goddess found no refuge,
Found no kindly welcome there,
And no temple bearing witness
To the worship of the gods.
"From the fields and from the vineyards
Came no fruits to deck the feasts,
Only flesh of bloodstained victims
Smoldered on the altar-fires,
And where'er the grieving goddess
Turns her melancholy gaze,
Sunk in vilest degradation
Man his loathsomeness displays."
Mitya broke into sobs and seized Alyosha's hand.
"My dear, my dear, in degradation, in degradation now, too. There's a
terrible amount of suffering for man on earth, a terrible lot of trouble.
Don't think I'm only a brute in an officer's uniform, wallowing in dirt
and drink. I hardly think of anything but of that degraded man--if only I'm
not lying. I pray God I'm not lying and showing off. I think about that
man because I am that man myself.
Would he purge his soul from vileness
And attain to light and worth,
He must turn and cling for ever
To his ancient Mother Earth.
But the difficulty is how am I to cling for ever to Mother Earth. I don't
kiss her. I don't cleave to her bosom. Am I to become a peasant or a
shepherd? I go on and I don't know whether I'm going to shame or to light
and joy. That's the trouble, for everything in the world is a riddle! And
whenever I've happened to sink into the vilest degradation (and it's
always been happening) I always read that poem about Ceres and man. Has it
reformed me? Never! For I'm a Karamazov. For when I do leap into the pit,
I go headlong with my heels up, and am pleased to be falling in that
degrading attitude, and pride myself upon it. And in the very depths of
that degradation I begin a hymn of praise. Let me be accursed. Let me be
vile and base, only let me kiss the hem of the veil in which my God is
shrouded. Though I may be following the devil, I am Thy son, O Lord, and I
love Thee, and I feel the joy without which the world cannot stand.
Joy everlasting fostereth
The soul of all creation,
It is her secret ferment fires
The cup of life with flame.
'Tis at her beck the grass hath turned
Each blade towards the light
And solar systems have evolved
From chaos and dark night,
Filling the realms of boundless space
Beyond the sage's sight.
At bounteous Nature's kindly breast,
All things that breathe drink Joy,
And birds and beasts and creeping things
All follow where She leads.
Her gifts to man are friends in need,
The wreath, the foaming must,
To angels--vision of God's throne,
To insects--sensual lust.
But enough poetry! I am in tears; let me cry. It may be foolishness that
every one would laugh at. But you won't laugh. Your eyes are shining, too.
Enough poetry. I want to tell you now about the insects to whom God gave
"sensual lust."
To insects--sensual lust.
I am that insect, brother, and it is said of me specially. All we
Karamazovs are such insects, and, angel as you are, that insect lives in
you, too, and will stir up a tempest in your blood. Tempests, because
sensual lust is a tempest--worse than a tempest! Beauty is a terrible and
awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed and never can
be fathomed, for God sets us nothing but riddles. Here the boundaries meet
and all contradictions exist side by side. I am not a cultivated man,
brother, but I've thought a lot about this. It's terrible what mysteries
there are! Too many riddles weigh men down on earth. We must solve them as
we can, and try to keep a dry skin in the water. Beauty! I can't endure
the thought that a man of lofty mind and heart begins with the ideal of
the Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom. What's still more awful is
that a man with the ideal of Sodom in his soul does not renounce the ideal
of the Madonna, and his heart may be on fire with that ideal, genuinely on
fire, just as in his days of youth and innocence. Yes, man is broad, too
broad, indeed. I'd have him narrower. The devil only knows what to make of
it! What to the mind is shameful is beauty and nothing else to the heart.
Is there beauty in Sodom? Believe me, that for the immense mass of mankind
beauty is found in Sodom. Did you know that secret? The awful thing is
that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are
fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man. But a man always
talks of his own ache. Listen, now to come to facts."
| 3,274 | Book 3, Chapter 3 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-3-chapter-3 | Alyosha decides to take a shortcut over to Katerina Ivanovna's even though she intimidates him. To get to Katerina's, he has to cut through his father's neighbors' garden. These neighbors are an old woman and her daughter, a former chambermaid used to working in grand homes. As Alyosha gets to the garden, he's astonished to see his brother Dmitri inside. Dmitri waves him over. Alyosha asks him why he's whispering, and Dmitri shouts out that he's got a secret. But Dmitri's voice quickly goes down to a whisper again as he asks Alyosha to follow him to a gazebo in the center of the garden. In the gazebo, Alyosha notices that Dmitri has been hitting the cognac pretty hard. Dmitri starts to ramble, spouting off a mixture of German and Russian poetry and proclaiming himself to be the lowest, basest sensualist - as only a Karamazov could be. | null | 148 | 1 | [
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28,054 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/12.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_11_part_0.txt | The Brothers Karamazov.book 2.chapter 7 | book 2, chapter 7 | null | {"name": "Book 2, Chapter 7", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-2-chapter-7", "summary": "After the guests leave, Alyosha accompanies the feeble Zosima to his cell. There, Zosima tells Alyosha that he will have to leave the monastery and endure life out in the real world before he returns to the monastery. Zosima tells Alyosha to \"seek happiness in sorrow\" and then to leave his cell to join his brothers. Outside Alyosha encounters Rakitin, another novice. Rakitin is a cynical type, and interprets Zosima's bow to Dmitri as a fake prediction of a crime that's about to be committed in the Karamazov family. Alyosha is shocked, but Rakitin thinks it's obvious that the Karamazovs are all headed toward some awful deed. According to Rakitin, Dmitri will do anything for Grushenka, the woman he's having an affair with. But Fyodor also has the hots for Grushenka. Meanwhile, Ivan is circling over Katerina, Dmitri's wealthy and dignified fiancee. Rakitin has the inside scoop because he's Grushenka's confidante, but Alyosha suggests that Rakitin is also in love with Katerina. Just then, Rakitin points out that Fyodor is running out of the Father Superior's quarters, followed by Ivan, Miusov, and the landowner Maximov. Fyodor and Father Isidore are shouting at each other.", "analysis": ""} | Chapter VII. A Young Man Bent On A Career
Alyosha helped Father Zossima to his bedroom and seated him on his bed. It
was a little room furnished with the bare necessities. There was a narrow
iron bedstead, with a strip of felt for a mattress. In the corner, under
the ikons, was a reading-desk with a cross and the Gospel lying on it. The
elder sank exhausted on the bed. His eyes glittered and he breathed hard.
He looked intently at Alyosha, as though considering something.
"Go, my dear boy, go. Porfiry is enough for me. Make haste, you are needed
there, go and wait at the Father Superior's table."
"Let me stay here," Alyosha entreated.
"You are more needed there. There is no peace there. You will wait, and be
of service. If evil spirits rise up, repeat a prayer. And remember, my
son"--the elder liked to call him that--"this is not the place for you in
the future. When it is God's will to call me, leave the monastery. Go away
for good."
Alyosha started.
"What is it? This is not your place for the time. I bless you for great
service in the world. Yours will be a long pilgrimage. And you will have
to take a wife, too. You will have to bear _all_ before you come back.
There will be much to do. But I don't doubt of you, and so I send you
forth. Christ is with you. Do not abandon Him and He will not abandon you.
You will see great sorrow, and in that sorrow you will be happy. This is
my last message to you: in sorrow seek happiness. Work, work unceasingly.
Remember my words, for although I shall talk with you again, not only my
days but my hours are numbered."
Alyosha's face again betrayed strong emotion. The corners of his mouth
quivered.
"What is it again?" Father Zossima asked, smiling gently. "The worldly may
follow the dead with tears, but here we rejoice over the father who is
departing. We rejoice and pray for him. Leave me, I must pray. Go, and
make haste. Be near your brothers. And not near one only, but near both."
Father Zossima raised his hand to bless him. Alyosha could make no
protest, though he had a great longing to remain. He longed, moreover, to
ask the significance of his bowing to Dmitri, the question was on the tip
of his tongue, but he dared not ask it. He knew that the elder would have
explained it unasked if he had thought fit. But evidently it was not his
will. That action had made a terrible impression on Alyosha; he believed
blindly in its mysterious significance. Mysterious, and perhaps awful.
As he hastened out of the hermitage precincts to reach the monastery in
time to serve at the Father Superior's dinner, he felt a sudden pang at
his heart, and stopped short. He seemed to hear again Father Zossima's
words, foretelling his approaching end. What he had foretold so exactly
must infallibly come to pass. Alyosha believed that implicitly. But how
could he be left without him? How could he live without seeing and hearing
him? Where should he go? He had told him not to weep, and to leave the
monastery. Good God! It was long since Alyosha had known such anguish. He
hurried through the copse that divided the monastery from the hermitage,
and unable to bear the burden of his thoughts, he gazed at the ancient
pines beside the path. He had not far to go--about five hundred paces. He
expected to meet no one at that hour, but at the first turn of the path he
noticed Rakitin. He was waiting for some one.
"Are you waiting for me?" asked Alyosha, overtaking him.
"Yes," grinned Rakitin. "You are hurrying to the Father Superior, I know;
he has a banquet. There's not been such a banquet since the Superior
entertained the Bishop and General Pahatov, do you remember? I shan't be
there, but you go and hand the sauces. Tell me one thing, Alexey, what
does that vision mean? That's what I want to ask you."
"What vision?"
"That bowing to your brother, Dmitri. And didn't he tap the ground with
his forehead, too!"
"You speak of Father Zossima?"
"Yes, of Father Zossima."
"Tapped the ground?"
"Ah, an irreverent expression! Well, what of it? Anyway, what does that
vision mean?"
"I don't know what it means, Misha."
"I knew he wouldn't explain it to you! There's nothing wonderful about it,
of course, only the usual holy mummery. But there was an object in the
performance. All the pious people in the town will talk about it and
spread the story through the province, wondering what it meant. To my
thinking the old man really has a keen nose; he sniffed a crime. Your
house stinks of it."
"What crime?"
Rakitin evidently had something he was eager to speak of.
"It'll be in your family, this crime. Between your brothers and your rich
old father. So Father Zossima flopped down to be ready for what may turn
up. If something happens later on, it'll be: 'Ah, the holy man foresaw it,
prophesied it!' though it's a poor sort of prophecy, flopping like that.
'Ah, but it was symbolic,' they'll say, 'an allegory,' and the devil knows
what all! It'll be remembered to his glory: 'He predicted the crime and
marked the criminal!' That's always the way with these crazy fanatics;
they cross themselves at the tavern and throw stones at the temple. Like
your elder, he takes a stick to a just man and falls at the feet of a
murderer."
"What crime? What murderer? What do you mean?"
Alyosha stopped dead. Rakitin stopped, too.
"What murderer? As though you didn't know! I'll bet you've thought of it
before. That's interesting, too, by the way. Listen, Alyosha, you always
speak the truth, though you're always between two stools. Have you thought
of it or not? Answer."
"I have," answered Alyosha in a low voice. Even Rakitin was taken aback.
"What? Have you really?" he cried.
"I ... I've not exactly thought it," muttered Alyosha, "but directly you
began speaking so strangely, I fancied I had thought of it myself."
"You see? (And how well you expressed it!) Looking at your father and your
brother Mitya to-day you thought of a crime. Then I'm not mistaken?"
"But wait, wait a minute," Alyosha broke in uneasily. "What has led you to
see all this? Why does it interest you? That's the first question."
"Two questions, disconnected, but natural. I'll deal with them separately.
What led me to see it? I shouldn't have seen it, if I hadn't suddenly
understood your brother Dmitri, seen right into the very heart of him all
at once. I caught the whole man from one trait. These very honest but
passionate people have a line which mustn't be crossed. If it were, he'd
run at your father with a knife. But your father's a drunken and abandoned
old sinner, who can never draw the line--if they both let themselves go,
they'll both come to grief."
"No, Misha, no. If that's all, you've reassured me. It won't come to
that."
"But why are you trembling? Let me tell you; he may be honest, our Mitya
(he is stupid, but honest), but he's--a sensualist. That's the very
definition and inner essence of him. It's your father has handed him on
his low sensuality. Do you know, I simply wonder at you, Alyosha, how you
can have kept your purity. You're a Karamazov too, you know! In your
family sensuality is carried to a disease. But now, these three
sensualists are watching one another, with their knives in their belts.
The three of them are knocking their heads together, and you may be the
fourth."
"You are mistaken about that woman. Dmitri--despises her," said Alyosha,
with a sort of shudder.
"Grushenka? No, brother, he doesn't despise her. Since he has openly
abandoned his betrothed for her, he doesn't despise her. There's something
here, my dear boy, that you don't understand yet. A man will fall in love
with some beauty, with a woman's body, or even with a part of a woman's
body (a sensualist can understand that), and he'll abandon his own
children for her, sell his father and mother, and his country, Russia,
too. If he's honest, he'll steal; if he's humane, he'll murder; if he's
faithful, he'll deceive. Pushkin, the poet of women's feet, sung of their
feet in his verse. Others don't sing their praises, but they can't look at
their feet without a thrill--and it's not only their feet. Contempt's no
help here, brother, even if he did despise Grushenka. He does, but he
can't tear himself away."
"I understand that," Alyosha jerked out suddenly.
"Really? Well, I dare say you do understand, since you blurt it out at the
first word," said Rakitin, malignantly. "That escaped you unawares, and
the confession's the more precious. So it's a familiar subject; you've
thought about it already, about sensuality, I mean! Oh, you virgin soul!
You're a quiet one, Alyosha, you're a saint, I know, but the devil only
knows what you've thought about, and what you know already! You are pure,
but you've been down into the depths.... I've been watching you a long
time. You're a Karamazov yourself; you're a thorough Karamazov--no doubt
birth and selection have something to answer for. You're a sensualist from
your father, a crazy saint from your mother. Why do you tremble? Is it
true, then? Do you know, Grushenka has been begging me to bring you along.
'I'll pull off his cassock,' she says. You can't think how she keeps
begging me to bring you. I wondered why she took such an interest in you.
Do you know, she's an extraordinary woman, too!"
"Thank her and say I'm not coming," said Alyosha, with a strained smile.
"Finish what you were saying, Misha. I'll tell you my idea after."
"There's nothing to finish. It's all clear. It's the same old tune,
brother. If even you are a sensualist at heart, what of your brother,
Ivan? He's a Karamazov, too. What is at the root of all you Karamazovs is
that you're all sensual, grasping and crazy! Your brother Ivan writes
theological articles in joke, for some idiotic, unknown motive of his own,
though he's an atheist, and he admits it's a fraud himself--that's your
brother Ivan. He's trying to get Mitya's betrothed for himself, and I
fancy he'll succeed, too. And what's more, it's with Mitya's consent. For
Mitya will surrender his betrothed to him to be rid of her, and escape to
Grushenka. And he's ready to do that in spite of all his nobility and
disinterestedness. Observe that. Those are the most fatal people! Who the
devil can make you out? He recognizes his vileness and goes on with it!
Let me tell you, too, the old man, your father, is standing in Mitya's way
now. He has suddenly gone crazy over Grushenka. His mouth waters at the
sight of her. It's simply on her account he made that scene in the cell
just now, simply because Miuesov called her an 'abandoned creature.' He's
worse than a tom-cat in love. At first she was only employed by him in
connection with his taverns and in some other shady business, but now he
has suddenly realized all she is and has gone wild about her. He keeps
pestering her with his offers, not honorable ones, of course. And they'll
come into collision, the precious father and son, on that path! But
Grushenka favors neither of them, she's still playing with them, and
teasing them both, considering which she can get most out of. For though
she could filch a lot of money from the papa he wouldn't marry her, and
maybe he'll turn stingy in the end, and keep his purse shut. That's where
Mitya's value comes in; he has no money, but he's ready to marry her. Yes,
ready to marry her! to abandon his betrothed, a rare beauty, Katerina
Ivanovna, who's rich, and the daughter of a colonel, and to marry
Grushenka, who has been the mistress of a dissolute old merchant,
Samsonov, a coarse, uneducated, provincial mayor. Some murderous conflict
may well come to pass from all this, and that's what your brother Ivan is
waiting for. It would suit him down to the ground. He'll carry off
Katerina Ivanovna, for whom he is languishing, and pocket her dowry of
sixty thousand. That's very alluring to start with, for a man of no
consequence and a beggar. And, take note, he won't be wronging Mitya, but
doing him the greatest service. For I know as a fact that Mitya only last
week, when he was with some gypsy girls drunk in a tavern, cried out aloud
that he was unworthy of his betrothed, Katya, but that his brother Ivan,
he was the man who deserved her. And Katerina Ivanovna will not in the end
refuse such a fascinating man as Ivan. She's hesitating between the two of
them already. And how has that Ivan won you all, so that you all worship
him? He is laughing at you, and enjoying himself at your expense."
"How do you know? How can you speak so confidently?" Alyosha asked
sharply, frowning.
"Why do you ask, and are frightened at my answer? It shows that you know
I'm speaking the truth."
"You don't like Ivan. Ivan wouldn't be tempted by money."
"Really? And the beauty of Katerina Ivanovna? It's not only the money,
though a fortune of sixty thousand is an attraction."
"Ivan is above that. He wouldn't make up to any one for thousands. It is
not money, it's not comfort Ivan is seeking. Perhaps it's suffering he is
seeking."
"What wild dream now? Oh, you--aristocrats!"
"Ah, Misha, he has a stormy spirit. His mind is in bondage. He is haunted
by a great, unsolved doubt. He is one of those who don't want millions,
but an answer to their questions."
"That's plagiarism, Alyosha. You're quoting your elder's phrases. Ah, Ivan
has set you a problem!" cried Rakitin, with undisguised malice. His face
changed, and his lips twitched. "And the problem's a stupid one. It is no
good guessing it. Rack your brains--you'll understand it. His article is
absurd and ridiculous. And did you hear his stupid theory just now: if
there's no immortality of the soul, then there's no virtue, and everything
is lawful. (And by the way, do you remember how your brother Mitya cried
out: 'I will remember!') An attractive theory for scoundrels!--(I'm being
abusive, that's stupid.) Not for scoundrels, but for pedantic _poseurs_,
'haunted by profound, unsolved doubts.' He's showing off, and what it all
comes to is, 'on the one hand we cannot but admit' and 'on the other it
must be confessed!' His whole theory is a fraud! Humanity will find in
itself the power to live for virtue even without believing in immortality.
It will find it in love for freedom, for equality, for fraternity."
Rakitin could hardly restrain himself in his heat, but, suddenly, as
though remembering something, he stopped short.
"Well, that's enough," he said, with a still more crooked smile. "Why are
you laughing? Do you think I'm a vulgar fool?"
"No, I never dreamed of thinking you a vulgar fool. You are clever but ...
never mind, I was silly to smile. I understand your getting hot about it,
Misha. I guess from your warmth that you are not indifferent to Katerina
Ivanovna yourself; I've suspected that for a long time, brother, that's
why you don't like my brother Ivan. Are you jealous of him?"
"And jealous of her money, too? Won't you add that?"
"I'll say nothing about money. I am not going to insult you."
"I believe it, since you say so, but confound you, and your brother Ivan
with you. Don't you understand that one might very well dislike him, apart
from Katerina Ivanovna. And why the devil should I like him? He
condescends to abuse me, you know. Why haven't I a right to abuse him?"
"I never heard of his saying anything about you, good or bad. He doesn't
speak of you at all."
"But I heard that the day before yesterday at Katerina Ivanovna's he was
abusing me for all he was worth--you see what an interest he takes in your
humble servant. And which is the jealous one after that, brother, I can't
say. He was so good as to express the opinion that, if I don't go in for
the career of an archimandrite in the immediate future and don't become a
monk, I shall be sure to go to Petersburg and get on to some solid
magazine as a reviewer, that I shall write for the next ten years, and in
the end become the owner of the magazine, and bring it out on the liberal
and atheistic side, with a socialistic tinge, with a tiny gloss of
socialism, but keeping a sharp look out all the time, that is, keeping in
with both sides and hoodwinking the fools. According to your brother's
account, the tinge of socialism won't hinder me from laying by the
proceeds and investing them under the guidance of some Jew, till at the
end of my career I build a great house in Petersburg and move my
publishing offices to it, and let out the upper stories to lodgers. He has
even chosen the place for it, near the new stone bridge across the Neva,
which they say is to be built in Petersburg."
"Ah, Misha, that's just what will really happen, every word of it," cried
Alyosha, unable to restrain a good-humored smile.
"You are pleased to be sarcastic, too, Alexey Fyodorovitch."
"No, no, I'm joking, forgive me. I've something quite different in my
mind. But, excuse me, who can have told you all this? You can't have been
at Katerina Ivanovna's yourself when he was talking about you?"
"I wasn't there, but Dmitri Fyodorovitch was; and I heard him tell it with
my own ears; if you want to know, he didn't tell me, but I overheard him,
unintentionally, of course, for I was sitting in Grushenka's bedroom and I
couldn't go away because Dmitri Fyodorovitch was in the next room."
"Oh, yes, I'd forgotten she was a relation of yours."
"A relation! That Grushenka a relation of mine!" cried Rakitin, turning
crimson. "Are you mad? You're out of your mind!"
"Why, isn't she a relation of yours? I heard so."
"Where can you have heard it? You Karamazovs brag of being an ancient,
noble family, though your father used to run about playing the buffoon at
other men's tables, and was only admitted to the kitchen as a favor. I may
be only a priest's son, and dirt in the eyes of noblemen like you, but
don't insult me so lightly and wantonly. I have a sense of honor, too,
Alexey Fyodorovitch, I couldn't be a relation of Grushenka, a common
harlot. I beg you to understand that!"
Rakitin was intensely irritated.
"Forgive me, for goodness' sake, I had no idea ... besides ... how can you
call her a harlot? Is she ... that sort of woman?" Alyosha flushed
suddenly. "I tell you again, I heard that she was a relation of yours. You
often go to see her, and you told me yourself you're not her lover. I
never dreamed that you of all people had such contempt for her! Does she
really deserve it?"
"I may have reasons of my own for visiting her. That's not your business.
But as for relationship, your brother, or even your father, is more likely
to make her yours than mine. Well, here we are. You'd better go to the
kitchen. Hullo! what's wrong, what is it? Are we late? They can't have
finished dinner so soon! Have the Karamazovs been making trouble again? No
doubt they have. Here's your father and your brother Ivan after him.
They've broken out from the Father Superior's. And look, Father Isidor's
shouting out something after them from the steps. And your father's
shouting and waving his arms. I expect he's swearing. Bah, and there goes
Miuesov driving away in his carriage. You see, he's going. And there's old
Maximov running!--there must have been a row. There can't have been any
dinner. Surely they've not been beating the Father Superior! Or have they,
perhaps, been beaten? It would serve them right!"
There was reason for Rakitin's exclamations. There had been a scandalous,
an unprecedented scene. It had all come from the impulse of a moment.
| 3,175 | Book 2, Chapter 7 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-2-chapter-7 | After the guests leave, Alyosha accompanies the feeble Zosima to his cell. There, Zosima tells Alyosha that he will have to leave the monastery and endure life out in the real world before he returns to the monastery. Zosima tells Alyosha to "seek happiness in sorrow" and then to leave his cell to join his brothers. Outside Alyosha encounters Rakitin, another novice. Rakitin is a cynical type, and interprets Zosima's bow to Dmitri as a fake prediction of a crime that's about to be committed in the Karamazov family. Alyosha is shocked, but Rakitin thinks it's obvious that the Karamazovs are all headed toward some awful deed. According to Rakitin, Dmitri will do anything for Grushenka, the woman he's having an affair with. But Fyodor also has the hots for Grushenka. Meanwhile, Ivan is circling over Katerina, Dmitri's wealthy and dignified fiancee. Rakitin has the inside scoop because he's Grushenka's confidante, but Alyosha suggests that Rakitin is also in love with Katerina. Just then, Rakitin points out that Fyodor is running out of the Father Superior's quarters, followed by Ivan, Miusov, and the landowner Maximov. Fyodor and Father Isidore are shouting at each other. | null | 194 | 1 | [
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110 | false | pinkmonkey | all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/05.txt | finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_1_part_2.txt | Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 5 | chapter 5 | null | {"name": "CHAPTER 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820050202/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmTessD14.asp", "summary": "Initially, Tess is too proud to go to her distant relatives to seek help, but the misfortune that she has brought to the family by her negligence with the horse has to be atoned. With little choice left, she reluctantly goes to see Mrs. D'Urberville. Upon arriving, she meets the wayward son, Alec D'Urberville, instead of his mother, who she learns is an invalid. Tess tells Alec about the unfortunate situation with the horse, and he promises to help her. It is obvious that Alec is impressed and bewitched by this beautiful, young country girl. He fills her basket with strawberries and gives her flowers. Tess, feeling uneasy about Alec, quickly departs for home.", "analysis": "Notes The readers are again shown Tess's innocence and her sense of responsibility. She accepts the fact that she must go to see the D'Urbervilles, even though she does not want to do it. When she arrives, Alec greets her. Tess is so naive that she has no understanding of the havoc her beauty is playing on Alec. He is totally smitten by her loveliness and country charm. His unwarranted attention puzzles Tess. Alec's intentions, however, are very obvious to the reader as Hardy begins to develop his villainous character"} |
The haggling business, which had mainly depended on the horse, became
disorganized forthwith. Distress, if not penury, loomed in the
distance. Durbeyfield was what was locally called a slack-twisted
fellow; he had good strength to work at times; but the times could
not be relied on to coincide with the hours of requirement; and,
having been unaccustomed to the regular toil of the day-labourer,
he was not particularly persistent when they did so coincide.
Tess, meanwhile, as the one who had dragged her parents into this
quagmire, was silently wondering what she could do to help them out
of it; and then her mother broached her scheme.
"We must take the ups wi' the downs, Tess," said she; "and never
could your high blood have been found out at a more called-for
moment. You must try your friends. Do ye know that there is a very
rich Mrs d'Urberville living on the outskirts o' The Chase, who must
be our relation? You must go to her and claim kin, and ask for some
help in our trouble."
"I shouldn't care to do that," says Tess. "If there is such a lady,
'twould be enough for us if she were friendly--not to expect her to
give us help."
"You could win her round to do anything, my dear. Besides, perhaps
there's more in it than you know of. I've heard what I've heard,
good-now."
The oppressive sense of the harm she had done led Tess to be more
deferential than she might otherwise have been to the maternal
wish; but she could not understand why her mother should find such
satisfaction in contemplating an enterprise of, to her, such doubtful
profit. Her mother might have made inquiries, and have discovered
that this Mrs d'Urberville was a lady of unequalled virtues and
charity. But Tess's pride made the part of poor relation one of
particular distaste to her.
"I'd rather try to get work," she murmured.
"Durbeyfield, you can settle it," said his wife, turning to where he
sat in the background. "If you say she ought to go, she will go."
"I don't like my children going and making themselves beholden to
strange kin," murmured he. "I'm the head of the noblest branch o'
the family, and I ought to live up to it."
His reasons for staying away were worse to Tess than her own
objections to going. "Well, as I killed the horse, mother," she said
mournfully, "I suppose I ought to do something. I don't mind going
and seeing her, but you must leave it to me about asking for help.
And don't go thinking about her making a match for me--it is silly."
"Very well said, Tess!" observed her father sententiously.
"Who said I had such a thought?" asked Joan.
"I fancy it is in your mind, mother. But I'll go."
Rising early next day she walked to the hill-town called Shaston,
and there took advantage of a van which twice in the week ran from
Shaston eastward to Chaseborough, passing near Trantridge, the parish
in which the vague and mysterious Mrs d'Urberville had her residence.
Tess Durbeyfield's route on this memorable morning lay amid the
north-eastern undulations of the Vale in which she had been born, and
in which her life had unfolded. The Vale of Blackmoor was to her the
world, and its inhabitants the races thereof. From the gates and
stiles of Marlott she had looked down its length in the wondering
days of infancy, and what had been mystery to her then was not
much less than mystery to her now. She had seen daily from her
chamber-window towers, villages, faint white mansions; above all,
the town of Shaston standing majestically on its height; its windows
shining like lamps in the evening sun. She had hardly ever visited
the place, only a small tract even of the Vale and its environs being
known to her by close inspection. Much less had she been far outside
the valley. Every contour of the surrounding hills was as personal
to her as that of her relatives' faces; but for what lay beyond, her
judgment was dependent on the teaching of the village school, where
she had held a leading place at the time of her leaving, a year or
two before this date.
In those early days she had been much loved by others of her own
sex and age, and had used to be seen about the village as one of
three--all nearly of the same year--walking home from school side
by side; Tess the middle one--in a pink print pinafore, of a finely
reticulated pattern, worn over a stuff frock that had lost its
original colour for a nondescript tertiary--marching on upon long
stalky legs, in tight stockings which had little ladder-like holes
at the knees, torn by kneeling in the roads and banks in search of
vegetable and mineral treasures; her then earth-coloured hair hanging
like pot-hooks; the arms of the two outside girls resting round the
waist of Tess; her arms on the shoulders of the two supporters.
As Tess grew older, and began to see how matters stood, she felt
quite a Malthusian towards her mother for thoughtlessly giving her so
many little sisters and brothers, when it was such a trouble to nurse
and provide for them. Her mother's intelligence was that of a happy
child: Joan Durbeyfield was simply an additional one, and that not
the eldest, to her own long family of waiters on Providence.
However, Tess became humanely beneficent towards the small ones,
and to help them as much as possible she used, as soon as she left
school, to lend a hand at haymaking or harvesting on neighbouring
farms; or, by preference, at milking or butter-making processes,
which she had learnt when her father had owned cows; and being
deft-fingered it was a kind of work in which she excelled.
Every day seemed to throw upon her young shoulders more of the
family burdens, and that Tess should be the representative of the
Durbeyfields at the d'Urberville mansion came as a thing of course.
In this instance it must be admitted that the Durbeyfields were
putting their fairest side outward.
She alighted from the van at Trantridge Cross, and ascended on foot
a hill in the direction of the district known as The Chase, on the
borders of which, as she had been informed, Mrs d'Urberville's seat,
The Slopes, would be found. It was not a manorial home in the
ordinary sense, with fields, and pastures, and a grumbling farmer,
out of whom the owner had to squeeze an income for himself and his
family by hook or by crook. It was more, far more; a country-house
built for enjoyment pure and simple, with not an acre of troublesome
land attached to it beyond what was required for residential
purposes, and for a little fancy farm kept in hand by the owner, and
tended by a bailiff.
The crimson brick lodge came first in sight, up to its eaves in dense
evergreens. Tess thought this was the mansion itself till, passing
through the side wicket with some trepidation, and onward to a point
at which the drive took a turn, the house proper stood in full view.
It was of recent erection--indeed almost new--and of the same rich
red colour that formed such a contrast with the evergreens of the
lodge. Far behind the corner of the house--which rose like a
geranium bloom against the subdued colours around--stretched the soft
azure landscape of The Chase--a truly venerable tract of forest land,
one of the few remaining woodlands in England of undoubted primaeval
date, wherein Druidical mistletoe was still found on aged oaks, and
where enormous yew-trees, not planted by the hand of man grew as
they had grown when they were pollarded for bows. All this sylvan
antiquity, however, though visible from The Slopes, was outside the
immediate boundaries of the estate.
Everything on this snug property was bright, thriving, and well kept;
acres of glass-houses stretched down the inclines to the copses at
their feet. Everything looked like money--like the last coin issued
from the Mint. The stables, partly screened by Austrian pines
and evergreen oaks, and fitted with every late appliance, were
as dignified as Chapels-of-Ease. On the extensive lawn stood an
ornamental tent, its door being towards her.
Simple Tess Durbeyfield stood at gaze, in a half-alarmed attitude,
on the edge of the gravel sweep. Her feet had brought her onward to
this point before she had quite realized where she was; and now all
was contrary to her expectation.
"I thought we were an old family; but this is all new!" she said, in
her artlessness. She wished that she had not fallen in so readily
with her mother's plans for "claiming kin," and had endeavoured to
gain assistance nearer home.
The d'Urbervilles--or Stoke-d'Urbervilles, as they at first called
themselves--who owned all this, were a somewhat unusual family to
find in such an old-fashioned part of the country. Parson Tringham
had spoken truly when he said that our shambling John Durbeyfield was
the only really lineal representative of the old d'Urberville family
existing in the county, or near it; he might have added, what he knew
very well, that the Stoke-d'Urbervilles were no more d'Urbervilles of
the true tree then he was himself. Yet it must be admitted that this
family formed a very good stock whereon to regraft a name which sadly
wanted such renovation.
When old Mr Simon Stoke, latterly deceased, had made his fortune as
an honest merchant (some said money-lender) in the North, he decided
to settle as a county man in the South of England, out of hail of
his business district; and in doing this he felt the necessity of
recommencing with a name that would not too readily identify him with
the smart tradesman of the past, and that would be less commonplace
than the original bald, stark words. Conning for an hour in the
British Museum the pages of works devoted to extinct, half-extinct,
obscured, and ruined families appertaining to the quarter of England
in which he proposed to settle, he considered that _d'Urberville_
looked and sounded as well as any of them: and d'Urberville
accordingly was annexed to his own name for himself and his heirs
eternally. Yet he was not an extravagant-minded man in this, and in
constructing his family tree on the new basis was duly reasonable in
framing his inter-marriages and aristocratic links, never inserting
a single title above a rank of strict moderation.
Of this work of imagination poor Tess and her parents were naturally
in ignorance--much to their discomfiture; indeed, the very
possibility of such annexations was unknown to them; who supposed
that, though to be well-favoured might be the gift of fortune, a
family name came by nature.
Tess still stood hesitating like a bather about to make his plunge,
hardly knowing whether to retreat or to persevere, when a figure came
forth from the dark triangular door of the tent. It was that of a
tall young man, smoking.
He had an almost swarthy complexion, with full lips, badly moulded,
though red and smooth, above which was a well-groomed black moustache
with curled points, though his age could not be more than three- or
four-and-twenty. Despite the touches of barbarism in his contours,
there was a singular force in the gentleman's face, and in his bold
rolling eye.
"Well, my Beauty, what can I do for you?" said he, coming forward.
And perceiving that she stood quite confounded: "Never mind me. I am
Mr d'Urberville. Have you come to see me or my mother?"
This embodiment of a d'Urberville and a namesake differed even more
from what Tess had expected than the house and grounds had differed.
She had dreamed of an aged and dignified face, the sublimation of
all the d'Urberville lineaments, furrowed with incarnate memories
representing in hieroglyphic the centuries of her family's and
England's history. But she screwed herself up to the work in hand,
since she could not get out of it, and answered--
"I came to see your mother, sir."
"I am afraid you cannot see her--she is an invalid," replied the
present representative of the spurious house; for this was Mr Alec,
the only son of the lately deceased gentleman. "Cannot I answer your
purpose? What is the business you wish to see her about?"
"It isn't business--it is--I can hardly say what!"
"Pleasure?"
"Oh no. Why, sir, if I tell you, it will seem--"
Tess's sense of a certain ludicrousness in her errand was now
so strong that, notwithstanding her awe of him, and her general
discomfort at being here, her rosy lips curved towards a smile,
much to the attraction of the swarthy Alexander.
"It is so very foolish," she stammered; "I fear can't tell you!"
"Never mind; I like foolish things. Try again, my dear," said he
kindly.
"Mother asked me to come," Tess continued; "and, indeed, I was in the
mind to do so myself likewise. But I did not think it would be like
this. I came, sir, to tell you that we are of the same family as
you."
"Ho! Poor relations?"
"Yes."
"Stokes?"
"No; d'Urbervilles."
"Ay, ay; I mean d'Urbervilles."
"Our names are worn away to Durbeyfield; but we have several proofs
that we are d'Urbervilles. Antiquarians hold we are,--and--and we
have an old seal, marked with a ramping lion on a shield, and a
castle over him. And we have a very old silver spoon, round in the
bowl like a little ladle, and marked with the same castle. But it
is so worn that mother uses it to stir the pea-soup."
"A castle argent is certainly my crest," said he blandly. "And my
arms a lion rampant."
"And so mother said we ought to make ourselves beknown to you--as
we've lost our horse by a bad accident, and are the oldest branch o'
the family."
"Very kind of your mother, I'm sure. And I, for one, don't regret
her step." Alec looked at Tess as he spoke, in a way that made her
blush a little. "And so, my pretty girl, you've come on a friendly
visit to us, as relations?"
"I suppose I have," faltered Tess, looking uncomfortable again.
"Well--there's no harm in it. Where do you live? What are you?"
She gave him brief particulars; and responding to further inquiries
told him that she was intending to go back by the same carrier who
had brought her.
"It is a long while before he returns past Trantridge Cross.
Supposing we walk round the grounds to pass the time, my pretty Coz?"
Tess wished to abridge her visit as much as possible; but the young
man was pressing, and she consented to accompany him. He conducted
her about the lawns, and flower-beds, and conservatories; and thence
to the fruit-garden and greenhouses, where he asked her if she liked
strawberries.
"Yes," said Tess, "when they come."
"They are already here." D'Urberville began gathering specimens
of the fruit for her, handing them back to her as he stooped; and,
presently, selecting a specially fine product of the "British Queen"
variety, he stood up and held it by the stem to her mouth.
"No--no!" she said quickly, putting her fingers between his hand and
her lips. "I would rather take it in my own hand."
"Nonsense!" he insisted; and in a slight distress she parted her lips
and took it in.
They had spent some time wandering desultorily thus, Tess eating in
a half-pleased, half-reluctant state whatever d'Urberville offered
her. When she could consume no more of the strawberries he filled
her little basket with them; and then the two passed round to the
rose-trees, whence he gathered blossoms and gave her to put in her
bosom. She obeyed like one in a dream, and when she could affix no
more he himself tucked a bud or two into her hat, and heaped her
basket with others in the prodigality of his bounty. At last,
looking at his watch, he said, "Now, by the time you have had
something to eat, it will be time for you to leave, if you want to
catch the carrier to Shaston. Come here, and I'll see what grub I
can find."
Stoke d'Urberville took her back to the lawn and into the tent, where
he left her, soon reappearing with a basket of light luncheon, which
he put before her himself. It was evidently the gentleman's wish not
to be disturbed in this pleasant _tete-a-tete_ by the servantry.
"Do you mind my smoking?" he asked.
"Oh, not at all, sir."
He watched her pretty and unconscious munching through the skeins of
smoke that pervaded the tent, and Tess Durbeyfield did not divine,
as she innocently looked down at the roses in her bosom, that there
behind the blue narcotic haze was potentially the "tragic mischief"
of her drama--one who stood fair to be the blood-red ray in the
spectrum of her young life. She had an attribute which amounted
to a disadvantage just now; and it was this that caused Alec
d'Urberville's eyes to rivet themselves upon her. It was a
luxuriance of aspect, a fulness of growth, which made her appear more
of a woman than she really was. She had inherited the feature from
her mother without the quality it denoted. It had troubled her mind
occasionally, till her companions had said that it was a fault which
time would cure.
She soon had finished her lunch. "Now I am going home, sir," she
said, rising.
"And what do they call you?" he asked, as he accompanied her along
the drive till they were out of sight of the house.
"Tess Durbeyfield, down at Marlott."
"And you say your people have lost their horse?"
"I--killed him!" she answered, her eyes filling with tears as she
gave particulars of Prince's death. "And I don't know what to do
for father on account of it!"
"I must think if I cannot do something. My mother must find a berth
for you. But, Tess, no nonsense about 'd'Urberville';--'Durbeyfield'
only, you know--quite another name."
"I wish for no better, sir," said she with something of dignity.
For a moment--only for a moment--when they were in the turning of the
drive, between the tall rhododendrons and conifers, before the lodge
became visible, he inclined his face towards her as if--but, no: he
thought better of it, and let her go.
Thus the thing began. Had she perceived this meeting's import she
might have asked why she was doomed to be seen and coveted that day
by the wrong man, and not by some other man, the right and desired
one in all respects--as nearly as humanity can supply the right
and desired; yet to him who amongst her acquaintance might have
approximated to this kind, she was but a transient impression, half
forgotten.
In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the
call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with
the hour for loving. Nature does not often say "See!" to her poor
creature at a time when seeing can lead to happy doing; or reply
"Here!" to a body's cry of "Where?" till the hide-and-seek has become
an irksome, outworn game. We may wonder whether at the acme and
summit of the human progress these anachronisms will be corrected by
a finer intuition, a closer interaction of the social machinery than
that which now jolts us round and along; but such completeness is not
to be prophesied, or even conceived as possible. Enough that in the
present case, as in millions, it was not the two halves of a perfect
whole that confronted each other at the perfect moment; a missing
counterpart wandered independently about the earth waiting in
crass obtuseness till the late time came. Out of which maladroit
delay sprang anxieties, disappointments, shocks, catastrophes, and
passing-strange destinies.
When d'Urberville got back to the tent he sat down astride on a
chair, reflecting, with a pleased gleam in his face. Then he broke
into a loud laugh.
"Well, I'm damned! What a funny thing! Ha-ha-ha! And what a crumby
girl!"
| 3,137 | CHAPTER 5 | https://web.archive.org/web/20180820050202/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmTessD14.asp | Initially, Tess is too proud to go to her distant relatives to seek help, but the misfortune that she has brought to the family by her negligence with the horse has to be atoned. With little choice left, she reluctantly goes to see Mrs. D'Urberville. Upon arriving, she meets the wayward son, Alec D'Urberville, instead of his mother, who she learns is an invalid. Tess tells Alec about the unfortunate situation with the horse, and he promises to help her. It is obvious that Alec is impressed and bewitched by this beautiful, young country girl. He fills her basket with strawberries and gives her flowers. Tess, feeling uneasy about Alec, quickly departs for home. | Notes The readers are again shown Tess's innocence and her sense of responsibility. She accepts the fact that she must go to see the D'Urbervilles, even though she does not want to do it. When she arrives, Alec greets her. Tess is so naive that she has no understanding of the havoc her beauty is playing on Alec. He is totally smitten by her loveliness and country charm. His unwarranted attention puzzles Tess. Alec's intentions, however, are very obvious to the reader as Hardy begins to develop his villainous character | 114 | 90 | [
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107 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/49.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Far from the Madding Crowd/section_48_part_0.txt | Far from the Madding Crowd.chapter 49 | chapter 49 | null | {"name": "Chapter 49", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-49", "summary": "Autumn passed and winter came. \"Bathsheba, having previously been living in a state of suspended feeling which was not suspense, now lived in a mood of quietude which was not precisely peacefulness.\" She kept the farm going, however, finally appointing Oak bailiff, a role he had, in fact, been filling anyway. Boldwood lost his crops through neglect; even the pigs rejected his rotted corn. He suggested that Gabriel administer his farm, as well as Bathsheba's, and Bathsheba languidly assented to this plan. \"Gabriel's malignant star was assuredly setting fast.\" Oak could now be seen \"mounted on a strong cob, and daily trotting the length and breadth of about two thousand acres in a cheerful spirit of surveillance . . . the actual mistress of the one half, and the master of the other, sitting in their respective homes in gloomy and sad seclusion.\" This led to talk that Oak was \"feathering his nest fast.\" Actually, Bathsheba paid him a fixed wage, but Boldwood gave him a share of the profits. Gossips considered Oak miserly because he continued to live exactly as he had in the past. Boldwood's devotion to Bathsheba was becoming a madness. Bathsheba's mourning -- she had been prevailed upon to wear it -- let him hope that there would be a time, however far off, when his waiting would be rewarded. Shortly, Bathsheba paid a two-month visit to an old aunt in Corcombe, and on her return, Boldwood questioned Liddy as to his prospects. She told him that Bathsheba had once spoken of the seven-year period before the legal declaration of Troy's death. \"Poor Boldwood had no more skill in finesse than a battering-ram, and he was uneasy with a sense of having made himself to appear stupid. . . . But he had, after all, lighted upon one fact by way of repayment. . . . though not without its sadness it was pertinent and real. In little more than six years from this time Bathsheba might certainly marry him.\" Meanwhile, late summer was approaching, bringing on the week of the Greenhill Fair.", "analysis": "This transitional chapter serves to show a change in Bathsheba, the reward for Gabriel, and the birth of new hope for Boldwood. Hardy alludes to the biblical story of Jacob serving for Rachel and the importance of the sacred number seven. He was obviously very familiar with the Bible, and his works are liberally sprinkled with such references. Note that the time has advanced from late autumn to the next summer."} |
OAK'S ADVANCEMENT--A GREAT HOPE
The later autumn and the winter drew on apace, and the leaves lay
thick upon the turf of the glades and the mosses of the woods.
Bathsheba, having previously been living in a state of suspended
feeling which was not suspense, now lived in a mood of quietude which
was not precisely peacefulness. While she had known him to be alive
she could have thought of his death with equanimity; but now that it
might be she had lost him, she regretted that he was not hers still.
She kept the farm going, raked in her profits without caring keenly
about them, and expended money on ventures because she had done so
in bygone days, which, though not long gone by, seemed infinitely
removed from her present. She looked back upon that past over a
great gulf, as if she were now a dead person, having the faculty of
meditation still left in her, by means of which, like the mouldering
gentlefolk of the poet's story, she could sit and ponder what a gift
life used to be.
However, one excellent result of her general apathy was the
long-delayed installation of Oak as bailiff; but he having virtually
exercised that function for a long time already, the change, beyond
the substantial increase of wages it brought, was little more than a
nominal one addressed to the outside world.
Boldwood lived secluded and inactive. Much of his wheat and all his
barley of that season had been spoilt by the rain. It sprouted,
grew into intricate mats, and was ultimately thrown to the pigs in
armfuls. The strange neglect which had produced this ruin and waste
became the subject of whispered talk among all the people round; and
it was elicited from one of Boldwood's men that forgetfulness had
nothing to do with it, for he had been reminded of the danger to his
corn as many times and as persistently as inferiors dared to do.
The sight of the pigs turning in disgust from the rotten ears seemed
to arouse Boldwood, and he one evening sent for Oak. Whether it
was suggested by Bathsheba's recent act of promotion or not, the
farmer proposed at the interview that Gabriel should undertake the
superintendence of the Lower Farm as well as of Bathsheba's, because
of the necessity Boldwood felt for such aid, and the impossibility
of discovering a more trustworthy man. Gabriel's malignant star was
assuredly setting fast.
Bathsheba, when she learnt of this proposal--for Oak was obliged to
consult her--at first languidly objected. She considered that the
two farms together were too extensive for the observation of one
man. Boldwood, who was apparently determined by personal rather than
commercial reasons, suggested that Oak should be furnished with a
horse for his sole use, when the plan would present no difficulty,
the two farms lying side by side. Boldwood did not directly
communicate with her during these negotiations, only speaking to Oak,
who was the go-between throughout. All was harmoniously arranged at
last, and we now see Oak mounted on a strong cob, and daily trotting
the length and breadth of about two thousand acres in a cheerful spirit
of surveillance, as if the crops all belonged to him--the actual
mistress of the one-half and the master of the other, sitting in
their respective homes in gloomy and sad seclusion.
Out of this there arose, during the spring succeeding, a talk in the
parish that Gabriel Oak was feathering his nest fast.
"Whatever d'ye think," said Susan Tall, "Gable Oak is coming it quite
the dand. He now wears shining boots with hardly a hob in 'em, two
or three times a-week, and a tall hat a-Sundays, and 'a hardly knows
the name of smockfrock. When I see people strut enough to be cut up
into bantam cocks, I stand dormant with wonder, and says no more!"
It was eventually known that Gabriel, though paid a fixed wage by
Bathsheba independent of the fluctuations of agricultural profits,
had made an engagement with Boldwood by which Oak was to receive a
share of the receipts--a small share certainly, yet it was money of
a higher quality than mere wages, and capable of expansion in a way
that wages were not. Some were beginning to consider Oak a "near"
man, for though his condition had thus far improved, he lived in no
better style than before, occupying the same cottage, paring his own
potatoes, mending his stockings, and sometimes even making his bed
with his own hands. But as Oak was not only provokingly indifferent
to public opinion, but a man who clung persistently to old habits and
usages, simply because they were old, there was room for doubt as to
his motives.
A great hope had latterly germinated in Boldwood, whose unreasoning
devotion to Bathsheba could only be characterized as a fond madness
which neither time nor circumstance, evil nor good report, could
weaken or destroy. This fevered hope had grown up again like a grain
of mustard-seed during the quiet which followed the hasty conjecture
that Troy was drowned. He nourished it fearfully, and almost shunned
the contemplation of it in earnest, lest facts should reveal the
wildness of the dream. Bathsheba having at last been persuaded to
wear mourning, her appearance as she entered the church in that
guise was in itself a weekly addition to his faith that a time was
coming--very far off perhaps, yet surely nearing--when his waiting on
events should have its reward. How long he might have to wait he had
not yet closely considered. What he would try to recognize was that
the severe schooling she had been subjected to had made Bathsheba
much more considerate than she had formerly been of the feelings of
others, and he trusted that, should she be willing at any time in the
future to marry any man at all, that man would be himself. There was
a substratum of good feeling in her: her self-reproach for the injury
she had thoughtlessly done him might be depended upon now to a much
greater extent than before her infatuation and disappointment. It
would be possible to approach her by the channel of her good nature,
and to suggest a friendly businesslike compact between them for
fulfilment at some future day, keeping the passionate side of his
desire entirely out of her sight. Such was Boldwood's hope.
To the eyes of the middle-aged, Bathsheba was perhaps additionally
charming just now. Her exuberance of spirit was pruned down; the
original phantom of delight had shown herself to be not too bright
for human nature's daily food, and she had been able to enter this
second poetical phase without losing much of the first in the
process.
Bathsheba's return from a two months' visit to her old aunt at
Norcombe afforded the impassioned and yearning farmer a pretext for
inquiring directly after her--now possibly in the ninth month of her
widowhood--and endeavouring to get a notion of her state of mind
regarding him. This occurred in the middle of the haymaking, and
Boldwood contrived to be near Liddy, who was assisting in the fields.
"I am glad to see you out of doors, Lydia," he said pleasantly.
She simpered, and wondered in her heart why he should speak so
frankly to her.
"I hope Mrs. Troy is quite well after her long absence," he
continued, in a manner expressing that the coldest-hearted neighbour
could scarcely say less about her.
"She is quite well, sir."
"And cheerful, I suppose."
"Yes, cheerful."
"Fearful, did you say?"
"Oh no. I merely said she was cheerful."
"Tells you all her affairs?"
"No, sir."
"Some of them?"
"Yes, sir."
"Mrs. Troy puts much confidence in you, Lydia, and very wisely,
perhaps."
"She do, sir. I've been with her all through her troubles, and was
with her at the time of Mr. Troy's going and all. And if she were
to marry again I expect I should bide with her."
"She promises that you shall--quite natural," said the strategic
lover, throbbing throughout him at the presumption which Liddy's
words appeared to warrant--that his darling had thought of
re-marriage.
"No--she doesn't promise it exactly. I merely judge on my own
account."
"Yes, yes, I understand. When she alludes to the possibility of
marrying again, you conclude--"
"She never do allude to it, sir," said Liddy, thinking how very
stupid Mr. Boldwood was getting.
"Of course not," he returned hastily, his hope falling again. "You
needn't take quite such long reaches with your rake, Lydia--short
and quick ones are best. Well, perhaps, as she is absolute mistress
again now, it is wise of her to resolve never to give up her
freedom."
"My mistress did certainly once say, though not seriously, that she
supposed she might marry again at the end of seven years from last
year, if she cared to risk Mr. Troy's coming back and claiming her."
"Ah, six years from the present time. Said that she might. She
might marry at once in every reasonable person's opinion, whatever
the lawyers may say to the contrary."
"Have you been to ask them?" said Liddy, innocently.
"Not I," said Boldwood, growing red. "Liddy, you needn't stay here
a minute later than you wish, so Mr. Oak says. I am now going on a
little farther. Good-afternoon."
He went away vexed with himself, and ashamed of having for this one
time in his life done anything which could be called underhand. Poor
Boldwood had no more skill in finesse than a battering-ram, and he
was uneasy with a sense of having made himself to appear stupid and,
what was worse, mean. But he had, after all, lighted upon one fact
by way of repayment. It was a singularly fresh and fascinating fact,
and though not without its sadness it was pertinent and real. In
little more than six years from this time Bathsheba might certainly
marry him. There was something definite in that hope, for admitting
that there might have been no deep thought in her words to Liddy
about marriage, they showed at least her creed on the matter.
This pleasant notion was now continually in his mind. Six years were
a long time, but how much shorter than never, the idea he had for so
long been obliged to endure! Jacob had served twice seven years for
Rachel: what were six for such a woman as this? He tried to like the
notion of waiting for her better than that of winning her at once.
Boldwood felt his love to be so deep and strong and eternal, that
it was possible she had never yet known its full volume, and this
patience in delay would afford him an opportunity of giving sweet
proof on the point. He would annihilate the six years of his life as
if they were minutes--so little did he value his time on earth beside
her love. He would let her see, all those six years of intangible
ethereal courtship, how little care he had for anything but as it
bore upon the consummation.
Meanwhile the early and the late summer brought round the week in
which Greenhill Fair was held. This fair was frequently attended by
the folk of Weatherbury.
| 1,749 | Chapter 49 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-49 | Autumn passed and winter came. "Bathsheba, having previously been living in a state of suspended feeling which was not suspense, now lived in a mood of quietude which was not precisely peacefulness." She kept the farm going, however, finally appointing Oak bailiff, a role he had, in fact, been filling anyway. Boldwood lost his crops through neglect; even the pigs rejected his rotted corn. He suggested that Gabriel administer his farm, as well as Bathsheba's, and Bathsheba languidly assented to this plan. "Gabriel's malignant star was assuredly setting fast." Oak could now be seen "mounted on a strong cob, and daily trotting the length and breadth of about two thousand acres in a cheerful spirit of surveillance . . . the actual mistress of the one half, and the master of the other, sitting in their respective homes in gloomy and sad seclusion." This led to talk that Oak was "feathering his nest fast." Actually, Bathsheba paid him a fixed wage, but Boldwood gave him a share of the profits. Gossips considered Oak miserly because he continued to live exactly as he had in the past. Boldwood's devotion to Bathsheba was becoming a madness. Bathsheba's mourning -- she had been prevailed upon to wear it -- let him hope that there would be a time, however far off, when his waiting would be rewarded. Shortly, Bathsheba paid a two-month visit to an old aunt in Corcombe, and on her return, Boldwood questioned Liddy as to his prospects. She told him that Bathsheba had once spoken of the seven-year period before the legal declaration of Troy's death. "Poor Boldwood had no more skill in finesse than a battering-ram, and he was uneasy with a sense of having made himself to appear stupid. . . . But he had, after all, lighted upon one fact by way of repayment. . . . though not without its sadness it was pertinent and real. In little more than six years from this time Bathsheba might certainly marry him." Meanwhile, late summer was approaching, bringing on the week of the Greenhill Fair. | This transitional chapter serves to show a change in Bathsheba, the reward for Gabriel, and the birth of new hope for Boldwood. Hardy alludes to the biblical story of Jacob serving for Rachel and the importance of the sacred number seven. He was obviously very familiar with the Bible, and his works are liberally sprinkled with such references. Note that the time has advanced from late autumn to the next summer. | 347 | 71 | [
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5,658 | false | pinkmonkey | all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/02.txt | finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Lord Jim/section_1_part_0.txt | Lord Jim.chapter 2 | chapter 2 | null | {"name": "Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim10.asp", "summary": "After two years of training, Jim goes to sea as the chief mate of a fine ship; but he does not find the romantic adventure he has expected. On every voyage, he has to work very hard and endure the monotony, but he does his best and loves being at sea. He still dreams of becoming a hero, being triumphant over the power of the ocean. On one of his voyages, a falling spar during a storm disables him for some time. He is delighted that he does not have to stay on deck during the violent weather; later, he feels guilty for such thoughts. When the pain subsides and good weather returns, he puts the accident out of his mind. His lameness, however, persists, and when the ship arrives in port , he is taken to the hospital. Since his recovery is slow, he cannot sail with his ship. There are only two other patients in the hospital ward with Jim. One is the purser of a gunboat, and the other is a railway contractor from a neighboring province. They keep each other company, telling the stories of their lives, playing cards, or lounging together in easy chairs during the day. The hospital is located on top of a hill, and every day Jim looks longingly out over the thick gardens towards the sea and thinks about his return to ship life; he does not want to get too comfortable with his life on land. When Jim is able to walk without a stick, he goes into town seeking an opportunity to sail home, but has no luck. As he stays in Singapore, he becomes more fascinated with the life that surrounds him and finally decides not to go home. He accepts a position as the chief mate of the Patna, a rusty old steamer. It is owned by a Chinese man, chartered to go to holy places by an Arab, and commanded by a tough German captain. Eight hundred Moslem pilgrims, from north, south, east and west, are crowded aboard, like cattle. When the Patna finally leaves port, the Arab pilgrims are praying aloud. The steamer soon crosses the Strait and sails towards the Red Sea.", "analysis": "Notes The omniscient third-person narrator continues the tale of Jim's life in the second chapter. As a young man, he is given a position of chief mate on a good ship. On board, Jim's positive qualities are again emphasized. He is a steady and obedient worker who has a thorough knowledge of his duties. He also continues to be a romantic, dreaming of the day he will be challenged by the sea and win. Ironically, when Jim is faced with his first challenge from the sea, a rough storm, he is injured by a falling spar and feels thankful that he does not have to stay on deck during the violent weather. He later feels guilty about his lack of courage, just as he did in the first chapter. On land Jim also worries. He does not want to get too comfortable with his life in the easy chair. He seeks a job on a ship and finally signs on as first mate on the Patna. It is important to notice how Conrad describes the ship. It is on old steamer \"eaten with rust worse than a condemned water-tank\" and captained by an \"iron\" German. There is clear foreshadowing that all will not be smooth sailing on this vessel. Although the setting changes several times in this chapter, from Jim's first ship to the hospital to the Patna, the Mood remains the same; it is serious, sometimes almost glum, reflecting the feelings and surroundings of Jim. The sea is also a constant throughout the chapter. Even when the injured Jim is in the hospital, he thinks about his return to the sea. The sea itself is not so constant. Sometimes it is gentle and smiling; at other times, it is an angry sea, which smashes and destroys with fury."} | After two years of training he went to sea, and entering the regions so
well known to his imagination, found them strangely barren of adventure.
He made many voyages. He knew the magic monotony of existence between
sky and water: he had to bear the criticism of men, the exactions of the
sea, and the prosaic severity of the daily task that gives bread--but
whose only reward is in the perfect love of the work. This reward eluded
him. Yet he could not go back, because there is nothing more enticing,
disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea. Besides, his
prospects were good. He was gentlemanly, steady, tractable, with a
thorough knowledge of his duties; and in time, when yet very young, he
became chief mate of a fine ship, without ever having been tested by
those events of the sea that show in the light of day the inner worth of
a man, the edge of his temper, and the fibre of his stuff; that reveal
the quality of his resistance and the secret truth of his pretences, not
only to others but also to himself.
Only once in all that time he had again a glimpse of the earnestness in
the anger of the sea. That truth is not so often made apparent as people
might think. There are many shades in the danger of adventures and
gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of
facts a sinister violence of intention--that indefinable something which
forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication
of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose
of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty
that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his
fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to
annihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is
priceless and necessary--the sunshine, the memories, the future; which
means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by
the simple and appalling act of taking his life.
Jim, disabled by a falling spar at the beginning of a week of which his
Scottish captain used to say afterwards, 'Man! it's a pairfect meeracle
to me how she lived through it!' spent many days stretched on his back,
dazed, battered, hopeless, and tormented as if at the bottom of an
abyss of unrest. He did not care what the end would be, and in his lucid
moments overvalued his indifference. The danger, when not seen, has
the imperfect vagueness of human thought. The fear grows shadowy; and
Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated,
sinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion. Jim saw nothing
but the disorder of his tossed cabin. He lay there battened down in the
midst of a small devastation, and felt secretly glad he had not to go on
deck. But now and again an uncontrollable rush of anguish would grip
him bodily, make him gasp and writhe under the blankets, and then the
unintelligent brutality of an existence liable to the agony of such
sensations filled him with a despairing desire to escape at any cost.
Then fine weather returned, and he thought no more about It.
His lameness, however, persisted, and when the ship arrived at an
Eastern port he had to go to the hospital. His recovery was slow, and he
was left behind.
There were only two other patients in the white men's ward: the purser
of a gunboat, who had broken his leg falling down a hatchway; and a kind
of railway contractor from a neighbouring province, afflicted by
some mysterious tropical disease, who held the doctor for an ass, and
indulged in secret debaucheries of patent medicine which his Tamil
servant used to smuggle in with unwearied devotion. They told each other
the story of their lives, played cards a little, or, yawning and in
pyjamas, lounged through the day in easy-chairs without saying a word.
The hospital stood on a hill, and a gentle breeze entering through the
windows, always flung wide open, brought into the bare room the softness
of the sky, the languor of the earth, the bewitching breath of the
Eastern waters. There were perfumes in it, suggestions of infinite
repose, the gift of endless dreams. Jim looked every day over the
thickets of gardens, beyond the roofs of the town, over the fronds of
palms growing on the shore, at that roadstead which is a thoroughfare
to the East,--at the roadstead dotted by garlanded islets, lighted by
festal sunshine, its ships like toys, its brilliant activity resembling
a holiday pageant, with the eternal serenity of the Eastern sky overhead
and the smiling peace of the Eastern seas possessing the space as far as
the horizon.
Directly he could walk without a stick, he descended into the town to
look for some opportunity to get home. Nothing offered just then, and,
while waiting, he associated naturally with the men of his calling in
the port. These were of two kinds. Some, very few and seen there but
seldom, led mysterious lives, had preserved an undefaced energy with the
temper of buccaneers and the eyes of dreamers. They appeared to live
in a crazy maze of plans, hopes, dangers, enterprises, ahead of
civilisation, in the dark places of the sea; and their death was the
only event of their fantastic existence that seemed to have a reasonable
certitude of achievement. The majority were men who, like himself,
thrown there by some accident, had remained as officers of country
ships. They had now a horror of the home service, with its harder
conditions, severer view of duty, and the hazard of stormy oceans. They
were attuned to the eternal peace of Eastern sky and sea. They
loved short passages, good deck-chairs, large native crews, and the
distinction of being white. They shuddered at the thought of hard work,
and led precariously easy lives, always on the verge of dismissal,
always on the verge of engagement, serving Chinamen, Arabs,
half-castes--would have served the devil himself had he made it easy
enough. They talked everlastingly of turns of luck: how So-and-so got
charge of a boat on the coast of China--a soft thing; how this one had
an easy billet in Japan somewhere, and that one was doing well in the
Siamese navy; and in all they said--in their actions, in their looks, in
their persons--could be detected the soft spot, the place of decay, the
determination to lounge safely through existence.
To Jim that gossiping crowd, viewed as seamen, seemed at first more
unsubstantial than so many shadows. But at length he found a fascination
in the sight of those men, in their appearance of doing so well on
such a small allowance of danger and toil. In time, beside the original
disdain there grew up slowly another sentiment; and suddenly, giving up
the idea of going home, he took a berth as chief mate of the Patna.
The Patna was a local steamer as old as the hills, lean like a
greyhound, and eaten up with rust worse than a condemned water-tank. She
was owned by a Chinaman, chartered by an Arab, and commanded by a sort
of renegade New South Wales German, very anxious to curse publicly
his native country, but who, apparently on the strength of Bismarck's
victorious policy, brutalised all those he was not afraid of, and wore a
'blood-and-iron' air,' combined with a purple nose and a red moustache.
After she had been painted outside and whitewashed inside, eight hundred
pilgrims (more or less) were driven on board of her as she lay with
steam up alongside a wooden jetty.
They streamed aboard over three gangways, they streamed in urged by
faith and the hope of paradise, they streamed in with a continuous tramp
and shuffle of bare feet, without a word, a murmur, or a look back; and
when clear of confining rails spread on all sides over the deck, flowed
forward and aft, overflowed down the yawning hatchways, filled the inner
recesses of the ship--like water filling a cistern, like water flowing
into crevices and crannies, like water rising silently even with the
rim. Eight hundred men and women with faith and hopes, with affections
and memories, they had collected there, coming from north and south
and from the outskirts of the East, after treading the jungle paths,
descending the rivers, coasting in praus along the shallows, crossing in
small canoes from island to island, passing through suffering, meeting
strange sights, beset by strange fears, upheld by one desire. They
came from solitary huts in the wilderness, from populous campongs, from
villages by the sea. At the call of an idea they had left their forests,
their clearings, the protection of their rulers, their prosperity,
their poverty, the surroundings of their youth and the graves of their
fathers. They came covered with dust, with sweat, with grime, with
rags--the strong men at the head of family parties, the lean old men
pressing forward without hope of return; young boys with fearless eyes
glancing curiously, shy little girls with tumbled long hair; the timid
women muffled up and clasping to their breasts, wrapped in loose ends of
soiled head-cloths, their sleeping babies, the unconscious pilgrims of
an exacting belief.
'Look at dese cattle,' said the German skipper to his new chief mate.
An Arab, the leader of that pious voyage, came last. He walked slowly
aboard, handsome and grave in his white gown and large turban. A string
of servants followed, loaded with his luggage; the Patna cast off and
backed away from the wharf.
She was headed between two small islets, crossed obliquely the
anchoring-ground of sailing-ships, swung through half a circle in the
shadow of a hill, then ranged close to a ledge of foaming reefs. The
Arab, standing up aft, recited aloud the prayer of travellers by sea.
He invoked the favour of the Most High upon that journey, implored His
blessing on men's toil and on the secret purposes of their hearts; the
steamer pounded in the dusk the calm water of the Strait; and far astern
of the pilgrim ship a screw-pile lighthouse, planted by unbelievers on
a treacherous shoal, seemed to wink at her its eye of flame, as if in
derision of her errand of faith.
She cleared the Strait, crossed the bay, continued on her way through
the 'One-degree' passage. She held on straight for the Red Sea under a
serene sky, under a sky scorching and unclouded, enveloped in a fulgor
of sunshine that killed all thought, oppressed the heart, withered all
impulses of strength and energy. And under the sinister splendour of
that sky the sea, blue and profound, remained still, without a stir,
without a ripple, without a wrinkle--viscous, stagnant, dead. The
Patna, with a slight hiss, passed over that plain, luminous and smooth,
unrolled a black ribbon of smoke across the sky, left behind her on the
water a white ribbon of foam that vanished at once, like the phantom of
a track drawn upon a lifeless sea by the phantom of a steamer.
Every morning the sun, as if keeping pace in his revolutions with the
progress of the pilgrimage, emerged with a silent burst of light exactly
at the same distance astern of the ship, caught up with her at noon,
pouring the concentrated fire of his rays on the pious purposes of the
men, glided past on his descent, and sank mysteriously into the sea
evening after evening, preserving the same distance ahead of her
advancing bows. The five whites on board lived amidships, isolated from
the human cargo. The awnings covered the deck with a white roof from
stem to stern, and a faint hum, a low murmur of sad voices, alone
revealed the presence of a crowd of people upon the great blaze of the
ocean. Such were the days, still, hot, heavy, disappearing one by one
into the past, as if falling into an abyss for ever open in the wake
of the ship; and the ship, lonely under a wisp of smoke, held on her
steadfast way black and smouldering in a luminous immensity, as if
scorched by a flame flicked at her from a heaven without pity.
The nights descended on her like a benediction. | 1,911 | Chapter 2 | https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim10.asp | After two years of training, Jim goes to sea as the chief mate of a fine ship; but he does not find the romantic adventure he has expected. On every voyage, he has to work very hard and endure the monotony, but he does his best and loves being at sea. He still dreams of becoming a hero, being triumphant over the power of the ocean. On one of his voyages, a falling spar during a storm disables him for some time. He is delighted that he does not have to stay on deck during the violent weather; later, he feels guilty for such thoughts. When the pain subsides and good weather returns, he puts the accident out of his mind. His lameness, however, persists, and when the ship arrives in port , he is taken to the hospital. Since his recovery is slow, he cannot sail with his ship. There are only two other patients in the hospital ward with Jim. One is the purser of a gunboat, and the other is a railway contractor from a neighboring province. They keep each other company, telling the stories of their lives, playing cards, or lounging together in easy chairs during the day. The hospital is located on top of a hill, and every day Jim looks longingly out over the thick gardens towards the sea and thinks about his return to ship life; he does not want to get too comfortable with his life on land. When Jim is able to walk without a stick, he goes into town seeking an opportunity to sail home, but has no luck. As he stays in Singapore, he becomes more fascinated with the life that surrounds him and finally decides not to go home. He accepts a position as the chief mate of the Patna, a rusty old steamer. It is owned by a Chinese man, chartered to go to holy places by an Arab, and commanded by a tough German captain. Eight hundred Moslem pilgrims, from north, south, east and west, are crowded aboard, like cattle. When the Patna finally leaves port, the Arab pilgrims are praying aloud. The steamer soon crosses the Strait and sails towards the Red Sea. | Notes The omniscient third-person narrator continues the tale of Jim's life in the second chapter. As a young man, he is given a position of chief mate on a good ship. On board, Jim's positive qualities are again emphasized. He is a steady and obedient worker who has a thorough knowledge of his duties. He also continues to be a romantic, dreaming of the day he will be challenged by the sea and win. Ironically, when Jim is faced with his first challenge from the sea, a rough storm, he is injured by a falling spar and feels thankful that he does not have to stay on deck during the violent weather. He later feels guilty about his lack of courage, just as he did in the first chapter. On land Jim also worries. He does not want to get too comfortable with his life in the easy chair. He seeks a job on a ship and finally signs on as first mate on the Patna. It is important to notice how Conrad describes the ship. It is on old steamer "eaten with rust worse than a condemned water-tank" and captained by an "iron" German. There is clear foreshadowing that all will not be smooth sailing on this vessel. Although the setting changes several times in this chapter, from Jim's first ship to the hospital to the Patna, the Mood remains the same; it is serious, sometimes almost glum, reflecting the feelings and surroundings of Jim. The sea is also a constant throughout the chapter. Even when the injured Jim is in the hospital, he thinks about his return to the sea. The sea itself is not so constant. Sometimes it is gentle and smiling; at other times, it is an angry sea, which smashes and destroys with fury. | 368 | 299 | [
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110 | false | gradesaver | all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/58.txt | finished_summaries/gradesaver/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_6_part_5.txt | Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 57 | chapter 57 | null | {"name": "Chapter 57", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-7-chapters-53-59", "summary": "Angel prepares to leave town, dejected. He walks to the first nearby train station, and as he travels he sees a woman running toward him. It is Tess, who has been following him. She tells Angel that she has killed Alec, and smiles faintly as she tells him this. Tess admits that she killed Alec when he taunted Tess and called Angel by a foul name. Angel wonders what obscure strain in the d'Urberville blood had led to this aberration of moral sense, if it were an aberration. Angel thinks about the legend of the d'Urberville coach. He vows not to desert Tess, and they continue together. They pass a deserted mansion, Bramshurst Court, where they rest.", "analysis": "Tess and Angel finally reconcile in this chapter, but the circumstances under which Angel and Tess find themselves render this reconciliation short-lived. Hardy finally connects Tess to the d'Urberville legacy in this chapter, allowing that her d'Urberville heritage has endowed her with a faulty moral deficiency that has made her capable of murder. Angel himself relates the murder of Alec to the legend of the d'Urberville coach. However, Tess's action may be seen as a reversal of this legend, for in this instance it is the victimized woman who strikes out against a rapacious d'Urberville. Tess inverts her family history, recalling the d'Urberville history and refuting its legends"} |
Meanwhile Angel Clare had walked automatically along the way by which
he had come, and, entering his hotel, sat down over the breakfast,
staring at nothingness. He went on eating and drinking unconsciously
till on a sudden he demanded his bill; having paid which, he took his
dressing-bag in his hand, the only luggage he had brought with him,
and went out.
At the moment of his departure a telegram was handed to him--a few
words from his mother, stating that they were glad to know his
address, and informing him that his brother Cuthbert had proposed to
and been accepted by Mercy Chant.
Clare crumpled up the paper and followed the route to the station;
reaching it, he found that there would be no train leaving for an
hour and more. He sat down to wait, and having waited a quarter of
an hour felt that he could wait there no longer. Broken in heart and
numbed, he had nothing to hurry for; but he wished to get out of a
town which had been the scene of such an experience, and turned to
walk to the first station onward, and let the train pick him up
there.
The highway that he followed was open, and at a little distance
dipped into a valley, across which it could be seen running from edge
to edge. He had traversed the greater part of this depression, and
was climbing the western acclivity when, pausing for breath, he
unconsciously looked back. Why he did so he could not say, but
something seemed to impel him to the act. The tape-like surface of
the road diminished in his rear as far as he could see, and as he
gazed a moving spot intruded on the white vacuity of its perspective.
It was a human figure running. Clare waited, with a dim sense that
somebody was trying to overtake him.
The form descending the incline was a woman's, yet so entirely was
his mind blinded to the idea of his wife's following him that even
when she came nearer he did not recognize her under the totally
changed attire in which he now beheld her. It was not till she was
quite close that he could believe her to be Tess.
"I saw you--turn away from the station--just before I got there--and
I have been following you all this way!"
She was so pale, so breathless, so quivering in every muscle, that he
did not ask her a single question, but seizing her hand, and pulling
it within his arm, he led her along. To avoid meeting any possible
wayfarers he left the high road and took a footpath under some
fir-trees. When they were deep among the moaning boughs he stopped
and looked at her inquiringly.
"Angel," she said, as if waiting for this, "do you know what I have
been running after you for? To tell you that I have killed him!"
A pitiful white smile lit her face as she spoke.
"What!" said he, thinking from the strangeness of her manner that she
was in some delirium.
"I have done it--I don't know how," she continued. "Still, I owed it
to you, and to myself, Angel. I feared long ago, when I struck him
on the mouth with my glove, that I might do it some day for the trap
he set for me in my simple youth, and his wrong to you through me.
He has come between us and ruined us, and now he can never do it any
more. I never loved him at all, Angel, as I loved you. You know it,
don't you? You believe it? You didn't come back to me, and I was
obliged to go back to him. Why did you go away--why did you--when I
loved you so? I can't think why you did it. But I don't blame you;
only, Angel, will you forgive me my sin against you, now I have
killed him? I thought as I ran along that you would be sure to
forgive me now I have done that. It came to me as a shining light
that I should get you back that way. I could not bear the loss of
you any longer--you don't know how entirely I was unable to bear your
not loving me! Say you do now, dear, dear husband; say you do, now I
have killed him!"
"I do love you, Tess--O, I do--it is all come back!" he said,
tightening his arms round her with fervid pressure. "But how do you
mean--you have killed him?"
"I mean that I have," she murmured in a reverie.
"What, bodily? Is he dead?"
"Yes. He heard me crying about you, and he bitterly taunted me; and
called you by a foul name; and then I did it. My heart could not
bear it. He had nagged me about you before. And then I dressed
myself and came away to find you."
By degrees he was inclined to believe that she had faintly attempted,
at least, what she said she had done; and his horror at her impulse
was mixed with amazement at the strength of her affection for
himself, and at the strangeness of its quality, which had apparently
extinguished her moral sense altogether. Unable to realize the
gravity of her conduct, she seemed at last content; and he looked
at her as she lay upon his shoulder, weeping with happiness, and
wondered what obscure strain in the d'Urberville blood had led to
this aberration--if it were an aberration. There momentarily flashed
through his mind that the family tradition of the coach and murder
might have arisen because the d'Urbervilles had been known to do
these things. As well as his confused and excited ideas could
reason, he supposed that in the moment of mad grief of which she
spoke, her mind had lost its balance, and plunged her into this
abyss.
It was very terrible if true; if a temporary hallucination, sad. But,
anyhow, here was this deserted wife of his, this passionately-fond
woman, clinging to him without a suspicion that he would be anything
to her but a protector. He saw that for him to be otherwise was
not, in her mind, within the region of the possible. Tenderness was
absolutely dominant in Clare at last. He kissed her endlessly with
his white lips, and held her hand, and said--
"I will not desert you! I will protect you by every means in my
power, dearest love, whatever you may have done or not have done!"
They then walked on under the trees, Tess turning her head every now
and then to look at him. Worn and unhandsome as he had become, it
was plain that she did not discern the least fault in his appearance.
To her he was, as of old, all that was perfection, personally and
mentally. He was still her Antinous, her Apollo even; his sickly
face was beautiful as the morning to her affectionate regard on
this day no less than when she first beheld him; for was it not the
face of the one man on earth who had loved her purely, and who had
believed in her as pure!
With an instinct as to possibilities, he did not now, as he had
intended, make for the first station beyond the town, but plunged
still farther under the firs, which here abounded for miles. Each
clasping the other round the waist they promenaded over the dry bed
of fir-needles, thrown into a vague intoxicating atmosphere at the
consciousness of being together at last, with no living soul between
them; ignoring that there was a corpse. Thus they proceeded for
several miles till Tess, arousing herself, looked about her, and
said, timidly--
"Are we going anywhere in particular?"
"I don't know, dearest. Why?"
"I don't know."
"Well, we might walk a few miles further, and when it is evening find
lodgings somewhere or other--in a lonely cottage, perhaps. Can you
walk well, Tessy?"
"O yes! I could walk for ever and ever with your arm round me!"
Upon the whole it seemed a good thing to do. Thereupon they
quickened their pace, avoiding high roads, and following obscure
paths tending more or less northward. But there was an unpractical
vagueness in their movements throughout the day; neither one of them
seemed to consider any question of effectual escape, disguise, or
long concealment. Their every idea was temporary and unforefending,
like the plans of two children.
At mid-day they drew near to a roadside inn, and Tess would have
entered it with him to get something to eat, but he persuaded
her to remain among the trees and bushes of this half-woodland,
half-moorland part of the country till he should come back. Her
clothes were of recent fashion; even the ivory-handled parasol that
she carried was of a shape unknown in the retired spot to which they
had now wandered; and the cut of such articles would have attracted
attention in the settle of a tavern. He soon returned, with food
enough for half-a-dozen people and two bottles of wine--enough to
last them for a day or more, should any emergency arise.
They sat down upon some dead boughs and shared their meal. Between
one and two o'clock they packed up the remainder and went on again.
"I feel strong enough to walk any distance," said she.
"I think we may as well steer in a general way towards the interior
of the country, where we can hide for a time, and are less likely to
be looked for than anywhere near the coast," Clare remarked. "Later
on, when they have forgotten us, we can make for some port."
She made no reply to this beyond that of grasping him more tightly,
and straight inland they went. Though the season was an English May,
the weather was serenely bright, and during the afternoon it was
quite warm. Through the latter miles of their walk their footpath
had taken them into the depths of the New Forest, and towards
evening, turning the corner of a lane, they perceived behind a brook
and bridge a large board on which was painted in white letters, "This
desirable Mansion to be Let Furnished"; particulars following, with
directions to apply to some London agents. Passing through the gate
they could see the house, an old brick building of regular design and
large accommodation.
"I know it," said Clare. "It is Bramshurst Court. You can see that
it is shut up, and grass is growing on the drive."
"Some of the windows are open," said Tess.
"Just to air the rooms, I suppose."
"All these rooms empty, and we without a roof to our heads!"
"You are getting tired, my Tess!" he said. "We'll stop soon." And
kissing her sad mouth, he again led her onwards.
He was growing weary likewise, for they had wandered a dozen or
fifteen miles, and it became necessary to consider what they should
do for rest. They looked from afar at isolated cottages and little
inns, and were inclined to approach one of the latter, when their
hearts failed them, and they sheered off. At length their gait
dragged, and they stood still.
"Could we sleep under the trees?" she asked.
He thought the season insufficiently advanced.
"I have been thinking of that empty mansion we passed," he said.
"Let us go back towards it again."
They retraced their steps, but it was half an hour before they stood
without the entrance-gate as earlier. He then requested her to stay
where she was, whilst he went to see who was within.
She sat down among the bushes within the gate, and Clare crept
towards the house. His absence lasted some considerable time, and
when he returned Tess was wildly anxious, not for herself, but for
him. He had found out from a boy that there was only an old woman in
charge as caretaker, and she only came there on fine days, from the
hamlet near, to open and shut the windows. She would come to shut
them at sunset. "Now, we can get in through one of the lower
windows, and rest there," said he.
Under his escort she went tardily forward to the main front, whose
shuttered windows, like sightless eyeballs, excluded the possibility
of watchers. The door was reached a few steps further, and one of
the windows beside it was open. Clare clambered in, and pulled Tess
in after him.
Except the hall, the rooms were all in darkness, and they ascended
the staircase. Up here also the shutters were tightly closed,
the ventilation being perfunctorily done, for this day at least,
by opening the hall-window in front and an upper window behind.
Clare unlatched the door of a large chamber, felt his way across
it, and parted the shutters to the width of two or three inches.
A shaft of dazzling sunlight glanced into the room, revealing heavy,
old-fashioned furniture, crimson damask hangings, and an enormous
four-post bedstead, along the head of which were carved running
figures, apparently Atalanta's race.
"Rest at last!" said he, setting down his bag and the parcel of
viands.
They remained in great quietness till the caretaker should have come
to shut the windows: as a precaution, putting themselves in total
darkness by barring the shutters as before, lest the woman should
open the door of their chamber for any casual reason. Between six
and seven o'clock she came, but did not approach the wing they
were in. They heard her close the windows, fasten them, lock the
door, and go away. Then Clare again stole a chink of light from
the window, and they shared another meal, till by-and-by they
were enveloped in the shades of night which they had no candle to
disperse.
| 2,170 | Chapter 57 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-7-chapters-53-59 | Angel prepares to leave town, dejected. He walks to the first nearby train station, and as he travels he sees a woman running toward him. It is Tess, who has been following him. She tells Angel that she has killed Alec, and smiles faintly as she tells him this. Tess admits that she killed Alec when he taunted Tess and called Angel by a foul name. Angel wonders what obscure strain in the d'Urberville blood had led to this aberration of moral sense, if it were an aberration. Angel thinks about the legend of the d'Urberville coach. He vows not to desert Tess, and they continue together. They pass a deserted mansion, Bramshurst Court, where they rest. | Tess and Angel finally reconcile in this chapter, but the circumstances under which Angel and Tess find themselves render this reconciliation short-lived. Hardy finally connects Tess to the d'Urberville legacy in this chapter, allowing that her d'Urberville heritage has endowed her with a faulty moral deficiency that has made her capable of murder. Angel himself relates the murder of Alec to the legend of the d'Urberville coach. However, Tess's action may be seen as a reversal of this legend, for in this instance it is the victimized woman who strikes out against a rapacious d'Urberville. Tess inverts her family history, recalling the d'Urberville history and refuting its legends | 117 | 108 | [
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28,054 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/28.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_27_part_0.txt | The Brothers Karamazov.book 4.chapter 4 | book 4, chapter 4 | null | {"name": "Book 4, Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-4-chapter-4", "summary": "Alyosha arrives at the Khokhlakovs', bloody finger and all. Madame Khokhlakov wants to talk about Zosima's \"miracle,\" but she's also mystified by what she perceives to be her daughter's hysteria. Lise pipes up behind a door that she isn't hysterical at all, but Madame Khokhlakov chides her for driving herself into hysterics. Alyosha interrupts this little tiff by asking for a clean cloth for his wounded finger, the sight of which horrifies Lise and Madame Khokhlakov. As Lise sends her mother off to get various dressings for Alyosha's wound, she has a moment alone with him. She tells him her love letter was just a joke, and now that she's embarrassed, she'd like it back. Alyosha replies that he left the letter back at the monastery, and besides, he took her letter very seriously and plans to marry her. Lise is thrilled, but just then her hysterical mother returns. Lise slyly announces to her mother that Alyosha is planning on getting married, but doesn't reveal that it's to her. Her mother is just confused and rambles on about rabid schoolboys. Then she announces that Katerina has also arrived and is eager to speak with Alyosha.", "analysis": ""} | Chapter IV. At The Hohlakovs'
Alyosha soon reached Madame Hohlakov's house, a handsome stone house of
two stories, one of the finest in our town. Though Madame Hohlakov spent
most of her time in another province where she had an estate, or in
Moscow, where she had a house of her own, yet she had a house in our town
too, inherited from her forefathers. The estate in our district was the
largest of her three estates, yet she had been very little in our province
before this time. She ran out to Alyosha in the hall.
"Did you get my letter about the new miracle?" She spoke rapidly and
nervously.
"Yes."
"Did you show it to every one? He restored the son to his mother!"
"He is dying to-day," said Alyosha.
"I have heard, I know, oh, how I long to talk to you, to you or some one,
about all this. No, to you, to you! And how sorry I am I can't see him!
The whole town is in excitement, they are all suspense. But now--do you
know Katerina Ivanovna is here now?"
"Ah, that's lucky," cried Alyosha. "Then I shall see her here. She told me
yesterday to be sure to come and see her to-day."
"I know, I know all. I've heard exactly what happened yesterday--and the
atrocious behavior of that--creature. _C'est tragique_, and if I'd been in
her place I don't know what I should have done. And your brother Dmitri
Fyodorovitch, what do you think of him?--my goodness! Alexey Fyodorovitch,
I am forgetting, only fancy; your brother is in there with her, not that
dreadful brother who was so shocking yesterday, but the other, Ivan
Fyodorovitch, he is sitting with her talking; they are having a serious
conversation. If you could only imagine what's passing between them
now--it's awful, I tell you it's lacerating, it's like some incredible tale
of horror. They are ruining their lives for no reason any one can see.
They both recognize it and revel in it. I've been watching for you! I've
been thirsting for you! It's too much for me, that's the worst of it. I'll
tell you all about it presently, but now I must speak of something else,
the most important thing--I had quite forgotten what's most important. Tell
me, why has Lise been in hysterics? As soon as she heard you were here,
she began to be hysterical!"
"_Maman_, it's you who are hysterical now, not I," Lise's voice caroled
through a tiny crack of the door at the side. Her voice sounded as though
she wanted to laugh, but was doing her utmost to control it. Alyosha at
once noticed the crack, and no doubt Lise was peeping through it, but that
he could not see.
"And no wonder, Lise, no wonder ... your caprices will make me hysterical
too. But she is so ill, Alexey Fyodorovitch, she has been so ill all
night, feverish and moaning! I could hardly wait for the morning and for
Herzenstube to come. He says that he can make nothing of it, that we must
wait. Herzenstube always comes and says that he can make nothing of it. As
soon as you approached the house, she screamed, fell into hysterics, and
insisted on being wheeled back into this room here."
"Mamma, I didn't know he had come. It wasn't on his account I wanted to be
wheeled into this room."
"That's not true, Lise, Yulia ran to tell you that Alexey Fyodorovitch was
coming. She was on the look-out for you."
"My darling mamma, it's not at all clever of you. But if you want to make
up for it and say something very clever, dear mamma, you'd better tell our
honored visitor, Alexey Fyodorovitch, that he has shown his want of wit by
venturing to us after what happened yesterday and although every one is
laughing at him."
"Lise, you go too far. I declare I shall have to be severe. Who laughs at
him? I am so glad he has come, I need him, I can't do without him. Oh,
Alexey Fyodorovitch, I am exceedingly unhappy!"
"But what's the matter with you, mamma, darling?"
"Ah, your caprices, Lise, your fidgetiness, your illness, that awful night
of fever, that awful everlasting Herzenstube, everlasting, everlasting,
that's the worst of it! Everything, in fact, everything.... Even that
miracle, too! Oh, how it has upset me, how it has shattered me, that
miracle, dear Alexey Fyodorovitch! And that tragedy in the drawing-room,
it's more than I can bear, I warn you. I can't bear it. A comedy, perhaps,
not a tragedy. Tell me, will Father Zossima live till to-morrow, will he?
Oh, my God! What is happening to me? Every minute I close my eyes and see
that it's all nonsense, all nonsense."
"I should be very grateful," Alyosha interrupted suddenly, "if you could
give me a clean rag to bind up my finger with. I have hurt it, and it's
very painful."
Alyosha unbound his bitten finger. The handkerchief was soaked with blood.
Madame Hohlakov screamed and shut her eyes.
"Good heavens, what a wound, how awful!"
But as soon as Lise saw Alyosha's finger through the crack, she flung the
door wide open.
"Come, come here," she cried, imperiously. "No nonsense now! Good heavens,
why did you stand there saying nothing about it all this time? He might
have bled to death, mamma! How did you do it? Water, water! You must wash
it first of all, simply hold it in cold water to stop the pain, and keep
it there, keep it there.... Make haste, mamma, some water in a slop-basin.
But do make haste," she finished nervously. She was quite frightened at
the sight of Alyosha's wound.
"Shouldn't we send for Herzenstube?" cried Madame Hohlakov.
"Mamma, you'll be the death of me. Your Herzenstube will come and say that
he can make nothing of it! Water, water! Mamma, for goodness' sake go
yourself and hurry Yulia, she is such a slowcoach and never can come
quickly! Make haste, mamma, or I shall die."
"Why, it's nothing much," cried Alyosha, frightened at this alarm.
Yulia ran in with water and Alyosha put his finger in it.
"Some lint, mamma, for mercy's sake, bring some lint and that muddy
caustic lotion for wounds, what's it called? We've got some. You know
where the bottle is, mamma; it's in your bedroom in the right-hand
cupboard, there's a big bottle of it there with the lint."
"I'll bring everything in a minute, Lise, only don't scream and don't
fuss. You see how bravely Alexey Fyodorovitch bears it. Where did you get
such a dreadful wound, Alexey Fyodorovitch?"
Madame Hohlakov hastened away. This was all Lise was waiting for.
"First of all, answer the question, where did you get hurt like this?" she
asked Alyosha, quickly. "And then I'll talk to you about something quite
different. Well?"
Instinctively feeling that the time of her mother's absence was precious
for her, Alyosha hastened to tell her of his enigmatic meeting with the
schoolboys in the fewest words possible. Lise clasped her hands at his
story.
"How can you, and in that dress too, associate with schoolboys?" she cried
angrily, as though she had a right to control him. "You are nothing but a
boy yourself if you can do that, a perfect boy! But you must find out for
me about that horrid boy and tell me all about it, for there's some
mystery in it. Now for the second thing, but first a question: does the
pain prevent you talking about utterly unimportant things, but talking
sensibly?"
"Of course not, and I don't feel much pain now."
"That's because your finger is in the water. It must be changed directly,
for it will get warm in a minute. Yulia, bring some ice from the cellar
and another basin of water. Now she is gone, I can speak; will you give me
the letter I sent you yesterday, dear Alexey Fyodorovitch--be quick, for
mamma will be back in a minute and I don't want--"
"I haven't got the letter."
"That's not true, you have. I knew you would say that. You've got it in
that pocket. I've been regretting that joke all night. Give me back the
letter at once, give it me."
"I've left it at home."
"But you can't consider me as a child, a little girl, after that silly
joke! I beg your pardon for that silliness, but you must bring me the
letter, if you really haven't got it--bring it to-day, you must, you must."
"To-day I can't possibly, for I am going back to the monastery and I
shan't come and see you for the next two days--three or four perhaps--for
Father Zossima--"
"Four days, what nonsense! Listen. Did you laugh at me very much?"
"I didn't laugh at all."
"Why not?"
"Because I believed all you said."
"You are insulting me!"
"Not at all. As soon as I read it, I thought that all that would come to
pass, for as soon as Father Zossima dies, I am to leave the monastery.
Then I shall go back and finish my studies, and when you reach the legal
age we will be married. I shall love you. Though I haven't had time to
think about it, I believe I couldn't find a better wife than you, and
Father Zossima tells me I must marry."
"But I am a cripple, wheeled about in a chair," laughed Lise, flushing
crimson.
"I'll wheel you about myself, but I'm sure you'll get well by then."
"But you are mad," said Lise, nervously, "to make all this nonsense out of
a joke! Here's mamma, very _a propos_, perhaps. Mamma, how slow you always
are, how can you be so long! And here's Yulia with the ice!"
"Oh, Lise, don't scream, above all things don't scream. That scream drives
me ... How can I help it when you put the lint in another place? I've been
hunting and hunting--I do believe you did it on purpose."
"But I couldn't tell that he would come with a bad finger, or else perhaps
I might have done it on purpose. My darling mamma, you begin to say really
witty things."
"Never mind my being witty, but I must say you show nice feeling for
Alexey Fyodorovitch's sufferings! Oh, my dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, what's
killing me is no one thing in particular, not Herzenstube, but everything
together, that's what is too much for me."
"That's enough, mamma, enough about Herzenstube," Lise laughed gayly.
"Make haste with the lint and the lotion, mamma. That's simply Goulard's
water, Alexey Fyodorovitch, I remember the name now, but it's a splendid
lotion. Would you believe it, mamma, on the way here he had a fight with
the boys in the street, and it was a boy bit his finger, isn't he a child,
a child himself? Is he fit to be married after that? For only fancy, he
wants to be married, mamma. Just think of him married, wouldn't it be
funny, wouldn't it be awful?"
And Lise kept laughing her thin hysterical giggle, looking slyly at
Alyosha.
"But why married, Lise? What makes you talk of such a thing? It's quite
out of place--and perhaps the boy was rabid."
"Why, mamma! As though there were rabid boys!"
"Why not, Lise, as though I had said something stupid! Your boy might have
been bitten by a mad dog and he would become mad and bite any one near
him. How well she has bandaged it, Alexey Fyodorovitch! I couldn't have
done it. Do you still feel the pain?"
"It's nothing much now."
"You don't feel afraid of water?" asked Lise.
"Come, that's enough, Lise, perhaps I really was rather too quick talking
of the boy being rabid, and you pounced upon it at once Katerina Ivanovna
has only just heard that you are here, Alexey Fyodorovitch, she simply
rushed at me, she's dying to see you, dying!"
"Ach, mamma, go to them yourself. He can't go just now, he is in too much
pain."
"Not at all, I can go quite well," said Alyosha.
"What! You are going away? Is that what you say?"
"Well, when I've seen them, I'll come back here and we can talk as much as
you like. But I should like to see Katerina Ivanovna at once, for I am
very anxious to be back at the monastery as soon as I can."
"Mamma, take him away quickly. Alexey Fyodorovitch, don't trouble to come
and see me afterwards, but go straight back to your monastery and a good
riddance. I want to sleep, I didn't sleep all night."
"Ah, Lise, you are only making fun, but how I wish you would sleep!" cried
Madame Hohlakov.
"I don't know what I've done.... I'll stay another three minutes, five if
you like," muttered Alyosha.
"Even five! Do take him away quickly, mamma, he is a monster."
"Lise, you are crazy. Let us go, Alexey Fyodorovitch, she is too
capricious to-day. I am afraid to cross her. Oh, the trouble one has with
nervous girls! Perhaps she really will be able to sleep after seeing you.
How quickly you have made her sleepy, and how fortunate it is!"
"Ah, mamma, how sweetly you talk! I must kiss you for it, mamma."
"And I kiss you too, Lise. Listen, Alexey Fyodorovitch," Madame Hohlakov
began mysteriously and importantly, speaking in a rapid whisper. "I don't
want to suggest anything, I don't want to lift the veil, you will see for
yourself what's going on. It's appalling. It's the most fantastic farce.
She loves your brother, Ivan, and she is doing her utmost to persuade
herself she loves your brother, Dmitri. It's appalling! I'll go in with
you, and if they don't turn me out, I'll stay to the end."
| 2,114 | Book 4, Chapter 4 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-4-chapter-4 | Alyosha arrives at the Khokhlakovs', bloody finger and all. Madame Khokhlakov wants to talk about Zosima's "miracle," but she's also mystified by what she perceives to be her daughter's hysteria. Lise pipes up behind a door that she isn't hysterical at all, but Madame Khokhlakov chides her for driving herself into hysterics. Alyosha interrupts this little tiff by asking for a clean cloth for his wounded finger, the sight of which horrifies Lise and Madame Khokhlakov. As Lise sends her mother off to get various dressings for Alyosha's wound, she has a moment alone with him. She tells him her love letter was just a joke, and now that she's embarrassed, she'd like it back. Alyosha replies that he left the letter back at the monastery, and besides, he took her letter very seriously and plans to marry her. Lise is thrilled, but just then her hysterical mother returns. Lise slyly announces to her mother that Alyosha is planning on getting married, but doesn't reveal that it's to her. Her mother is just confused and rambles on about rabid schoolboys. Then she announces that Katerina has also arrived and is eager to speak with Alyosha. | null | 195 | 1 | [
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161 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/09.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Sense and Sensibility/section_1_part_9.txt | Sense and Sensibility.chapter ix | chapter ix | null | {"name": "Chapter IX", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201020004256/https://www.novelguide.com/sense-and-sensibility/summaries/volume1-chapter1-11", "summary": "Marianne and Margaret ignore signs of bad weather and go for a walk. It begins to rain, and as the girls rush home, Marianne trips and falls, spraining her ankle. An unknown handsome man who is out shooting game with his dogs comes to her assistance, scooping her up in his arms and carrying her back to the house. Mrs. Dashwood is charmed by the man, who introduces himself as Mr. Willoughby, currently of Allenham. He is given permission to call tomorrow to find out how Marianne is. After he leaves, the Dashwood women discuss him with admiration. When Sir John visits, they ask him about Willoughby. All Sir John can say is that he shoots and rides well, has a good gundog, and shows stamina in dancing. He says that Willoughby has no property of his own but is the heir of Mrs. Smith, a distant relative who lives at nearby Allenham Court. He concludes that he is \"well worth catching\" for any young woman. He adds that poor Colonel Brandon will be forgotten. Marianne is offended by the suggestion that she would try to catch anyone", "analysis": ""} |
The Dashwoods were now settled at Barton with tolerable comfort to
themselves. The house and the garden, with all the objects surrounding
them, were now become familiar, and the ordinary pursuits which had
given to Norland half its charms were engaged in again with far greater
enjoyment than Norland had been able to afford, since the loss of their
father. Sir John Middleton, who called on them every day for the first
fortnight, and who was not in the habit of seeing much occupation at
home, could not conceal his amazement on finding them always employed.
Their visitors, except those from Barton Park, were not many; for, in
spite of Sir John's urgent entreaties that they would mix more in the
neighbourhood, and repeated assurances of his carriage being always at
their service, the independence of Mrs. Dashwood's spirit overcame the
wish of society for her children; and she was resolute in declining to
visit any family beyond the distance of a walk. There were but few who
could be so classed; and it was not all of them that were attainable.
About a mile and a half from the cottage, along the narrow winding
valley of Allenham, which issued from that of Barton, as formerly
described, the girls had, in one of their earliest walks, discovered an
ancient respectable looking mansion which, by reminding them a little
of Norland, interested their imagination and made them wish to be
better acquainted with it. But they learnt, on enquiry, that its
possessor, an elderly lady of very good character, was unfortunately
too infirm to mix with the world, and never stirred from home.
The whole country about them abounded in beautiful walks. The high
downs which invited them from almost every window of the cottage to
seek the exquisite enjoyment of air on their summits, were a happy
alternative when the dirt of the valleys beneath shut up their superior
beauties; and towards one of these hills did Marianne and Margaret one
memorable morning direct their steps, attracted by the partial sunshine
of a showery sky, and unable longer to bear the confinement which the
settled rain of the two preceding days had occasioned. The weather was
not tempting enough to draw the two others from their pencil and their
book, in spite of Marianne's declaration that the day would be
lastingly fair, and that every threatening cloud would be drawn off
from their hills; and the two girls set off together.
They gaily ascended the downs, rejoicing in their own penetration at
every glimpse of blue sky; and when they caught in their faces the
animating gales of a high south-westerly wind, they pitied the fears
which had prevented their mother and Elinor from sharing such
delightful sensations.
"Is there a felicity in the world," said Marianne, "superior to
this?--Margaret, we will walk here at least two hours."
Margaret agreed, and they pursued their way against the wind, resisting
it with laughing delight for about twenty minutes longer, when suddenly
the clouds united over their heads, and a driving rain set full in
their face.-- Chagrined and surprised, they were obliged, though
unwillingly, to turn back, for no shelter was nearer than their own
house. One consolation however remained for them, to which the
exigence of the moment gave more than usual propriety; it was that of
running with all possible speed down the steep side of the hill which
led immediately to their garden gate.
They set off. Marianne had at first the advantage, but a false step
brought her suddenly to the ground; and Margaret, unable to stop
herself to assist her, was involuntarily hurried along, and reached the
bottom in safety.
A gentleman carrying a gun, with two pointers playing round him, was
passing up the hill and within a few yards of Marianne, when her
accident happened. He put down his gun and ran to her assistance. She
had raised herself from the ground, but her foot had been twisted in
her fall, and she was scarcely able to stand. The gentleman offered
his services; and perceiving that her modesty declined what her
situation rendered necessary, took her up in his arms without farther
delay, and carried her down the hill. Then passing through the garden,
the gate of which had been left open by Margaret, he bore her directly
into the house, whither Margaret was just arrived, and quitted not his
hold till he had seated her in a chair in the parlour.
Elinor and her mother rose up in amazement at their entrance, and while
the eyes of both were fixed on him with an evident wonder and a secret
admiration which equally sprung from his appearance, he apologized for
his intrusion by relating its cause, in a manner so frank and so
graceful that his person, which was uncommonly handsome, received
additional charms from his voice and expression. Had he been even old,
ugly, and vulgar, the gratitude and kindness of Mrs. Dashwood would
have been secured by any act of attention to her child; but the
influence of youth, beauty, and elegance, gave an interest to the
action which came home to her feelings.
She thanked him again and again; and, with a sweetness of address which
always attended her, invited him to be seated. But this he declined,
as he was dirty and wet. Mrs. Dashwood then begged to know to whom she
was obliged. His name, he replied, was Willoughby, and his present
home was at Allenham, from whence he hoped she would allow him the
honour of calling tomorrow to enquire after Miss Dashwood. The honour
was readily granted, and he then departed, to make himself still more
interesting, in the midst of a heavy rain.
His manly beauty and more than common gracefulness were instantly the
theme of general admiration, and the laugh which his gallantry raised
against Marianne received particular spirit from his exterior
attractions.-- Marianne herself had seen less of his Mama the
rest, for the confusion which crimsoned over her face, on his lifting
her up, had robbed her of the power of regarding him after their
entering the house. But she had seen enough of him to join in all the
admiration of the others, and with an energy which always adorned her
praise. His person and air were equal to what her fancy had ever drawn
for the hero of a favourite story; and in his carrying her into the
house with so little previous formality, there was a rapidity of
thought which particularly recommended the action to her. Every
circumstance belonging to him was interesting. His name was good, his
residence was in their favourite village, and she soon found out that
of all manly dresses a shooting-jacket was the most becoming. Her
imagination was busy, her reflections were pleasant, and the pain of a
sprained ankle was disregarded.
Sir John called on them as soon as the next interval of fair weather
that morning allowed him to get out of doors; and Marianne's accident
being related to him, he was eagerly asked whether he knew any
gentleman of the name of Willoughby at Allenham.
"Willoughby!" cried Sir John; "what, is HE in the country? That is good
news however; I will ride over tomorrow, and ask him to dinner on
Thursday."
"You know him then," said Mrs. Dashwood.
"Know him! to be sure I do. Why, he is down here every year."
"And what sort of a young man is he?"
"As good a kind of fellow as ever lived, I assure you. A very decent
shot, and there is not a bolder rider in England."
"And is that all you can say for him?" cried Marianne, indignantly.
"But what are his manners on more intimate acquaintance? What his
pursuits, his talents, and genius?"
Sir John was rather puzzled.
"Upon my soul," said he, "I do not know much about him as to all THAT.
But he is a pleasant, good humoured fellow, and has got the nicest
little black bitch of a pointer I ever saw. Was she out with him
today?"
But Marianne could no more satisfy him as to the colour of Mr.
Willoughby's pointer, than he could describe to her the shades of his
mind.
"But who is he?" said Elinor. "Where does he come from? Has he a
house at Allenham?"
On this point Sir John could give more certain intelligence; and he
told them that Mr. Willoughby had no property of his own in the
country; that he resided there only while he was visiting the old lady
at Allenham Court, to whom he was related, and whose possessions he was
to inherit; adding, "Yes, yes, he is very well worth catching I can
tell you, Miss Dashwood; he has a pretty little estate of his own in
Somersetshire besides; and if I were you, I would not give him up to my
younger sister, in spite of all this tumbling down hills. Miss
Marianne must not expect to have all the men to herself. Brandon will
be jealous, if she does not take care."
"I do not believe," said Mrs. Dashwood, with a good humoured smile,
"that Mr. Willoughby will be incommoded by the attempts of either of MY
daughters towards what you call CATCHING him. It is not an employment
to which they have been brought up. Men are very safe with us, let
them be ever so rich. I am glad to find, however, from what you say,
that he is a respectable young man, and one whose acquaintance will not
be ineligible."
"He is as good a sort of fellow, I believe, as ever lived," repeated
Sir John. "I remember last Christmas at a little hop at the park, he
danced from eight o'clock till four, without once sitting down."
"Did he indeed?" cried Marianne with sparkling eyes, "and with
elegance, with spirit?"
"Yes; and he was up again at eight to ride to covert."
"That is what I like; that is what a young man ought to be. Whatever
be his pursuits, his eagerness in them should know no moderation, and
leave him no sense of fatigue."
"Aye, aye, I see how it will be," said Sir John, "I see how it will be.
You will be setting your cap at him now, and never think of poor
Brandon."
"That is an expression, Sir John," said Marianne, warmly, "which I
particularly dislike. I abhor every common-place phrase by which wit
is intended; and 'setting one's cap at a man,' or 'making a conquest,'
are the most odious of all. Their tendency is gross and illiberal; and
if their construction could ever be deemed clever, time has long ago
destroyed all its ingenuity."
Sir John did not much understand this reproof; but he laughed as
heartily as if he did, and then replied,
"Ay, you will make conquests enough, I dare say, one way or other.
Poor Brandon! he is quite smitten already, and he is very well worth
setting your cap at, I can tell you, in spite of all this tumbling
about and spraining of ankles."
| 1,727 | Chapter IX | https://web.archive.org/web/20201020004256/https://www.novelguide.com/sense-and-sensibility/summaries/volume1-chapter1-11 | Marianne and Margaret ignore signs of bad weather and go for a walk. It begins to rain, and as the girls rush home, Marianne trips and falls, spraining her ankle. An unknown handsome man who is out shooting game with his dogs comes to her assistance, scooping her up in his arms and carrying her back to the house. Mrs. Dashwood is charmed by the man, who introduces himself as Mr. Willoughby, currently of Allenham. He is given permission to call tomorrow to find out how Marianne is. After he leaves, the Dashwood women discuss him with admiration. When Sir John visits, they ask him about Willoughby. All Sir John can say is that he shoots and rides well, has a good gundog, and shows stamina in dancing. He says that Willoughby has no property of his own but is the heir of Mrs. Smith, a distant relative who lives at nearby Allenham Court. He concludes that he is "well worth catching" for any young woman. He adds that poor Colonel Brandon will be forgotten. Marianne is offended by the suggestion that she would try to catch anyone | null | 188 | 1 | [
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161 | true | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/chapters_32_to_33.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Sense and Sensibility/section_22_part_0.txt | Sense and Sensibility.chapters 32-33 | chapters 32-33 | null | {"name": "Chapters 32-33", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapters-3233", "summary": "When Elinor told Marianne about Willoughby's shocking behavior, she \"felt the loss of Willoughby's character yet more heavily than she had felt the loss of his heart.\" But she was kinder to Colonel Brandon, \"even voluntarily speaking, with a kind of compassionate respect.\" Mrs. Dashwood, on learning the truth from Elinor's letter, was miserable; however, she advised them not to shorten their visit to Mrs. Jennings, for the distraction would do Marianne good. Mrs. Palmer, Sir John, and Lady Middleton were all indignant about Willoughby's behavior and swore they would have nothing more to do with him, although, seeing the future Mrs. Willoughby would be a lady of fashion, Lady Middleton planned to leave her card with her. Two weeks after Marianne received Willoughby's letter, Elinor had to break the news of his marriage. At first Marianne received it \"with resolute composure,\" but for the rest of the day was in a pitiable state. The Misses Steele arrived in town and paid a call, behaving with their usual vulgarity. Lucy insinuated that Elinor had stayed in town to see Edward, and it took all Elinor's civility to remain composed in front of the girl. One day Marianne yielded to Elinor's urging and went shopping with her and Mrs. Jennings. Mrs. Jennings left them to do some business in Gray's jewelry shop while she paid a short call on a friend. While waiting to be served, Elinor and Marianne were diverted by a foppish young man who was buying a toothpick case and calling attention to himself. Finally he decided on his purchase, and the girls were served. Just as they finished their business, a gentleman appeared at their side. It was their stepbrother, John, who promised to call on them the next day. John was punctual and, after exchanging civilities with Mrs. Jennings and Colonel Brandon, went with Elinor to call on Sir John and Lady Middleton. On the way, John questioned her about Colonel Brandon and despite her protests insisted on believing that the colonel was interested in Elinor. He mentioned a prior attachment of Elinor's, saying it was out of the question and, alluding to an engagement for Edward, told her, \"It is not actually settled, but there is such a thing in agitation.\" Guiltily he tried to persuade his half-sister that, because of his many expenses, he was \"very far . . . from being rich\" and inquired about Mrs. Jennings, hinting that because of her kindness to Elinor and Marianne, they might well have \"expectations\" from her. Elinor protested again. He then asked, \"What is the matter with Marianne? She looks very unwell, has lost her colour, and is grown quite thin.\" Elinor told him that Marianne was suffering from a \"nervous complaint.\" John seemed to fear she would lose her looks and thus the chance of a good marriage. John was well pleased with his visit to Sir John and Lady Middleton and went off satisfied that he would have \"a charming account to carry to Fanny.\" He had feared they would be low-class due to Mrs. Jennings' low connections. But he was much impressed by Lady Middleton's elegance and Sir John's amiability.", "analysis": "Some of Jane Austen's most humorous writing is found in these chapters, especially in the reactions of Mrs. Palmer, Sir John, and Fanny to the news of Willoughby's faithlessness. Mrs. Palmer \"was determined to drop his acquaintance immediately, and she was very thankful that she had never been acquainted with him at all.\" Sir John is appalled by the fact that he had ever offered Willoughby a puppy. Lady Middleton expressed her shock daily and \"was able not only to see the Miss Dashwoods from the first without the smallest emotion, but very soon to see them without recollecting a word of the matter.\" The description of the stranger in Mr. Gray's shop is a masterpiece of satiric humor -- \"a person and face of strong, natural, sterling insignificance.\" In Austen's novels, good looks are invariably associated with good health, and a \"sickly\" girl has no allure for the male. John Dashwood is thus alarmed to see Marianne looking so poorly. John is anxious for his half-sisters to marry as soon and as well as possible to relieve him of the guilt he feels for not having provided for them. However, any pangs of conscience he does feel are quickly assuaged by his rationalizations concerning his own expenses, the Dashwoods' complacency at Barton, and their expectations for good marriages and a possible inheritance from someone as unlikely as Mrs. Jennings."} |
When the particulars of this conversation were repeated by Miss
Dashwood to her sister, as they very soon were, the effect on her was
not entirely such as the former had hoped to see. Not that Marianne
appeared to distrust the truth of any part of it, for she listened to
it all with the most steady and submissive attention, made neither
objection nor remark, attempted no vindication of Willoughby, and
seemed to shew by her tears that she felt it to be impossible. But
though this behaviour assured Elinor that the conviction of this guilt
WAS carried home to her mind, though she saw with satisfaction the
effect of it, in her no longer avoiding Colonel Brandon when he called,
in her speaking to him, even voluntarily speaking, with a kind of
compassionate respect, and though she saw her spirits less violently
irritated than before, she did not see her less wretched. Her mind did
become settled, but it was settled in a gloomy dejection. She felt the
loss of Willoughby's character yet more heavily than she had felt the
loss of his heart; his seduction and desertion of Miss Williams, the
misery of that poor girl, and the doubt of what his designs might ONCE
have been on herself, preyed altogether so much on her spirits, that
she could not bring herself to speak of what she felt even to Elinor;
and, brooding over her sorrows in silence, gave more pain to her sister
than could have been communicated by the most open and most frequent
confession of them.
To give the feelings or the language of Mrs. Dashwood on receiving and
answering Elinor's letter would be only to give a repetition of what
her daughters had already felt and said; of a disappointment hardly
less painful than Marianne's, and an indignation even greater than
Elinor's. Long letters from her, quickly succeeding each other,
arrived to tell all that she suffered and thought; to express her
anxious solicitude for Marianne, and entreat she would bear up with
fortitude under this misfortune. Bad indeed must the nature of
Marianne's affliction be, when her mother could talk of fortitude!
mortifying and humiliating must be the origin of those regrets, which
SHE could wish her not to indulge!
Against the interest of her own individual comfort, Mrs. Dashwood had
determined that it would be better for Marianne to be any where, at
that time, than at Barton, where every thing within her view would be
bringing back the past in the strongest and most afflicting manner, by
constantly placing Willoughby before her, such as she had always seen
him there. She recommended it to her daughters, therefore, by all
means not to shorten their visit to Mrs. Jennings; the length of which,
though never exactly fixed, had been expected by all to comprise at
least five or six weeks. A variety of occupations, of objects, and of
company, which could not be procured at Barton, would be inevitable
there, and might yet, she hoped, cheat Marianne, at times, into some
interest beyond herself, and even into some amusement, much as the
ideas of both might now be spurned by her.
From all danger of seeing Willoughby again, her mother considered her
to be at least equally safe in town as in the country, since his
acquaintance must now be dropped by all who called themselves her
friends. Design could never bring them in each other's way: negligence
could never leave them exposed to a surprise; and chance had less in
its favour in the crowd of London than even in the retirement of
Barton, where it might force him before her while paying that visit at
Allenham on his marriage, which Mrs. Dashwood, from foreseeing at first
as a probable event, had brought herself to expect as a certain one.
She had yet another reason for wishing her children to remain where
they were; a letter from her son-in-law had told her that he and his
wife were to be in town before the middle of February, and she judged
it right that they should sometimes see their brother.
Marianne had promised to be guided by her mother's opinion, and she
submitted to it therefore without opposition, though it proved
perfectly different from what she wished and expected, though she felt
it to be entirely wrong, formed on mistaken grounds, and that by
requiring her longer continuance in London it deprived her of the only
possible alleviation of her wretchedness, the personal sympathy of her
mother, and doomed her to such society and such scenes as must prevent
her ever knowing a moment's rest.
But it was a matter of great consolation to her, that what brought evil
to herself would bring good to her sister; and Elinor, on the other
hand, suspecting that it would not be in her power to avoid Edward
entirely, comforted herself by thinking, that though their longer stay
would therefore militate against her own happiness, it would be better
for Marianne than an immediate return into Devonshire.
Her carefulness in guarding her sister from ever hearing Willoughby's
name mentioned, was not thrown away. Marianne, though without knowing
it herself, reaped all its advantage; for neither Mrs. Jennings, nor
Sir John, nor even Mrs. Palmer herself, ever spoke of him before her.
Elinor wished that the same forbearance could have extended towards
herself, but that was impossible, and she was obliged to listen day
after day to the indignation of them all.
Sir John, could not have thought it possible. "A man of whom he had
always had such reason to think well! Such a good-natured fellow! He
did not believe there was a bolder rider in England! It was an
unaccountable business. He wished him at the devil with all his heart.
He would not speak another word to him, meet him where he might, for
all the world! No, not if it were to be by the side of Barton covert,
and they were kept watching for two hours together. Such a scoundrel
of a fellow! such a deceitful dog! It was only the last time they met
that he had offered him one of Folly's puppies! and this was the end of
it!"
Mrs. Palmer, in her way, was equally angry. "She was determined to
drop his acquaintance immediately, and she was very thankful that she
had never been acquainted with him at all. She wished with all her
heart Combe Magna was not so near Cleveland; but it did not signify,
for it was a great deal too far off to visit; she hated him so much
that she was resolved never to mention his name again, and she should
tell everybody she saw, how good-for-nothing he was."
The rest of Mrs. Palmer's sympathy was shewn in procuring all the
particulars in her power of the approaching marriage, and communicating
them to Elinor. She could soon tell at what coachmaker's the new
carriage was building, by what painter Mr. Willoughby's portrait was
drawn, and at what warehouse Miss Grey's clothes might be seen.
The calm and polite unconcern of Lady Middleton on the occasion was a
happy relief to Elinor's spirits, oppressed as they often were by the
clamorous kindness of the others. It was a great comfort to her to be
sure of exciting no interest in ONE person at least among their circle
of friends: a great comfort to know that there was ONE who would meet
her without feeling any curiosity after particulars, or any anxiety for
her sister's health.
Every qualification is raised at times, by the circumstances of the
moment, to more than its real value; and she was sometimes worried down
by officious condolence to rate good-breeding as more indispensable to
comfort than good-nature.
Lady Middleton expressed her sense of the affair about once every day,
or twice, if the subject occurred very often, by saying, "It is very
shocking, indeed!" and by the means of this continual though gentle
vent, was able not only to see the Miss Dashwoods from the first
without the smallest emotion, but very soon to see them without
recollecting a word of the matter; and having thus supported the
dignity of her own sex, and spoken her decided censure of what was
wrong in the other, she thought herself at liberty to attend to the
interest of her own assemblies, and therefore determined (though rather
against the opinion of Sir John) that as Mrs. Willoughby would at once
be a woman of elegance and fortune, to leave her card with her as soon
as she married.
Colonel Brandon's delicate, unobtrusive enquiries were never unwelcome
to Miss Dashwood. He had abundantly earned the privilege of intimate
discussion of her sister's disappointment, by the friendly zeal with
which he had endeavoured to soften it, and they always conversed with
confidence. His chief reward for the painful exertion of disclosing
past sorrows and present humiliations, was given in the pitying eye
with which Marianne sometimes observed him, and the gentleness of her
voice whenever (though it did not often happen) she was obliged, or
could oblige herself to speak to him. THESE assured him that his
exertion had produced an increase of good-will towards himself, and
THESE gave Elinor hopes of its being farther augmented hereafter; but
Mrs. Jennings, who knew nothing of all this, who knew only that the
Colonel continued as grave as ever, and that she could neither prevail
on him to make the offer himself, nor commission her to make it for
him, began, at the end of two days, to think that, instead of
Midsummer, they would not be married till Michaelmas, and by the end of
a week that it would not be a match at all. The good understanding
between the Colonel and Miss Dashwood seemed rather to declare that the
honours of the mulberry-tree, the canal, and the yew arbour, would all
be made over to HER; and Mrs. Jennings had, for some time ceased to
think at all of Mrs. Ferrars.
Early in February, within a fortnight from the receipt of Willoughby's
letter, Elinor had the painful office of informing her sister that he
was married. She had taken care to have the intelligence conveyed to
herself, as soon as it was known that the ceremony was over, as she was
desirous that Marianne should not receive the first notice of it from
the public papers, which she saw her eagerly examining every morning.
She received the news with resolute composure; made no observation on
it, and at first shed no tears; but after a short time they would burst
out, and for the rest of the day, she was in a state hardly less
pitiable than when she first learnt to expect the event.
The Willoughbys left town as soon as they were married; and Elinor now
hoped, as there could be no danger of her seeing either of them, to
prevail on her sister, who had never yet left the house since the blow
first fell, to go out again by degrees as she had done before.
About this time the two Miss Steeles, lately arrived at their cousin's
house in Bartlett's Buildings, Holburn, presented themselves again
before their more grand relations in Conduit and Berkeley Streets; and
were welcomed by them all with great cordiality.
Elinor only was sorry to see them. Their presence always gave her
pain, and she hardly knew how to make a very gracious return to the
overpowering delight of Lucy in finding her STILL in town.
"I should have been quite disappointed if I had not found you here
STILL," said she repeatedly, with a strong emphasis on the word. "But
I always thought I SHOULD. I was almost sure you would not leave
London yet awhile; though you TOLD me, you know, at Barton, that you
should not stay above a MONTH. But I thought, at the time, that you
would most likely change your mind when it came to the point. It would
have been such a great pity to have went away before your brother and
sister came. And now to be sure you will be in no hurry to be gone. I
am amazingly glad you did not keep to YOUR WORD."
Elinor perfectly understood her, and was forced to use all her
self-command to make it appear that she did NOT.
"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Jennings, "and how did you travel?"
"Not in the stage, I assure you," replied Miss Steele, with quick
exultation; "we came post all the way, and had a very smart beau to
attend us. Dr. Davies was coming to town, and so we thought we'd join
him in a post-chaise; and he behaved very genteelly, and paid ten or
twelve shillings more than we did."
"Oh, oh!" cried Mrs. Jennings; "very pretty, indeed! and the Doctor is
a single man, I warrant you."
"There now," said Miss Steele, affectedly simpering, "everybody laughs
at me so about the Doctor, and I cannot think why. My cousins say they
are sure I have made a conquest; but for my part I declare I never
think about him from one hour's end to another. 'Lord! here comes your
beau, Nancy,' my cousin said t'other day, when she saw him crossing the
street to the house. My beau, indeed! said I--I cannot think who you
mean. The Doctor is no beau of mine."
"Aye, aye, that is very pretty talking--but it won't do--the Doctor is
the man, I see."
"No, indeed!" replied her cousin, with affected earnestness, "and I beg
you will contradict it, if you ever hear it talked of."
Mrs. Jennings directly gave her the gratifying assurance that she
certainly would NOT, and Miss Steele was made completely happy.
"I suppose you will go and stay with your brother and sister, Miss
Dashwood, when they come to town," said Lucy, returning, after a
cessation of hostile hints, to the charge.
"No, I do not think we shall."
"Oh, yes, I dare say you will."
Elinor would not humour her by farther opposition.
"What a charming thing it is that Mrs. Dashwood can spare you both for
so long a time together!"
"Long a time, indeed!" interposed Mrs. Jennings. "Why, their visit is
but just begun!"
Lucy was silenced.
"I am sorry we cannot see your sister, Miss Dashwood," said Miss
Steele. "I am sorry she is not well--" for Marianne had left the room
on their arrival.
"You are very good. My sister will be equally sorry to miss the
pleasure of seeing you; but she has been very much plagued lately with
nervous head-aches, which make her unfit for company or conversation."
"Oh, dear, that is a great pity! but such old friends as Lucy and
me!--I think she might see US; and I am sure we would not speak a word."
Elinor, with great civility, declined the proposal. Her sister was
perhaps laid down upon the bed, or in her dressing gown, and therefore
not able to come to them.
"Oh, if that's all," cried Miss Steele, "we can just as well go and see
HER."
Elinor began to find this impertinence too much for her temper; but she
was saved the trouble of checking it, by Lucy's sharp reprimand, which
now, as on many occasions, though it did not give much sweetness to the
manners of one sister, was of advantage in governing those of the other.
After some opposition, Marianne yielded to her sister's entreaties, and
consented to go out with her and Mrs. Jennings one morning for half an
hour. She expressly conditioned, however, for paying no visits, and
would do no more than accompany them to Gray's in Sackville Street,
where Elinor was carrying on a negotiation for the exchange of a few
old-fashioned jewels of her mother.
When they stopped at the door, Mrs. Jennings recollected that there was
a lady at the other end of the street on whom she ought to call; and as
she had no business at Gray's, it was resolved, that while her young
friends transacted their's, she should pay her visit and return for
them.
On ascending the stairs, the Miss Dashwoods found so many people before
them in the room, that there was not a person at liberty to tend to
their orders; and they were obliged to wait. All that could be done
was, to sit down at that end of the counter which seemed to promise the
quickest succession; one gentleman only was standing there, and it is
probable that Elinor was not without hope of exciting his politeness to
a quicker despatch. But the correctness of his eye, and the delicacy
of his taste, proved to be beyond his politeness. He was giving orders
for a toothpick-case for himself, and till its size, shape, and
ornaments were determined, all of which, after examining and debating
for a quarter of an hour over every toothpick-case in the shop, were
finally arranged by his own inventive fancy, he had no leisure to
bestow any other attention on the two ladies, than what was comprised
in three or four very broad stares; a kind of notice which served to
imprint on Elinor the remembrance of a person and face, of strong,
natural, sterling insignificance, though adorned in the first style of
fashion.
Marianne was spared from the troublesome feelings of contempt and
resentment, on this impertinent examination of their features, and on
the puppyism of his manner in deciding on all the different horrors of
the different toothpick-cases presented to his inspection, by remaining
unconscious of it all; for she was as well able to collect her thoughts
within herself, and be as ignorant of what was passing around her, in
Mr. Gray's shop, as in her own bedroom.
At last the affair was decided. The ivory, the gold, and the pearls,
all received their appointment, and the gentleman having named the last
day on which his existence could be continued without the possession of
the toothpick-case, drew on his gloves with leisurely care, and
bestowing another glance on the Miss Dashwoods, but such a one as
seemed rather to demand than express admiration, walked off with a
happy air of real conceit and affected indifference.
Elinor lost no time in bringing her business forward, was on the point
of concluding it, when another gentleman presented himself at her side.
She turned her eyes towards his face, and found him with some surprise
to be her brother.
Their affection and pleasure in meeting was just enough to make a very
creditable appearance in Mr. Gray's shop. John Dashwood was really far
from being sorry to see his sisters again; it rather gave them
satisfaction; and his inquiries after their mother were respectful and
attentive.
Elinor found that he and Fanny had been in town two days.
"I wished very much to call upon you yesterday," said he, "but it was
impossible, for we were obliged to take Harry to see the wild beasts at
Exeter Exchange; and we spent the rest of the day with Mrs. Ferrars.
Harry was vastly pleased. THIS morning I had fully intended to call on
you, if I could possibly find a spare half hour, but one has always so
much to do on first coming to town. I am come here to bespeak Fanny a
seal. But tomorrow I think I shall certainly be able to call in
Berkeley Street, and be introduced to your friend Mrs. Jennings. I
understand she is a woman of very good fortune. And the Middletons
too, you must introduce me to THEM. As my mother-in-law's relations, I
shall be happy to show them every respect. They are excellent
neighbours to you in the country, I understand."
"Excellent indeed. Their attention to our comfort, their friendliness
in every particular, is more than I can express."
"I am extremely glad to hear it, upon my word; extremely glad indeed.
But so it ought to be; they are people of large fortune, they are
related to you, and every civility and accommodation that can serve to
make your situation pleasant might be reasonably expected. And so you
are most comfortably settled in your little cottage and want for
nothing! Edward brought us a most charming account of the place: the
most complete thing of its kind, he said, that ever was, and you all
seemed to enjoy it beyond any thing. It was a great satisfaction to us
to hear it, I assure you."
Elinor did feel a little ashamed of her brother; and was not sorry to
be spared the necessity of answering him, by the arrival of Mrs.
Jennings's servant, who came to tell her that his mistress waited for
them at the door.
Mr. Dashwood attended them down stairs, was introduced to Mrs. Jennings
at the door of her carriage, and repeating his hope of being able to
call on them the next day, took leave.
His visit was duly paid. He came with a pretence at an apology from
their sister-in-law, for not coming too; "but she was so much engaged
with her mother, that really she had no leisure for going any where."
Mrs. Jennings, however, assured him directly, that she should not stand
upon ceremony, for they were all cousins, or something like it, and she
should certainly wait on Mrs. John Dashwood very soon, and bring her
sisters to see her. His manners to THEM, though calm, were perfectly
kind; to Mrs. Jennings, most attentively civil; and on Colonel
Brandon's coming in soon after himself, he eyed him with a curiosity
which seemed to say, that he only wanted to know him to be rich, to be
equally civil to HIM.
After staying with them half an hour, he asked Elinor to walk with him
to Conduit Street, and introduce him to Sir John and Lady Middleton.
The weather was remarkably fine, and she readily consented. As soon as
they were out of the house, his enquiries began.
"Who is Colonel Brandon? Is he a man of fortune?"
"Yes; he has very good property in Dorsetshire."
"I am glad of it. He seems a most gentlemanlike man; and I think,
Elinor, I may congratulate you on the prospect of a very respectable
establishment in life."
"Me, brother! what do you mean?"
"He likes you. I observed him narrowly, and am convinced of it. What
is the amount of his fortune?"
"I believe about two thousand a year."
"Two thousand a-year;" and then working himself up to a pitch of
enthusiastic generosity, he added, "Elinor, I wish with all my heart it
were TWICE as much, for your sake."
"Indeed I believe you," replied Elinor; "but I am very sure that
Colonel Brandon has not the smallest wish of marrying ME."
"You are mistaken, Elinor; you are very much mistaken. A very little
trouble on your side secures him. Perhaps just at present he may be
undecided; the smallness of your fortune may make him hang back; his
friends may all advise him against it. But some of those little
attentions and encouragements which ladies can so easily give will fix
him, in spite of himself. And there can be no reason why you should
not try for him. It is not to be supposed that any prior attachment on
your side--in short, you know as to an attachment of that kind, it is
quite out of the question, the objections are insurmountable--you have
too much sense not to see all that. Colonel Brandon must be the man;
and no civility shall be wanting on my part to make him pleased with
you and your family. It is a match that must give universal
satisfaction. In short, it is a kind of thing that"--lowering his
voice to an important whisper--"will be exceedingly welcome to ALL
PARTIES." Recollecting himself, however, he added, "That is, I mean to
say--your friends are all truly anxious to see you well settled; Fanny
particularly, for she has your interest very much at heart, I assure
you. And her mother too, Mrs. Ferrars, a very good-natured woman, I am
sure it would give her great pleasure; she said as much the other day."
Elinor would not vouchsafe any answer.
"It would be something remarkable, now," he continued, "something
droll, if Fanny should have a brother and I a sister settling at the
same time. And yet it is not very unlikely."
"Is Mr. Edward Ferrars," said Elinor, with resolution, "going to be
married?"
"It is not actually settled, but there is such a thing in agitation.
He has a most excellent mother. Mrs. Ferrars, with the utmost
liberality, will come forward, and settle on him a thousand a year, if
the match takes place. The lady is the Hon. Miss Morton, only daughter
of the late Lord Morton, with thirty thousand pounds. A very desirable
connection on both sides, and I have not a doubt of its taking place in
time. A thousand a-year is a great deal for a mother to give away, to
make over for ever; but Mrs. Ferrars has a noble spirit. To give you
another instance of her liberality:--The other day, as soon as we came
to town, aware that money could not be very plenty with us just now,
she put bank-notes into Fanny's hands to the amount of two hundred
pounds. And extremely acceptable it is, for we must live at a great
expense while we are here."
He paused for her assent and compassion; and she forced herself to say,
"Your expenses both in town and country must certainly be considerable;
but your income is a large one."
"Not so large, I dare say, as many people suppose. I do not mean to
complain, however; it is undoubtedly a comfortable one, and I hope will
in time be better. The enclosure of Norland Common, now carrying on,
is a most serious drain. And then I have made a little purchase within
this half year; East Kingham Farm, you must remember the place, where
old Gibson used to live. The land was so very desirable for me in
every respect, so immediately adjoining my own property, that I felt it
my duty to buy it. I could not have answered it to my conscience to
let it fall into any other hands. A man must pay for his convenience;
and it HAS cost me a vast deal of money."
"More than you think it really and intrinsically worth."
"Why, I hope not that. I might have sold it again, the next day, for
more than I gave: but, with regard to the purchase-money, I might have
been very unfortunate indeed; for the stocks were at that time so low,
that if I had not happened to have the necessary sum in my banker's
hands, I must have sold out to very great loss."
Elinor could only smile.
"Other great and inevitable expenses too we have had on first coming to
Norland. Our respected father, as you well know, bequeathed all the
Stanhill effects that remained at Norland (and very valuable they were)
to your mother. Far be it from me to repine at his doing so; he had an
undoubted right to dispose of his own property as he chose, but, in
consequence of it, we have been obliged to make large purchases of
linen, china, &c. to supply the place of what was taken away. You may
guess, after all these expenses, how very far we must be from being
rich, and how acceptable Mrs. Ferrars's kindness is."
"Certainly," said Elinor; "and assisted by her liberality, I hope you
may yet live to be in easy circumstances."
"Another year or two may do much towards it," he gravely replied; "but
however there is still a great deal to be done. There is not a stone
laid of Fanny's green-house, and nothing but the plan of the
flower-garden marked out."
"Where is the green-house to be?"
"Upon the knoll behind the house. The old walnut trees are all come
down to make room for it. It will be a very fine object from many
parts of the park, and the flower-garden will slope down just before
it, and be exceedingly pretty. We have cleared away all the old thorns
that grew in patches over the brow."
Elinor kept her concern and her censure to herself; and was very
thankful that Marianne was not present, to share the provocation.
Having now said enough to make his poverty clear, and to do away the
necessity of buying a pair of ear-rings for each of his sisters, in his
next visit at Gray's his thoughts took a cheerfuller turn, and he began
to congratulate Elinor on having such a friend as Mrs. Jennings.
"She seems a most valuable woman indeed--Her house, her style of
living, all bespeak an exceeding good income; and it is an acquaintance
that has not only been of great use to you hitherto, but in the end may
prove materially advantageous.--Her inviting you to town is certainly a
vast thing in your favour; and indeed, it speaks altogether so great a
regard for you, that in all probability when she dies you will not be
forgotten.-- She must have a great deal to leave."
"Nothing at all, I should rather suppose; for she has only her
jointure, which will descend to her children."
"But it is not to be imagined that she lives up to her income. Few
people of common prudence will do THAT; and whatever she saves, she
will be able to dispose of."
"And do you not think it more likely that she should leave it to her
daughters, than to us?"
"Her daughters are both exceedingly well married, and therefore I
cannot perceive the necessity of her remembering them farther.
Whereas, in my opinion, by her taking so much notice of you, and
treating you in this kind of way, she has given you a sort of claim on
her future consideration, which a conscientious woman would not
disregard. Nothing can be kinder than her behaviour; and she can
hardly do all this, without being aware of the expectation it raises."
"But she raises none in those most concerned. Indeed, brother, your
anxiety for our welfare and prosperity carries you too far."
"Why, to be sure," said he, seeming to recollect himself, "people have
little, have very little in their power. But, my dear Elinor, what is
the matter with Marianne?-- she looks very unwell, has lost her colour,
and is grown quite thin. Is she ill?"
"She is not well, she has had a nervous complaint on her for several
weeks."
"I am sorry for that. At her time of life, any thing of an illness
destroys the bloom for ever! Hers has been a very short one! She was
as handsome a girl last September, as I ever saw; and as likely to
attract the man. There was something in her style of beauty, to please
them particularly. I remember Fanny used to say that she would marry
sooner and better than you did; not but what she is exceedingly fond of
YOU, but so it happened to strike her. She will be mistaken, however.
I question whether Marianne NOW, will marry a man worth more than five
or six hundred a-year, at the utmost, and I am very much deceived if
YOU do not do better. Dorsetshire! I know very little of Dorsetshire;
but, my dear Elinor, I shall be exceedingly glad to know more of it;
and I think I can answer for your having Fanny and myself among the
earliest and best pleased of your visitors."
Elinor tried very seriously to convince him that there was no
likelihood of her marrying Colonel Brandon; but it was an expectation
of too much pleasure to himself to be relinquished, and he was really
resolved on seeking an intimacy with that gentleman, and promoting the
marriage by every possible attention. He had just compunction enough
for having done nothing for his sisters himself, to be exceedingly
anxious that everybody else should do a great deal; and an offer from
Colonel Brandon, or a legacy from Mrs. Jennings, was the easiest means
of atoning for his own neglect.
They were lucky enough to find Lady Middleton at home, and Sir John
came in before their visit ended. Abundance of civilities passed on
all sides. Sir John was ready to like anybody, and though Mr. Dashwood
did not seem to know much about horses, he soon set him down as a very
good-natured fellow: while Lady Middleton saw enough of fashion in his
appearance to think his acquaintance worth having; and Mr. Dashwood
went away delighted with both.
"I shall have a charming account to carry to Fanny," said he, as he
walked back with his sister. "Lady Middleton is really a most elegant
woman! Such a woman as I am sure Fanny will be glad to know. And Mrs.
Jennings too, an exceedingly well-behaved woman, though not so elegant
as her daughter. Your sister need not have any scruple even of
visiting HER, which, to say the truth, has been a little the case, and
very naturally; for we only knew that Mrs. Jennings was the widow of a
man who had got all his money in a low way; and Fanny and Mrs. Ferrars
were both strongly prepossessed, that neither she nor her daughters
were such kind of women as Fanny would like to associate with. But now
I can carry her a most satisfactory account of both."
| 5,244 | Chapters 32-33 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapters-3233 | When Elinor told Marianne about Willoughby's shocking behavior, she "felt the loss of Willoughby's character yet more heavily than she had felt the loss of his heart." But she was kinder to Colonel Brandon, "even voluntarily speaking, with a kind of compassionate respect." Mrs. Dashwood, on learning the truth from Elinor's letter, was miserable; however, she advised them not to shorten their visit to Mrs. Jennings, for the distraction would do Marianne good. Mrs. Palmer, Sir John, and Lady Middleton were all indignant about Willoughby's behavior and swore they would have nothing more to do with him, although, seeing the future Mrs. Willoughby would be a lady of fashion, Lady Middleton planned to leave her card with her. Two weeks after Marianne received Willoughby's letter, Elinor had to break the news of his marriage. At first Marianne received it "with resolute composure," but for the rest of the day was in a pitiable state. The Misses Steele arrived in town and paid a call, behaving with their usual vulgarity. Lucy insinuated that Elinor had stayed in town to see Edward, and it took all Elinor's civility to remain composed in front of the girl. One day Marianne yielded to Elinor's urging and went shopping with her and Mrs. Jennings. Mrs. Jennings left them to do some business in Gray's jewelry shop while she paid a short call on a friend. While waiting to be served, Elinor and Marianne were diverted by a foppish young man who was buying a toothpick case and calling attention to himself. Finally he decided on his purchase, and the girls were served. Just as they finished their business, a gentleman appeared at their side. It was their stepbrother, John, who promised to call on them the next day. John was punctual and, after exchanging civilities with Mrs. Jennings and Colonel Brandon, went with Elinor to call on Sir John and Lady Middleton. On the way, John questioned her about Colonel Brandon and despite her protests insisted on believing that the colonel was interested in Elinor. He mentioned a prior attachment of Elinor's, saying it was out of the question and, alluding to an engagement for Edward, told her, "It is not actually settled, but there is such a thing in agitation." Guiltily he tried to persuade his half-sister that, because of his many expenses, he was "very far . . . from being rich" and inquired about Mrs. Jennings, hinting that because of her kindness to Elinor and Marianne, they might well have "expectations" from her. Elinor protested again. He then asked, "What is the matter with Marianne? She looks very unwell, has lost her colour, and is grown quite thin." Elinor told him that Marianne was suffering from a "nervous complaint." John seemed to fear she would lose her looks and thus the chance of a good marriage. John was well pleased with his visit to Sir John and Lady Middleton and went off satisfied that he would have "a charming account to carry to Fanny." He had feared they would be low-class due to Mrs. Jennings' low connections. But he was much impressed by Lady Middleton's elegance and Sir John's amiability. | Some of Jane Austen's most humorous writing is found in these chapters, especially in the reactions of Mrs. Palmer, Sir John, and Fanny to the news of Willoughby's faithlessness. Mrs. Palmer "was determined to drop his acquaintance immediately, and she was very thankful that she had never been acquainted with him at all." Sir John is appalled by the fact that he had ever offered Willoughby a puppy. Lady Middleton expressed her shock daily and "was able not only to see the Miss Dashwoods from the first without the smallest emotion, but very soon to see them without recollecting a word of the matter." The description of the stranger in Mr. Gray's shop is a masterpiece of satiric humor -- "a person and face of strong, natural, sterling insignificance." In Austen's novels, good looks are invariably associated with good health, and a "sickly" girl has no allure for the male. John Dashwood is thus alarmed to see Marianne looking so poorly. John is anxious for his half-sisters to marry as soon and as well as possible to relieve him of the guilt he feels for not having provided for them. However, any pangs of conscience he does feel are quickly assuaged by his rationalizations concerning his own expenses, the Dashwoods' complacency at Barton, and their expectations for good marriages and a possible inheritance from someone as unlikely as Mrs. Jennings. | 528 | 230 | [
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161 | false | gradesaver | all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/33.txt | finished_summaries/gradesaver/Sense and Sensibility/section_3_part_3.txt | Sense and Sensibility.chapter 33 | chapter 33 | null | {"name": "Chapter 33", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210419170735/https://www.gradesaver.com/sense-and-sensibility/study-guide/summary-chapters-31-40", "summary": "Marianne is persuaded to go out on a short errand to the jeweler's. They find John Dashwood there, as he and Fanny had just gotten into town. He comes to visit them the next day, to be introduced to Mrs. Jennings and to Sir John and Lady Middleton. Colonel Brandon comes in during his visit, and John is somehow convinced that the Colonel and Elinor will probably be married. He congratulates Elinor on the match, though she tries and fails to convince him that there is no such plan. John also tells her that Edward is to be married to Miss Morton, an orphan with a great deal of money left to her. To excuse himself from helping the Dashwood women, he goes on for some time about how little money he has, and the poor state of his finances. He also insists that Mrs. Jennings will probably leave some money for the girls in his will, thus convincing himself that he has no need to help them in their tough circumstances. He also laments that Marianne has lost her beauty and bloom through illness, and will hardly marry well now; he is then introduced to Sir John and Lady Middleton, and determines that Fanny will certainly find them charming and worthy company.", "analysis": "John Dashwood's meanness and miserly nature is displayed again here, as he makes a long, involved argument convincing himself that he has no obligations to the Dashwood girls. That he has to justify this before Elinor shows that he is not altogether cold-hearted, but shows him to be petty and wholly ungenerous. His condescension toward Elinor is also rather appalling, and serves to show Elinor in an even more positive light through the juxtaposition of their characters. Snobbery is also evident in John as he says that Fanny thought Mrs. Jennings and her daughters were below her because they got their money through trade. John Dashwood is a symbol of the petty, greedy type found often in the upper classes, and Austen is sure to expose all his foibles through his conversation and excuses"} |
After some opposition, Marianne yielded to her sister's entreaties, and
consented to go out with her and Mrs. Jennings one morning for half an
hour. She expressly conditioned, however, for paying no visits, and
would do no more than accompany them to Gray's in Sackville Street,
where Elinor was carrying on a negotiation for the exchange of a few
old-fashioned jewels of her mother.
When they stopped at the door, Mrs. Jennings recollected that there was
a lady at the other end of the street on whom she ought to call; and as
she had no business at Gray's, it was resolved, that while her young
friends transacted their's, she should pay her visit and return for
them.
On ascending the stairs, the Miss Dashwoods found so many people before
them in the room, that there was not a person at liberty to tend to
their orders; and they were obliged to wait. All that could be done
was, to sit down at that end of the counter which seemed to promise the
quickest succession; one gentleman only was standing there, and it is
probable that Elinor was not without hope of exciting his politeness to
a quicker despatch. But the correctness of his eye, and the delicacy
of his taste, proved to be beyond his politeness. He was giving orders
for a toothpick-case for himself, and till its size, shape, and
ornaments were determined, all of which, after examining and debating
for a quarter of an hour over every toothpick-case in the shop, were
finally arranged by his own inventive fancy, he had no leisure to
bestow any other attention on the two ladies, than what was comprised
in three or four very broad stares; a kind of notice which served to
imprint on Elinor the remembrance of a person and face, of strong,
natural, sterling insignificance, though adorned in the first style of
fashion.
Marianne was spared from the troublesome feelings of contempt and
resentment, on this impertinent examination of their features, and on
the puppyism of his manner in deciding on all the different horrors of
the different toothpick-cases presented to his inspection, by remaining
unconscious of it all; for she was as well able to collect her thoughts
within herself, and be as ignorant of what was passing around her, in
Mr. Gray's shop, as in her own bedroom.
At last the affair was decided. The ivory, the gold, and the pearls,
all received their appointment, and the gentleman having named the last
day on which his existence could be continued without the possession of
the toothpick-case, drew on his gloves with leisurely care, and
bestowing another glance on the Miss Dashwoods, but such a one as
seemed rather to demand than express admiration, walked off with a
happy air of real conceit and affected indifference.
Elinor lost no time in bringing her business forward, was on the point
of concluding it, when another gentleman presented himself at her side.
She turned her eyes towards his face, and found him with some surprise
to be her brother.
Their affection and pleasure in meeting was just enough to make a very
creditable appearance in Mr. Gray's shop. John Dashwood was really far
from being sorry to see his sisters again; it rather gave them
satisfaction; and his inquiries after their mother were respectful and
attentive.
Elinor found that he and Fanny had been in town two days.
"I wished very much to call upon you yesterday," said he, "but it was
impossible, for we were obliged to take Harry to see the wild beasts at
Exeter Exchange; and we spent the rest of the day with Mrs. Ferrars.
Harry was vastly pleased. THIS morning I had fully intended to call on
you, if I could possibly find a spare half hour, but one has always so
much to do on first coming to town. I am come here to bespeak Fanny a
seal. But tomorrow I think I shall certainly be able to call in
Berkeley Street, and be introduced to your friend Mrs. Jennings. I
understand she is a woman of very good fortune. And the Middletons
too, you must introduce me to THEM. As my mother-in-law's relations, I
shall be happy to show them every respect. They are excellent
neighbours to you in the country, I understand."
"Excellent indeed. Their attention to our comfort, their friendliness
in every particular, is more than I can express."
"I am extremely glad to hear it, upon my word; extremely glad indeed.
But so it ought to be; they are people of large fortune, they are
related to you, and every civility and accommodation that can serve to
make your situation pleasant might be reasonably expected. And so you
are most comfortably settled in your little cottage and want for
nothing! Edward brought us a most charming account of the place: the
most complete thing of its kind, he said, that ever was, and you all
seemed to enjoy it beyond any thing. It was a great satisfaction to us
to hear it, I assure you."
Elinor did feel a little ashamed of her brother; and was not sorry to
be spared the necessity of answering him, by the arrival of Mrs.
Jennings's servant, who came to tell her that his mistress waited for
them at the door.
Mr. Dashwood attended them down stairs, was introduced to Mrs. Jennings
at the door of her carriage, and repeating his hope of being able to
call on them the next day, took leave.
His visit was duly paid. He came with a pretence at an apology from
their sister-in-law, for not coming too; "but she was so much engaged
with her mother, that really she had no leisure for going any where."
Mrs. Jennings, however, assured him directly, that she should not stand
upon ceremony, for they were all cousins, or something like it, and she
should certainly wait on Mrs. John Dashwood very soon, and bring her
sisters to see her. His manners to THEM, though calm, were perfectly
kind; to Mrs. Jennings, most attentively civil; and on Colonel
Brandon's coming in soon after himself, he eyed him with a curiosity
which seemed to say, that he only wanted to know him to be rich, to be
equally civil to HIM.
After staying with them half an hour, he asked Elinor to walk with him
to Conduit Street, and introduce him to Sir John and Lady Middleton.
The weather was remarkably fine, and she readily consented. As soon as
they were out of the house, his enquiries began.
"Who is Colonel Brandon? Is he a man of fortune?"
"Yes; he has very good property in Dorsetshire."
"I am glad of it. He seems a most gentlemanlike man; and I think,
Elinor, I may congratulate you on the prospect of a very respectable
establishment in life."
"Me, brother! what do you mean?"
"He likes you. I observed him narrowly, and am convinced of it. What
is the amount of his fortune?"
"I believe about two thousand a year."
"Two thousand a-year;" and then working himself up to a pitch of
enthusiastic generosity, he added, "Elinor, I wish with all my heart it
were TWICE as much, for your sake."
"Indeed I believe you," replied Elinor; "but I am very sure that
Colonel Brandon has not the smallest wish of marrying ME."
"You are mistaken, Elinor; you are very much mistaken. A very little
trouble on your side secures him. Perhaps just at present he may be
undecided; the smallness of your fortune may make him hang back; his
friends may all advise him against it. But some of those little
attentions and encouragements which ladies can so easily give will fix
him, in spite of himself. And there can be no reason why you should
not try for him. It is not to be supposed that any prior attachment on
your side--in short, you know as to an attachment of that kind, it is
quite out of the question, the objections are insurmountable--you have
too much sense not to see all that. Colonel Brandon must be the man;
and no civility shall be wanting on my part to make him pleased with
you and your family. It is a match that must give universal
satisfaction. In short, it is a kind of thing that"--lowering his
voice to an important whisper--"will be exceedingly welcome to ALL
PARTIES." Recollecting himself, however, he added, "That is, I mean to
say--your friends are all truly anxious to see you well settled; Fanny
particularly, for she has your interest very much at heart, I assure
you. And her mother too, Mrs. Ferrars, a very good-natured woman, I am
sure it would give her great pleasure; she said as much the other day."
Elinor would not vouchsafe any answer.
"It would be something remarkable, now," he continued, "something
droll, if Fanny should have a brother and I a sister settling at the
same time. And yet it is not very unlikely."
"Is Mr. Edward Ferrars," said Elinor, with resolution, "going to be
married?"
"It is not actually settled, but there is such a thing in agitation.
He has a most excellent mother. Mrs. Ferrars, with the utmost
liberality, will come forward, and settle on him a thousand a year, if
the match takes place. The lady is the Hon. Miss Morton, only daughter
of the late Lord Morton, with thirty thousand pounds. A very desirable
connection on both sides, and I have not a doubt of its taking place in
time. A thousand a-year is a great deal for a mother to give away, to
make over for ever; but Mrs. Ferrars has a noble spirit. To give you
another instance of her liberality:--The other day, as soon as we came
to town, aware that money could not be very plenty with us just now,
she put bank-notes into Fanny's hands to the amount of two hundred
pounds. And extremely acceptable it is, for we must live at a great
expense while we are here."
He paused for her assent and compassion; and she forced herself to say,
"Your expenses both in town and country must certainly be considerable;
but your income is a large one."
"Not so large, I dare say, as many people suppose. I do not mean to
complain, however; it is undoubtedly a comfortable one, and I hope will
in time be better. The enclosure of Norland Common, now carrying on,
is a most serious drain. And then I have made a little purchase within
this half year; East Kingham Farm, you must remember the place, where
old Gibson used to live. The land was so very desirable for me in
every respect, so immediately adjoining my own property, that I felt it
my duty to buy it. I could not have answered it to my conscience to
let it fall into any other hands. A man must pay for his convenience;
and it HAS cost me a vast deal of money."
"More than you think it really and intrinsically worth."
"Why, I hope not that. I might have sold it again, the next day, for
more than I gave: but, with regard to the purchase-money, I might have
been very unfortunate indeed; for the stocks were at that time so low,
that if I had not happened to have the necessary sum in my banker's
hands, I must have sold out to very great loss."
Elinor could only smile.
"Other great and inevitable expenses too we have had on first coming to
Norland. Our respected father, as you well know, bequeathed all the
Stanhill effects that remained at Norland (and very valuable they were)
to your mother. Far be it from me to repine at his doing so; he had an
undoubted right to dispose of his own property as he chose, but, in
consequence of it, we have been obliged to make large purchases of
linen, china, &c. to supply the place of what was taken away. You may
guess, after all these expenses, how very far we must be from being
rich, and how acceptable Mrs. Ferrars's kindness is."
"Certainly," said Elinor; "and assisted by her liberality, I hope you
may yet live to be in easy circumstances."
"Another year or two may do much towards it," he gravely replied; "but
however there is still a great deal to be done. There is not a stone
laid of Fanny's green-house, and nothing but the plan of the
flower-garden marked out."
"Where is the green-house to be?"
"Upon the knoll behind the house. The old walnut trees are all come
down to make room for it. It will be a very fine object from many
parts of the park, and the flower-garden will slope down just before
it, and be exceedingly pretty. We have cleared away all the old thorns
that grew in patches over the brow."
Elinor kept her concern and her censure to herself; and was very
thankful that Marianne was not present, to share the provocation.
Having now said enough to make his poverty clear, and to do away the
necessity of buying a pair of ear-rings for each of his sisters, in his
next visit at Gray's his thoughts took a cheerfuller turn, and he began
to congratulate Elinor on having such a friend as Mrs. Jennings.
"She seems a most valuable woman indeed--Her house, her style of
living, all bespeak an exceeding good income; and it is an acquaintance
that has not only been of great use to you hitherto, but in the end may
prove materially advantageous.--Her inviting you to town is certainly a
vast thing in your favour; and indeed, it speaks altogether so great a
regard for you, that in all probability when she dies you will not be
forgotten.-- She must have a great deal to leave."
"Nothing at all, I should rather suppose; for she has only her
jointure, which will descend to her children."
"But it is not to be imagined that she lives up to her income. Few
people of common prudence will do THAT; and whatever she saves, she
will be able to dispose of."
"And do you not think it more likely that she should leave it to her
daughters, than to us?"
"Her daughters are both exceedingly well married, and therefore I
cannot perceive the necessity of her remembering them farther.
Whereas, in my opinion, by her taking so much notice of you, and
treating you in this kind of way, she has given you a sort of claim on
her future consideration, which a conscientious woman would not
disregard. Nothing can be kinder than her behaviour; and she can
hardly do all this, without being aware of the expectation it raises."
"But she raises none in those most concerned. Indeed, brother, your
anxiety for our welfare and prosperity carries you too far."
"Why, to be sure," said he, seeming to recollect himself, "people have
little, have very little in their power. But, my dear Elinor, what is
the matter with Marianne?-- she looks very unwell, has lost her colour,
and is grown quite thin. Is she ill?"
"She is not well, she has had a nervous complaint on her for several
weeks."
"I am sorry for that. At her time of life, any thing of an illness
destroys the bloom for ever! Hers has been a very short one! She was
as handsome a girl last September, as I ever saw; and as likely to
attract the man. There was something in her style of beauty, to please
them particularly. I remember Fanny used to say that she would marry
sooner and better than you did; not but what she is exceedingly fond of
YOU, but so it happened to strike her. She will be mistaken, however.
I question whether Marianne NOW, will marry a man worth more than five
or six hundred a-year, at the utmost, and I am very much deceived if
YOU do not do better. Dorsetshire! I know very little of Dorsetshire;
but, my dear Elinor, I shall be exceedingly glad to know more of it;
and I think I can answer for your having Fanny and myself among the
earliest and best pleased of your visitors."
Elinor tried very seriously to convince him that there was no
likelihood of her marrying Colonel Brandon; but it was an expectation
of too much pleasure to himself to be relinquished, and he was really
resolved on seeking an intimacy with that gentleman, and promoting the
marriage by every possible attention. He had just compunction enough
for having done nothing for his sisters himself, to be exceedingly
anxious that everybody else should do a great deal; and an offer from
Colonel Brandon, or a legacy from Mrs. Jennings, was the easiest means
of atoning for his own neglect.
They were lucky enough to find Lady Middleton at home, and Sir John
came in before their visit ended. Abundance of civilities passed on
all sides. Sir John was ready to like anybody, and though Mr. Dashwood
did not seem to know much about horses, he soon set him down as a very
good-natured fellow: while Lady Middleton saw enough of fashion in his
appearance to think his acquaintance worth having; and Mr. Dashwood
went away delighted with both.
"I shall have a charming account to carry to Fanny," said he, as he
walked back with his sister. "Lady Middleton is really a most elegant
woman! Such a woman as I am sure Fanny will be glad to know. And Mrs.
Jennings too, an exceedingly well-behaved woman, though not so elegant
as her daughter. Your sister need not have any scruple even of
visiting HER, which, to say the truth, has been a little the case, and
very naturally; for we only knew that Mrs. Jennings was the widow of a
man who had got all his money in a low way; and Fanny and Mrs. Ferrars
were both strongly prepossessed, that neither she nor her daughters
were such kind of women as Fanny would like to associate with. But now
I can carry her a most satisfactory account of both."
| 2,845 | Chapter 33 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210419170735/https://www.gradesaver.com/sense-and-sensibility/study-guide/summary-chapters-31-40 | Marianne is persuaded to go out on a short errand to the jeweler's. They find John Dashwood there, as he and Fanny had just gotten into town. He comes to visit them the next day, to be introduced to Mrs. Jennings and to Sir John and Lady Middleton. Colonel Brandon comes in during his visit, and John is somehow convinced that the Colonel and Elinor will probably be married. He congratulates Elinor on the match, though she tries and fails to convince him that there is no such plan. John also tells her that Edward is to be married to Miss Morton, an orphan with a great deal of money left to her. To excuse himself from helping the Dashwood women, he goes on for some time about how little money he has, and the poor state of his finances. He also insists that Mrs. Jennings will probably leave some money for the girls in his will, thus convincing himself that he has no need to help them in their tough circumstances. He also laments that Marianne has lost her beauty and bloom through illness, and will hardly marry well now; he is then introduced to Sir John and Lady Middleton, and determines that Fanny will certainly find them charming and worthy company. | John Dashwood's meanness and miserly nature is displayed again here, as he makes a long, involved argument convincing himself that he has no obligations to the Dashwood girls. That he has to justify this before Elinor shows that he is not altogether cold-hearted, but shows him to be petty and wholly ungenerous. His condescension toward Elinor is also rather appalling, and serves to show Elinor in an even more positive light through the juxtaposition of their characters. Snobbery is also evident in John as he says that Fanny thought Mrs. Jennings and her daughters were below her because they got their money through trade. John Dashwood is a symbol of the petty, greedy type found often in the upper classes, and Austen is sure to expose all his foibles through his conversation and excuses | 213 | 134 | [
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5,658 | false | pinkmonkey | all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/12.txt | finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Lord Jim/section_11_part_0.txt | Lord Jim.chapter 12 | chapter 12 | null | {"name": "Chapter 12", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim20.asp", "summary": "The next morning, Jim and the others in the lifeboat are rescued by the Avondale. As the others tell a lie about what has happened, Jim remains silent. The captain says that the first lifeboat was lowered slowly when suddenly the Patna went down, sinking like lead. He manages to save himself and some of his crew. As Jim hears the lies, he is thinking about the voices he has heard throughout the night, coming from people on the Patna screaming for help as they drown. When the Avondale arrives in port, Jim immediately learns that a French gunboat has towed the Patna to Aden successfully and an investigation is to begin immediately, Jim realizes that the voices he had heard were in his imagination. He still feels guilty about not helping the people on the boat and convinces himself that he would have tried to rescue them if he had been able to see the lights of the ship.", "analysis": "Notes In this chapter, Jim's imagination continues to play tricks on him. He still thinks that he has heard the screaming voices of the pilgrims as they drown. When he learns that the Patna and the pilgrims have been saved, he finally acknowledges that the voices were only in his imagination. He still imagines, however, that he would have tried to rescue them if he had been able to see the lights of the ship. It is obvious that Jim continues to exist in a dream world, even after the reality of the Patna is known."} |
'All around everything was still as far as the ear could reach. The mist
of his feelings shifted between us, as if disturbed by his struggles,
and in the rifts of the immaterial veil he would appear to my staring
eyes distinct of form and pregnant with vague appeal like a symbolic
figure in a picture. The chill air of the night seemed to lie on my
limbs as heavy as a slab of marble.
'"I see," I murmured, more to prove to myself that I could break my
state of numbness than for any other reason.
'"The Avondale picked us up just before sunset," he remarked moodily.
"Steamed right straight for us. We had only to sit and wait."
'After a long interval, he said, "They told their story." And again
there was that oppressive silence. "Then only I knew what it was I had
made up my mind to," he added.
'"You said nothing," I whispered.
'"What could I say?" he asked, in the same low tone. . . . "Shock
slight. Stopped the ship. Ascertained the damage. Took measures to get
the boats out without creating a panic. As the first boat was lowered
ship went down in a squall. Sank like lead. . . . What could be more
clear" . . . he hung his head . . . "and more awful?" His lips quivered
while he looked straight into my eyes. "I had jumped--hadn't I?" he
asked, dismayed. "That's what I had to live down. The story didn't
matter." . . . He clasped his hands for an instant, glanced right and
left into the gloom: "It was like cheating the dead," he stammered.
'"And there were no dead," I said.
'He went away from me at this. That is the only way I can describe it.
In a moment I saw his back close to the balustrade. He stood there for
some time, as if admiring the purity and the peace of the night. Some
flowering-shrub in the garden below spread its powerful scent through
the damp air. He returned to me with hasty steps.
'"And that did not matter," he said, as stubbornly as you please.
'"Perhaps not," I admitted. I began to have a notion he was too much for
me. After all, what did _I_ know?
'"Dead or not dead, I could not get clear," he said. "I had to live;
hadn't I?"
'"Well, yes--if you take it in that way," I mumbled.
'"I was glad, of course," he threw out carelessly, with his mind fixed
on something else. "The exposure," he pronounced slowly, and lifted
his head. "Do you know what was my first thought when I heard? I was
relieved. I was relieved to learn that those shouts--did I tell you I
had heard shouts? No? Well, I did. Shouts for help . . . blown along
with the drizzle. Imagination, I suppose. And yet I can hardly . . . How
stupid. . . . The others did not. I asked them afterwards. They all
said No. No? And I was hearing them even then! I might have known--but
I didn't think--I only listened. Very faint screams--day after day. Then
that little half-caste chap here came up and spoke to me. 'The
Patna . . . French gunboat . . . towed successfully to Aden . . .
Investigation . . . Marine Office . . . Sailors' Home . . . arrangements
made for your board and lodging!' I walked along with him, and I enjoyed
the silence. So there had been no shouting. Imagination. I had to
believe him. I could hear nothing any more. I wonder how long I could
have stood it. It was getting worse, too . . . I mean--louder." 'He fell
into thought.
'"And I had heard nothing! Well--so be it. But the lights! The lights
did go! We did not see them. They were not there. If they had been, I
would have swam back--I would have gone back and shouted alongside--I
would have begged them to take me on board. . . . I would have had my
chance. . . . You doubt me? . . . How do you know how I felt? . . . What
right have you to doubt? . . . I very nearly did it as it was--do you
understand?" His voice fell. "There was not a glimmer--not a glimmer,"
he protested mournfully. "Don't you understand that if there had been,
you would not have seen me here? You see me--and you doubt."
'I shook my head negatively. This question of the lights being lost
sight of when the boat could not have been more than a quarter of a mile
from the ship was a matter for much discussion. Jim stuck to it that
there was nothing to be seen after the first shower had cleared away;
and the others had affirmed the same thing to the officers of the
Avondale. Of course people shook their heads and smiled. One old skipper
who sat near me in court tickled my ear with his white beard to murmur,
"Of course they would lie." As a matter of fact nobody lied; not even
the chief engineer with his story of the mast-head light dropping like a
match you throw down. Not consciously, at least. A man with his liver in
such a state might very well have seen a floating spark in the corner of
his eye when stealing a hurried glance over his shoulder. They had seen
no light of any sort though they were well within range, and they could
only explain this in one way: the ship had gone down. It was obvious
and comforting. The foreseen fact coming so swiftly had justified their
haste. No wonder they did not cast about for any other explanation. Yet
the true one was very simple, and as soon as Brierly suggested it the
court ceased to bother about the question. If you remember, the ship had
been stopped, and was lying with her head on the course steered through
the night, with her stern canted high and her bows brought low down in
the water through the filling of the fore-compartment. Being thus out of
trim, when the squall struck her a little on the quarter, she swung head
to wind as sharply as though she had been at anchor. By this change in
her position all her lights were in a very few moments shut off from
the boat to leeward. It may very well be that, had they been seen, they
would have had the effect of a mute appeal--that their glimmer lost in
the darkness of the cloud would have had the mysterious power of the
human glance that can awaken the feelings of remorse and pity. It would
have said, "I am here--still here" . . . and what more can the eye of
the most forsaken of human beings say? But she turned her back on them
as if in disdain of their fate: she had swung round, burdened, to glare
stubbornly at the new danger of the open sea which she so strangely
survived to end her days in a breaking-up yard, as if it had been her
recorded fate to die obscurely under the blows of many hammers. What
were the various ends their destiny provided for the pilgrims I am
unable to say; but the immediate future brought, at about nine o'clock
next morning, a French gunboat homeward bound from Reunion. The report
of her commander was public property. He had swept a little out of
his course to ascertain what was the matter with that steamer floating
dangerously by the head upon a still and hazy sea. There was an ensign,
union down, flying at her main gaff (the serang had the sense to make a
signal of distress at daylight); but the cooks were preparing the food
in the cooking-boxes forward as usual. The decks were packed as close
as a sheep-pen: there were people perched all along the rails, jammed on
the bridge in a solid mass; hundreds of eyes stared, and not a sound was
heard when the gunboat ranged abreast, as if all that multitude of lips
had been sealed by a spell.
'The Frenchman hailed, could get no intelligible reply, and after
ascertaining through his binoculars that the crowd on deck did not look
plague-stricken, decided to send a boat. Two officers came on board,
listened to the serang, tried to talk with the Arab, couldn't make head
or tail of it: but of course the nature of the emergency was obvious
enough. They were also very much struck by discovering a white man, dead
and curled up peacefully on the bridge. "Fort intrigues par ce cadavre,"
as I was informed a long time after by an elderly French lieutenant whom
I came across one afternoon in Sydney, by the merest chance, in a sort
of cafe, and who remembered the affair perfectly. Indeed this affair,
I may notice in passing, had an extraordinary power of defying the
shortness of memories and the length of time: it seemed to live, with
a sort of uncanny vitality, in the minds of men, on the tips of their
tongues. I've had the questionable pleasure of meeting it often, years
afterwards, thousands of miles away, emerging from the remotest possible
talk, coming to the surface of the most distant allusions. Has it not
turned up to-night between us? And I am the only seaman here. I am the
only one to whom it is a memory. And yet it has made its way out! But if
two men who, unknown to each other, knew of this affair met accidentally
on any spot of this earth, the thing would pop up between them as sure
as fate, before they parted. I had never seen that Frenchman before, and
at the end of an hour we had done with each other for life: he did not
seem particularly talkative either; he was a quiet, massive chap in a
creased uniform, sitting drowsily over a tumbler half full of some
dark liquid. His shoulder-straps were a bit tarnished, his clean-shaved
cheeks were large and sallow; he looked like a man who would be given
to taking snuff--don't you know? I won't say he did; but the habit would
have fitted that kind of man. It all began by his handing me a number of
Home News, which I didn't want, across the marble table. I said "Merci."
We exchanged a few apparently innocent remarks, and suddenly, before
I knew how it had come about, we were in the midst of it, and he was
telling me how much they had been "intrigued by that corpse." It turned
out he had been one of the boarding officers.
'In the establishment where we sat one could get a variety of foreign
drinks which were kept for the visiting naval officers, and he took a
sip of the dark medical-looking stuff, which probably was nothing more
nasty than cassis a l'eau, and glancing with one eye into the tumbler,
shook his head slightly. "Impossible de comprendre--vous concevez," he
said, with a curious mixture of unconcern and thoughtfulness. I could
very easily conceive how impossible it had been for them to understand.
Nobody in the gunboat knew enough English to get hold of the story as
told by the serang. There was a good deal of noise, too, round the two
officers. "They crowded upon us. There was a circle round that dead
man (autour de ce mort)," he described. "One had to attend to the most
pressing. These people were beginning to agitate themselves--Parbleu!
A mob like that--don't you see?" he interjected with philosophic
indulgence. As to the bulkhead, he had advised his commander that the
safest thing was to leave it alone, it was so villainous to look at.
They got two hawsers on board promptly (en toute hale) and took the
Patna in tow--stern foremost at that--which, under the circumstances,
was not so foolish, since the rudder was too much out of the water to
be of any great use for steering, and this manoeuvre eased the strain on
the bulkhead, whose state, he expounded with stolid glibness, demanded
the greatest care (exigeait les plus grands menagements). I could not
help thinking that my new acquaintance must have had a voice in most of
these arrangements: he looked a reliable officer, no longer very active,
and he was seamanlike too, in a way, though as he sat there, with his
thick fingers clasped lightly on his stomach, he reminded you of one
of those snuffy, quiet village priests, into whose ears are poured the
sins, the sufferings, the remorse of peasant generations, on whose faces
the placid and simple expression is like a veil thrown over the mystery
of pain and distress. He ought to have had a threadbare black soutane
buttoned smoothly up to his ample chin, instead of a frock-coat with
shoulder-straps and brass buttons. His broad bosom heaved regularly
while he went on telling me that it had been the very devil of a job,
as doubtless (sans doute) I could figure to myself in my quality of a
seaman (en votre qualite de marin). At the end of the period he inclined
his body slightly towards me, and, pursing his shaved lips, allowed the
air to escape with a gentle hiss. "Luckily," he continued, "the sea was
level like this table, and there was no more wind than there is here."
. . . The place struck me as indeed intolerably stuffy, and very hot;
my face burned as though I had been young enough to be embarrassed and
blushing. They had directed their course, he pursued, to the nearest
English port "naturellement," where their responsibility ceased, "Dieu
merci." . . . He blew out his flat cheeks a little. . . . "Because,
mind you (notez bien), all the time of towing we had two quartermasters
stationed with axes by the hawsers, to cut us clear of our tow in case
she . . ." He fluttered downwards his heavy eyelids, making his meaning
as plain as possible. . . . "What would you! One does what one can
(on fait ce qu'on peut)," and for a moment he managed to invest
his ponderous immobility with an air of resignation. "Two
quartermasters--thirty hours--always there. Two!" he repeated, lifting
up his right hand a little, and exhibiting two fingers. This was
absolutely the first gesture I saw him make. It gave me the opportunity
to "note" a starred scar on the back of his hand--effect of a gunshot
clearly; and, as if my sight had been made more acute by this discovery,
I perceived also the seam of an old wound, beginning a little below the
temple and going out of sight under the short grey hair at the side of
his head--the graze of a spear or the cut of a sabre. He clasped his
hands on his stomach again. "I remained on board that--that--my memory
is going (s'en va). Ah! Patt-na. C'est bien ca. Patt-na. Merci. It is
droll how one forgets. I stayed on that ship thirty hours. . . ."
'"You did!" I exclaimed. Still gazing at his hands, he pursed his lips a
little, but this time made no hissing sound. "It was judged proper," he
said, lifting his eyebrows dispassionately, "that one of the officers
should remain to keep an eye open (pour ouvrir l'oeil)" . . . he sighed
idly . . . "and for communicating by signals with the towing ship--do
you see?--and so on. For the rest, it was my opinion too. We made our
boats ready to drop over--and I also on that ship took measures. . . .
Enfin! One has done one's possible. It was a delicate position. Thirty
hours! They prepared me some food. As for the wine--go and whistle for
it--not a drop." In some extraordinary way, without any marked change in
his inert attitude and in the placid expression of his face, he managed
to convey the idea of profound disgust. "I--you know--when it comes to
eating without my glass of wine--I am nowhere."
'I was afraid he would enlarge upon the grievance, for though he didn't
stir a limb or twitch a feature, he made one aware how much he was
irritated by the recollection. But he seemed to forget all about it.
They delivered their charge to the "port authorities," as he expressed
it. He was struck by the calmness with which it had been received. "One
might have thought they had such a droll find (drole de trouvaille)
brought them every day. You are extraordinary--you others," he
commented, with his back propped against the wall, and looking himself
as incapable of an emotional display as a sack of meal. There happened
to be a man-of-war and an Indian Marine steamer in the harbour at the
time, and he did not conceal his admiration of the efficient manner in
which the boats of these two ships cleared the Patna of her passengers.
Indeed his torpid demeanour concealed nothing: it had that mysterious,
almost miraculous, power of producing striking effects by means
impossible of detection which is the last word of the highest art.
"Twenty-five minutes--watch in hand--twenty-five, no more." . . . He
unclasped and clasped again his fingers without removing his hands from
his stomach, and made it infinitely more effective than if he had thrown
up his arms to heaven in amazement. . . . "All that lot (tout ce monde)
on shore--with their little affairs--nobody left but a guard of
seamen (marins de l'Etat) and that interesting corpse (cet interessant
cadavre). Twenty-five minutes." . . . With downcast eyes and his head
tilted slightly on one side he seemed to roll knowingly on his tongue
the savour of a smart bit of work. He persuaded one without any further
demonstration that his approval was eminently worth having, and resuming
his hardly interrupted immobility, he went on to inform me that, being
under orders to make the best of their way to Toulon, they left in
two hours' time, "so that (de sorte que) there are many things in this
incident of my life (dans cet episode de ma vie) which have remained
obscure."' | 2,831 | Chapter 12 | https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim20.asp | The next morning, Jim and the others in the lifeboat are rescued by the Avondale. As the others tell a lie about what has happened, Jim remains silent. The captain says that the first lifeboat was lowered slowly when suddenly the Patna went down, sinking like lead. He manages to save himself and some of his crew. As Jim hears the lies, he is thinking about the voices he has heard throughout the night, coming from people on the Patna screaming for help as they drown. When the Avondale arrives in port, Jim immediately learns that a French gunboat has towed the Patna to Aden successfully and an investigation is to begin immediately, Jim realizes that the voices he had heard were in his imagination. He still feels guilty about not helping the people on the boat and convinces himself that he would have tried to rescue them if he had been able to see the lights of the ship. | Notes In this chapter, Jim's imagination continues to play tricks on him. He still thinks that he has heard the screaming voices of the pilgrims as they drown. When he learns that the Patna and the pilgrims have been saved, he finally acknowledges that the voices were only in his imagination. He still imagines, however, that he would have tried to rescue them if he had been able to see the lights of the ship. It is obvious that Jim continues to exist in a dream world, even after the reality of the Patna is known. | 160 | 96 | [
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110 | false | novelguide | all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/05.txt | finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_1_part_5.txt | Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter v | chapter v | null | {"name": "Chapter V", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase1-chapter1-11", "summary": "Tess does not argue when her mother sends her to the Trantridge estate of the d'Urbervilles to work. Joan Durbeyfield has no idea, however, that the d'Urbervilles have absolutely no blood relation to Tess and that the name itself was purchased to enhance the family's social standing. Tess is surprised to find a large new red brick country estate instead of the ancient house she envisioned. Here Tess meets Alec d'Urberville who, in his early twenties, is very attracted to his new \"poor relation. After feeding her strawberries and showering her with roses, he explains that his mother is ill but that he will find a way to help her. Then he sends her on her way", "analysis": ""} |
The haggling business, which had mainly depended on the horse, became
disorganized forthwith. Distress, if not penury, loomed in the
distance. Durbeyfield was what was locally called a slack-twisted
fellow; he had good strength to work at times; but the times could
not be relied on to coincide with the hours of requirement; and,
having been unaccustomed to the regular toil of the day-labourer,
he was not particularly persistent when they did so coincide.
Tess, meanwhile, as the one who had dragged her parents into this
quagmire, was silently wondering what she could do to help them out
of it; and then her mother broached her scheme.
"We must take the ups wi' the downs, Tess," said she; "and never
could your high blood have been found out at a more called-for
moment. You must try your friends. Do ye know that there is a very
rich Mrs d'Urberville living on the outskirts o' The Chase, who must
be our relation? You must go to her and claim kin, and ask for some
help in our trouble."
"I shouldn't care to do that," says Tess. "If there is such a lady,
'twould be enough for us if she were friendly--not to expect her to
give us help."
"You could win her round to do anything, my dear. Besides, perhaps
there's more in it than you know of. I've heard what I've heard,
good-now."
The oppressive sense of the harm she had done led Tess to be more
deferential than she might otherwise have been to the maternal
wish; but she could not understand why her mother should find such
satisfaction in contemplating an enterprise of, to her, such doubtful
profit. Her mother might have made inquiries, and have discovered
that this Mrs d'Urberville was a lady of unequalled virtues and
charity. But Tess's pride made the part of poor relation one of
particular distaste to her.
"I'd rather try to get work," she murmured.
"Durbeyfield, you can settle it," said his wife, turning to where he
sat in the background. "If you say she ought to go, she will go."
"I don't like my children going and making themselves beholden to
strange kin," murmured he. "I'm the head of the noblest branch o'
the family, and I ought to live up to it."
His reasons for staying away were worse to Tess than her own
objections to going. "Well, as I killed the horse, mother," she said
mournfully, "I suppose I ought to do something. I don't mind going
and seeing her, but you must leave it to me about asking for help.
And don't go thinking about her making a match for me--it is silly."
"Very well said, Tess!" observed her father sententiously.
"Who said I had such a thought?" asked Joan.
"I fancy it is in your mind, mother. But I'll go."
Rising early next day she walked to the hill-town called Shaston,
and there took advantage of a van which twice in the week ran from
Shaston eastward to Chaseborough, passing near Trantridge, the parish
in which the vague and mysterious Mrs d'Urberville had her residence.
Tess Durbeyfield's route on this memorable morning lay amid the
north-eastern undulations of the Vale in which she had been born, and
in which her life had unfolded. The Vale of Blackmoor was to her the
world, and its inhabitants the races thereof. From the gates and
stiles of Marlott she had looked down its length in the wondering
days of infancy, and what had been mystery to her then was not
much less than mystery to her now. She had seen daily from her
chamber-window towers, villages, faint white mansions; above all,
the town of Shaston standing majestically on its height; its windows
shining like lamps in the evening sun. She had hardly ever visited
the place, only a small tract even of the Vale and its environs being
known to her by close inspection. Much less had she been far outside
the valley. Every contour of the surrounding hills was as personal
to her as that of her relatives' faces; but for what lay beyond, her
judgment was dependent on the teaching of the village school, where
she had held a leading place at the time of her leaving, a year or
two before this date.
In those early days she had been much loved by others of her own
sex and age, and had used to be seen about the village as one of
three--all nearly of the same year--walking home from school side
by side; Tess the middle one--in a pink print pinafore, of a finely
reticulated pattern, worn over a stuff frock that had lost its
original colour for a nondescript tertiary--marching on upon long
stalky legs, in tight stockings which had little ladder-like holes
at the knees, torn by kneeling in the roads and banks in search of
vegetable and mineral treasures; her then earth-coloured hair hanging
like pot-hooks; the arms of the two outside girls resting round the
waist of Tess; her arms on the shoulders of the two supporters.
As Tess grew older, and began to see how matters stood, she felt
quite a Malthusian towards her mother for thoughtlessly giving her so
many little sisters and brothers, when it was such a trouble to nurse
and provide for them. Her mother's intelligence was that of a happy
child: Joan Durbeyfield was simply an additional one, and that not
the eldest, to her own long family of waiters on Providence.
However, Tess became humanely beneficent towards the small ones,
and to help them as much as possible she used, as soon as she left
school, to lend a hand at haymaking or harvesting on neighbouring
farms; or, by preference, at milking or butter-making processes,
which she had learnt when her father had owned cows; and being
deft-fingered it was a kind of work in which she excelled.
Every day seemed to throw upon her young shoulders more of the
family burdens, and that Tess should be the representative of the
Durbeyfields at the d'Urberville mansion came as a thing of course.
In this instance it must be admitted that the Durbeyfields were
putting their fairest side outward.
She alighted from the van at Trantridge Cross, and ascended on foot
a hill in the direction of the district known as The Chase, on the
borders of which, as she had been informed, Mrs d'Urberville's seat,
The Slopes, would be found. It was not a manorial home in the
ordinary sense, with fields, and pastures, and a grumbling farmer,
out of whom the owner had to squeeze an income for himself and his
family by hook or by crook. It was more, far more; a country-house
built for enjoyment pure and simple, with not an acre of troublesome
land attached to it beyond what was required for residential
purposes, and for a little fancy farm kept in hand by the owner, and
tended by a bailiff.
The crimson brick lodge came first in sight, up to its eaves in dense
evergreens. Tess thought this was the mansion itself till, passing
through the side wicket with some trepidation, and onward to a point
at which the drive took a turn, the house proper stood in full view.
It was of recent erection--indeed almost new--and of the same rich
red colour that formed such a contrast with the evergreens of the
lodge. Far behind the corner of the house--which rose like a
geranium bloom against the subdued colours around--stretched the soft
azure landscape of The Chase--a truly venerable tract of forest land,
one of the few remaining woodlands in England of undoubted primaeval
date, wherein Druidical mistletoe was still found on aged oaks, and
where enormous yew-trees, not planted by the hand of man grew as
they had grown when they were pollarded for bows. All this sylvan
antiquity, however, though visible from The Slopes, was outside the
immediate boundaries of the estate.
Everything on this snug property was bright, thriving, and well kept;
acres of glass-houses stretched down the inclines to the copses at
their feet. Everything looked like money--like the last coin issued
from the Mint. The stables, partly screened by Austrian pines
and evergreen oaks, and fitted with every late appliance, were
as dignified as Chapels-of-Ease. On the extensive lawn stood an
ornamental tent, its door being towards her.
Simple Tess Durbeyfield stood at gaze, in a half-alarmed attitude,
on the edge of the gravel sweep. Her feet had brought her onward to
this point before she had quite realized where she was; and now all
was contrary to her expectation.
"I thought we were an old family; but this is all new!" she said, in
her artlessness. She wished that she had not fallen in so readily
with her mother's plans for "claiming kin," and had endeavoured to
gain assistance nearer home.
The d'Urbervilles--or Stoke-d'Urbervilles, as they at first called
themselves--who owned all this, were a somewhat unusual family to
find in such an old-fashioned part of the country. Parson Tringham
had spoken truly when he said that our shambling John Durbeyfield was
the only really lineal representative of the old d'Urberville family
existing in the county, or near it; he might have added, what he knew
very well, that the Stoke-d'Urbervilles were no more d'Urbervilles of
the true tree then he was himself. Yet it must be admitted that this
family formed a very good stock whereon to regraft a name which sadly
wanted such renovation.
When old Mr Simon Stoke, latterly deceased, had made his fortune as
an honest merchant (some said money-lender) in the North, he decided
to settle as a county man in the South of England, out of hail of
his business district; and in doing this he felt the necessity of
recommencing with a name that would not too readily identify him with
the smart tradesman of the past, and that would be less commonplace
than the original bald, stark words. Conning for an hour in the
British Museum the pages of works devoted to extinct, half-extinct,
obscured, and ruined families appertaining to the quarter of England
in which he proposed to settle, he considered that _d'Urberville_
looked and sounded as well as any of them: and d'Urberville
accordingly was annexed to his own name for himself and his heirs
eternally. Yet he was not an extravagant-minded man in this, and in
constructing his family tree on the new basis was duly reasonable in
framing his inter-marriages and aristocratic links, never inserting
a single title above a rank of strict moderation.
Of this work of imagination poor Tess and her parents were naturally
in ignorance--much to their discomfiture; indeed, the very
possibility of such annexations was unknown to them; who supposed
that, though to be well-favoured might be the gift of fortune, a
family name came by nature.
Tess still stood hesitating like a bather about to make his plunge,
hardly knowing whether to retreat or to persevere, when a figure came
forth from the dark triangular door of the tent. It was that of a
tall young man, smoking.
He had an almost swarthy complexion, with full lips, badly moulded,
though red and smooth, above which was a well-groomed black moustache
with curled points, though his age could not be more than three- or
four-and-twenty. Despite the touches of barbarism in his contours,
there was a singular force in the gentleman's face, and in his bold
rolling eye.
"Well, my Beauty, what can I do for you?" said he, coming forward.
And perceiving that she stood quite confounded: "Never mind me. I am
Mr d'Urberville. Have you come to see me or my mother?"
This embodiment of a d'Urberville and a namesake differed even more
from what Tess had expected than the house and grounds had differed.
She had dreamed of an aged and dignified face, the sublimation of
all the d'Urberville lineaments, furrowed with incarnate memories
representing in hieroglyphic the centuries of her family's and
England's history. But she screwed herself up to the work in hand,
since she could not get out of it, and answered--
"I came to see your mother, sir."
"I am afraid you cannot see her--she is an invalid," replied the
present representative of the spurious house; for this was Mr Alec,
the only son of the lately deceased gentleman. "Cannot I answer your
purpose? What is the business you wish to see her about?"
"It isn't business--it is--I can hardly say what!"
"Pleasure?"
"Oh no. Why, sir, if I tell you, it will seem--"
Tess's sense of a certain ludicrousness in her errand was now
so strong that, notwithstanding her awe of him, and her general
discomfort at being here, her rosy lips curved towards a smile,
much to the attraction of the swarthy Alexander.
"It is so very foolish," she stammered; "I fear can't tell you!"
"Never mind; I like foolish things. Try again, my dear," said he
kindly.
"Mother asked me to come," Tess continued; "and, indeed, I was in the
mind to do so myself likewise. But I did not think it would be like
this. I came, sir, to tell you that we are of the same family as
you."
"Ho! Poor relations?"
"Yes."
"Stokes?"
"No; d'Urbervilles."
"Ay, ay; I mean d'Urbervilles."
"Our names are worn away to Durbeyfield; but we have several proofs
that we are d'Urbervilles. Antiquarians hold we are,--and--and we
have an old seal, marked with a ramping lion on a shield, and a
castle over him. And we have a very old silver spoon, round in the
bowl like a little ladle, and marked with the same castle. But it
is so worn that mother uses it to stir the pea-soup."
"A castle argent is certainly my crest," said he blandly. "And my
arms a lion rampant."
"And so mother said we ought to make ourselves beknown to you--as
we've lost our horse by a bad accident, and are the oldest branch o'
the family."
"Very kind of your mother, I'm sure. And I, for one, don't regret
her step." Alec looked at Tess as he spoke, in a way that made her
blush a little. "And so, my pretty girl, you've come on a friendly
visit to us, as relations?"
"I suppose I have," faltered Tess, looking uncomfortable again.
"Well--there's no harm in it. Where do you live? What are you?"
She gave him brief particulars; and responding to further inquiries
told him that she was intending to go back by the same carrier who
had brought her.
"It is a long while before he returns past Trantridge Cross.
Supposing we walk round the grounds to pass the time, my pretty Coz?"
Tess wished to abridge her visit as much as possible; but the young
man was pressing, and she consented to accompany him. He conducted
her about the lawns, and flower-beds, and conservatories; and thence
to the fruit-garden and greenhouses, where he asked her if she liked
strawberries.
"Yes," said Tess, "when they come."
"They are already here." D'Urberville began gathering specimens
of the fruit for her, handing them back to her as he stooped; and,
presently, selecting a specially fine product of the "British Queen"
variety, he stood up and held it by the stem to her mouth.
"No--no!" she said quickly, putting her fingers between his hand and
her lips. "I would rather take it in my own hand."
"Nonsense!" he insisted; and in a slight distress she parted her lips
and took it in.
They had spent some time wandering desultorily thus, Tess eating in
a half-pleased, half-reluctant state whatever d'Urberville offered
her. When she could consume no more of the strawberries he filled
her little basket with them; and then the two passed round to the
rose-trees, whence he gathered blossoms and gave her to put in her
bosom. She obeyed like one in a dream, and when she could affix no
more he himself tucked a bud or two into her hat, and heaped her
basket with others in the prodigality of his bounty. At last,
looking at his watch, he said, "Now, by the time you have had
something to eat, it will be time for you to leave, if you want to
catch the carrier to Shaston. Come here, and I'll see what grub I
can find."
Stoke d'Urberville took her back to the lawn and into the tent, where
he left her, soon reappearing with a basket of light luncheon, which
he put before her himself. It was evidently the gentleman's wish not
to be disturbed in this pleasant _tete-a-tete_ by the servantry.
"Do you mind my smoking?" he asked.
"Oh, not at all, sir."
He watched her pretty and unconscious munching through the skeins of
smoke that pervaded the tent, and Tess Durbeyfield did not divine,
as she innocently looked down at the roses in her bosom, that there
behind the blue narcotic haze was potentially the "tragic mischief"
of her drama--one who stood fair to be the blood-red ray in the
spectrum of her young life. She had an attribute which amounted
to a disadvantage just now; and it was this that caused Alec
d'Urberville's eyes to rivet themselves upon her. It was a
luxuriance of aspect, a fulness of growth, which made her appear more
of a woman than she really was. She had inherited the feature from
her mother without the quality it denoted. It had troubled her mind
occasionally, till her companions had said that it was a fault which
time would cure.
She soon had finished her lunch. "Now I am going home, sir," she
said, rising.
"And what do they call you?" he asked, as he accompanied her along
the drive till they were out of sight of the house.
"Tess Durbeyfield, down at Marlott."
"And you say your people have lost their horse?"
"I--killed him!" she answered, her eyes filling with tears as she
gave particulars of Prince's death. "And I don't know what to do
for father on account of it!"
"I must think if I cannot do something. My mother must find a berth
for you. But, Tess, no nonsense about 'd'Urberville';--'Durbeyfield'
only, you know--quite another name."
"I wish for no better, sir," said she with something of dignity.
For a moment--only for a moment--when they were in the turning of the
drive, between the tall rhododendrons and conifers, before the lodge
became visible, he inclined his face towards her as if--but, no: he
thought better of it, and let her go.
Thus the thing began. Had she perceived this meeting's import she
might have asked why she was doomed to be seen and coveted that day
by the wrong man, and not by some other man, the right and desired
one in all respects--as nearly as humanity can supply the right
and desired; yet to him who amongst her acquaintance might have
approximated to this kind, she was but a transient impression, half
forgotten.
In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the
call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with
the hour for loving. Nature does not often say "See!" to her poor
creature at a time when seeing can lead to happy doing; or reply
"Here!" to a body's cry of "Where?" till the hide-and-seek has become
an irksome, outworn game. We may wonder whether at the acme and
summit of the human progress these anachronisms will be corrected by
a finer intuition, a closer interaction of the social machinery than
that which now jolts us round and along; but such completeness is not
to be prophesied, or even conceived as possible. Enough that in the
present case, as in millions, it was not the two halves of a perfect
whole that confronted each other at the perfect moment; a missing
counterpart wandered independently about the earth waiting in
crass obtuseness till the late time came. Out of which maladroit
delay sprang anxieties, disappointments, shocks, catastrophes, and
passing-strange destinies.
When d'Urberville got back to the tent he sat down astride on a
chair, reflecting, with a pleased gleam in his face. Then he broke
into a loud laugh.
"Well, I'm damned! What a funny thing! Ha-ha-ha! And what a crumby
girl!"
| 3,137 | Chapter V | https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase1-chapter1-11 | Tess does not argue when her mother sends her to the Trantridge estate of the d'Urbervilles to work. Joan Durbeyfield has no idea, however, that the d'Urbervilles have absolutely no blood relation to Tess and that the name itself was purchased to enhance the family's social standing. Tess is surprised to find a large new red brick country estate instead of the ancient house she envisioned. Here Tess meets Alec d'Urberville who, in his early twenties, is very attracted to his new "poor relation. After feeding her strawberries and showering her with roses, he explains that his mother is ill but that he will find a way to help her. Then he sends her on her way | null | 117 | 1 | [
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1,232 | false | sparknotes | all_chapterized_books/1232-chapters/10.txt | finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Prince/section_4_part_1.txt | The Prince.chapter x | chapter x | null | {"name": "Chapter X", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210303115306/https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/prince/section5/", "summary": "How the Strength of All Principalities Should Be Measured Although a prince should always aim to keep an army of size and strength equaling that of any aggressor, it is just as important to maintain defenses and fortifications. These defensive preparations not only provide security but also deter enemies from attacking. Some might argue that if an enemy lays siege to a fortified city, the people inside, upon witnessing their countryside pillaged and possessions destroyed, will turn against their prince. But a prince who has made adequate defensive preparations can actually inspire his subjects during such times. To do so, he must convince the people that the hardships are only temporary and, more importantly, create feelings of patriotism and enthusiasm for the city's defense. This way, when the siege is over, the grateful and obliged people will love the prince all the more", "analysis": ""} |
It is necessary to consider another point in examining the character of
these principalities: that is, whether a prince has such power that, in
case of need, he can support himself with his own resources, or whether
he has always need of the assistance of others. And to make this quite
clear I say that I consider those who are able to support themselves by
their own resources who can, either by abundance of men or money, raise
a sufficient army to join battle against any one who comes to attack
them; and I consider those always to have need of others who cannot
show themselves against the enemy in the field, but are forced to
defend themselves by sheltering behind walls. The first case has been
discussed, but we will speak of it again should it recur. In the second
case one can say nothing except to encourage such princes to provision
and fortify their towns, and not on any account to defend the country.
And whoever shall fortify his town well, and shall have managed the
other concerns of his subjects in the way stated above, and to be often
repeated, will never be attacked without great caution, for men are
always adverse to enterprises where difficulties can be seen, and it
will be seen not to be an easy thing to attack one who has his town well
fortified, and is not hated by his people.
The cities of Germany are absolutely free, they own but little country
around them, and they yield obedience to the emperor when it suits
them, nor do they fear this or any other power they may have near them,
because they are fortified in such a way that every one thinks the
taking of them by assault would be tedious and difficult, seeing they
have proper ditches and walls, they have sufficient artillery, and they
always keep in public depots enough for one year's eating, drinking, and
firing. And beyond this, to keep the people quiet and without loss to
the state, they always have the means of giving work to the community
in those labours that are the life and strength of the city, and on
the pursuit of which the people are supported; they also hold military
exercises in repute, and moreover have many ordinances to uphold them.
Therefore, a prince who has a strong city, and had not made himself
odious, will not be attacked, or if any one should attack he will only
be driven off with disgrace; again, because that the affairs of this
world are so changeable, it is almost impossible to keep an army a whole
year in the field without being interfered with. And whoever should
reply: If the people have property outside the city, and see it burnt,
they will not remain patient, and the long siege and self-interest will
make them forget their prince; to this I answer that a powerful and
courageous prince will overcome all such difficulties by giving at one
time hope to his subjects that the evil will not be for long, at another
time fear of the cruelty of the enemy, then preserving himself adroitly
from those subjects who seem to him to be too bold.
Further, the enemy would naturally on his arrival at once burn and ruin
the country at the time when the spirits of the people are still hot and
ready for the defence; and, therefore, so much the less ought the prince
to hesitate; because after a time, when spirits have cooled, the damage
is already done, the ills are incurred, and there is no longer any
remedy; and therefore they are so much the more ready to unite with
their prince, he appearing to be under obligations to them now that
their houses have been burnt and their possessions ruined in his
defence. For it is the nature of men to be bound by the benefits they
confer as much as by those they receive. Therefore, if everything is
well considered, it will not be difficult for a wise prince to keep the
minds of his citizens steadfast from first to last, when he does not
fail to support and defend them.
| 647 | Chapter X | https://web.archive.org/web/20210303115306/https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/prince/section5/ | How the Strength of All Principalities Should Be Measured Although a prince should always aim to keep an army of size and strength equaling that of any aggressor, it is just as important to maintain defenses and fortifications. These defensive preparations not only provide security but also deter enemies from attacking. Some might argue that if an enemy lays siege to a fortified city, the people inside, upon witnessing their countryside pillaged and possessions destroyed, will turn against their prince. But a prince who has made adequate defensive preparations can actually inspire his subjects during such times. To do so, he must convince the people that the hardships are only temporary and, more importantly, create feelings of patriotism and enthusiasm for the city's defense. This way, when the siege is over, the grateful and obliged people will love the prince all the more | null | 143 | 1 | [
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23,046 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/23046-chapters/6.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Comedy of Errors/section_5_part_0.txt | The Comedy of Errors.act iii.scene ii | act iii, scene ii | null | {"name": "Act III, Scene ii", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219160210/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/comedy-of-errors/summary/act-iii-scene-ii", "summary": "Still at E. Antipholus's house, the confusion we've just seen outside is almost as bad as the confusion going on inside. Remember S. Antipholus has just had dinner with Adriana and Luciana . Dinner must've been pretty good , because S. Antipholus has presently declared his love for Luciana. Of course, this is complicated by the fact that Luciana thinks her brother-in-law is coming onto her. Luciana wonders just how E. Antipholus can turn from loving his wife to being so unfaithful. She says Antipholus may have married her sister for money, but she wishes he'd be better to her for the money's sake, then. Luciana doesn't tell him to be faithful, exactly. Instead, she recommends that if he does love another, that he do it stealthily, as it's one offense to cheat on your wife, and an entirely different offense to let the poor woman know about it. According to Luciana, a man should hide his infidelity for his wife's sake. Luciana finally deflects S. Antipholus by saying women are gullible, and will believe what men want them to believe, especially if the men can flatter them by claiming true love. S. Antipholus is undeterred. Again, he wonders how Luciana even knows his name. He admits he doesn't really know her name, and decides that she must be some divine creature. He pleads with her to be his mentor, and teach him the ways of the world and himself. Finally, S. Antipholus rightly asserts that he has no wife, and either way, he prefers Luciana to Adriana. Besides, Adriana is inside the house crying as they speak. S. Antipholus wishes Luciana would do more with her power than just try to get him to love her sister. He basically declares Luciana to be the apple of his eye. Luciana is weirded out and runs off to try to comfort her sister. Just then, S. Dromio runs in, out of breath. S. Dromio says this woman, the unattractive kitchen wench, claims that he's her man. Though the girl's not appealing, she did know Dromio by name. Even creepier, she knew about all the marks and moles on his body. This is no woman to bring home to mom , so Dromio ran from her as though she were a witch. S. Antipholus has clearly had enough, and his plan is to get the hell out. He sends S. Dromio to go find out if any ships are leaving immediately. He'd really rather not spend the night in this creepy place that's clearly enchanted by witches and full of awful women who claim he and Dromio for their husbands. Still, S. Antipholus will be a little sad to leave Luciana, who has enchanted him. Now, Angelo the goldsmith shows up with E. Antipholus's gold chain for his wife. He mistakes S. Antipholus for E. Antipholus, and happily gives him the chain, so glad to meet him before he went to the Porpentine. Of course, S. Antipholus has no idea what's going on, but he doesn't refuse the necklace because it's pretty. He tries to pay Angelo on the spot, but Angelo refuses . S. Antipholus, thinking golden gifts are raining from the sky, decides to accept his gift. He'll meet Dromio at the marketplace and leave Ephesus as soon as possible.", "analysis": ""} | _SCENE II.
The same._
_Enter LUCIANA and _ANTIPHOLUS of Syracuse_._
_Luc._ And may it be that you have quite forgot
A husband's office? shall, Antipholus,
Even in the spring of love, thy love-springs rot?
Shall love, in building, grow so ruinous?
If you did wed my sister for her wealth, 5
Then for her wealth's sake use her with more kindness:
Or if you like elsewhere, do it by stealth;
Muffle your false love with some show of blindness:
Let not my sister read it in your eye;
Be not thy tongue thy own shame's orator; 10
Look sweet, speak fair, become disloyalty;
Apparel vice like virtue's harbinger;
Bear a fair presence, though your heart be tainted;
Teach sin the carriage of a holy saint;
Be secret-false: what need she be acquainted? 15
What simple thief brags of his own attaint?
'Tis double wrong, to truant with your bed,
And let her read it in thy looks at board:
Shame hath a bastard fame, well managed;
Ill deeds are doubled with an evil word. 20
Alas, poor women! make us but believe,
Being compact of credit, that you love us;
Though others have the arm, show us the sleeve;
We in your motion turn, and you may move us.
Then, gentle brother, get you in again; 25
Comfort my sister, cheer her, call her wife:
'Tis holy sport, to be a little vain,
When the sweet breath of flattery conquers strife.
_Ant. S._ Sweet mistress,--what your name is else, I know not,
Nor by what wonder you do hit of mine,-- 30
Less in your knowledge and your grace you show not
Than our earth's wonder; more than earth divine.
Teach me, dear creature, how to think and speak;
Lay open to my earthy-gross conceit,
Smother'd in errors, feeble, shallow, weak, 35
The folded meaning of your words' deceit.
Against my soul's pure truth why labour you
To make it wander in an unknown field?
Are you a god? would you create me new?
Transform me, then, and to your power I'll yield. 40
But if that I am I, then well I know
Your weeping sister is no wife of mine,
Nor to her bed no homage do I owe:
Far more, far more to you do I decline.
O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note, 45
To drown me in thy sister flood of tears:
Sing, siren, for thyself, and I will dote:
Spread o'er the silver waves thy golden hairs,
And as a bed I'll take them, and there lie;
And, in that glorious supposition, think 50
He gains by death that hath such means to die:
Let Love, being light, be drowned if she sink!
_Luc._ What, are you mad, that you do reason so?
_Ant. S._ Not mad, but mated; how, I do not know.
_Luc._ It is a fault that springeth from your eye. 55
_Ant. S._ For gazing on your beams, fair sun, being by.
_Luc._ Gaze where you should, and that will clear your sight.
_Ant. S._ As good to wink, sweet love, as look on night.
_Luc._ Why call you me love? call my sister so.
_Ant. S._ Thy sister's sister.
_Luc._ That's my sister.
_Ant. S._ No; 60
It is thyself, mine own self's better part,
Mine eye's clear eye, my dear heart's dearer heart,
My food, my fortune, and my sweet hope's aim,
My sole earth's heaven, and my heaven's claim.
_Luc._ All this my sister is, or else should be. 65
_Ant. S._ Call thyself sister, sweet, for I am thee.
Thee will I love, and with thee lead my life:
Thou hast no husband yet, nor I no wife.
Give me thy hand.
_Luc._ O, soft, sir! hold you still:
I'll fetch my sister, to get her good will. [_Exit._ 70
_Enter _DROMIO of Syracuse_._
_Ant. S._ Why, how now, Dromio! where runn'st thou
so fast?
_Dro. S._ Do you know me, sir? am I Dromio? am I
your man? am I myself?
_Ant. S._ Thou art Dromio, thou art my man, thou art 75
thyself.
_Dro. S._ I am an ass, I am a woman's man, and
besides myself.
_Ant. S._ What woman's man? and how besides thyself?
_Dro. S._ Marry, sir, besides myself, I am due to a 80
woman; one that claims me, one that haunts me, one that
will have me.
_Ant. S._ What claim lays she to thee?
_Dro. S._ Marry, sir, such claim as you would lay to
your horse; and she would have me as a beast: not that, 85
I being a beast, she would have me; but that she, being
a very beastly creature, lays claim to me.
_Ant. S._ What is she?
_Dro. S._ A very reverent body; ay, such a one as a man
may not speak of, without he say Sir-reverence. I have 90
but lean luck in the match, and yet is she a wondrous fat
marriage.
_Ant. S._ How dost thou mean a fat marriage?
_Dro. S._ Marry, sir, she's the kitchen-wench, and all
grease; and I know not what use to put her to, but to make 95
a lamp of her, and run from her by her own light. I warrant,
her rags, and the tallow in them, will burn a Poland
winter: if she lives till doomsday, she'll burn a week
longer than the whole world.
_Ant. S._ What complexion is she of? 100
_Dro. S._ Swart, like my shoe, but her face nothing like
so clean kept: for why she sweats; a man may go over
shoes in the grime of it.
_Ant. S._ That's a fault that water will mend.
_Dro. S._ No, sir, 'tis in grain; Noah's flood could not 105
do it.
_Ant. S._ What's her name?
_Dro. S._ Nell, sir; but her name and three quarters,
that's an ell and three quarters, will not measure her from
hip to hip. 110
_Ant. S._ Then she bears some breadth?
_Dro. S._ No longer from head to foot than from hip to
hip: she is spherical, like a globe; I could find out countries
in her.
_Ant. S._ In what part of her body stands Ireland? 115
_Dro. S._ Marry, sir, in her buttocks: I found it out by
the bogs.
_Ant. S._ Where Scotland?
_Dro. S._ I found it by the barrenness; hard in the palm
of the hand. 120
_Ant. S._ Where France?
_Dro. S._ In her forehead; armed and reverted, making
war against her heir.
_Ant. S._ Where England?
_Dro. S._ I looked for the chalky cliffs, but I could find 125
no whiteness in them; but I guess it stood in her chin, by
the salt rheum that ran between France and it.
_Ant. S._ Where Spain?
_Dro. S._ Faith, I saw it not; but I felt it hot in her
breath. 130
_Ant. S._ Where America, the Indies?
_Dro. S._ Oh, sir, upon her nose, all o'er embellished
with rubies, carbuncles, sapphires, declining their rich aspect
to the hot breath of Spain; who sent whole armadoes
of caracks to be ballast at her nose. 135
_Ant. S._ Where stood Belgia, the Netherlands?
_Dro. S._ Oh, sir, I did not look so low. To conclude,
this drudge, or diviner, laid claim to me; called me
Dromio; swore I was assured to her; told me what privy
marks I had about me, as, the mark of my shoulder, the 140
mole in my neck, the great wart on my left arm, that
I, amazed, ran from her as a witch:
And, I think, if my breast had not been made of faith, and
my heart of steel,
She had transform'd me to a curtal dog, and made me turn
i' the wheel.
_Ant. S._ Go hie thee presently, post to the road:-- 145
An if the wind blow any way from shore,
I will not harbour in this town to-night:--
If any bark put forth, come to the mart,
Where I will walk till thou return to me.
If every one knows us, and we know none, 150
'Tis time, I think, to trudge, pack, and be gone.
_Dro. S._ As from a bear a man would run for life,
So fly I from her that would be my wife. [_Exit._
_Ant. S._ There's none but witches do inhabit here;
And therefore 'tis high time that I were hence. 155
She that doth call me husband, even my soul
Doth for a wife abhor. But her fair sister,
Possess'd with such a gentle sovereign grace,
Of such enchanting presence and discourse,
Hath almost made me traitor to myself: 160
But, lest myself be guilty to self-wrong,
I'll stop mine ears against the mermaid's song.
_Enter ANGELO with the chain._
_Ang._ Master Antipholus,--
_Ant. S._ Ay, that's my name.
_Ang._ I know it well, sir:--lo, here is the chain.
I thought to have ta'en you at the Porpentine: 165
The chain unfinish'd made me stay thus long.
_Ant. S._ What is your will that I shall do with this?
_Ang._ What please yourself, sir: I have made it for you.
_Ant. S._ Made it for me, sir! I bespoke it not.
_Ang._ Not once, nor twice, but twenty times you have. 170
Go home with it, and please your wife withal;
And soon at supper-time I'll visit you,
And then receive my money for the chain.
_Ant. S._ I pray you, sir, receive the money now,
For fear you ne'er see chain nor money more. 175
_Ang._ You are a merry man, sir: fare you well. [_Exit._
_Ant. S._ What I should think of this, I cannot tell:
But this I think, there's no man is so vain
That would refuse so fair an offer'd chain.
I see a man here needs not live by shifts, 180
When in the streets he meets such golden gifts.
I'll to the mart, and there for Dromio stay:
If any ship put out, then straight away. [_Exit._
NOTES: III, 2.
SCENE II. Enter LUCIANA] F2. Enter JULIANA F1.
1: Luc.] Rowe. Julia Ff.
2: _Antipholus_] _Antipholis, hate_ Theobald. _Antipholis, thus_
Id. conj. _a nipping hate_ Heath conj. _unkind debate_ Collier MS.
4: _building_] Theobald. _buildings_ Ff.
_ruinous_] Capell (Theobald conj.). _ruinate_ Ff.
16: _attaint_] Rowe. _attaine_ F1 F2 F3. _attain_ F4.
20: _are_] F2 F3 F4. _is_ F1.
21: _but_] Theobald. _not_ Ff.
26: _wife_] _wise_ F1.
35: _shallow_] F1. _shaddow_ F2 F3. _shadow_ F4.
43: _no_] F1. _a_ F2 F3 F4.
44: _decline_] _incline_ Collier MS.
46: _sister_] F1. _sister's_ F2 F3 F4.
49: _bed_] F2 F3 F4. _bud_ F1. _bride_ Dyce.
_them_] Capell (Edwards conj.). _thee_ Ff.
52: _she_] _he_ Capell.
57: _where_] Pope. _when_ Ff.
66: _am_] _mean_ Pope. _aim_ Capell.
71: SCENE III. Pope.
93: _How_] _What_ Capell.
97: _Poland_] _Lapland_ Warburton.
108: _and_] Theobald (Thirlby conj). _is_ Ff.
120: _the_] Ff. _her_ Rowe.
122: _forehead_] _sore head_ Jackson conj.
_reverted_] _revolted_ Grant White.
123: _heir_] _heire_ F1. _haire_ F2 F3. _hair_ F4.
125: _chalky_] _chalkle_ F1.
135: _caracks_] Hanmer. _carrects_ F1. _carracts_ F2 F3 F4.
_ballast_] _ballasted_ Capell.
138: _drudge, or_] _drudge of the Devil, this_ Warburton.
_or diviner_] _this divine one_ Capell conj.
140: _mark_] _marke_ F1. _marks_ F2 F3 F4.
143: _faith_] _flint_ Hanmer.
143, 144: Printed as prose in Ff. As verse first by Knight.
144: _curtal_] F4. _curtull_ F1. _curtall_ F2 F3. _cur-tail_ Hanmer.
146: _An_] Capell. _And_ Ff.
150: _knows us_] _know us_ Johnson.
154: SCENE IV. Pope.
161: _to_] _of_ Pope.
164: _here is_] Pope. _here's_ Ff.
177: Ant. S.] Ant. F1 F4. Dro. F2 F3.
181: _streets_] _street_ Capell conj.
| 2,808 | Act III, Scene ii | https://web.archive.org/web/20201219160210/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/comedy-of-errors/summary/act-iii-scene-ii | Still at E. Antipholus's house, the confusion we've just seen outside is almost as bad as the confusion going on inside. Remember S. Antipholus has just had dinner with Adriana and Luciana . Dinner must've been pretty good , because S. Antipholus has presently declared his love for Luciana. Of course, this is complicated by the fact that Luciana thinks her brother-in-law is coming onto her. Luciana wonders just how E. Antipholus can turn from loving his wife to being so unfaithful. She says Antipholus may have married her sister for money, but she wishes he'd be better to her for the money's sake, then. Luciana doesn't tell him to be faithful, exactly. Instead, she recommends that if he does love another, that he do it stealthily, as it's one offense to cheat on your wife, and an entirely different offense to let the poor woman know about it. According to Luciana, a man should hide his infidelity for his wife's sake. Luciana finally deflects S. Antipholus by saying women are gullible, and will believe what men want them to believe, especially if the men can flatter them by claiming true love. S. Antipholus is undeterred. Again, he wonders how Luciana even knows his name. He admits he doesn't really know her name, and decides that she must be some divine creature. He pleads with her to be his mentor, and teach him the ways of the world and himself. Finally, S. Antipholus rightly asserts that he has no wife, and either way, he prefers Luciana to Adriana. Besides, Adriana is inside the house crying as they speak. S. Antipholus wishes Luciana would do more with her power than just try to get him to love her sister. He basically declares Luciana to be the apple of his eye. Luciana is weirded out and runs off to try to comfort her sister. Just then, S. Dromio runs in, out of breath. S. Dromio says this woman, the unattractive kitchen wench, claims that he's her man. Though the girl's not appealing, she did know Dromio by name. Even creepier, she knew about all the marks and moles on his body. This is no woman to bring home to mom , so Dromio ran from her as though she were a witch. S. Antipholus has clearly had enough, and his plan is to get the hell out. He sends S. Dromio to go find out if any ships are leaving immediately. He'd really rather not spend the night in this creepy place that's clearly enchanted by witches and full of awful women who claim he and Dromio for their husbands. Still, S. Antipholus will be a little sad to leave Luciana, who has enchanted him. Now, Angelo the goldsmith shows up with E. Antipholus's gold chain for his wife. He mistakes S. Antipholus for E. Antipholus, and happily gives him the chain, so glad to meet him before he went to the Porpentine. Of course, S. Antipholus has no idea what's going on, but he doesn't refuse the necklace because it's pretty. He tries to pay Angelo on the spot, but Angelo refuses . S. Antipholus, thinking golden gifts are raining from the sky, decides to accept his gift. He'll meet Dromio at the marketplace and leave Ephesus as soon as possible. | null | 550 | 1 | [
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44,747 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/30.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/The Red and the Black/section_8_part_0.txt | The Red and the Black.part 1.chapter 30 | chapter 30 | null | {"name": "Chapter 30", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201128052739/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/the-red-and-the-black/summary-and-analysis/part-1-chapter-30", "summary": "Pirard refuses to serve as Mole's secretary but recommends Julien for the post. The latter is notified by Pirard to come to Paris but visits Verrieres before his departure. Chelan requires that he not see Mme. de Renal. Julien obtains a ladder, however, and courageously presents himself at Mme. de Renal's window, not knowing who might be awaiting him there or how he would be received by Mme. de Renal. She admits him with reluctance, but after three hours of conversation, he succeeds in overcoming her remorse. She has given herself with a certain gaiety and abandon, an attitude that she retains the next day while she hides Julien in her room and, in spite of endless perils, until the next night. The arrival of M. de Renal, who has discovered the \"thief's\" ladder, pounding on her door, causes Julien to leap from her window and to take flight to Paris, on the road to Geneva, however, to avoid capture.", "analysis": "It is obvious that Pirard's journey to Paris is a means to get Julien there, and with a position, that is, protected by the powerful M. de La Mole. Julien can only assume that the gift he has received comes from Mme. de Renal. The superiority of the reader invites our complicity with Julien's other mentors. It is fitting that Julien returns to Verrieres before undertaking the next stage in his education in Paris. We are thereby made more aware of the distance covered in his formation. Fourteen months have passed, we are told, but we are not noticeably aware of the passage of time with Stendhal. We have, rather, the impression of a non-ending present. Contrast Julien's attitude as he undertakes with premeditation the seduction of Mme. de Renal to his awkwardness on the first occasion. A refusal on her part would have been a disgrace for his honor, and he is forced to cold calculation to overcome her remorse. The ruthlessness with which Julien calculates this seduction shows us the extent to which the hypocrisy of the seminary has permeated his character. His threat to leave and the avowal that he will be going to Paris never to return force her consent. Note the means employed by Julien to gain access to Mme. vie Renal's room prior to their last meeting. It is possible that Julien recalls his meeting with Mme. de Renal in the Besancon cathedral, a scene in which he had utilized a ladder to perform another act of daring: the decoration of the church. Stendhal flatters the intelligence of his reader by not making explicit this associational mechanism in the mind of Julien. In both incidents, Julien distinguishes himself by a spirit of adventure, a necessity to engage his entire existence in a single act, regardless of the consequences. What of Julien's love for Mme. de Renal? Once again he is able to appreciate her greatness of soul as he witnesses her courage and gaiety in the face of danger. They are worthy of one another in their heroism. The dangers to which his visit exposes Mme. de Renal, both real and in the form of remorse which will no doubt follow, and Julien's insistence -- everything indicates that although Stendhal says that Julien \"adores\" her, his love is rather a need to be loved, to be preferred, to be the object of sacrifice for another."} | CHAPTER XXX
AN AMBITIOUS MAN
There is only one nobility, the title of duke; a marquis is
ridiculous; the word duke makes one turn round.
_Edinburgh Review_.
The Marquis de la Mole received the abbe Pirard without any of those
aristocratic mannerisms whose very politeness is at the same time so
impertinent to one who understands them. It would have been a waste of
time, and the Marquis was sufficiently expeditious in big affairs to
have no time to lose.
He had been intriguing for six months to get both the king and people
to accept a minister who, as a matter of gratitude, was to make him a
Duke. The Marquis had been asking his Besancon advocate for years on
end for a clear and precise summary of his Franche-Comte lawsuits. How
could the celebrated advocate explain to him what he did not understand
himself? The little square of paper which the abbe handed him explained
the whole matter.
"My dear abbe," said the Marquis to him, having got through in less
than five minutes all polite formulae of personal questions. "My dear
abbe, in the midst of my pretended prosperity I lack the time to occupy
myself seriously with two little matters which are rather important,
my family and my affairs. I manage the fortune of my house on a large
scale. I can carry it far. I manage my pleasures, and that is the first
consideration in my eyes," he added, as he saw a look of astonishment
in the abbe Pirard's eyes. Although a man of common sense, the abbe was
surprised to hear a man talk so frankly about his pleasures.
"Work doubtless exists in Paris," continued the great lord, "but it is
perched on the fifth story, and as soon as I take anyone up, he takes
an apartment on the second floor, and his wife starts a day at home;
the result is no more work and no more efforts except either to be, or
appear to be, a society man. That is the only thing they bother about,
as soon as they have got their bread and butter.
"For my lawsuits, yes, for every single one of them, I have, to put it
plainly, advocates who quarrel to death. One died of consumption the
day before yesterday. Taking my business all round, would you believe,
monsieur, that for three years I have given up all hope of finding a
man who deigns, during the time he is acting as my clerk, to give a
little serious thought to what he is doing. Besides, all this is only a
preliminary.
"I respect you and would venture to add that, although I only see you
for the first time to-day, I like you. Will you be my secretary at a
salary of eight hundred francs or even double. I shall still be the
gainer by it, I swear to you, and I will manage to reserve that fine
living for you for the day when we shall no longer be able to agree."
The abbe refused, but the genuine embarrassment in which he saw the
Marquis suggested an idea to him towards the end of the conversation.
"I have left in the depths of my seminary a poor young man who, if I
mistake not, will be harshly persecuted. If he were only a simple monk
he would be already _in pace_. So far this young man only knows Latin
and the Holy Scriptures, but it is not impossible that he will one day
exhibit great talent, either for preaching or the guiding of souls. I
do not know what he will do, but he has the sacred fire. He may go far.
I thought of giving him to our Bishop, if we had ever had one who was a
little of your way of considering men and things."
"What is your young man's extraction?" said the Marquis.
"He is said to be the son of a carpenter in our mountains. I rather
believe he is the natural son of some rich man. I have seen him receive
an anonymous or pseudonymous letter with a bill for five hundred
francs."
"Oh, it is Julien Sorel," said the Marquis.
"How do you know his name?" said the abbe, in astonishment, reddening
at his question.
"That's what I'm not going to tell you," answered the Marquis.
"Well," replied the abbe, "you might try making him your secretary. He
has energy. He has a logical mind. In a word, it's worth trying."
"Why not?" said the Marquis. "But would he be the kind of man to allow
his palm to be greased by the Prefect of Police or any one else and
then spy on me? That is only my objection."
After hearing the favourable assurances of the abbe Pirard, the Marquis
took a thousand franc note.
"Send this journey money to Julien Sorel. Let him come to me."
"One sees at once," said the abbe Pirard, "that you live in Paris.
You do not know the tyranny which weighs us poor provincials down,
and particularly those priests who are not friendly to the Jesuits.
They will refuse to let Julien Sorel leave. They will manage to cloak
themselves in the most clever excuses. They will answer me that he is
ill, that his letters were lost in the post, etc., etc."
"I will get a letter from the minister to the Bishop, one of these
days," answered the Marquis.
"I was forgetting to warn you of one thing," said the abbe. "This young
man, though of low birth, has a high spirit. He will be of no use if
you madden his pride. You will make him stupid."
"That pleases me," said the Marquis. "I will make him my son's comrade.
Will that be enough for you?"
Some time afterwards, Julien received a letter in an unknown writing,
and bearing the Chelon postmark. He found in it a draft on a Besancon
merchant, and instructions to present himself at Paris without delay.
The letter was signed in a fictitious name, but Julien had felt a
thrill in opening it. A leaf of a tree had fallen down at his feet. It
was the agreed signal between himself and the abbe Pirard.
Within an hour's time, Julien was summoned to the Bishop's Palace,
where he found himself welcomed with a quite paternal benevolence. My
lord quoted Horace and at the same time complimented him very adroitly
on the exalted destiny which awaited him in Paris in such a way as
to elicit an explanation by way of thanks. Julien was unable to say
anything, simply because he did not know anything, and my Lord showed
him much consideration. One of the little priests in the bishopric
wrote to the mayor, who hastened to bring in person a signed passport,
where the name of the traveller had been left in blank.
Before midnight of the same evening, Julien was at Fouque's. His
friend's shrewd mind was more astonished than pleased with the future
which seemed to await his friend.
"You will finish up," said that Liberal voter, "with a place in the
Government, which will compel you to take some step which will be
calumniated. It will only be by your own disgrace that I shall have
news of you. Remember that, even from the financial standpoint, it is
better to earn a hundred louis in a good timber business, of which
one is his own master, than to receive four thousand francs from a
Government, even though it were that of King Solomon."
Julien saw nothing in this except the pettiness of spirit of a country
bourgeois. At last he was going to make an appearance in the theatre of
great events. Everything was over-shadowed in his eyes by the happiness
of going to Paris, which he imagined to be populated by people of
intellect, full of intrigues and full of hypocrisy, but as polite as
the Bishop of Besancon and the Bishop of Agde. He represented to his
friend that he was deprived of any free choice in the matter by the
abbe Pirard's letter.'
The following day he arrived at Verrieres about noon. He felt the
happiest of men for he counted on seeing Madame de Renal again. He
went first to his protector the good abbe Chelan. He met with a severe
welcome.
"Do you think you are under any obligation to me?" said M. Chelan to
him, without answering his greeting. "You will take breakfast with me.
During that time I will have a horse hired for you and you will leave
Verrieres without seeing anyone."
"Hearing is obeying," answered Julien with a demeanour smacking of
the seminary, and the only questions now discussed were theology and
classical Latin.
He mounted his horse, rode a league, and then perceiving a wood and
not seeing any one who could notice him enter, he plunged into it.
At sunset, he sent away the horse. Later, he entered the cottage of
a peasant, who consented to sell him a ladder and to follow him with
it to the little wood which commands the _Cours de la Fidelite_ at
Verrieres.
"I have been following a poor mutineer of a conscript ... or a
smuggler," said the peasant as he took leave of him, "but what does
it matter? My ladder has been well paid for, and I myself have done a
thing or two in that line."
The night was very black. Towards one o'clock in the morning, Julien,
laden with his ladder, entered Verrieres. He descended as soon as he
could into the bed of the stream, which is banked within two walls, and
traverses M. de Renal's magnificent gardens at a depth of ten feet.
Julien easily climbed up the ladder. "How will the watch dogs welcome
me," he thought. "It all turns on that." The dogs barked and galloped
towards him, but he whistled softly and they came and caressed him.
Then climbing from terrace to terrace he easily managed, although all
the grills were shut, to get as far as the window of Madame de Renal's
bedroom which, on the garden side, was only eight or six feet above the
ground. There was a little heart shaped opening in the shutters which
Julien knew well. To his great disappointment, this little opening was
not illuminated by the flare of a little night-light inside.
"Good God," he said to himself. "This room is not occupied by Madame de
Renal. Where can she be sleeping? The family must be at Verrieres since
I have found the dogs here, but I might meet M. de Renal himself, or
even a stranger in this room without a light, and then what a scandal!"
The most prudent course was to retreat, but this idea horrified Julien.
"If it's a stranger, I will run away for all I'm worth, and leave my
ladder behind me, but if it is she, what a welcome awaits me! I can
well imagine that she has fallen into a mood of penitence and the most
exalted piety, but after all, she still has some remembrance of me,
since she has written to me." This bit of reasoning decided him.
With a beating heart, but resolved none the less to see her or perish
in the attempt, he threw some little pebbles against the shutter.
No answer. He leaned his long ladder beside the window, and himself
knocked on the shutter, at first softly, and then more strongly.
"However dark it is, they may still shoot me," thought Julien. This
idea made the mad adventure simply a question of bravery.
"This room is not being slept in to-night," he thought, "or whatever
person might be there would have woken up by now. So far as it is
concerned, therefore, no further precautions are needed. I must only
try not to be heard by the persons sleeping in the other rooms."
He descended, placed his ladder against one of the shutters, climbed
up again, and placing his hand through the heart-shaped opening, was
fortunate enough to find pretty quickly the wire which is attached to
the hook which closed the shutter. He pulled this wire. It was with an
ineffable joy that he felt that the shutter was no longer held back,
and yielded to his effort.
I must open it bit by bit and let her recognise my voice. He opened the
shutter enough to pass his head through it, while he repeated in a low
voice, "It's a friend."
He pricked up his ears and assured himself that nothing disturbed the
profound silence of the room, but there could be no doubt about it,
there was no light, even half-extinguished, on the mantelpiece. It was
a very bad sign.
"Look out for the gun-shot," he reflected a little, then he ventured
to knock against the window with his finger. No answer. He knocked
harder. I must finish it one way or another, even if I have to break
the window. When he was knocking very hard, he thought he could catch
a glimpse through the darkness of something like a white shadow that
was crossing the room. At last there was no doubt about it. He saw a
shadow which appeared to advance with extreme slowness. Suddenly he saw
a cheek placed against the pane to which his eye was glued.
He shuddered and went away a little, but the night was so black that
he could not, even at this distance, distinguish if it were Madame de
Renal. He was frightened of her crying out at first in alarm. He heard
the dogs prowling and growling around the foot of the ladder. "It is
I," he repeated fairly loudly. "A friend."
No answer. The white phantom had disappeared.
"Deign to open to me. I must speak to you. I am too unhappy." And he
knocked hard enough to break the pane.
A crisp sound followed. The casement fastening of the window yielded.
He pushed the casement and leaped lightly into the room.
The white phantom flitted away from him. He took hold of its arms. It
was a woman. All his ideas of courage vanished. "If it is she, what is
she going to say?" What were his emotions when a little cry gave him to
understand, that it was Madame de Renal?
He clasped her in his arms. She trembled and scarcely had the strength
to push him away.
"Unhappy man. What are you doing?" Her agonised voice could scarcely
articulate the words.
Julien thought that her voice rang with the most genuine indignation.
"I have come to see you after a cruel separation of more than fourteen
months."
"Go away, leave me at once. Oh, M. Chelan, why did you prevent me
writing to him? I could then have foreseen this horror." She pushed
him away with a truly extraordinary strength. "Heaven has deigned to
enlighten me," she repeated in a broken voice. "Go away! Flee!"
"After fourteen months of unhappiness I shall certainly not leave you
without a word. I want to know all you have done. Yes, I have loved
you enough to deserve this confidence. I want to know everything."
This authoritative tone dominated Madame de Renal's heart in spite of
herself. Julien, who was hugging her passionately and resisting her
efforts to get loose, left off clasping her in his arms. This reassured
Madame de Renal a little.
"I will take away the ladder," he said, "to prevent it compromising
us in case some servant should be awakened by the noise, and go on a
round."
"Oh leave me, leave me!" she cried with an admirable anger. "What
do men matter to me! It is God who sees the awful scene you are now
making. You are abusing meanly the sentiments which I had for you but
have no longer. Do you hear, Monsieur Julien?"
He took away the ladder very slowly so as not to make a noise.
"Is your husband in town, dear," he said to her not in order to defy
her but as a sheer matter of habit.
"Don't talk to me like that, I beg you, or I will call my husband. I
feel only too guilty in not having sent you away before. I pity you,"
she said to him, trying to wound his, as she well knew, irritable pride.
This refusal of all endearments, this abrupt way of breaking so tender
a tie which he thought still subsisted, carried the transports of
Julien's love to the point of delirium.
"What! is it possible you do not love me?" he said to her, with one of
those accents that come straight from the heart and impose a severe
strain on the cold equanimity of the listener.
She did not answer. As for him, he wept bitterly.
In fact he had no longer the strength to speak.
"So I am completely forgotten by the one being who ever loved me, what
is the good of living on henceforth?" As soon as he had no longer to
fear the danger of meeting a man all his courage had left him; his
heart now contained no emotion except that of love.
He wept for a long time in silence.
He took her hand; she tried to take it away, and after a few almost
convulsive moments, surrendered it to him. It was extremely dark; they
were both sitting on Madame de Renal's bed.
"What a change from fourteen months ago," thought Julien, and his tears
redoubled. "So absence is really bound to destroy all human sentiments."
"Deign to tell me what has happened to you?" Julien said at last.
"My follies," answered Madame de Renal in a hard voice whose frigid
intonation contained in it a certain element of reproach, "were no
doubt known in the town when you left, your conduct was so imprudent.
Some time afterwards when I was in despair the venerable Chelan came to
see me. He tried in vain for a long time to obtain a confession. One
day he took me to that church at Dijon where I made my first communion.
In that place he ventured to speak himself----" Madame de Renal
was interrupted by her tears. "What a moment of shame. I confessed
everything. The good man was gracious enough not to overwhelm me with
the weight of his indignation. He grieved with me. During that time I
used to write letters to you every day which I never ventured to send.
I hid them carefully and when I was more than usually unhappy I shut
myself up in my room and read over my letters."
"At last M. Chelan induced me to hand them over to him, some of them
written a little more discreetly were sent to you, you never answered."
"I never received any letters from you, I swear!"
"Great heavens! Who can have intercepted them? Imagine my grief until
the day I saw you in the cathedral. I did not know if you were still
alive."
"God granted me the grace of understanding how much I was sinning
towards Him, towards my children, towards my husband," went on Madame
de Renal. "He never loved me in the way that I then thought that you
had loved me."
Julien rushed into her arms, as a matter of fact without any particular
purpose and feeling quite beside himself. But Madame de Renal repelled
him and continued fairly firmly.
"My venerable friend, M. Chelan, made me understand that in marrying I
had plighted all my affections, even those which I did not then know,
and which I had never felt before a certain fatal attachment ... after
the great sacrifice of the letters that were so dear to me, my life has
flowed on, if not happily, at any rate calmly. Do not disturb it. Be
a friend to me, my best friend." Julien covered her hand with kisses.
She perceived he was still crying. "Do not cry, you pain me so much.
Tell me, in your turn, what you have been doing," Julien was unable
to speak. "I want to know the life you lead at the seminary," she
repeated. "And then you will go."
Without thinking about what he was saying Julien spoke of the
numberless intrigues and jealousies which he had first encountered, and
then of the great serenity of his life after he had been made a tutor.
"It was then," he added, "that after a long silence which was no doubt
intended to make me realise what I see only too clearly to-day, that
you no longer loved me and that I had become a matter of indifference
to you...."
Madame de Renal wrung her hands.
"It was then that you sent me the sum of five hundred francs."
"Never," said Madame de Renal.
"It was a letter stamped Paris and signed Paul Sorel so as to avert
suspicion."
There was a little discussion about how the letter could possibly have
originated.
The psychological situation was altered. Without knowing it Julien had
abandoned his solemn tone; they were now once more on the footing of a
tender affection. It was so dark that they did not see each other but
the tone of their voices was eloquent of everything. Julien clasped
his arm round his love's waist. This movement had its dangers. She
tried to put Julien's arms away from her; at this juncture he cleverly
diverted her attention by an interesting detail in his story. The arm
was practically forgotten and remained in its present position.
After many conjectures as to the origin of the five hundred francs
letter, Julien took up his story. He regained a little of his
self-control as he spoke of his past life, which compared with what he
was now experiencing interested him so little. His attention was now
concentrated on the final outcome of of his visit. "You will have to
go," were the curt words he heard from time to time.
"What a disgrace for me if I am dismissed. My remorse will embitter all
my life," he said to himself, "she will never write to me. God knows
when I shall come back to this part of the country." From this moment
Julien's heart became rapidly oblivious of all the heavenly delights of
his present position.
Seated as he was close to a woman whom he adored and practically
clasping her in his arms in this room, the scene of his former
happiness, amid a deep obscurity, seeing quite clearly as he did that
she had just started crying, and feeling that she was sobbing from the
heaving of her chest, he was unfortunate enough to turn into a cold
diplomatist, nearly as cold as in those days when in the courtyard
of the seminary he found himself the butt of some malicious joke on
the part of one of his comrades who was stronger than he was. Julien
protracted his story by talking of his unhappy life since his departure
from Verrieres.
"So," said Madame de Renal to herself, "after a year's absence and
deprived almost entirely of all tokens of memory while I myself was
forgetting him, he only thought of the happy days that he had had in
Verrieres." Her sobs redoubled. Julien saw the success of his story.
He realised that he must play his last card. He abruptly mentioned a
letter he had just received from Paris.
"I have taken leave of my Lord Bishop."
"What! you are not going back to Besancon? You are leaving us for ever?"
"Yes," answered Julien resolutely, "yes, I am leaving a country where I
have been forgotten even by the woman whom I loved more than anyone in
my life; I am leaving it and I shall never see it again. I am going to
Paris."
"You are going to Paris, dear," exclaimed Madame de Renal.
Her voice was almost choked by her tears and showed the extremity of
her trouble. Julien had need of this encouragement. He was on the point
of executing a manoeuvre which might decide everything against him; and
up to the time of this exclamation he could not tell what effect he was
producing as he was unable to see. He no longer hesitated. The fear of
remorse gave him complete control over himself. He coldly added as he
got up.
"Yes, madame, I leave you for ever. May you be happy. Adieu."
He moved some steps towards the window. He began to open it. Madame de
Renal rushed to him and threw herself into his arms. So it was in this
way that, after a dialogue lasting three hours, Julien obtained what he
desired so passionately during the first two hours.
Madame de Renal's return to her tender feelings and this overshadowing
of her remorse would have been a divine happiness had they come a
little earlier; but, as they had been obtained by artifice, they were
simply a pleasure. Julien insisted on lighting the night-light in spite
of his mistress's opposition.
"Do you wish me then," he said to her "to have no recollection of
having seen you. Is the love in those charming eyes to be lost to me
for ever? Is the whiteness of that pretty hand to remain invisible?
Remember that perhaps I am leaving you for a very long time."
Madame de Renal could refuse him nothing. His argument made her melt
into tears. But the dawn was beginning to throw into sharp relief the
outlines of the pine trees on the mountain east of Verrieres. Instead
of going away Julien, drunk with pleasure, asked Madame de Renal to let
him pass the day in her room and leave the following night.
"And why not?" she answered. "This fatal relapse robs me of all my
respect and will mar all my life," and she pressed him to her heart.
"My husband is no longer the same; he has suspicions, he believes I led
him the way I wanted in all this business, and shows great irritation
against me. If he hears the slightest noise I shall be ruined, he will
hound me out like the unhappy woman that I am."
"Ah here we have a phrase of M. Chelan's," said Julien "you would not
have talked like that before my cruel departure to the seminary; in
those days you used to love me."
Julien was rewarded for the frigidity which he put into those words. He
saw his love suddenly forget the danger which her husband's presence
compelled her to run, in thinking of the much greater danger of seeing
Julien doubt her love. The daylight grew rapidly brighter and vividly
illuminated the room. Julien savoured once more all the deliciousness
of pride, when he saw this charming woman in his arms and almost at his
feet, the only woman whom he had ever loved, and who had been entirely
absorbed only a few hours before by her fear of a terrible God and her
devotion to her duties. Resolutions, fortified by a year's persuasion,
had failed to hold out against his courage.
They soon heard a noise in the house. A matter that Madame de Renal had
not thought of began to trouble her.
"That wicked Elisa will come into the room. What are we to do with this
enormous ladder?" she said to her sweetheart, "where are we to hide it?
I will take it to the loft," she exclaimed suddenly half playfully.
"But you will have to pass through the servants' room," said Julien in
astonishment.
"I will leave the ladder in the corridor and will call the servant and
send him on an errand."
"Think of some explanation to have ready in the event of a servant
passing the ladder and noticing it in the corridor."
"Yes, my angel," said Madame de Renal giving him a kiss "as for you,
dear, remember to hide under the bed pretty quickly if Elisa enters
here during my absence."
Julien was astonished by this sudden gaiety--"So" he thought, "the
approach of a real danger instead of troubling her gives her back
her spirits before she forgets her remorse. Truly a superior woman.
Yes, that's a heart over which it is glorious to reign." Julien was
transported with delight.
Madame de Renal took the ladder, which was obviously too heavy for her.
Julien went to her help. He was admiring that elegant figure which was
so far from betokening any strength when she suddenly seized the ladder
without assistance and took it up as if it had been a chair. She took
it rapidly into the corridor of the third storey where she laid it
alongside the wall. She called a servant, and in order to give him time
to dress himself, went up into the dovecot.
Five minutes later, when she came back to the corridor, she found no
signs of the ladder. What had happened to it? If Julien had been out
of the house she would not have minded the danger in the least. But
supposing her husband were to see the ladder just now, the incident
might be awful. Madame de Renal ran all over the house.
Madame de Renal finally discovered the ladder under the roof where the
servant had carried it and even hid it.
"What does it matter what happens in twenty-four hours," she thought,
"when Julien will be gone?"
She had a vague idea that she ought to take leave of life but what
mattered her duty? He was restored to her after a separation which she
had thought eternal. She was seeing him again and the efforts he had
made to reach her showed the extent of his love.
"What shall I say to my husband," she said to him. "If the servant
tells him he found this ladder?" She was pensive for a moment. "They
will need twenty-four hours to discover the peasant who sold it
to you." And she threw herself into Julien's arms and clasped him
convulsively.
"Oh, if I could only die like this," she cried covering him with
kisses. "But you mustn't die of starvation," she said with a smile.
"Come, I will first hide you in Madame Derville's room which is always
locked." She went and watched at the other end of the corridor and
Julien ran in. "Mind you don't try and open if any one knocks," she
said as she locked him in. "Anyway it would only be a frolic of the
children as they play together."
"Get them to come into the garden under the window," said Julien, "so
that I may have the pleasure of seeing them. Make them speak."
"Yes, yes," cried Madame de Renal to him as she went away. She soon
returned with oranges, biscuits and a bottle of Malaga wine. She had
not been able to steal any bread.
"What is your husband doing?" said Julien.
"He is writing out the figures of the bargains he is going to make with
the peasants."
But eight o'clock had struck and they were making a lot of noise in the
house. If Madame de Renal failed to put in an appearance, they would
look for her all over the house. She was obliged to leave him. Soon she
came back, in defiance of all prudence, bringing him a cup of coffee.
She was frightened lest he should die of starvation.
She managed after breakfast to bring the children under the window of
Madame Derville's room. He thought they had grown a great deal, but
they had begun to look common, or else his ideas had changed. Madame de
Renal spoke to them about Julien. The elder answered in an affectionate
tone and regretted his old tutor, but he found that the younger
children had almost forgotten him.
M. de Renal did not go out that morning; he was going up and downstairs
incessantly engaged in bargaining with some peasants to whom he was
selling potatoes.
Madame de Renal did not have an instant to give to her prisoner until
dinner-time. When the bell had been rung and dinner had been served,
it occurred to her to steal a plate of warm soup for him. As she
noiselessly approached the door of the room which he occupied, she
found herself face to face with the servant who had hid the ladder
in the morning. At the time he too was going noiselessly along the
corridor, as though listening for something. The servant took himself
off in some confusion.
Madame de Renal boldly entered Julien's room. The news of this
encounter made him shudder.
"You are frightened," she said to him, "but I would brave all the
dangers in the world without flinching. There is only one thing I fear,
and that is the moment when I shall be alone after you have left," and
she left him and ran downstairs.
"Ah," thought Julien ecstatically, "remorse is the only danger which
this sublime soul is afraid of."
At last evening came. Monsieur de Renal went to the Casino.
His wife had given out that she was suffering from an awful headache.
She went to her room, hastened to dismiss Elisa and quickly got up in
order to let Julien out.
He was literally starving. Madame de Renal went to the pantry to fetch
some bread. Julien heard a loud cry. Madame de Renal came back and told
him that when she went to the dark pantry and got near the cupboard
where they kept the bread, she had touched a woman's arm as she
stretched out her hand. It was Elisa who had uttered the cry Julien had
heard.
"What was she doing there?"
"Stealing some sweets or else spying on us," said Madame de Renal with
complete indifference, "but luckily I found a pie and a big loaf of
bread."
"But what have you got there?" said Julien pointing to the pockets of
her apron.
Madame de Renal had forgotten that they had been filled with bread
since dinner.
Julien clasped her in his arms with the most lively passion. She had
never seemed to him so beautiful. "I could not meet a woman of greater
character even at Paris," he said confusedly to himself. She combined
all the clumsiness of a woman who was but little accustomed to paying
attentions of this kind, with all the genuine courage of a person who
is only afraid of dangers of quite a different sphere and quite a
different kind of awfulness.
While Julien was enjoying his supper with a hearty appetite and his
sweetheart was rallying him on the simplicity of the meal, the door of
the room was suddenly shaken violently. It was M. de Renal.
"Why have you shut yourself in?" he cried to her.
Julien had only just time to slip under the sofa.
On any ordinary day Madame de Renal would have been upset by this
question which was put with true conjugal harshness; but she realised
that M. de Renal had only to bend down a little to notice Julien, for
M. de Renal had flung himself into the chair opposite the sofa which
Julien had been sitting in one moment before.
Her headache served as an excuse for everything. While her husband on
his side went into a long-winded account of the billiards pool which he
had won at Casino, "yes, to be sure a nineteen franc pool," he added.
She noticed Julien's hat on a chair three paces in front of them.
Her self-possession became twice as great, she began to undress, and
rapidly passing one minute behind her husband threw her dress over the
chair with the hat on it.
At last M. de Renal left. She begged Julien to start over again his
account of his life at the Seminary. "I was not listening to you
yesterday all the time you were speaking, I was only thinking of
prevailing on myself to send you away."
She was the personification of indiscretion. They talked very loud and
about two o'clock in the morning they were interrupted by a violent
knock at the door. It was M. de Renal again.
"Open quickly, there are thieves in the house!" he said. "Saint Jean
found their ladder this morning."
"This is the end of everything," cried Madame de Renal, throwing
herself into Julien's arms. "He will kill both of us, he doesn't
believe there are any thieves. I will die in your arms, and be more
happy in my death than I ever was in my life." She made no attempt to
answer her husband who was beginning to lose his temper, but started
kissing Julien passionately.
"Save Stanislas's mother," he said to her with an imperious look. "I
will jump down into the courtyard through the lavatory window, and
escape in the garden; the dogs have recognised me. Make my clothes into
a parcel and throw them into the garden as soon as you can. In the
meanwhile let him break the door down. But above all, no confession, I
forbid you to confess, it is better that he should suspect rather than
be certain."
"You will kill yourself as you jump!" was her only answer and her only
anxiety.
She went with him to the lavatory window; she then took sufficient time
to hide his clothes. She finally opened the door to her husband who was
boiling with rage. He looked in the room and in the lavatory without
saying a word and disappeared. Julien's clothes were thrown down to
him; he seized them and ran rapidly towards the bottom of the garden in
the direction of the Doubs.
As he was running he heard a bullet whistle past him, and heard at the
same time the report of a gun.
"It is not M. de Renal," he thought, "he's far too bad a shot." The
dogs ran silently at his side, the second shot apparently broke the paw
of one dog, for he began to whine piteously. Julien jumped the wall of
the terrace, did fifty paces under cover, and began to fly in another
direction. He heard voices calling and had a distinct view of his enemy
the servant firing a gun; a farmer also began to shoot away from the
other side of the garden. Julien had already reached the bank of the
Doubs where he dressed himself.
An hour later he was a league from Verrieres on the Geneva road. "If
they had suspicions," thought Julien, "they will look for me on the
Paris road."
| 5,929 | Chapter 30 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201128052739/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/the-red-and-the-black/summary-and-analysis/part-1-chapter-30 | Pirard refuses to serve as Mole's secretary but recommends Julien for the post. The latter is notified by Pirard to come to Paris but visits Verrieres before his departure. Chelan requires that he not see Mme. de Renal. Julien obtains a ladder, however, and courageously presents himself at Mme. de Renal's window, not knowing who might be awaiting him there or how he would be received by Mme. de Renal. She admits him with reluctance, but after three hours of conversation, he succeeds in overcoming her remorse. She has given herself with a certain gaiety and abandon, an attitude that she retains the next day while she hides Julien in her room and, in spite of endless perils, until the next night. The arrival of M. de Renal, who has discovered the "thief's" ladder, pounding on her door, causes Julien to leap from her window and to take flight to Paris, on the road to Geneva, however, to avoid capture. | It is obvious that Pirard's journey to Paris is a means to get Julien there, and with a position, that is, protected by the powerful M. de La Mole. Julien can only assume that the gift he has received comes from Mme. de Renal. The superiority of the reader invites our complicity with Julien's other mentors. It is fitting that Julien returns to Verrieres before undertaking the next stage in his education in Paris. We are thereby made more aware of the distance covered in his formation. Fourteen months have passed, we are told, but we are not noticeably aware of the passage of time with Stendhal. We have, rather, the impression of a non-ending present. Contrast Julien's attitude as he undertakes with premeditation the seduction of Mme. de Renal to his awkwardness on the first occasion. A refusal on her part would have been a disgrace for his honor, and he is forced to cold calculation to overcome her remorse. The ruthlessness with which Julien calculates this seduction shows us the extent to which the hypocrisy of the seminary has permeated his character. His threat to leave and the avowal that he will be going to Paris never to return force her consent. Note the means employed by Julien to gain access to Mme. vie Renal's room prior to their last meeting. It is possible that Julien recalls his meeting with Mme. de Renal in the Besancon cathedral, a scene in which he had utilized a ladder to perform another act of daring: the decoration of the church. Stendhal flatters the intelligence of his reader by not making explicit this associational mechanism in the mind of Julien. In both incidents, Julien distinguishes himself by a spirit of adventure, a necessity to engage his entire existence in a single act, regardless of the consequences. What of Julien's love for Mme. de Renal? Once again he is able to appreciate her greatness of soul as he witnesses her courage and gaiety in the face of danger. They are worthy of one another in their heroism. The dangers to which his visit exposes Mme. de Renal, both real and in the form of remorse which will no doubt follow, and Julien's insistence -- everything indicates that although Stendhal says that Julien "adores" her, his love is rather a need to be loved, to be preferred, to be the object of sacrifice for another. | 160 | 401 | [
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1,130 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/1130-chapters/36.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra/section_35_part_0.txt | The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra.act iv.scene xi | act iv, scene xi | null | {"name": "Act IV, Scene xi", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210116191009/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/antony-cleopatra/summary/act-iv-scene-xi", "summary": "Caesar prepares his army to be inactive by land. He'll meet Antony at sea, where he hopes they can hold some advantageous position.", "analysis": ""} | SCENE XI.
Between the camps
Enter CAESAR and his army
CAESAR. But being charg'd, we will be still by land,
Which, as I take't, we shall; for his best force
Is forth to man his galleys. To the vales,
And hold our best advantage. Exeunt
ACT_4|SC_12
| 114 | Act IV, Scene xi | https://web.archive.org/web/20210116191009/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/antony-cleopatra/summary/act-iv-scene-xi | Caesar prepares his army to be inactive by land. He'll meet Antony at sea, where he hopes they can hold some advantageous position. | null | 23 | 1 | [
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110 | false | gradesaver | all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/15.txt | finished_summaries/gradesaver/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_1_part_4.txt | Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 15 | chapter 15 | null | {"name": "Chapter 15", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-2-chapters-12-15", "summary": "Tess began to note the passing of anniversaries, such as her first arrival at Trantridge and the fateful night at The Chase. Almost suddenly Tess changed from a simple girl to a complex woman. Her eyes grow larger and more eloquent. She wonders if chastity, once lost, is always lost and waits for a new departure. She vows that there will be no more talk of d'Urberville castles, and prepares to go to the Talbothays dairy.", "analysis": "Hardy makes explicit in this chapter what he implied earlier, elucidating the transformative events that moved Tess from a timid girl to a strong and courageous woman. Her rebirth during the baptism of Sorrow is followed by Tess's decision to leave Marlott for a place in which she may start her life anew. However, at this point Hardy introduces one of the most important themes of the novel: the question of the extent to which sins may be forgiven. In this instance, the question is given explicitly: can Tess regain her chastity after one indiscretion. Although Tess herself appears as evidence that purity may be regained, this question will provide significant thematic material throughout the novel"} |
"By experience," says Roger Ascham, "we find out a short way by
a long wandering." Not seldom that long wandering unfits us for
further travel, and of what use is our experience to us then? Tess
Durbeyfield's experience was of this incapacitating kind. At last
she had learned what to do; but who would now accept her doing?
If before going to the d'Urbervilles' she had vigorously moved under
the guidance of sundry gnomic texts and phrases known to her and to
the world in general, no doubt she would never have been imposed on.
But it had not been in Tess's power--nor is it in anybody's power--to
feel the whole truth of golden opinions while it is possible to
profit by them. She--and how many more--might have ironically said
to God with Saint Augustine: "Thou hast counselled a better course
than Thou hast permitted."
She remained at her father's house during the winter months, plucking
fowls, or cramming turkeys and geese, or making clothes for her
sisters and brothers out of some finery which d'Urberville had given
her, and she had put by with contempt. Apply to him she would not.
But she would often clasp her hands behind her head and muse when she
was supposed to be working hard.
She philosophically noted dates as they came past in the revolution
of the year; the disastrous night of her undoing at Trantridge with
its dark background of The Chase; also the dates of the baby's birth
and death; also her own birthday; and every other day individualized
by incidents in which she had taken some share. She suddenly thought
one afternoon, when looking in the glass at her fairness, that there
was yet another date, of greater importance to her than those; that
of her own death, when all these charms would have disappeared; a day
which lay sly and unseen among all the other days of the year, giving
no sign or sound when she annually passed over it; but not the less
surely there. When was it? Why did she not feel the chill of each
yearly encounter with such a cold relation? She had Jeremy Taylor's
thought that some time in the future those who had known her would
say: "It is the ----th, the day that poor Tess Durbeyfield died"; and
there would be nothing singular to their minds in the statement. Of
that day, doomed to be her terminus in time through all the ages, she
did not know the place in month, week, season or year.
Almost at a leap Tess thus changed from simple girl to complex woman.
Symbols of reflectiveness passed into her face, and a note of tragedy
at times into her voice. Her eyes grew larger and more eloquent.
She became what would have been called a fine creature; her aspect
was fair and arresting; her soul that of a woman whom the turbulent
experiences of the last year or two had quite failed to demoralize.
But for the world's opinion those experiences would have been simply
a liberal education.
She had held so aloof of late that her trouble, never generally
known, was nearly forgotten in Marlott. But it became evident to her
that she could never be really comfortable again in a place which
had seen the collapse of her family's attempt to "claim kin"--and,
through her, even closer union--with the rich d'Urbervilles. At
least she could not be comfortable there till long years should have
obliterated her keen consciousness of it. Yet even now Tess felt the
pulse of hopeful life still warm within her; she might be happy in
some nook which had no memories. To escape the past and all that
appertained thereto was to annihilate it, and to do that she would
have to get away.
Was once lost always lost really true of chastity? she would ask
herself. She might prove it false if she could veil bygones. The
recuperative power which pervaded organic nature was surely not
denied to maidenhood alone.
She waited a long time without finding opportunity for a new
departure. A particularly fine spring came round, and the stir of
germination was almost audible in the buds; it moved her, as it moved
the wild animals, and made her passionate to go. At last, one day in
early May, a letter reached her from a former friend of her mother's,
to whom she had addressed inquiries long before--a person whom she
had never seen--that a skilful milkmaid was required at a dairy-house
many miles to the southward, and that the dairyman would be glad to
have her for the summer months.
It was not quite so far off as could have been wished; but it was
probably far enough, her radius of movement and repute having been
so small. To persons of limited spheres, miles are as geographical
degrees, parishes as counties, counties as provinces and kingdoms.
On one point she was resolved: there should be no more d'Urberville
air-castles in the dreams and deeds of her new life. She would be
the dairymaid Tess, and nothing more. Her mother knew Tess's feeling
on this point so well, though no words had passed between them on the
subject, that she never alluded to the knightly ancestry now.
Yet such is human inconsistency that one of the interests of the
new place to her was the accidental virtues of its lying near her
forefathers' country (for they were not Blakemore men, though her
mother was Blakemore to the bone). The dairy called Talbothays,
for which she was bound, stood not remotely from some of the former
estates of the d'Urbervilles, near the great family vaults of her
granddames and their powerful husbands. She would be able to look at
them, and think not only that d'Urberville, like Babylon, had fallen,
but that the individual innocence of a humble descendant could lapse
as silently. All the while she wondered if any strange good thing
might come of her being in her ancestral land; and some spirit within
her rose automatically as the sap in the twigs. It was unexpected
youth, surging up anew after its temporary check, and bringing with
it hope, and the invincible instinct towards self-delight.
END OF PHASE THE SECOND
Phase the Third: The Rally
| 984 | Chapter 15 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-2-chapters-12-15 | Tess began to note the passing of anniversaries, such as her first arrival at Trantridge and the fateful night at The Chase. Almost suddenly Tess changed from a simple girl to a complex woman. Her eyes grow larger and more eloquent. She wonders if chastity, once lost, is always lost and waits for a new departure. She vows that there will be no more talk of d'Urberville castles, and prepares to go to the Talbothays dairy. | Hardy makes explicit in this chapter what he implied earlier, elucidating the transformative events that moved Tess from a timid girl to a strong and courageous woman. Her rebirth during the baptism of Sorrow is followed by Tess's decision to leave Marlott for a place in which she may start her life anew. However, at this point Hardy introduces one of the most important themes of the novel: the question of the extent to which sins may be forgiven. In this instance, the question is given explicitly: can Tess regain her chastity after one indiscretion. Although Tess herself appears as evidence that purity may be regained, this question will provide significant thematic material throughout the novel | 76 | 116 | [
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161 | false | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/18.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Sense and Sensibility/section_12_part_0.txt | Sense and Sensibility.chapter 18 | chapter 18 | null | {"name": "Chapter 18", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapter-18", "summary": "Edward's reticence became more noticeable as his visit continued. On one occasion Marianne attempted to leave the couple alone together and met with the speedy withdrawal of Edward from the room where she had left them. One day when the sisters and Edward were having breakfast, Marianne noticed \"a ring, with a plait of hair in the centre,\" on one of Edward's fingers. She asked him if it was Fanny's, and Edward answered in the affirmative. Elinor and Marianne, however, believed it was Elinor's, although while Marianne thought it was freely given, Elinor was \"conscious it must have been procured by some theft or contrivance unknown to herself.\" At noon, Sir John and Mrs. Jennings arrived, curious about the guest at the cottage. Realizing that he was the mysterious man with a name beginning with \"F,\" Sir John insisted that they must \"drink tea\" at Barton Park that night and dine there the following day.", "analysis": "Notice Edward's raillery of Marianne's sentimental view of the landscape. While he admires it for its utility and beauty, he is aware that Marianne's appreciation of it is for its romantic attributes. He is warmly sarcastic in his delineation of the differences between their points of view. He says, \"I shall call hills steep, which ought to be bold; surfaces strange and uncouth, which ought to be irregular and rugged. . . . I know nothing of the picturesque.\""} |
Elinor saw, with great uneasiness the low spirits of her friend. His
visit afforded her but a very partial satisfaction, while his own
enjoyment in it appeared so imperfect. It was evident that he was
unhappy; she wished it were equally evident that he still distinguished
her by the same affection which once she had felt no doubt of
inspiring; but hitherto the continuance of his preference seemed very
uncertain; and the reservedness of his manner towards her contradicted
one moment what a more animated look had intimated the preceding one.
He joined her and Marianne in the breakfast-room the next morning
before the others were down; and Marianne, who was always eager to
promote their happiness as far as she could, soon left them to
themselves. But before she was half way upstairs she heard the parlour
door open, and, turning round, was astonished to see Edward himself
come out.
"I am going into the village to see my horses," said he, "as you are
not yet ready for breakfast; I shall be back again presently."
***
Edward returned to them with fresh admiration of the surrounding
country; in his walk to the village, he had seen many parts of the
valley to advantage; and the village itself, in a much higher situation
than the cottage, afforded a general view of the whole, which had
exceedingly pleased him. This was a subject which ensured Marianne's
attention, and she was beginning to describe her own admiration of
these scenes, and to question him more minutely on the objects that had
particularly struck him, when Edward interrupted her by saying, "You
must not enquire too far, Marianne--remember I have no knowledge in the
picturesque, and I shall offend you by my ignorance and want of taste
if we come to particulars. I shall call hills steep, which ought to be
bold; surfaces strange and uncouth, which ought to be irregular and
rugged; and distant objects out of sight, which ought only to be
indistinct through the soft medium of a hazy atmosphere. You must be
satisfied with such admiration as I can honestly give. I call it a
very fine country--the hills are steep, the woods seem full of fine
timber, and the valley looks comfortable and snug--with rich meadows
and several neat farm houses scattered here and there. It exactly
answers my idea of a fine country, because it unites beauty with
utility--and I dare say it is a picturesque one too, because you admire
it; I can easily believe it to be full of rocks and promontories, grey
moss and brush wood, but these are all lost on me. I know nothing of
the picturesque."
"I am afraid it is but too true," said Marianne; "but why should you
boast of it?"
"I suspect," said Elinor, "that to avoid one kind of affectation,
Edward here falls into another. Because he believes many people
pretend to more admiration of the beauties of nature than they really
feel, and is disgusted with such pretensions, he affects greater
indifference and less discrimination in viewing them himself than he
possesses. He is fastidious and will have an affectation of his own."
"It is very true," said Marianne, "that admiration of landscape scenery
is become a mere jargon. Every body pretends to feel and tries to
describe with the taste and elegance of him who first defined what
picturesque beauty was. I detest jargon of every kind, and sometimes I
have kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to
describe them in but what was worn and hackneyed out of all sense and
meaning."
"I am convinced," said Edward, "that you really feel all the delight in
a fine prospect which you profess to feel. But, in return, your sister
must allow me to feel no more than I profess. I like a fine prospect,
but not on picturesque principles. I do not like crooked, twisted,
blasted trees. I admire them much more if they are tall, straight, and
flourishing. I do not like ruined, tattered cottages. I am not fond
of nettles or thistles, or heath blossoms. I have more pleasure in a
snug farm-house than a watch-tower--and a troop of tidy, happy villages
please me better than the finest banditti in the world."
Marianne looked with amazement at Edward, with compassion at her
sister. Elinor only laughed.
The subject was continued no farther; and Marianne remained
thoughtfully silent, till a new object suddenly engaged her attention.
She was sitting by Edward, and in taking his tea from Mrs. Dashwood,
his hand passed so directly before her, as to make a ring, with a plait
of hair in the centre, very conspicuous on one of his fingers.
"I never saw you wear a ring before, Edward," she cried. "Is that
Fanny's hair? I remember her promising to give you some. But I should
have thought her hair had been darker."
Marianne spoke inconsiderately what she really felt--but when she saw
how much she had pained Edward, her own vexation at her want of thought
could not be surpassed by his. He coloured very deeply, and giving a
momentary glance at Elinor, replied, "Yes; it is my sister's hair. The
setting always casts a different shade on it, you know."
Elinor had met his eye, and looked conscious likewise. That the hair
was her own, she instantaneously felt as well satisfied as Marianne;
the only difference in their conclusions was, that what Marianne
considered as a free gift from her sister, Elinor was conscious must
have been procured by some theft or contrivance unknown to herself.
She was not in a humour, however, to regard it as an affront, and
affecting to take no notice of what passed, by instantly talking of
something else, she internally resolved henceforward to catch every
opportunity of eyeing the hair and of satisfying herself, beyond all
doubt, that it was exactly the shade of her own.
Edward's embarrassment lasted some time, and it ended in an absence of
mind still more settled. He was particularly grave the whole morning.
Marianne severely censured herself for what she had said; but her own
forgiveness might have been more speedy, had she known how little
offence it had given her sister.
Before the middle of the day, they were visited by Sir John and Mrs.
Jennings, who, having heard of the arrival of a gentleman at the
cottage, came to take a survey of the guest. With the assistance of
his mother-in-law, Sir John was not long in discovering that the name
of Ferrars began with an F. and this prepared a future mine of raillery
against the devoted Elinor, which nothing but the newness of their
acquaintance with Edward could have prevented from being immediately
sprung. But, as it was, she only learned, from some very significant
looks, how far their penetration, founded on Margaret's instructions,
extended.
Sir John never came to the Dashwoods without either inviting them to
dine at the park the next day, or to drink tea with them that evening.
On the present occasion, for the better entertainment of their visitor,
towards whose amusement he felt himself bound to contribute, he wished
to engage them for both.
"You MUST drink tea with us to night," said he, "for we shall be quite
alone--and tomorrow you must absolutely dine with us, for we shall be a
large party."
Mrs. Jennings enforced the necessity. "And who knows but you may raise
a dance," said she. "And that will tempt YOU, Miss Marianne."
"A dance!" cried Marianne. "Impossible! Who is to dance?"
"Who! why yourselves, and the Careys, and Whitakers to be sure.--What!
you thought nobody could dance because a certain person that shall be
nameless is gone!"
"I wish with all my soul," cried Sir John, "that Willoughby were among
us again."
This, and Marianne's blushing, gave new suspicions to Edward. "And who
is Willoughby?" said he, in a low voice, to Miss Dashwood, by whom he
was sitting.
She gave him a brief reply. Marianne's countenance was more
communicative. Edward saw enough to comprehend, not only the meaning
of others, but such of Marianne's expressions as had puzzled him
before; and when their visitors left them, he went immediately round
her, and said, in a whisper, "I have been guessing. Shall I tell you
my guess?"
"What do you mean?"
"Shall I tell you."
"Certainly."
"Well then; I guess that Mr. Willoughby hunts."
Marianne was surprised and confused, yet she could not help smiling at
the quiet archness of his manner, and after a moment's silence, said,
"Oh, Edward! How can you?--But the time will come I hope...I am sure
you will like him."
"I do not doubt it," replied he, rather astonished at her earnestness
and warmth; for had he not imagined it to be a joke for the good of her
acquaintance in general, founded only on a something or a nothing
between Mr. Willoughby and herself, he would not have ventured to
mention it.
| 1,419 | Chapter 18 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapter-18 | Edward's reticence became more noticeable as his visit continued. On one occasion Marianne attempted to leave the couple alone together and met with the speedy withdrawal of Edward from the room where she had left them. One day when the sisters and Edward were having breakfast, Marianne noticed "a ring, with a plait of hair in the centre," on one of Edward's fingers. She asked him if it was Fanny's, and Edward answered in the affirmative. Elinor and Marianne, however, believed it was Elinor's, although while Marianne thought it was freely given, Elinor was "conscious it must have been procured by some theft or contrivance unknown to herself." At noon, Sir John and Mrs. Jennings arrived, curious about the guest at the cottage. Realizing that he was the mysterious man with a name beginning with "F," Sir John insisted that they must "drink tea" at Barton Park that night and dine there the following day. | Notice Edward's raillery of Marianne's sentimental view of the landscape. While he admires it for its utility and beauty, he is aware that Marianne's appreciation of it is for its romantic attributes. He is warmly sarcastic in his delineation of the differences between their points of view. He says, "I shall call hills steep, which ought to be bold; surfaces strange and uncouth, which ought to be irregular and rugged. . . . I know nothing of the picturesque." | 155 | 79 | [
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161 | false | pinkmonkey | all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/01.txt | finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Sense and Sensibility/section_0_part_0.txt | Sense and Sensibility.chapter 1 | chapter 1 | null | {"name": "Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820034609/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmSenseSensibility16.asp", "summary": "Mr. Henry Dashwood is leading a comfortable and happy life with his family at Norland Estate, which belongs to his uncle. He is the rightful heir to the property. However, after his uncle's death, it is revealed that his son, John Dashwood, and his grandson, Harry, are to inherit the estate. Mr. Henry Dashwood is obviously disappointed. He is concerned about the welfare of his wife and three daughters, who might have to lead a simple life with a very modest income. Before he dies, he calls his son, John, to his side and asks him to support Mrs. Dashwood and the girls. John decides to give his sisters three thousand pounds. In the meantime, Fanny Dashwood, John's wife, arrives at Norland Estate and soon takes charge of the house. She adopts an air of condescension towards her in-laws. Mrs. Dashwood feels slighted. Her daughters, especially Elinor, understand her plight but are helpless to improve their situation.", "analysis": "Notes In this chapter Jane Austen presents the circumstances which place the main characters of the novel, Mrs. Dashwood and her children, in a difficult situation. The novel opens with the death of the elder Mr. Dashwood, who was a bachelor and the owner of the Norland Estate. His nephew, Henry, and his family have been living with him and looking after his needs. Naturally, they expect to be named the inheritors of the estate. However, they are shocked when the will is read after the old man's death. Mr. John Dashwood, the old man's grand nephew, and his son, Harry, are declared the inheritors of the property. The turn in the fortunes of Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters thus becomes the starting point for the novel. The chapter also gives a family portrait of the Dashwoods. The reader is presented with sketches of all the characters, from the elder Mr. Dashwood to little Harry. Old Mr. Dashwood is a kind but eccentric man who leaves the best part of his property not to his nephew, who looked after him, but to his grand nephew, who was only a visitor in his house. The nephew, Henry Dashwood, is a good man with a 'cheerful and sanguine' temperament. Mrs. Dashwood is a sensitive woman with \"a sense of honor so keen, a generosity so romantic\" that she finds it difficult to tolerate the arrogant behavior of her daughter-in-law. Fanny Dashwood is an avaricious, 'narrow-minded and selfish' woman who does not mind hurting her in-laws' feelings. John Dashwood is \"not an ill- disposed young man,\" but he is overpowered by his domineering wife. Elinor is good sense personified, while Marianne is idealistic and romantic. Margaret is a good-natured girl who resembles Marianne in her fanciful ideas. Harry is the spoiled child of Fanny and John Dashwood. His cunning tricks have won over the heart of old Mr. Dashwood and induced him to make the little boy the actual inheritor of Norland Estate. This chapter also introduces the main theme of the novel: sense versus sensibility. Elinor is presented as a girl who possesses not only good looks but good sense, too, which makes her the decision-maker in the family. Marianne is the opposite of her in temperament. She is impulsive and is guided only by her sensibility CHAPTER 2 Summary This chapter is a continuation of the previous chapter. The presence of Fanny Dashwood at Norland changes the atmosphere of the house. She acts as the mistress of the house and treats her in-laws as mere visitors. Mrs. Dashwood tolerates her daughter- in-law's imposing manner only because of John, who is civil to everyone. However, Fanny succeeds in changing her husband's decision to assist his sisters financially. Therefore, John, who had made up his mind to give his sisters three thousand pounds, now decides against giving them anything. He is obviously under the influence of his wife. Notes This short chapter exposes the true nature of Fanny. She is rude, selfish and greedy. She arrives at Norland and immediately takes control of the house, without being asked to do so. She is in a hurry to establish herself as the mistress of the house. Through her imposing manner, she hurts the feelings of her mother-in-law and places her in an awkward position. She is cunning and crafty as well. When John reveals to her his plans to give his sisters money, she is shocked. However, instead of expressing her anger to him, she slowly but surely manages to convince him against providing any aid to Mrs. Dashwood or her daughters. John is dim-witted and does not see through Fanny's scheming nature. In fact, he is thankful to her for her advice and is quite satisfied with her reasoning. The scene between John and Fanny Dashwood is one of the most humorous scenes in the novel. John Dashwood, like a devoted husband, tells his wife about his plans to give three thousand pounds to his sisters. Fanny is aghast at his generosity, but she does not throw a fit or chastise him. She overpowers her husband with sweet talk, sly reasoning and mild assertion. She appears to agree with him but ends up disagreeing. When John mentions his promise to his father, Fanny argues, \"Well, then, let something be done for them; but that something need not be three thousand pounds. Consider. . . that when the money is once parted with, it never can return. Your sisters will marry, and it will be gone for ever. If, indeed, it could ever be restored to our poor little boy-- \" She tries to sound reasonable and plays on his sentiments. John is too weak to resist her logic and sees sense in her reasoning. He finds her argument \"irresistible. It gave to his intentions whatever of decision was wanting before: and he finally resolved, that it would be absolutely unnecessary, if not highly indecorous, to do more for the widow and children of his father, than such kind of neighborly acts as his own wife pointed out.\" It is evident how malleable John is in his wife's hands."} |
The family of Dashwood had long been settled in Sussex. Their estate
was large, and their residence was at Norland Park, in the centre of
their property, where, for many generations, they had lived in so
respectable a manner as to engage the general good opinion of their
surrounding acquaintance. The late owner of this estate was a single
man, who lived to a very advanced age, and who for many years of his
life, had a constant companion and housekeeper in his sister. But her
death, which happened ten years before his own, produced a great
alteration in his home; for to supply her loss, he invited and received
into his house the family of his nephew Mr. Henry Dashwood, the legal
inheritor of the Norland estate, and the person to whom he intended to
bequeath it. In the society of his nephew and niece, and their
children, the old Gentleman's days were comfortably spent. His
attachment to them all increased. The constant attention of Mr. and
Mrs. Henry Dashwood to his wishes, which proceeded not merely from
interest, but from goodness of heart, gave him every degree of solid
comfort which his age could receive; and the cheerfulness of the
children added a relish to his existence.
By a former marriage, Mr. Henry Dashwood had one son: by his present
lady, three daughters. The son, a steady respectable young man, was
amply provided for by the fortune of his mother, which had been large,
and half of which devolved on him on his coming of age. By his own
marriage, likewise, which happened soon afterwards, he added to his
wealth. To him therefore the succession to the Norland estate was not
so really important as to his sisters; for their fortune, independent
of what might arise to them from their father's inheriting that
property, could be but small. Their mother had nothing, and their
father only seven thousand pounds in his own disposal; for the
remaining moiety of his first wife's fortune was also secured to her
child, and he had only a life-interest in it.
The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other
will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;--but
he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
and daughters than for himself or his son;--but to his son, and his
son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as
to leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear
to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate, or
by any sale of its valuable woods. The whole was tied up for the
benefit of this child, who, in occasional visits with his father and
mother at Norland, had so far gained on the affections of his uncle, by
such attractions as are by no means unusual in children of two or three
years old; an imperfect articulation, an earnest desire of having his
own way, many cunning tricks, and a great deal of noise, as to outweigh
all the value of all the attention which, for years, he had received
from his niece and her daughters. He meant not to be unkind, however,
and, as a mark of his affection for the three girls, he left them a
thousand pounds a-piece.
Mr. Dashwood's disappointment was, at first, severe; but his temper was
cheerful and sanguine; and he might reasonably hope to live many years,
and by living economically, lay by a considerable sum from the produce
of an estate already large, and capable of almost immediate
improvement. But the fortune, which had been so tardy in coming, was
his only one twelvemonth. He survived his uncle no longer; and ten
thousand pounds, including the late legacies, was all that remained for
his widow and daughters.
His son was sent for as soon as his danger was known, and to him Mr.
Dashwood recommended, with all the strength and urgency which illness
could command, the interest of his mother-in-law and sisters.
Mr. John Dashwood had not the strong feelings of the rest of the
family; but he was affected by a recommendation of such a nature at
such a time, and he promised to do every thing in his power to make
them comfortable. His father was rendered easy by such an assurance,
and Mr. John Dashwood had then leisure to consider how much there might
prudently be in his power to do for them.
He was not an ill-disposed young man, unless to be rather cold hearted
and rather selfish is to be ill-disposed: but he was, in general, well
respected; for he conducted himself with propriety in the discharge of
his ordinary duties. Had he married a more amiable woman, he might
have been made still more respectable than he was:--he might even have
been made amiable himself; for he was very young when he married, and
very fond of his wife. But Mrs. John Dashwood was a strong caricature
of himself;--more narrow-minded and selfish.
When he gave his promise to his father, he meditated within himself to
increase the fortunes of his sisters by the present of a thousand
pounds a-piece. He then really thought himself equal to it. The
prospect of four thousand a-year, in addition to his present income,
besides the remaining half of his own mother's fortune, warmed his
heart, and made him feel capable of generosity.-- "Yes, he would give
them three thousand pounds: it would be liberal and handsome! It would
be enough to make them completely easy. Three thousand pounds! he
could spare so considerable a sum with little inconvenience."-- He
thought of it all day long, and for many days successively, and he did
not repent.
No sooner was his father's funeral over, than Mrs. John Dashwood,
without sending any notice of her intention to her mother-in-law,
arrived with her child and their attendants. No one could dispute her
right to come; the house was her husband's from the moment of his
father's decease; but the indelicacy of her conduct was so much the
greater, and to a woman in Mrs. Dashwood's situation, with only common
feelings, must have been highly unpleasing;--but in HER mind there was
a sense of honor so keen, a generosity so romantic, that any offence of
the kind, by whomsoever given or received, was to her a source of
immovable disgust. Mrs. John Dashwood had never been a favourite with
any of her husband's family; but she had had no opportunity, till the
present, of shewing them with how little attention to the comfort of
other people she could act when occasion required it.
So acutely did Mrs. Dashwood feel this ungracious behaviour, and so
earnestly did she despise her daughter-in-law for it, that, on the
arrival of the latter, she would have quitted the house for ever, had
not the entreaty of her eldest girl induced her first to reflect on the
propriety of going, and her own tender love for all her three children
determined her afterwards to stay, and for their sakes avoid a breach
with their brother.
Elinor, this eldest daughter, whose advice was so effectual, possessed
a strength of understanding, and coolness of judgment, which qualified
her, though only nineteen, to be the counsellor of her mother, and
enabled her frequently to counteract, to the advantage of them all,
that eagerness of mind in Mrs. Dashwood which must generally have led
to imprudence. She had an excellent heart;--her disposition was
affectionate, and her feelings were strong; but she knew how to govern
them: it was a knowledge which her mother had yet to learn; and which
one of her sisters had resolved never to be taught.
Marianne's abilities were, in many respects, quite equal to Elinor's.
She was sensible and clever; but eager in everything: her sorrows, her
joys, could have no moderation. She was generous, amiable,
interesting: she was everything but prudent. The resemblance between
her and her mother was strikingly great.
Elinor saw, with concern, the excess of her sister's sensibility; but
by Mrs. Dashwood it was valued and cherished. They encouraged each
other now in the violence of their affliction. The agony of grief
which overpowered them at first, was voluntarily renewed, was sought
for, was created again and again. They gave themselves up wholly to
their sorrow, seeking increase of wretchedness in every reflection that
could afford it, and resolved against ever admitting consolation in
future. Elinor, too, was deeply afflicted; but still she could
struggle, she could exert herself. She could consult with her brother,
could receive her sister-in-law on her arrival, and treat her with
proper attention; and could strive to rouse her mother to similar
exertion, and encourage her to similar forbearance.
Margaret, the other sister, was a good-humored, well-disposed girl; but
as she had already imbibed a good deal of Marianne's romance, without
having much of her sense, she did not, at thirteen, bid fair to equal
her sisters at a more advanced period of life.
| 1,444 | Chapter 1 | https://web.archive.org/web/20180820034609/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmSenseSensibility16.asp | Mr. Henry Dashwood is leading a comfortable and happy life with his family at Norland Estate, which belongs to his uncle. He is the rightful heir to the property. However, after his uncle's death, it is revealed that his son, John Dashwood, and his grandson, Harry, are to inherit the estate. Mr. Henry Dashwood is obviously disappointed. He is concerned about the welfare of his wife and three daughters, who might have to lead a simple life with a very modest income. Before he dies, he calls his son, John, to his side and asks him to support Mrs. Dashwood and the girls. John decides to give his sisters three thousand pounds. In the meantime, Fanny Dashwood, John's wife, arrives at Norland Estate and soon takes charge of the house. She adopts an air of condescension towards her in-laws. Mrs. Dashwood feels slighted. Her daughters, especially Elinor, understand her plight but are helpless to improve their situation. | Notes In this chapter Jane Austen presents the circumstances which place the main characters of the novel, Mrs. Dashwood and her children, in a difficult situation. The novel opens with the death of the elder Mr. Dashwood, who was a bachelor and the owner of the Norland Estate. His nephew, Henry, and his family have been living with him and looking after his needs. Naturally, they expect to be named the inheritors of the estate. However, they are shocked when the will is read after the old man's death. Mr. John Dashwood, the old man's grand nephew, and his son, Harry, are declared the inheritors of the property. The turn in the fortunes of Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters thus becomes the starting point for the novel. The chapter also gives a family portrait of the Dashwoods. The reader is presented with sketches of all the characters, from the elder Mr. Dashwood to little Harry. Old Mr. Dashwood is a kind but eccentric man who leaves the best part of his property not to his nephew, who looked after him, but to his grand nephew, who was only a visitor in his house. The nephew, Henry Dashwood, is a good man with a 'cheerful and sanguine' temperament. Mrs. Dashwood is a sensitive woman with "a sense of honor so keen, a generosity so romantic" that she finds it difficult to tolerate the arrogant behavior of her daughter-in-law. Fanny Dashwood is an avaricious, 'narrow-minded and selfish' woman who does not mind hurting her in-laws' feelings. John Dashwood is "not an ill- disposed young man," but he is overpowered by his domineering wife. Elinor is good sense personified, while Marianne is idealistic and romantic. Margaret is a good-natured girl who resembles Marianne in her fanciful ideas. Harry is the spoiled child of Fanny and John Dashwood. His cunning tricks have won over the heart of old Mr. Dashwood and induced him to make the little boy the actual inheritor of Norland Estate. This chapter also introduces the main theme of the novel: sense versus sensibility. Elinor is presented as a girl who possesses not only good looks but good sense, too, which makes her the decision-maker in the family. Marianne is the opposite of her in temperament. She is impulsive and is guided only by her sensibility CHAPTER 2 Summary This chapter is a continuation of the previous chapter. The presence of Fanny Dashwood at Norland changes the atmosphere of the house. She acts as the mistress of the house and treats her in-laws as mere visitors. Mrs. Dashwood tolerates her daughter- in-law's imposing manner only because of John, who is civil to everyone. However, Fanny succeeds in changing her husband's decision to assist his sisters financially. Therefore, John, who had made up his mind to give his sisters three thousand pounds, now decides against giving them anything. He is obviously under the influence of his wife. Notes This short chapter exposes the true nature of Fanny. She is rude, selfish and greedy. She arrives at Norland and immediately takes control of the house, without being asked to do so. She is in a hurry to establish herself as the mistress of the house. Through her imposing manner, she hurts the feelings of her mother-in-law and places her in an awkward position. She is cunning and crafty as well. When John reveals to her his plans to give his sisters money, she is shocked. However, instead of expressing her anger to him, she slowly but surely manages to convince him against providing any aid to Mrs. Dashwood or her daughters. John is dim-witted and does not see through Fanny's scheming nature. In fact, he is thankful to her for her advice and is quite satisfied with her reasoning. The scene between John and Fanny Dashwood is one of the most humorous scenes in the novel. John Dashwood, like a devoted husband, tells his wife about his plans to give three thousand pounds to his sisters. Fanny is aghast at his generosity, but she does not throw a fit or chastise him. She overpowers her husband with sweet talk, sly reasoning and mild assertion. She appears to agree with him but ends up disagreeing. When John mentions his promise to his father, Fanny argues, "Well, then, let something be done for them; but that something need not be three thousand pounds. Consider. . . that when the money is once parted with, it never can return. Your sisters will marry, and it will be gone for ever. If, indeed, it could ever be restored to our poor little boy-- " She tries to sound reasonable and plays on his sentiments. John is too weak to resist her logic and sees sense in her reasoning. He finds her argument "irresistible. It gave to his intentions whatever of decision was wanting before: and he finally resolved, that it would be absolutely unnecessary, if not highly indecorous, to do more for the widow and children of his father, than such kind of neighborly acts as his own wife pointed out." It is evident how malleable John is in his wife's hands. | 157 | 856 | [
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2,166 | false | gradesaver | all_chapterized_books/2166-chapters/03.txt | finished_summaries/gradesaver/King Solomon's Mines/section_1_part_0.txt | King Solomon's Mines.chapter 3 | chapter 3 | null | {"name": "Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200804024551/https://www.gradesaver.com/king-solomons-mines/study-guide/summary-chapter-3", "summary": "The Dunkeld arrives in the port of Durban, but so late in the day that the passengers remain on board for the night. Allan Quatermain gives Sir Henry his terms: all expenses are to be paid by Sir Henry, any ivory obtained along the way is to be divided equally between Quatermain and Good, Sir Henry is to pay Quatermain 500 English pounds as a retainer for his service throughout expedition, and Sir Henry is to approve a deed guaranteeing 200 pounds annually for five years to Quatermain's son Harry should misfortune befall Quatermain in the expedition. Sir Henry readily agrees to these terms. Quatermain then explains his reasoning for these specific terms of hire. He has not been able to make provision for his son's time at medical school to guarantee the boy will be able to complete his studies and acquire a livelihood. Furthermore, Quatermain believes he is living on borrowed time, as he has outlived most elephant hunters five times over, so he knows his time of death draws near. Finally, he believes the expedition to the Suliman Mountains will end in disaster, as the previous three known explorers died without having found their goal. Sir Henry is not daunted by Quatermain's fatalism, so driven is he to find his brother. Upon disembarking to Durban, the three men immediately take care of the deed required for Quatermain's service. Once that is legally approved, Quatermain sets about outfitting the expedition. He buys a sturdy wagon and a team of oxen, and then supplies it from Sir Henry's cache of weapons and local goods. Quatermain readily finds a Zulu driver, Goza, and a Zulu leader, Tom. In search of three servants, Quatermain at first only finds two likely candidates: Ventvogel, a Hottentot tracker, and Khiva, a Zulu who speaks English. Quatermain decides to leave the third servant position to be filled as they begin their journey. However, the evening before they set out, the mysterious Umbopa comes to Quatermain and requests to enter his service on the expedition. Quatermain recalls that he made Umbopa's acquaintance briefly during the Zulu Wars. Umbopa has spoken out that his side of the conflict was ill-fated that day, just prior to their defeat. Umbopa explains that he is a man without a kraal who wishes to use his skills in this endeavor. Quatermain believes Umbopa to be an honorable man who is not telling the whole truth. Sir Henry, however, wholeheartedly approves of Umbopa when he sees how tall and strong he is. Umbopa notes, as he stands beside the equally powerfully-built Sir Henry, \"We are men, you and I.\"", "analysis": "Haggard continues evoking the concept of a reluctant hero in Quatermain's grudging acceptance of Sir Henry's offer. He cites his own impecunious circumstances and his son's upcoming financial needs as his rationale for accepting the quest. Haggard draws a parallel to Odysseus' own reluctant acceptance of the mission to sack Troy, wherein the Ithacan king was forced to give up his deception of madness in order to spare his baby son's life. In the person of Umbopa, Haggard introduces the lost-son motif common to many adventure tales and heroic quests. Umbopa is taken to be a Zulu by Quatermain, but he is \"very light-coloured for a Zulu\" . Quatermain takes notice that Umbopa is a \"ringed man,\" meaning that he wears a black ring worked into his hair \"usually assumed by Zulus on attaining a certain age or dignity\" . Umbopa's air of equality with Sir Henry annoys Quatermain, but hints to the reader that Umbopa may be more than a mere Zulu guide and hunter looking for work. Quatermain's frustration at Umbopa's attitude belies a deeper conviction of the ignorance, and therefore inferiority, of the African peoples to Europeans. This sense of European, white superiority arises throughout King Solomon's Mines, and is not limited merely to a comparison between Europe and Africa. Earlier in the chapter, noting the abuse the luggage is taking at the hands of Kafir porters, Quatermain tells the Kafirs that the champagne they have just drunk--after having broken it in their negligent handling--is \"the white man's strongest medicine, and that they were as good as dead men\" . Inexperienced with the bubbling of champagne, the Kafirs believe him. Haggard's personal views on racial relations are harder to pin down from this novel, for Quatermain is already established as an unreliable narrator. The future fate of Umbopa, too, indicates a higher respect for the African people than is present in many of Haggard's contemporaries. Ultimately, the reader sees that Quatermain reflects a somewhat liberal view common to the white men of nineteenth-century England. This mixture of respect and patronizing will be seen in later chapters."} | It takes from four to five days, according to the speed of the vessel
and the state of the weather, to run up from the Cape to Durban.
Sometimes, if the landing is bad at East London, where they have not
yet made that wonderful harbour they talk so much of, and sink such a
mint of money in, a ship is delayed for twenty-four hours before the
cargo boats can get out to take off the goods. But on this occasion we
had not to wait at all, for there were no breakers on the Bar to speak
of, and the tugs came out at once with the long strings of ugly
flat-bottomed boats behind them, into which the packages were bundled
with a crash. It did not matter what they might be, over they went
slap-bang; whether they contained china or woollen goods they met with
the same treatment. I saw one case holding four dozen of champagne
smashed all to bits, and there was the champagne fizzing and boiling
about in the bottom of the dirty cargo boat. It was a wicked waste, and
evidently so the Kafirs in the boat thought, for they found a couple of
unbroken bottles, and knocking off the necks drank the contents. But
they had not allowed for the expansion caused by the fizz in the wine,
and, feeling themselves swelling, rolled about in the bottom of the
boat, calling out that the good liquor was "tagati"--that is,
bewitched. I spoke to them from the vessel, and told them it was the
white man's strongest medicine, and that they were as good as dead men.
Those Kafirs went to the shore in a very great fright, and I do not
think that they will touch champagne again.
Well, all the time that we were steaming up to Natal I was thinking
over Sir Henry Curtis's offer. We did not speak any more on the subject
for a day or two, though I told them many hunting yarns, all true ones.
There is no need to tell lies about hunting, for so many curious things
happen within the knowledge of a man whose business it is to hunt; but
this is by the way.
At last, one beautiful evening in January, which is our hottest month,
we steamed past the coast of Natal, expecting to make Durban Point by
sunset. It is a lovely coast all along from East London, with its red
sandhills and wide sweeps of vivid green, dotted here and there with
Kafir kraals, and bordered by a ribbon of white surf, which spouts up
in pillars of foam where it hits the rocks. But just before you come to
Durban there is a peculiar richness about the landscape. There are the
sheer kloofs cut in the hills by the rushing rains of centuries, down
which the rivers sparkle; there is the deepest green of the bush,
growing as God planted it, and the other greens of the mealie gardens
and the sugar patches, while now and again a white house, smiling out
at the placid sea, puts a finish and gives an air of homeliness to the
scene. For to my mind, however beautiful a view may be, it requires the
presence of man to make it complete, but perhaps that is because I have
lived so much in the wilderness, and therefore know the value of
civilisation, though to be sure it drives away the game. The Garden of
Eden, no doubt, looked fair before man was, but I always think that it
must have been fairer when Eve adorned it.
To return, we had miscalculated a little, and the sun was well down
before we dropped anchor off the Point, and heard the gun which told
the good folks of Durban that the English Mail was in. It was too late
to think of getting over the Bar that night, so we went comfortably to
dinner, after seeing the Mails carried off in the life-boat.
When we came up again the moon was out, and shining so brightly over
sea and shore that she almost paled the quick, large flashes from the
lighthouse. From the shore floated sweet spicy odours that always
remind me of hymns and missionaries, and in the windows of the houses
on the Berea sparkled a hundred lights. From a large brig lying near
also came the music of the sailors as they worked at getting the anchor
up in order to be ready for the wind. Altogether it was a perfect
night, such a night as you sometimes get in Southern Africa, and it
threw a garment of peace over everybody as the moon threw a garment of
silver over everything. Even the great bulldog, belonging to a sporting
passenger, seemed to yield to its gentle influences, and forgetting his
yearning to come to close quarters with the baboon in a cage on the
foc'sle, snored happily at the door of the cabin, dreaming no doubt
that he had finished him, and happy in his dream.
We three--that is, Sir Henry Curtis, Captain Good, and myself--went and
sat by the wheel, and were quiet for a while.
"Well, Mr. Quatermain," said Sir Henry presently, "have you been
thinking about my proposals?"
"Ay," echoed Captain Good, "what do you think of them, Mr. Quatermain?
I hope that you are going to give us the pleasure of your company so
far as Solomon's Mines, or wherever the gentleman you knew as Neville
may have got to."
I rose and knocked out my pipe before I answered. I had not made up my
mind, and wanted an additional moment to decide. Before the burning
tobacco had fallen into the sea I had decided; just that little extra
second did the trick. It is often the way when you have been bothering
a long time over a thing.
"Yes, gentlemen," I said, sitting down again, "I will go, and by your
leave I will tell you why, and on what conditions. First for the terms
which I ask.
"1. You are to pay all expenses, and any ivory or other valuables we
may get is to be divided between Captain Good and myself.
"2. That you give me L500 for my services on the trip before we start,
I undertaking to serve you faithfully till you choose to abandon the
enterprise, or till we succeed, or disaster overtakes us.
"3. That before we trek you execute a deed agreeing, in the event of my
death or disablement, to pay my boy Harry, who is studying medicine
over there in London, at Guy's Hospital, a sum of L200 a year for five
years, by which time he ought to be able to earn a living for himself
if he is worth his salt. That is all, I think, and I daresay you will
say quite enough too."
"No," answered Sir Henry, "I accept them gladly. I am bent upon this
project, and would pay more than that for your help, considering the
peculiar and exclusive knowledge which you possess."
"Pity I did not ask it, then, but I won't go back on my word. And now
that I have got my terms I will tell you my reasons for making up my
mind to go. First of all, gentlemen, I have been observing you both for
the last few days, and if you will not think me impertinent I may say
that I like you, and believe that we shall come up well to the yoke
together. That is something, let me tell you, when one has a long
journey like this before one.
"And now as to the journey itself, I tell you flatly, Sir Henry and
Captain Good, that I do not think it probable we can come out of it
alive, that is, if we attempt to cross the Suliman Mountains. What was
the fate of the old Dom da Silvestra three hundred years ago? What was
the fate of his descendant twenty years ago? What has been your
brother's fate? I tell you frankly, gentlemen, that as their fates were
so I believe ours will be."
I paused to watch the effect of my words. Captain Good looked a little
uncomfortable, but Sir Henry's face did not change. "We must take our
chance," he said.
"You may perhaps wonder," I went on, "why, if I think this, I, who am,
as I told you, a timid man, should undertake such a journey. It is for
two reasons. First I am a fatalist, and believe that my time is
appointed to come quite without reference to my own movements and will,
and that if I am to go to Suliman's Mountains to be killed, I shall go
there and shall be killed. God Almighty, no doubt, knows His mind about
me, so I need not trouble on that point. Secondly, I am a poor man. For
nearly forty years I have hunted and traded, but I have never made more
than a living. Well, gentlemen, I don't know if you are aware that the
average life of an elephant hunter from the time he takes to the trade
is between four and five years. So you see I have lived through about
seven generations of my class, and I should think that my time cannot
be far off, anyway. Now, if anything were to happen to me in the
ordinary course of business, by the time my debts are paid there would
be nothing left to support my son Harry whilst he was getting in the
way of earning a living, whereas now he will be set up for five years.
There is the whole affair in a nutshell."
"Mr. Quatermain," said Sir Henry, who had been giving me his most
serious attention, "your motives for undertaking an enterprise which
you believe can only end in disaster reflect a great deal of credit on
you. Whether or not you are right, of course time and the event alone
can show. But whether you are right or wrong, I may as well tell you at
once that I am going through with it to the end, sweet or bitter. If we
are to be knocked on the head, all I have to say is, that I hope we get
a little shooting first, eh, Good?"
"Yes, yes," put in the captain. "We have all three of us been
accustomed to face danger, and to hold our lives in our hands in
various ways, so it is no good turning back now. And now I vote we go
down to the saloon and take an observation just for luck, you know."
And we did--through the bottom of a tumbler.
Next day we went ashore, and I put up Sir Henry and Captain Good at the
little shanty I have built on the Berea, and which I call my home.
There are only three rooms and a kitchen in it, and it is constructed
of green brick with a galvanised iron roof, but there is a good garden
with the best loquot trees in it that I know, and some nice young
mangoes, of which I hope great things. The curator of the botanical
gardens gave them to me. It is looked after by an old hunter of mine
named Jack, whose thigh was so badly broken by a buffalo cow in
Sikukunis country that he will never hunt again. But he can potter
about and garden, being a Griqua by birth. You will never persuade a
Zulu to take much interest in gardening. It is a peaceful art, and
peaceful arts are not in his line.
Sir Henry and Good slept in a tent pitched in my little grove of orange
trees at the end of the garden, for there was no room for them in the
house, and what with the smell of the bloom, and the sight of the green
and golden fruit--in Durban you will see all three on the tree
together--I daresay it is a pleasant place enough, for we have few
mosquitos here on the Berea, unless there happens to come an unusually
heavy rain.
Well, to get on--for if I do not, Harry, you will be tired of my story
before ever we fetch up at Suliman's Mountains--having once made up my
mind to go I set about making the necessary preparations. First I
secured the deed from Sir Henry, providing for you, my boy, in case of
accidents. There was some difficulty about its legal execution, as Sir
Henry was a stranger here, and the property to be charged is over the
water; but it was ultimately got over with the help of a lawyer, who
charged L20 for the job--a price that I thought outrageous. Then I
pocketed my cheque for L500.
Having paid this tribute to my bump of caution, I purchased a wagon and
a span of oxen on Sir Henry's behalf, and beauties they were. It was a
twenty-two-foot wagon with iron axles, very strong, very light, and
built throughout of stink wood; not quite a new one, having been to the
Diamond Fields and back, but, in my opinion, all the better for that,
for I could see that the wood was well seasoned. If anything is going
to give in a wagon, or if there is green wood in it, it will show out
on the first trip. This particular vehicle was what we call a
"half-tented" wagon, that is to say, only covered in over the after
twelve feet, leaving all the front part free for the necessaries we had
to carry with us. In this after part were a hide "cartle," or bed, on
which two people could sleep, also racks for rifles, and many other
little conveniences. I gave L125 for it, and think that it was cheap at
the price.
Then I bought a beautiful team of twenty Zulu oxen, which I had kept my
eye on for a year or two. Sixteen oxen is the usual number for a team,
but I took four extra to allow for casualties. These Zulu cattle are
small and light, not more than half the size of the Africander oxen,
which are generally used for transport purposes; but they will live
where the Africanders would starve, and with a moderate load can make
five miles a day better going, being quicker and not so liable to
become footsore. What is more, this lot were thoroughly "salted," that
is, they had worked all over South Africa, and so had become proof,
comparatively speaking, against red water, which so frequently destroys
whole teams of oxen when they get on to strange "veldt" or grass
country. As for "lung sick," which is a dreadful form of pneumonia,
very prevalent in this country, they had all been inoculated against
it. This is done by cutting a slit in the tail of an ox, and binding in
a piece of the diseased lung of an animal which has died of the
sickness. The result is that the ox sickens, takes the disease in a
mild form, which causes its tail to drop off, as a rule about a foot
from the root, and becomes proof against future attacks. It seems cruel
to rob the animal of his tail, especially in a country where there are
so many flies, but it is better to sacrifice the tail and keep the ox
than to lose both tail and ox, for a tail without an ox is not much
good, except to dust with. Still it does look odd to trek along behind
twenty stumps, where there ought to be tails. It seems as though Nature
made a trifling mistake, and stuck the stern ornaments of a lot of
prize bull-dogs on to the rumps of the oxen.
Next came the question of provisioning and medicines, one which
required the most careful consideration, for what we had to do was to
avoid lumbering the wagon, and yet to take everything absolutely
necessary. Fortunately, it turned out that Good is a bit of a doctor,
having at some point in his previous career managed to pass through a
course of medical and surgical instruction, which he has more or less
kept up. He is not, of course, qualified, but he knows more about it
than many a man who can write M.D. after his name, as we found out
afterwards, and he had a splendid travelling medicine chest and a set
of instruments. Whilst we were at Durban he cut off a Kafir's big toe
in a way which it was a pleasure to see. But he was quite nonplussed
when the Kafir, who had sat stolidly watching the operation, asked him
to put on another, saying that a "white one" would do at a pinch.
There remained, when these questions were satisfactorily settled, two
further important points for consideration, namely, that of arms and
that of servants. As to the arms I cannot do better than put down a
list of those which we finally decided on from among the ample store
that Sir Henry had brought with him from England, and those which I
owned. I copy it from my pocket-book, where I made the entry at the
time.
"Three heavy breech-loading double-eight elephant guns, weighing about
fifteen pounds each, to carry a charge of eleven drachms of black
powder." Two of these were by a well-known London firm, most excellent
makers, but I do not know by whom mine, which is not so highly
finished, was made. I have used it on several trips, and shot a good
many elephants with it, and it has always proved a most superior
weapon, thoroughly to be relied on.
"Three double-500 Expresses, constructed to stand a charge of six
drachms," sweet weapons, and admirable for medium-sized game, such as
eland or sable antelope, or for men, especially in an open country and
with the semi-hollow bullet.
"One double No. 12 central-fire Keeper's shot-gun, full choke both
barrels." This gun proved of the greatest service to us afterwards in
shooting game for the pot.
"Three Winchester repeating rifles (not carbines), spare guns.
"Three single-action Colt's revolvers, with the heavier, or American
pattern of cartridge."
This was our total armament, and doubtless the reader will observe that
the weapons of each class were of the same make and calibre, so that
the cartridges were interchangeable, a very important point. I make no
apology for detailing it at length, as every experienced hunter will
know how vital a proper supply of guns and ammunition is to the success
of an expedition.
Now as to the men who were to go with us. After much consultation we
decided that their number should be limited to five, namely, a driver,
a leader, and three servants.
The driver and leader I found without much difficulty, two Zulus, named
respectively Goza and Tom; but to get the servants proved a more
difficult matter. It was necessary that they should be thoroughly
trustworthy and brave men, as in a business of this sort our lives
might depend upon their conduct. At last I secured two, one a Hottentot
named Ventvoegel, or "windbird," and one a little Zulu named Khiva, who
had the merit of speaking English perfectly. Ventvoegel I had known
before; he was one of the most perfect "spoorers," that is, game
trackers, I ever had to do with, and tough as whipcord. He never seemed
to tire. But he had one failing, so common with his race, drink. Put
him within reach of a bottle of gin and you could not trust him.
However, as we were going beyond the region of grog-shops this little
weakness of his did not so much matter.
Having secured these two men I looked in vain for a third to suit my
purpose, so we determined to start without one, trusting to luck to
find a suitable man on our way up country. But, as it happened, on the
evening before the day we had fixed for our departure the Zulu Khiva
informed me that a Kafir was waiting to see me. Accordingly, when we
had done dinner, for we were at table at the time, I told Khiva to
bring him in. Presently a tall, handsome-looking man, somewhere about
thirty years of age, and very light-coloured for a Zulu, entered, and
lifting his knob-stick by way of salute, squatted himself down in the
corner on his haunches, and sat silent. I did not take any notice of
him for a while, for it is a great mistake to do so. If you rush into
conversation at once, a Zulu is apt to think you a person of little
dignity or consequence. I observed, however, that he was a "Keshla" or
ringed man; that is, he wore on his head the black ring, made of a
species of gum polished with fat and worked up in the hair, which is
usually assumed by Zulus on attaining a certain age or dignity. Also it
struck me that his face was familiar to me.
"Well," I said at last, "What is your name?"
"Umbopa," answered the man in a slow, deep voice.
"I have seen your face before."
"Yes; the Inkoosi, the chief, my father, saw my face at the place of
the Little Hand"--that is, Isandhlwana--"on the day before the battle."
Then I remembered. I was one of Lord Chelmsford's guides in that
unlucky Zulu War, and had the good fortune to leave the camp in charge
of some wagons on the day before the battle. While I was waiting for
the cattle to be inspanned I fell into conversation with this man, who
held some small command among the native auxiliaries, and he had
expressed to me his doubts as to the safety of the camp. At the time I
told him to hold his tongue, and leave such matters to wiser heads; but
afterwards I thought of his words.
"I remember," I said; "what is it you want?"
"It is this, 'Macumazahn.'" That is my Kafir name, and means the man
who gets up in the middle of the night, or, in vulgar English, he who
keeps his eyes open. "I hear that you go on a great expedition far into
the North with the white chiefs from over the water. Is it a true word?"
"It is."
"I hear that you go even to the Lukanga River, a moon's journey beyond
the Manica country. Is this so also, 'Macumazahn?'"
"Why do you ask whither we go? What is it to you?" I answered
suspiciously, for the objects of our journey had been kept a dead
secret.
"It is this, O white men, that if indeed you travel so far I would
travel with you."
There was a certain assumption of dignity in the man's mode of speech,
and especially in his use of the words "O white men," instead of "O
Inkosis," or chiefs, which struck me.
"You forget yourself a little," I said. "Your words run out unawares.
That is not the way to speak. What is your name, and where is your
kraal? Tell us, that we may know with whom we have to deal."
"My name is Umbopa. I am of the Zulu people, yet not of them. The house
of my tribe is in the far North; it was left behind when the Zulus came
down here a 'thousand years ago,' long before Chaka reigned in
Zululand. I have no kraal. I have wandered for many years. I came from
the North as a child to Zululand. I was Cetewayo's man in the
Nkomabakosi Regiment, serving there under the great Captain,
Umslopogaasi of the Axe,[1] who taught my hands to fight. Afterwards I
ran away from Zululand and came to Natal because I wanted to see the
white man's ways. Next I fought against Cetewayo in the war. Since then
I have been working in Natal. Now I am tired, and would go North again.
Here is not my place. I want no money, but I am a brave man, and am
worth my place and meat. I have spoken."
I was rather puzzled by this man and his way of speech. It was evident
to me from his manner that in the main he was telling the truth, but
somehow he seemed different from the ordinary run of Zulus, and I
rather mistrusted his offer to come without pay. Being in a difficulty,
I translated his words to Sir Henry and Good, and asked them their
opinion.
Sir Henry told me to ask him to stand up. Umbopa did so, at the same
time slipping off the long military great coat which he wore, and
revealing himself naked except for the moocha round his centre and a
necklace of lions' claws. Certainly he was a magnificent-looking man; I
never saw a finer native. Standing about six foot three high he was
broad in proportion, and very shapely. In that light, too, his skin
looked scarcely more than dark, except here and there where deep black
scars marked old assegai wounds. Sir Henry walked up to him and looked
into his proud, handsome face.
"They make a good pair, don't they?" said Good; "one as big as the
other."
"I like your looks, Mr. Umbopa, and I will take you as my servant,"
said Sir Henry in English.
Umbopa evidently understood him, for he answered in Zulu, "It is well";
and then added, with a glance at the white man's great stature and
breadth, "We are men, thou and I."
[1] For the history of Umslopogaasi and his Axe, the reader is referred
to the books called "Allan Quatermain" and "Nada the Lily."--Editor.
| 3,956 | Chapter 3 | https://web.archive.org/web/20200804024551/https://www.gradesaver.com/king-solomons-mines/study-guide/summary-chapter-3 | The Dunkeld arrives in the port of Durban, but so late in the day that the passengers remain on board for the night. Allan Quatermain gives Sir Henry his terms: all expenses are to be paid by Sir Henry, any ivory obtained along the way is to be divided equally between Quatermain and Good, Sir Henry is to pay Quatermain 500 English pounds as a retainer for his service throughout expedition, and Sir Henry is to approve a deed guaranteeing 200 pounds annually for five years to Quatermain's son Harry should misfortune befall Quatermain in the expedition. Sir Henry readily agrees to these terms. Quatermain then explains his reasoning for these specific terms of hire. He has not been able to make provision for his son's time at medical school to guarantee the boy will be able to complete his studies and acquire a livelihood. Furthermore, Quatermain believes he is living on borrowed time, as he has outlived most elephant hunters five times over, so he knows his time of death draws near. Finally, he believes the expedition to the Suliman Mountains will end in disaster, as the previous three known explorers died without having found their goal. Sir Henry is not daunted by Quatermain's fatalism, so driven is he to find his brother. Upon disembarking to Durban, the three men immediately take care of the deed required for Quatermain's service. Once that is legally approved, Quatermain sets about outfitting the expedition. He buys a sturdy wagon and a team of oxen, and then supplies it from Sir Henry's cache of weapons and local goods. Quatermain readily finds a Zulu driver, Goza, and a Zulu leader, Tom. In search of three servants, Quatermain at first only finds two likely candidates: Ventvogel, a Hottentot tracker, and Khiva, a Zulu who speaks English. Quatermain decides to leave the third servant position to be filled as they begin their journey. However, the evening before they set out, the mysterious Umbopa comes to Quatermain and requests to enter his service on the expedition. Quatermain recalls that he made Umbopa's acquaintance briefly during the Zulu Wars. Umbopa has spoken out that his side of the conflict was ill-fated that day, just prior to their defeat. Umbopa explains that he is a man without a kraal who wishes to use his skills in this endeavor. Quatermain believes Umbopa to be an honorable man who is not telling the whole truth. Sir Henry, however, wholeheartedly approves of Umbopa when he sees how tall and strong he is. Umbopa notes, as he stands beside the equally powerfully-built Sir Henry, "We are men, you and I." | Haggard continues evoking the concept of a reluctant hero in Quatermain's grudging acceptance of Sir Henry's offer. He cites his own impecunious circumstances and his son's upcoming financial needs as his rationale for accepting the quest. Haggard draws a parallel to Odysseus' own reluctant acceptance of the mission to sack Troy, wherein the Ithacan king was forced to give up his deception of madness in order to spare his baby son's life. In the person of Umbopa, Haggard introduces the lost-son motif common to many adventure tales and heroic quests. Umbopa is taken to be a Zulu by Quatermain, but he is "very light-coloured for a Zulu" . Quatermain takes notice that Umbopa is a "ringed man," meaning that he wears a black ring worked into his hair "usually assumed by Zulus on attaining a certain age or dignity" . Umbopa's air of equality with Sir Henry annoys Quatermain, but hints to the reader that Umbopa may be more than a mere Zulu guide and hunter looking for work. Quatermain's frustration at Umbopa's attitude belies a deeper conviction of the ignorance, and therefore inferiority, of the African peoples to Europeans. This sense of European, white superiority arises throughout King Solomon's Mines, and is not limited merely to a comparison between Europe and Africa. Earlier in the chapter, noting the abuse the luggage is taking at the hands of Kafir porters, Quatermain tells the Kafirs that the champagne they have just drunk--after having broken it in their negligent handling--is "the white man's strongest medicine, and that they were as good as dead men" . Inexperienced with the bubbling of champagne, the Kafirs believe him. Haggard's personal views on racial relations are harder to pin down from this novel, for Quatermain is already established as an unreliable narrator. The future fate of Umbopa, too, indicates a higher respect for the African people than is present in many of Haggard's contemporaries. Ultimately, the reader sees that Quatermain reflects a somewhat liberal view common to the white men of nineteenth-century England. This mixture of respect and patronizing will be seen in later chapters. | 437 | 360 | [
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161 | false | gradesaver | all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/10.txt | finished_summaries/gradesaver/Sense and Sensibility/section_0_part_10.txt | Sense and Sensibility.chapter 10 | chapter 10 | null | {"name": "Chapter 10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210419170735/https://www.gradesaver.com/sense-and-sensibility/study-guide/summary-chapters-1-10", "summary": "Willoughby calls again the next morning, and the family are again convinced of his charms, as he comes to admire them, and Marianne in particular. Marianne sets about asking him about books, music, and dancing, and is pleased to learn that they have similar tastes and passion for the arts. Marianne and Willoughby are already at ease with each other after this first meeting, yet Marianne is reminded that perhaps she should not have been so forward with her views and affections on this first visit. Willoughby, however, admires Marianne very much and enjoys her family's hospitality; he begins to visit them everyday, as his attachment to Marianne deepens. Mrs. Dashwood thinks very well of him, although Elinor perceives a lack of discretion in his behavior and judgment that he should possess. Elinor is upset when Willoughby proceeds to slight Colonel Brandon, when Elinor knows that he is a good, kind man behind his reserve; Marianne and Willoughby underestimate him because he is older, more experienced, and reserved, although Elinor sees these as assets rather than hindrances, and continues to defend his character.", "analysis": "Marianne showing \"neither shyness nor reserve\" in her conversation with Willoughby is in keeping with her character, but asserts the importance of discretion in personal relations. Discretion is a theme which proves to be of some importance in society; revealing one's self too quickly or completely can lead to disappointment, embarrassment, or heartbreak, as Marianne is to learn all too soon. The disagreement of Elinor and Marianne on the subjects of discretion and decorum shows them to be the pure embodiments of sense and sensibility, respectively. Marianne lacks the prudence to be able and limit herself where she knows she should, and Elinor in turn lacks the boldness and passion to express her own feelings with confidence. Both would be better off developing a few of the other's qualities, learning how to temper passion with reason, and caution with emotion. Willoughby's outburst on the subject of Colonel Brandon foreshadows the discovery of some sort of bad blood between them. Willoughby's disregard for Colonel Brandon, like Marianne's, is impetuous and childlike in nature, but Willoughby's greater dislike indicates that there might be more to his slighting of Colonel Brandon than is readily apparent. Marianne and Willoughby's distaste for the Colonel is ironic, in view of their own failings; they might do better to imitate some of his reserve, rather than to spend time mocking it"} |
Marianne's preserver, as Margaret, with more elegance than precision,
styled Willoughby, called at the cottage early the next morning to make
his personal enquiries. He was received by Mrs. Dashwood with more
than politeness; with a kindness which Sir John's account of him and
her own gratitude prompted; and every thing that passed during the
visit tended to assure him of the sense, elegance, mutual affection,
and domestic comfort of the family to whom accident had now introduced
him. Of their personal charms he had not required a second interview
to be convinced.
Miss Dashwood had a delicate complexion, regular features, and a
remarkably pretty figure. Marianne was still handsomer. Her form,
though not so correct as her sister's, in having the advantage of
height, was more striking; and her face was so lovely, that when in the
common cant of praise, she was called a beautiful girl, truth was less
violently outraged than usually happens. Her skin was very brown, but,
from its transparency, her complexion was uncommonly brilliant; her
features were all good; her smile was sweet and attractive; and in her
eyes, which were very dark, there was a life, a spirit, an eagerness,
which could hardily be seen without delight. From Willoughby their
expression was at first held back, by the embarrassment which the
remembrance of his assistance created. But when this passed away, when
her spirits became collected, when she saw that to the perfect
good-breeding of the gentleman, he united frankness and vivacity, and
above all, when she heard him declare, that of music and dancing he was
passionately fond, she gave him such a look of approbation as secured
the largest share of his discourse to herself for the rest of his stay.
It was only necessary to mention any favourite amusement to engage her
to talk. She could not be silent when such points were introduced, and
she had neither shyness nor reserve in their discussion. They speedily
discovered that their enjoyment of dancing and music was mutual, and
that it arose from a general conformity of judgment in all that related
to either. Encouraged by this to a further examination of his
opinions, she proceeded to question him on the subject of books; her
favourite authors were brought forward and dwelt upon with so rapturous
a delight, that any young man of five and twenty must have been
insensible indeed, not to become an immediate convert to the excellence
of such works, however disregarded before. Their taste was strikingly
alike. The same books, the same passages were idolized by each--or if
any difference appeared, any objection arose, it lasted no longer than
till the force of her arguments and the brightness of her eyes could be
displayed. He acquiesced in all her decisions, caught all her
enthusiasm; and long before his visit concluded, they conversed with
the familiarity of a long-established acquaintance.
"Well, Marianne," said Elinor, as soon as he had left them, "for ONE
morning I think you have done pretty well. You have already
ascertained Mr. Willoughby's opinion in almost every matter of
importance. You know what he thinks of Cowper and Scott; you are
certain of his estimating their beauties as he ought, and you have
received every assurance of his admiring Pope no more than is proper.
But how is your acquaintance to be long supported, under such
extraordinary despatch of every subject for discourse? You will soon
have exhausted each favourite topic. Another meeting will suffice to
explain his sentiments on picturesque beauty, and second marriages, and
then you can have nothing farther to ask."--
"Elinor," cried Marianne, "is this fair? is this just? are my ideas so
scanty? But I see what you mean. I have been too much at my ease, too
happy, too frank. I have erred against every common-place notion of
decorum; I have been open and sincere where I ought to have been
reserved, spiritless, dull, and deceitful--had I talked only of the
weather and the roads, and had I spoken only once in ten minutes, this
reproach would have been spared."
"My love," said her mother, "you must not be offended with Elinor--she
was only in jest. I should scold her myself, if she were capable of
wishing to check the delight of your conversation with our new
friend."-- Marianne was softened in a moment.
Willoughby, on his side, gave every proof of his pleasure in their
acquaintance, which an evident wish of improving it could offer. He
came to them every day. To enquire after Marianne was at first his
excuse; but the encouragement of his reception, to which every day gave
greater kindness, made such an excuse unnecessary before it had ceased
to be possible, by Marianne's perfect recovery. She was confined for
some days to the house; but never had any confinement been less
irksome. Willoughby was a young man of good abilities, quick
imagination, lively spirits, and open, affectionate manners. He was
exactly formed to engage Marianne's heart, for with all this, he joined
not only a captivating person, but a natural ardour of mind which was
now roused and increased by the example of her own, and which
recommended him to her affection beyond every thing else.
His society became gradually her most exquisite enjoyment. They read,
they talked, they sang together; his musical talents were considerable;
and he read with all the sensibility and spirit which Edward had
unfortunately wanted.
In Mrs. Dashwood's estimation he was as faultless as in Marianne's; and
Elinor saw nothing to censure in him but a propensity, in which he
strongly resembled and peculiarly delighted her sister, of saying too
much what he thought on every occasion, without attention to persons or
circumstances. In hastily forming and giving his opinion of other
people, in sacrificing general politeness to the enjoyment of undivided
attention where his heart was engaged, and in slighting too easily the
forms of worldly propriety, he displayed a want of caution which Elinor
could not approve, in spite of all that he and Marianne could say in
its support.
Marianne began now to perceive that the desperation which had seized
her at sixteen and a half, of ever seeing a man who could satisfy her
ideas of perfection, had been rash and unjustifiable. Willoughby was
all that her fancy had delineated in that unhappy hour and in every
brighter period, as capable of attaching her; and his behaviour
declared his wishes to be in that respect as earnest, as his abilities
were strong.
Her mother too, in whose mind not one speculative thought of their
marriage had been raised, by his prospect of riches, was led before the
end of a week to hope and expect it; and secretly to congratulate
herself on having gained two such sons-in-law as Edward and Willoughby.
Colonel Brandon's partiality for Marianne, which had so early been
discovered by his friends, now first became perceptible to Elinor, when
it ceased to be noticed by them. Their attention and wit were drawn
off to his more fortunate rival; and the raillery which the other had
incurred before any partiality arose, was removed when his feelings
began really to call for the ridicule so justly annexed to sensibility.
Elinor was obliged, though unwillingly, to believe that the sentiments
which Mrs. Jennings had assigned him for her own satisfaction, were now
actually excited by her sister; and that however a general resemblance
of disposition between the parties might forward the affection of Mr.
Willoughby, an equally striking opposition of character was no
hindrance to the regard of Colonel Brandon. She saw it with concern;
for what could a silent man of five and thirty hope, when opposed to a
very lively one of five and twenty? and as she could not even wish him
successful, she heartily wished him indifferent. She liked him--in
spite of his gravity and reserve, she beheld in him an object of
interest. His manners, though serious, were mild; and his reserve
appeared rather the result of some oppression of spirits than of any
natural gloominess of temper. Sir John had dropped hints of past
injuries and disappointments, which justified her belief of his being
an unfortunate man, and she regarded him with respect and compassion.
Perhaps she pitied and esteemed him the more because he was slighted by
Willoughby and Marianne, who, prejudiced against him for being neither
lively nor young, seemed resolved to undervalue his merits.
"Brandon is just the kind of man," said Willoughby one day, when they
were talking of him together, "whom every body speaks well of, and
nobody cares about; whom all are delighted to see, and nobody remembers
to talk to."
"That is exactly what I think of him," cried Marianne.
"Do not boast of it, however," said Elinor, "for it is injustice in
both of you. He is highly esteemed by all the family at the park, and
I never see him myself without taking pains to converse with him."
"That he is patronised by YOU," replied Willoughby, "is certainly in
his favour; but as for the esteem of the others, it is a reproach in
itself. Who would submit to the indignity of being approved by such a
woman as Lady Middleton and Mrs. Jennings, that could command the
indifference of any body else?"
"But perhaps the abuse of such people as yourself and Marianne will
make amends for the regard of Lady Middleton and her mother. If their
praise is censure, your censure may be praise, for they are not more
undiscerning, than you are prejudiced and unjust."
"In defence of your protege you can even be saucy."
"My protege, as you call him, is a sensible man; and sense will always
have attractions for me. Yes, Marianne, even in a man between thirty
and forty. He has seen a great deal of the world; has been abroad, has
read, and has a thinking mind. I have found him capable of giving me
much information on various subjects; and he has always answered my
inquiries with readiness of good-breeding and good nature."
"That is to say," cried Marianne contemptuously, "he has told you, that
in the East Indies the climate is hot, and the mosquitoes are
troublesome."
"He WOULD have told me so, I doubt not, had I made any such inquiries,
but they happened to be points on which I had been previously informed."
"Perhaps," said Willoughby, "his observations may have extended to the
existence of nabobs, gold mohrs, and palanquins."
"I may venture to say that HIS observations have stretched much further
than your candour. But why should you dislike him?"
"I do not dislike him. I consider him, on the contrary, as a very
respectable man, who has every body's good word, and nobody's notice;
who, has more money than he can spend, more time than he knows how to
employ, and two new coats every year."
"Add to which," cried Marianne, "that he has neither genius, taste, nor
spirit. That his understanding has no brilliancy, his feelings no
ardour, and his voice no expression."
"You decide on his imperfections so much in the mass," replied Elinor,
"and so much on the strength of your own imagination, that the
commendation I am able to give of him is comparatively cold and
insipid. I can only pronounce him to be a sensible man, well-bred,
well-informed, of gentle address, and, I believe, possessing an amiable
heart."
"Miss Dashwood," cried Willoughby, "you are now using me unkindly. You
are endeavouring to disarm me by reason, and to convince me against my
will. But it will not do. You shall find me as stubborn as you can be
artful. I have three unanswerable reasons for disliking Colonel
Brandon; he threatened me with rain when I wanted it to be fine; he has
found fault with the hanging of my curricle, and I cannot persuade him
to buy my brown mare. If it will be any satisfaction to you, however,
to be told, that I believe his character to be in other respects
irreproachable, I am ready to confess it. And in return for an
acknowledgment, which must give me some pain, you cannot deny me the
privilege of disliking him as much as ever."
| 1,910 | Chapter 10 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210419170735/https://www.gradesaver.com/sense-and-sensibility/study-guide/summary-chapters-1-10 | Willoughby calls again the next morning, and the family are again convinced of his charms, as he comes to admire them, and Marianne in particular. Marianne sets about asking him about books, music, and dancing, and is pleased to learn that they have similar tastes and passion for the arts. Marianne and Willoughby are already at ease with each other after this first meeting, yet Marianne is reminded that perhaps she should not have been so forward with her views and affections on this first visit. Willoughby, however, admires Marianne very much and enjoys her family's hospitality; he begins to visit them everyday, as his attachment to Marianne deepens. Mrs. Dashwood thinks very well of him, although Elinor perceives a lack of discretion in his behavior and judgment that he should possess. Elinor is upset when Willoughby proceeds to slight Colonel Brandon, when Elinor knows that he is a good, kind man behind his reserve; Marianne and Willoughby underestimate him because he is older, more experienced, and reserved, although Elinor sees these as assets rather than hindrances, and continues to defend his character. | Marianne showing "neither shyness nor reserve" in her conversation with Willoughby is in keeping with her character, but asserts the importance of discretion in personal relations. Discretion is a theme which proves to be of some importance in society; revealing one's self too quickly or completely can lead to disappointment, embarrassment, or heartbreak, as Marianne is to learn all too soon. The disagreement of Elinor and Marianne on the subjects of discretion and decorum shows them to be the pure embodiments of sense and sensibility, respectively. Marianne lacks the prudence to be able and limit herself where she knows she should, and Elinor in turn lacks the boldness and passion to express her own feelings with confidence. Both would be better off developing a few of the other's qualities, learning how to temper passion with reason, and caution with emotion. Willoughby's outburst on the subject of Colonel Brandon foreshadows the discovery of some sort of bad blood between them. Willoughby's disregard for Colonel Brandon, like Marianne's, is impetuous and childlike in nature, but Willoughby's greater dislike indicates that there might be more to his slighting of Colonel Brandon than is readily apparent. Marianne and Willoughby's distaste for the Colonel is ironic, in view of their own failings; they might do better to imitate some of his reserve, rather than to spend time mocking it | 183 | 224 | [
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110 | false | shmoop | all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/25.txt | finished_summaries/shmoop/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_24_part_0.txt | Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 25 | chapter 25 | null | {"name": "Phase IV: \"The Consequence,\" Chapter Twenty-Five", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-25", "summary": "Angel wanders around that evening after Tess has gone to bed, thinking about what has happened. He hadn't meant to tell her he loved her--he hadn't meant to fall in love at all. But he's not toying around with her, either. He's got a conscience, and doesn't want to break any hearts. He decides to go home to see his folks for a few days, and talk it over with them. He's almost finished studying farming, and will soon be ready to start one of his own. He tells himself that it would make more sense to marry a woman who understands the business. But he decides to go see his parents anyway. The next morning at breakfast one of the girls comments that Mr. Clare isn't there. Dairyman Crick says that Angel has gone home to see his parents--probably to plan for the future, since he's almost finished his time at the dairy. Marian, Izz, Retty, and of course Tess all sigh and look sad at the news. Meanwhile, Angel is riding his horse towards his parents' house, thinking things over. Should he marry Tess? Would they be happy together? Does he really love her, or does he just have the hots for her? He's carrying a basket with some black puddings and a bottle of mead as a gift from Mrs. Crick to his parents. As he passes the church where his father preaches, he sees a young woman--it's Mercy Chant, the daughter of his parents' friend and neighbor. They hope he'll marry her someday. He decides she hasn't seen him, so he's not obliged to say hi. He gets to his parents' house just as they're all sitting down to breakfast. His brothers, Felix and Cuthbert, are there as well. Mr. Clare is an old man to have such a young son, and he's very set in his ways and thoroughly convinced that his way of viewing the world and religion is the right one. At least he's sincere about it, though. His family greets him, and Angel sits down to breakfast with them. They notice that he's lost some of his fancy polish--he's started to behave \"like a farmer.\" After breakfast, he goes for a walk with his brothers. They might be noticing his lack of social graces, but he's starting to notice their closed-mindedness. Their parents, meanwhile, have gone out to do good work among the poor in their community, as they do everyday. At lunch, he looks around for the black puddings, but his mother tells him that they had given them to some poor folks. Angel then looks for the mead, and they tell him it was too alcoholic to drink at the table, so they've put it in the medicine cabinet with the brandy. Angel is disappointed--he likes both mead and black puddings, and wanted his family to enjoy them so that he could tell Mrs. Crick that her gift was appreciated.", "analysis": ""} |
Clare, restless, went out into the dusk when evening drew on, she who
had won him having retired to her chamber.
The night was as sultry as the day. There was no coolness after dark
unless on the grass. Roads, garden-paths, the house-fronts, the
barton-walls were warm as hearths, and reflected the noontime
temperature into the noctambulist's face.
He sat on the east gate of the dairy-yard, and knew not what to think
of himself. Feeling had indeed smothered judgement that day.
Since the sudden embrace, three hours before, the twain had kept
apart. She seemed stilled, almost alarmed, at what had occurred,
while the novelty, unpremeditation, mastery of circumstance
disquieted him--palpitating, contemplative being that he was. He
could hardly realize their true relations to each other as yet, and
what their mutual bearing should be before third parties
thenceforward.
Angel had come as pupil to this dairy in the idea that his temporary
existence here was to be the merest episode in his life, soon passed
through and early forgotten; he had come as to a place from which
as from a screened alcove he could calmly view the absorbing world
without, and, apostrophizing it with Walt Whitman--
Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes,
How curious you are to me!--
resolve upon a plan for plunging into that world anew. But behold,
the absorbing scene had been imported hither. What had been the
engrossing world had dissolved into an uninteresting outer dumb-show;
while here, in this apparently dim and unimpassioned place, novelty
had volcanically started up, as it had never, for him, started up
elsewhere.
Every window of the house being open, Clare could hear across the
yard each trivial sound of the retiring household. The dairy-house,
so humble, so insignificant, so purely to him a place of constrained
sojourn that he had never hitherto deemed it of sufficient importance
to be reconnoitred as an object of any quality whatever in the
landscape; what was it now? The aged and lichened brick gables
breathed forth "Stay!" The windows smiled, the door coaxed and
beckoned, the creeper blushed confederacy. A personality within
it was so far-reaching in her influence as to spread into and make
the bricks, mortar, and whole overhanging sky throb with a burning
sensibility. Whose was this mighty personality? A milkmaid's.
It was amazing, indeed, to find how great a matter the life of the
obscure dairy had become to him. And though new love was to be held
partly responsible for this, it was not solely so. Many besides
Angel have learnt that the magnitude of lives is not as to their
external displacements, but as to their subjective experiences. The
impressionable peasant leads a larger, fuller, more dramatic life
than the pachydermatous king. Looking at it thus, he found that life
was to be seen of the same magnitude here as elsewhere.
Despite his heterodoxy, faults, and weaknesses, Clare was a man with
a conscience. Tess was no insignificant creature to toy with and
dismiss; but a woman living her precious life--a life which, to
herself who endured or enjoyed it, possessed as great a dimension
as the life of the mightiest to himself. Upon her sensations
the whole world depended to Tess; through her existence all her
fellow-creatures existed, to her. The universe itself only came into
being for Tess on the particular day in the particular year in which
she was born.
This consciousness upon which he had intruded was the single
opportunity of existence ever vouchsafed to Tess by an unsympathetic
First Cause--her all; her every and only chance. How then should he
look upon her as of less consequence than himself; as a pretty trifle
to caress and grow weary of; and not deal in the greatest seriousness
with the affection which he knew that he had awakened in her--so
fervid and so impressionable as she was under her reserve--in order
that it might not agonize and wreck her?
To encounter her daily in the accustomed manner would be to develop
what had begun. Living in such close relations, to meet meant to
fall into endearment; flesh and blood could not resist it; and,
having arrived at no conclusion as to the issue of such a tendency,
he decided to hold aloof for the present from occupations in which
they would be mutually engaged. As yet the harm done was small.
But it was not easy to carry out the resolution never to approach
her. He was driven towards her by every heave of his pulse.
He thought he would go and see his friends. It might be possible
to sound them upon this. In less than five months his term here
would have ended, and after a few additional months spent upon other
farms he would be fully equipped in agricultural knowledge and in
a position to start on his own account. Would not a farmer want a
wife, and should a farmer's wife be a drawing-room wax-figure, or a
woman who understood farming? Notwithstanding the pleasing answer
returned to him by the silence, he resolved to go his journey.
One morning when they sat down to breakfast at Talbothays Dairy some
maid observed that she had not seen anything of Mr Clare that day.
"O no," said Dairyman Crick. "Mr Clare has gone hwome to Emminster
to spend a few days wi' his kinsfolk."
For four impassioned ones around that table the sunshine of the
morning went out at a stroke, and the birds muffled their song.
But neither girl by word or gesture revealed her blankness. "He's
getting on towards the end of his time wi' me," added the dairyman,
with a phlegm which unconsciously was brutal; "and so I suppose he
is beginning to see about his plans elsewhere."
"How much longer is he to bide here?" asked Izz Huett, the only
one of the gloom-stricken bevy who could trust her voice with the
question.
The others waited for the dairyman's answer as if their lives hung
upon it; Retty, with parted lips, gazing on the tablecloth, Marian
with heat added to her redness, Tess throbbing and looking out at
the meads.
"Well, I can't mind the exact day without looking at my
memorandum-book," replied Crick, with the same intolerable unconcern.
"And even that may be altered a bit. He'll bide to get a little
practice in the calving out at the straw-yard, for certain. He'll
hang on till the end of the year I should say."
Four months or so of torturing ecstasy in his society--of "pleasure
girdled about with pain". After that the blackness of unutterable
night.
At this moment of the morning Angel Clare was riding along a narrow
lane ten miles distant from the breakfasters, in the direction of
his father's Vicarage at Emminster, carrying, as well as he could,
a little basket which contained some black-puddings and a bottle of
mead, sent by Mrs Crick, with her kind respects, to his parents. The
white lane stretched before him, and his eyes were upon it; but they
were staring into next year, and not at the lane. He loved her;
ought he to marry her? Dared he to marry her? What would his mother
and his brothers say? What would he himself say a couple of years
after the event? That would depend upon whether the germs of staunch
comradeship underlay the temporary emotion, or whether it were a
sensuous joy in her form only, with no substratum of everlastingness.
His father's hill-surrounded little town, the Tudor church-tower of
red stone, the clump of trees near the Vicarage, came at last into
view beneath him, and he rode down towards the well-known gate.
Casting a glance in the direction of the church before entering his
home, he beheld standing by the vestry-door a group of girls, of
ages between twelve and sixteen, apparently awaiting the arrival of
some other one, who in a moment became visible; a figure somewhat
older than the school-girls, wearing a broad-brimmed hat and
highly-starched cambric morning-gown, with a couple of books in her
hand.
Clare knew her well. He could not be sure that she observed him; he
hoped she did not, so as to render it unnecessary that he should go
and speak to her, blameless creature that she was. An overpowering
reluctance to greet her made him decide that she had not seen him.
The young lady was Miss Mercy Chant, the only daughter of his
father's neighbour and friend, whom it was his parents' quiet hope
that he might wed some day. She was great at Antinomianism and
Bible-classes, and was plainly going to hold a class now. Clare's
mind flew to the impassioned, summer-steeped heathens in the Var
Vale, their rosy faces court-patched with cow-droppings; and to one
the most impassioned of them all.
It was on the impulse of the moment that he had resolved to trot
over to Emminster, and hence had not written to apprise his mother
and father, aiming, however, to arrive about the breakfast hour,
before they should have gone out to their parish duties. He was
a little late, and they had already sat down to the morning meal.
The group at the table jumped up to welcome him as soon as he
entered. They were his father and mother, his brother the Reverend
Felix--curate at a town in the adjoining county, home for the inside
of a fortnight--and his other brother, the Reverend Cuthbert, the
classical scholar, and Fellow and Dean of his College, down from
Cambridge for the long vacation. His mother appeared in a cap and
silver spectacles, and his father looked what in fact he was--an
earnest, God-fearing man, somewhat gaunt, in years about sixty-five,
his pale face lined with thought and purpose. Over their heads hung
the picture of Angel's sister, the eldest of the family, sixteen
years his senior, who had married a missionary and gone out to
Africa.
Old Mr Clare was a clergyman of a type which, within the last twenty
years, has well nigh dropped out of contemporary life. A spiritual
descendant in the direct line from Wycliff, Huss, Luther, Calvin; an
Evangelical of the Evangelicals, a Conversionist, a man of Apostolic
simplicity in life and thought, he had in his raw youth made up his
mind once for all in the deeper questions of existence, and admitted
no further reasoning on them thenceforward. He was regarded even by
those of his own date and school of thinking as extreme; while, on
the other hand, those totally opposed to him were unwillingly won
to admiration for his thoroughness, and for the remarkable power he
showed in dismissing all question as to principles in his energy for
applying them. He loved Paul of Tarsus, liked St John, hated St
James as much as he dared, and regarded with mixed feelings Timothy,
Titus, and Philemon. The New Testament was less a Christiad then a
Pauliad to his intelligence--less an argument than an intoxication.
His creed of determinism was such that it almost amounted to a
vice, and quite amounted, on its negative side, to a renunciative
philosophy which had cousinship with that of Schopenhauer and
Leopardi. He despised the Canons and Rubric, swore by the Articles,
and deemed himself consistent through the whole category--which in a
way he might have been. One thing he certainly was--sincere.
To the aesthetic, sensuous, pagan pleasure in natural life and lush
womanhood which his son Angel had lately been experiencing in Var
Vale, his temper would have been antipathetic in a high degree, had
he either by inquiry or imagination been able to apprehend it. Once
upon a time Angel had been so unlucky as to say to his father, in
a moment of irritation, that it might have resulted far better for
mankind if Greece had been the source of the religion of modern
civilization, and not Palestine; and his father's grief was of that
blank description which could not realize that there might lurk a
thousandth part of a truth, much less a half truth or a whole truth,
in such a proposition. He had simply preached austerely at Angel for
some time after. But the kindness of his heart was such that he
never resented anything for long, and welcomed his son to-day with a
smile which was as candidly sweet as a child's.
Angel sat down, and the place felt like home; yet he did not so much
as formerly feel himself one of the family gathered there. Every
time that he returned hither he was conscious of this divergence,
and since he had last shared in the Vicarage life it had grown even
more distinctly foreign to his own than usual. Its transcendental
aspirations--still unconsciously based on the geocentric view of
things, a zenithal paradise, a nadiral hell--were as foreign to his
own as if they had been the dreams of people on another planet.
Latterly he had seen only Life, felt only the great passionate pulse
of existence, unwarped, uncontorted, untrammelled by those creeds
which futilely attempt to check what wisdom would be content to
regulate.
On their part they saw a great difference in him, a growing
divergence from the Angel Clare of former times. It was chiefly a
difference in his manner that they noticed just now, particularly
his brothers. He was getting to behave like a farmer; he flung his
legs about; the muscles of his face had grown more expressive; his
eyes looked as much information as his tongue spoke, and more. The
manner of the scholar had nearly disappeared; still more the manner
of the drawing-room young man. A prig would have said that he had
lost culture, and a prude that he had become coarse. Such was the
contagion of domiciliary fellowship with the Talbothays nymphs and
swains.
After breakfast he walked with his two brothers, non-evangelical,
well-educated, hall-marked young men, correct to their remotest
fibre, such unimpeachable models as are turned out yearly by
the lathe of a systematic tuition. They were both somewhat
short-sighted, and when it was the custom to wear a single eyeglass
and string they wore a single eyeglass and string; when it was the
custom to wear a double glass they wore a double glass; when it was
the custom to wear spectacles they wore spectacles straightway, all
without reference to the particular variety of defect in their own
vision. When Wordsworth was enthroned they carried pocket copies;
and when Shelley was belittled they allowed him to grow dusty on
their shelves. When Correggio's Holy Families were admired, they
admired Correggio's Holy Families; when he was decried in favour
of Velasquez, they sedulously followed suit without any personal
objection.
If these two noticed Angel's growing social ineptness, he noticed
their growing mental limitations. Felix seemed to him all Church;
Cuthbert all College. His Diocesan Synod and Visitations were the
mainsprings of the world to the one; Cambridge to the other. Each
brother candidly recognized that there were a few unimportant score
of millions of outsiders in civilized society, persons who were
neither University men nor churchmen; but they were to be tolerated
rather than reckoned with and respected.
They were both dutiful and attentive sons, and were regular in their
visits to their parents. Felix, though an offshoot from a far more
recent point in the devolution of theology than his father, was less
self-sacrificing and disinterested. More tolerant than his father of
a contradictory opinion, in its aspect as a danger to its holder, he
was less ready than his father to pardon it as a slight to his own
teaching. Cuthbert was, upon the whole, the more liberal-minded,
though, with greater subtlety, he had not so much heart.
As they walked along the hillside Angel's former feeling revived
in him--that whatever their advantages by comparison with himself,
neither saw or set forth life as it really was lived. Perhaps, as
with many men, their opportunities of observation were not so good
as their opportunities of expression. Neither had an adequate
conception of the complicated forces at work outside the smooth and
gentle current in which they and their associates floated. Neither
saw the difference between local truth and universal truth; that what
the inner world said in their clerical and academic hearing was quite
a different thing from what the outer world was thinking.
"I suppose it is farming or nothing for you now, my dear fellow,"
Felix was saying, among other things, to his youngest brother, as
he looked through his spectacles at the distant fields with sad
austerity. "And, therefore, we must make the best of it. But I do
entreat you to endeavour to keep as much as possible in touch with
moral ideals. Farming, of course, means roughing it externally; but
high thinking may go with plain living, nevertheless."
"Of course it may," said Angel. "Was it not proved nineteen hundred
years ago--if I may trespass upon your domain a little? Why should
you think, Felix, that I am likely to drop my high thinking and my
moral ideals?"
"Well, I fancied, from the tone of your letters and our
conversation--it may be fancy only--that you were somehow losing
intellectual grasp. Hasn't it struck you, Cuthbert?"
"Now, Felix," said Angel drily, "we are very good friends, you
know; each of us treading our allotted circles; but if it comes to
intellectual grasp, I think you, as a contented dogmatist, had
better leave mine alone, and inquire what has become of yours."
They returned down the hill to dinner, which was fixed at any time at
which their father's and mother's morning work in the parish usually
concluded. Convenience as regarded afternoon callers was the last
thing to enter into the consideration of unselfish Mr and Mrs Clare;
though the three sons were sufficiently in unison on this matter to
wish that their parents would conform a little to modern notions.
The walk had made them hungry, Angel in particular, who was now
an outdoor man, accustomed to the profuse _dapes inemptae_ of the
dairyman's somewhat coarsely-laden table. But neither of the old
people had arrived, and it was not till the sons were almost tired of
waiting that their parents entered. The self-denying pair had been
occupied in coaxing the appetites of some of their sick parishioners,
whom they, somewhat inconsistently, tried to keep imprisoned in the
flesh, their own appetites being quite forgotten.
The family sat down to table, and a frugal meal of cold viands
was deposited before them. Angel looked round for Mrs Crick's
black-puddings, which he had directed to be nicely grilled as they
did them at the dairy, and of which he wished his father and mother
to appreciate the marvellous herbal savours as highly as he did
himself.
"Ah! you are looking for the black-puddings, my dear boy," observed
Clare's mother. "But I am sure you will not mind doing without them
as I am sure your father and I shall not, when you know the reason.
I suggested to him that we should take Mrs Crick's kind present to
the children of the man who can earn nothing just now because of his
attacks of delirium tremens; and he agreed that it would be a great
pleasure to them; so we did."
"Of course," said Angel cheerfully, looking round for the mead.
"I found the mead so extremely alcoholic," continued his mother,
"that it was quite unfit for use as a beverage, but as valuable
as rum or brandy in an emergency; so I have put it in my
medicine-closet."
"We never drink spirits at this table, on principle," added his
father.
"But what shall I tell the dairyman's wife?" said Angel.
"The truth, of course," said his father.
"I rather wanted to say we enjoyed the mead and the black-puddings
very much. She is a kind, jolly sort of body, and is sure to ask me
directly I return."
"You cannot, if we did not," Mr Clare answered lucidly.
"Ah--no; though that mead was a drop of pretty tipple."
"A what?" said Cuthbert and Felix both.
"Oh--'tis an expression they use down at Talbothays," replied Angel,
blushing. He felt that his parents were right in their practice if
wrong in their want of sentiment, and said no more.
| 3,164 | Phase IV: "The Consequence," Chapter Twenty-Five | https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-25 | Angel wanders around that evening after Tess has gone to bed, thinking about what has happened. He hadn't meant to tell her he loved her--he hadn't meant to fall in love at all. But he's not toying around with her, either. He's got a conscience, and doesn't want to break any hearts. He decides to go home to see his folks for a few days, and talk it over with them. He's almost finished studying farming, and will soon be ready to start one of his own. He tells himself that it would make more sense to marry a woman who understands the business. But he decides to go see his parents anyway. The next morning at breakfast one of the girls comments that Mr. Clare isn't there. Dairyman Crick says that Angel has gone home to see his parents--probably to plan for the future, since he's almost finished his time at the dairy. Marian, Izz, Retty, and of course Tess all sigh and look sad at the news. Meanwhile, Angel is riding his horse towards his parents' house, thinking things over. Should he marry Tess? Would they be happy together? Does he really love her, or does he just have the hots for her? He's carrying a basket with some black puddings and a bottle of mead as a gift from Mrs. Crick to his parents. As he passes the church where his father preaches, he sees a young woman--it's Mercy Chant, the daughter of his parents' friend and neighbor. They hope he'll marry her someday. He decides she hasn't seen him, so he's not obliged to say hi. He gets to his parents' house just as they're all sitting down to breakfast. His brothers, Felix and Cuthbert, are there as well. Mr. Clare is an old man to have such a young son, and he's very set in his ways and thoroughly convinced that his way of viewing the world and religion is the right one. At least he's sincere about it, though. His family greets him, and Angel sits down to breakfast with them. They notice that he's lost some of his fancy polish--he's started to behave "like a farmer." After breakfast, he goes for a walk with his brothers. They might be noticing his lack of social graces, but he's starting to notice their closed-mindedness. Their parents, meanwhile, have gone out to do good work among the poor in their community, as they do everyday. At lunch, he looks around for the black puddings, but his mother tells him that they had given them to some poor folks. Angel then looks for the mead, and they tell him it was too alcoholic to drink at the table, so they've put it in the medicine cabinet with the brandy. Angel is disappointed--he likes both mead and black puddings, and wanted his family to enjoy them so that he could tell Mrs. Crick that her gift was appreciated. | null | 490 | 1 | [
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174 | false | sparknotes | all_chapterized_books/174-chapters/08.txt | finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Picture of Dorian Gray/section_3_part_2.txt | The Picture of Dorian Gray.chapter 8 | chapter 8 | null | {"name": "Chapter 8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210228142327/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/doriangray/section4/", "summary": "Dorian does not awake until well after noon the next day. When he gets up, he goes to check the painting. In the light, the change is unmistakable; the face in the portrait has become crueler. While the stunned Dorian tries to come up with some rational explanation for the change, Lord Henry arrives with terrible news: Sibyl committed suicide the previous night. Dorian is stunned, but Lord Henry manages to convince him that he should not go to the police and explain his part in the girl's death. Lord Henry urges Dorian not to wallow in guilt but, rather, to regard Sibyl's suicide as a perfect artistic representation of undying love and appreciate it as such. Dorian, who feels numb rather than anguished, is convinced by his friend's seductive words and agrees to go to the opera with him that very night. When Lord Henry is gone, Dorian reflects that this incident is a turning point in his existence, and he resolves to accept a life of \"ternal youth, infinite passion, pleasures subtle and secret, wild joy and wilder sins,\" in which his portrait, rather than his own body, will bear the marks of age and experience. Having made this resolution, he joins Lord Henry at the opera", "analysis": "Dorian's romance with Sibyl represents the possibility that he will not accept Lord Henry's philosophy and will instead learn to prize human beings and emotions over art. His love for her allows him to resist Lord Henry's seductive words, noting to Lord Henry, \"When I am with her, I regret all that you have taught me. . . . he mere touch of Sibyl Vane's hand makes me forget you and all your wrong, fascinating, poisonous, delightful theories.\" But just as Lord Henry appreciates Dorian as a work of art rather than as a human being, what Dorian values most about Sibyl is her talent as an actress--her ability to portray an ideal, not her true self. The extent of Lord Henry's influence is painfully clear as Dorian heartlessly snubs Sibyl, who claims that her real love for him prohibits her from acting out such emotions onstage. Surely, to modern readers, Sibyl's devotion to Dorian--not to mention her grief over losing him--seems a bit melodramatic. She is a rather thinly drawn character, but she serves two important functions. First, she forces us to question what precisely art is and when its effects are good. Second, she shows the pernicious consequences of a philosophy that places beauty and self-pleasure above consideration for others. Sibyl's tragic fate enables us to be as critical of Wilde's philosophies as he himself was at the end of his life. Sibyl's claim that Dorian gives her \"something higher, something of which all art is but a reflection\" stands in undeniable contrast to Lord Henry's philosophy, in which art is the highest experience and life imitates art rather than vice versa. Indeed, time and again, Lord Henry delights in ignoring the significance of human emotions. Even though Sibyl's conception of art as a reflection of grand emotions counters Lord Henry's philosophy of art, it resonates throughout the remainder of the novel. Indeed, Sibyl's philosophy is echoed in the very portrait of Dorian, since it is a reflection of Dorian's true self. The answer to the narrator's question as to whether the changing portrait \"ould ... teach to loathe his own soul\" is yes, as Dorian grows increasingly uncomfortable over the course of the novel with what the disfigured portrait signifies about himself. As the novel progresses and the painting continues to register the effects of time and dissipation, we see the degree to which Dorian is undone by the sins that his portrait reflects and the degree to which he suffers for allowing the painting to act as a \"visible emblem of conscience.\" The aging of Dorian's likeness in the portrait ultimately contradicts some of Lord Henry's--and Wilde's--beliefs about art: the painting does not exist in a moral vacuum. Instead, the painting both shows the deleterious effects of sin and gives Dorian a sense of freedom from morality; it thus influences and is influenced by morality."} |
It was long past noon when he awoke. His valet had crept several times
on tiptoe into the room to see if he was stirring, and had wondered
what made his young master sleep so late. Finally his bell sounded,
and Victor came in softly with a cup of tea, and a pile of letters, on
a small tray of old Sevres china, and drew back the olive-satin
curtains, with their shimmering blue lining, that hung in front of the
three tall windows.
"Monsieur has well slept this morning," he said, smiling.
"What o'clock is it, Victor?" asked Dorian Gray drowsily.
"One hour and a quarter, Monsieur."
How late it was! He sat up, and having sipped some tea, turned over
his letters. One of them was from Lord Henry, and had been brought by
hand that morning. He hesitated for a moment, and then put it aside.
The others he opened listlessly. They contained the usual collection
of cards, invitations to dinner, tickets for private views, programmes
of charity concerts, and the like that are showered on fashionable
young men every morning during the season. There was a rather heavy
bill for a chased silver Louis-Quinze toilet-set that he had not yet
had the courage to send on to his guardians, who were extremely
old-fashioned people and did not realize that we live in an age when
unnecessary things are our only necessities; and there were several
very courteously worded communications from Jermyn Street money-lenders
offering to advance any sum of money at a moment's notice and at the
most reasonable rates of interest.
After about ten minutes he got up, and throwing on an elaborate
dressing-gown of silk-embroidered cashmere wool, passed into the
onyx-paved bathroom. The cool water refreshed him after his long
sleep. He seemed to have forgotten all that he had gone through. A
dim sense of having taken part in some strange tragedy came to him once
or twice, but there was the unreality of a dream about it.
As soon as he was dressed, he went into the library and sat down to a
light French breakfast that had been laid out for him on a small round
table close to the open window. It was an exquisite day. The warm air
seemed laden with spices. A bee flew in and buzzed round the
blue-dragon bowl that, filled with sulphur-yellow roses, stood before
him. He felt perfectly happy.
Suddenly his eye fell on the screen that he had placed in front of the
portrait, and he started.
"Too cold for Monsieur?" asked his valet, putting an omelette on the
table. "I shut the window?"
Dorian shook his head. "I am not cold," he murmured.
Was it all true? Had the portrait really changed? Or had it been
simply his own imagination that had made him see a look of evil where
there had been a look of joy? Surely a painted canvas could not alter?
The thing was absurd. It would serve as a tale to tell Basil some day.
It would make him smile.
And, yet, how vivid was his recollection of the whole thing! First in
the dim twilight, and then in the bright dawn, he had seen the touch of
cruelty round the warped lips. He almost dreaded his valet leaving the
room. He knew that when he was alone he would have to examine the
portrait. He was afraid of certainty. When the coffee and cigarettes
had been brought and the man turned to go, he felt a wild desire to
tell him to remain. As the door was closing behind him, he called him
back. The man stood waiting for his orders. Dorian looked at him for
a moment. "I am not at home to any one, Victor," he said with a sigh.
The man bowed and retired.
Then he rose from the table, lit a cigarette, and flung himself down on
a luxuriously cushioned couch that stood facing the screen. The screen
was an old one, of gilt Spanish leather, stamped and wrought with a
rather florid Louis-Quatorze pattern. He scanned it curiously,
wondering if ever before it had concealed the secret of a man's life.
Should he move it aside, after all? Why not let it stay there? What
was the use of knowing? If the thing was true, it was terrible. If it
was not true, why trouble about it? But what if, by some fate or
deadlier chance, eyes other than his spied behind and saw the horrible
change? What should he do if Basil Hallward came and asked to look at
his own picture? Basil would be sure to do that. No; the thing had to
be examined, and at once. Anything would be better than this dreadful
state of doubt.
He got up and locked both doors. At least he would be alone when he
looked upon the mask of his shame. Then he drew the screen aside and
saw himself face to face. It was perfectly true. The portrait had
altered.
As he often remembered afterwards, and always with no small wonder, he
found himself at first gazing at the portrait with a feeling of almost
scientific interest. That such a change should have taken place was
incredible to him. And yet it was a fact. Was there some subtle
affinity between the chemical atoms that shaped themselves into form
and colour on the canvas and the soul that was within him? Could it be
that what that soul thought, they realized?--that what it dreamed, they
made true? Or was there some other, more terrible reason? He
shuddered, and felt afraid, and, going back to the couch, lay there,
gazing at the picture in sickened horror.
One thing, however, he felt that it had done for him. It had made him
conscious how unjust, how cruel, he had been to Sibyl Vane. It was not
too late to make reparation for that. She could still be his wife.
His unreal and selfish love would yield to some higher influence, would
be transformed into some nobler passion, and the portrait that Basil
Hallward had painted of him would be a guide to him through life, would
be to him what holiness is to some, and conscience to others, and the
fear of God to us all. There were opiates for remorse, drugs that
could lull the moral sense to sleep. But here was a visible symbol of
the degradation of sin. Here was an ever-present sign of the ruin men
brought upon their souls.
Three o'clock struck, and four, and the half-hour rang its double
chime, but Dorian Gray did not stir. He was trying to gather up the
scarlet threads of life and to weave them into a pattern; to find his
way through the sanguine labyrinth of passion through which he was
wandering. He did not know what to do, or what to think. Finally, he
went over to the table and wrote a passionate letter to the girl he had
loved, imploring her forgiveness and accusing himself of madness. He
covered page after page with wild words of sorrow and wilder words of
pain. There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we
feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession,
not the priest, that gives us absolution. When Dorian had finished the
letter, he felt that he had been forgiven.
Suddenly there came a knock to the door, and he heard Lord Henry's
voice outside. "My dear boy, I must see you. Let me in at once. I
can't bear your shutting yourself up like this."
He made no answer at first, but remained quite still. The knocking
still continued and grew louder. Yes, it was better to let Lord Henry
in, and to explain to him the new life he was going to lead, to quarrel
with him if it became necessary to quarrel, to part if parting was
inevitable. He jumped up, drew the screen hastily across the picture,
and unlocked the door.
"I am so sorry for it all, Dorian," said Lord Henry as he entered.
"But you must not think too much about it."
"Do you mean about Sibyl Vane?" asked the lad.
"Yes, of course," answered Lord Henry, sinking into a chair and slowly
pulling off his yellow gloves. "It is dreadful, from one point of
view, but it was not your fault. Tell me, did you go behind and see
her, after the play was over?"
"Yes."
"I felt sure you had. Did you make a scene with her?"
"I was brutal, Harry--perfectly brutal. But it is all right now. I am
not sorry for anything that has happened. It has taught me to know
myself better."
"Ah, Dorian, I am so glad you take it in that way! I was afraid I
would find you plunged in remorse and tearing that nice curly hair of
yours."
"I have got through all that," said Dorian, shaking his head and
smiling. "I am perfectly happy now. I know what conscience is, to
begin with. It is not what you told me it was. It is the divinest
thing in us. Don't sneer at it, Harry, any more--at least not before
me. I want to be good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being
hideous."
"A very charming artistic basis for ethics, Dorian! I congratulate you
on it. But how are you going to begin?"
"By marrying Sibyl Vane."
"Marrying Sibyl Vane!" cried Lord Henry, standing up and looking at him
in perplexed amazement. "But, my dear Dorian--"
"Yes, Harry, I know what you are going to say. Something dreadful
about marriage. Don't say it. Don't ever say things of that kind to
me again. Two days ago I asked Sibyl to marry me. I am not going to
break my word to her. She is to be my wife."
"Your wife! Dorian! ... Didn't you get my letter? I wrote to you this
morning, and sent the note down by my own man."
"Your letter? Oh, yes, I remember. I have not read it yet, Harry. I
was afraid there might be something in it that I wouldn't like. You
cut life to pieces with your epigrams."
"You know nothing then?"
"What do you mean?"
Lord Henry walked across the room, and sitting down by Dorian Gray,
took both his hands in his own and held them tightly. "Dorian," he
said, "my letter--don't be frightened--was to tell you that Sibyl Vane
is dead."
A cry of pain broke from the lad's lips, and he leaped to his feet,
tearing his hands away from Lord Henry's grasp. "Dead! Sibyl dead!
It is not true! It is a horrible lie! How dare you say it?"
"It is quite true, Dorian," said Lord Henry, gravely. "It is in all
the morning papers. I wrote down to you to ask you not to see any one
till I came. There will have to be an inquest, of course, and you must
not be mixed up in it. Things like that make a man fashionable in
Paris. But in London people are so prejudiced. Here, one should never
make one's _debut_ with a scandal. One should reserve that to give an
interest to one's old age. I suppose they don't know your name at the
theatre? If they don't, it is all right. Did any one see you going
round to her room? That is an important point."
Dorian did not answer for a few moments. He was dazed with horror.
Finally he stammered, in a stifled voice, "Harry, did you say an
inquest? What did you mean by that? Did Sibyl--? Oh, Harry, I can't
bear it! But be quick. Tell me everything at once."
"I have no doubt it was not an accident, Dorian, though it must be put
in that way to the public. It seems that as she was leaving the
theatre with her mother, about half-past twelve or so, she said she had
forgotten something upstairs. They waited some time for her, but she
did not come down again. They ultimately found her lying dead on the
floor of her dressing-room. She had swallowed something by mistake,
some dreadful thing they use at theatres. I don't know what it was,
but it had either prussic acid or white lead in it. I should fancy it
was prussic acid, as she seems to have died instantaneously."
"Harry, Harry, it is terrible!" cried the lad.
"Yes; it is very tragic, of course, but you must not get yourself mixed
up in it. I see by _The Standard_ that she was seventeen. I should have
thought she was almost younger than that. She looked such a child, and
seemed to know so little about acting. Dorian, you mustn't let this
thing get on your nerves. You must come and dine with me, and
afterwards we will look in at the opera. It is a Patti night, and
everybody will be there. You can come to my sister's box. She has got
some smart women with her."
"So I have murdered Sibyl Vane," said Dorian Gray, half to himself,
"murdered her as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife.
Yet the roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as
happily in my garden. And to-night I am to dine with you, and then go
on to the opera, and sup somewhere, I suppose, afterwards. How
extraordinarily dramatic life is! If I had read all this in a book,
Harry, I think I would have wept over it. Somehow, now that it has
happened actually, and to me, it seems far too wonderful for tears.
Here is the first passionate love-letter I have ever written in my
life. Strange, that my first passionate love-letter should have been
addressed to a dead girl. Can they feel, I wonder, those white silent
people we call the dead? Sibyl! Can she feel, or know, or listen?
Oh, Harry, how I loved her once! It seems years ago to me now. She
was everything to me. Then came that dreadful night--was it really
only last night?--when she played so badly, and my heart almost broke.
She explained it all to me. It was terribly pathetic. But I was not
moved a bit. I thought her shallow. Suddenly something happened that
made me afraid. I can't tell you what it was, but it was terrible. I
said I would go back to her. I felt I had done wrong. And now she is
dead. My God! My God! Harry, what shall I do? You don't know the
danger I am in, and there is nothing to keep me straight. She would
have done that for me. She had no right to kill herself. It was
selfish of her."
"My dear Dorian," answered Lord Henry, taking a cigarette from his case
and producing a gold-latten matchbox, "the only way a woman can ever
reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible
interest in life. If you had married this girl, you would have been
wretched. Of course, you would have treated her kindly. One can
always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing. But she would
have soon found out that you were absolutely indifferent to her. And
when a woman finds that out about her husband, she either becomes
dreadfully dowdy, or wears very smart bonnets that some other woman's
husband has to pay for. I say nothing about the social mistake, which
would have been abject--which, of course, I would not have allowed--but
I assure you that in any case the whole thing would have been an
absolute failure."
"I suppose it would," muttered the lad, walking up and down the room
and looking horribly pale. "But I thought it was my duty. It is not
my fault that this terrible tragedy has prevented my doing what was
right. I remember your saying once that there is a fatality about good
resolutions--that they are always made too late. Mine certainly were."
"Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific
laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely _nil_.
They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions
that have a certain charm for the weak. That is all that can be said
for them. They are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they
have no account."
"Harry," cried Dorian Gray, coming over and sitting down beside him,
"why is it that I cannot feel this tragedy as much as I want to? I
don't think I am heartless. Do you?"
"You have done too many foolish things during the last fortnight to be
entitled to give yourself that name, Dorian," answered Lord Henry with
his sweet melancholy smile.
The lad frowned. "I don't like that explanation, Harry," he rejoined,
"but I am glad you don't think I am heartless. I am nothing of the
kind. I know I am not. And yet I must admit that this thing that has
happened does not affect me as it should. It seems to me to be simply
like a wonderful ending to a wonderful play. It has all the terrible
beauty of a Greek tragedy, a tragedy in which I took a great part, but
by which I have not been wounded."
"It is an interesting question," said Lord Henry, who found an
exquisite pleasure in playing on the lad's unconscious egotism, "an
extremely interesting question. I fancy that the true explanation is
this: It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such
an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their
absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack
of style. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give us
an impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that.
Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements of
beauty crosses our lives. If these elements of beauty are real, the
whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenly
we find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of the
play. Or rather we are both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonder
of the spectacle enthralls us. In the present case, what is it that
has really happened? Some one has killed herself for love of you. I
wish that I had ever had such an experience. It would have made me in
love with love for the rest of my life. The people who have adored
me--there have not been very many, but there have been some--have
always insisted on living on, long after I had ceased to care for them,
or they to care for me. They have become stout and tedious, and when I
meet them, they go in at once for reminiscences. That awful memory of
woman! What a fearful thing it is! And what an utter intellectual
stagnation it reveals! One should absorb the colour of life, but one
should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar."
"I must sow poppies in my garden," sighed Dorian.
"There is no necessity," rejoined his companion. "Life has always
poppies in her hands. Of course, now and then things linger. I once
wore nothing but violets all through one season, as a form of artistic
mourning for a romance that would not die. Ultimately, however, it did
die. I forget what killed it. I think it was her proposing to
sacrifice the whole world for me. That is always a dreadful moment.
It fills one with the terror of eternity. Well--would you believe
it?--a week ago, at Lady Hampshire's, I found myself seated at dinner
next the lady in question, and she insisted on going over the whole
thing again, and digging up the past, and raking up the future. I had
buried my romance in a bed of asphodel. She dragged it out again and
assured me that I had spoiled her life. I am bound to state that she
ate an enormous dinner, so I did not feel any anxiety. But what a lack
of taste she showed! The one charm of the past is that it is the past.
But women never know when the curtain has fallen. They always want a
sixth act, and as soon as the interest of the play is entirely over,
they propose to continue it. If they were allowed their own way, every
comedy would have a tragic ending, and every tragedy would culminate in
a farce. They are charmingly artificial, but they have no sense of
art. You are more fortunate than I am. I assure you, Dorian, that not
one of the women I have known would have done for me what Sibyl Vane
did for you. Ordinary women always console themselves. Some of them
do it by going in for sentimental colours. Never trust a woman who
wears mauve, whatever her age may be, or a woman over thirty-five who
is fond of pink ribbons. It always means that they have a history.
Others find a great consolation in suddenly discovering the good
qualities of their husbands. They flaunt their conjugal felicity in
one's face, as if it were the most fascinating of sins. Religion
consoles some. Its mysteries have all the charm of a flirtation, a
woman once told me, and I can quite understand it. Besides, nothing
makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. Conscience makes
egotists of us all. Yes; there is really no end to the consolations
that women find in modern life. Indeed, I have not mentioned the most
important one."
"What is that, Harry?" said the lad listlessly.
"Oh, the obvious consolation. Taking some one else's admirer when one
loses one's own. In good society that always whitewashes a woman. But
really, Dorian, how different Sibyl Vane must have been from all the
women one meets! There is something to me quite beautiful about her
death. I am glad I am living in a century when such wonders happen.
They make one believe in the reality of the things we all play with,
such as romance, passion, and love."
"I was terribly cruel to her. You forget that."
"I am afraid that women appreciate cruelty, downright cruelty, more
than anything else. They have wonderfully primitive instincts. We
have emancipated them, but they remain slaves looking for their
masters, all the same. They love being dominated. I am sure you were
splendid. I have never seen you really and absolutely angry, but I can
fancy how delightful you looked. And, after all, you said something to
me the day before yesterday that seemed to me at the time to be merely
fanciful, but that I see now was absolutely true, and it holds the key
to everything."
"What was that, Harry?"
"You said to me that Sibyl Vane represented to you all the heroines of
romance--that she was Desdemona one night, and Ophelia the other; that
if she died as Juliet, she came to life as Imogen."
"She will never come to life again now," muttered the lad, burying his
face in his hands.
"No, she will never come to life. She has played her last part. But
you must think of that lonely death in the tawdry dressing-room simply
as a strange lurid fragment from some Jacobean tragedy, as a wonderful
scene from Webster, or Ford, or Cyril Tourneur. The girl never really
lived, and so she has never really died. To you at least she was
always a dream, a phantom that flitted through Shakespeare's plays and
left them lovelier for its presence, a reed through which Shakespeare's
music sounded richer and more full of joy. The moment she touched
actual life, she marred it, and it marred her, and so she passed away.
Mourn for Ophelia, if you like. Put ashes on your head because
Cordelia was strangled. Cry out against Heaven because the daughter of
Brabantio died. But don't waste your tears over Sibyl Vane. She was
less real than they are."
There was a silence. The evening darkened in the room. Noiselessly,
and with silver feet, the shadows crept in from the garden. The
colours faded wearily out of things.
After some time Dorian Gray looked up. "You have explained me to
myself, Harry," he murmured with something of a sigh of relief. "I
felt all that you have said, but somehow I was afraid of it, and I
could not express it to myself. How well you know me! But we will not
talk again of what has happened. It has been a marvellous experience.
That is all. I wonder if life has still in store for me anything as
marvellous."
"Life has everything in store for you, Dorian. There is nothing that
you, with your extraordinary good looks, will not be able to do."
"But suppose, Harry, I became haggard, and old, and wrinkled? What
then?"
"Ah, then," said Lord Henry, rising to go, "then, my dear Dorian, you
would have to fight for your victories. As it is, they are brought to
you. No, you must keep your good looks. We live in an age that reads
too much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful. We
cannot spare you. And now you had better dress and drive down to the
club. We are rather late, as it is."
"I think I shall join you at the opera, Harry. I feel too tired to eat
anything. What is the number of your sister's box?"
"Twenty-seven, I believe. It is on the grand tier. You will see her
name on the door. But I am sorry you won't come and dine."
"I don't feel up to it," said Dorian listlessly. "But I am awfully
obliged to you for all that you have said to me. You are certainly my
best friend. No one has ever understood me as you have."
"We are only at the beginning of our friendship, Dorian," answered Lord
Henry, shaking him by the hand. "Good-bye. I shall see you before
nine-thirty, I hope. Remember, Patti is singing."
As he closed the door behind him, Dorian Gray touched the bell, and in
a few minutes Victor appeared with the lamps and drew the blinds down.
He waited impatiently for him to go. The man seemed to take an
interminable time over everything.
As soon as he had left, he rushed to the screen and drew it back. No;
there was no further change in the picture. It had received the news
of Sibyl Vane's death before he had known of it himself. It was
conscious of the events of life as they occurred. The vicious cruelty
that marred the fine lines of the mouth had, no doubt, appeared at the
very moment that the girl had drunk the poison, whatever it was. Or
was it indifferent to results? Did it merely take cognizance of what
passed within the soul? He wondered, and hoped that some day he would
see the change taking place before his very eyes, shuddering as he
hoped it.
Poor Sibyl! What a romance it had all been! She had often mimicked
death on the stage. Then Death himself had touched her and taken her
with him. How had she played that dreadful last scene? Had she cursed
him, as she died? No; she had died for love of him, and love would
always be a sacrament to him now. She had atoned for everything by the
sacrifice she had made of her life. He would not think any more of
what she had made him go through, on that horrible night at the
theatre. When he thought of her, it would be as a wonderful tragic
figure sent on to the world's stage to show the supreme reality of
love. A wonderful tragic figure? Tears came to his eyes as he
remembered her childlike look, and winsome fanciful ways, and shy
tremulous grace. He brushed them away hastily and looked again at the
picture.
He felt that the time had really come for making his choice. Or had
his choice already been made? Yes, life had decided that for
him--life, and his own infinite curiosity about life. Eternal youth,
infinite passion, pleasures subtle and secret, wild joys and wilder
sins--he was to have all these things. The portrait was to bear the
burden of his shame: that was all.
A feeling of pain crept over him as he thought of the desecration that
was in store for the fair face on the canvas. Once, in boyish mockery
of Narcissus, he had kissed, or feigned to kiss, those painted lips
that now smiled so cruelly at him. Morning after morning he had sat
before the portrait wondering at its beauty, almost enamoured of it, as
it seemed to him at times. Was it to alter now with every mood to
which he yielded? Was it to become a monstrous and loathsome thing, to
be hidden away in a locked room, to be shut out from the sunlight that
had so often touched to brighter gold the waving wonder of its hair?
The pity of it! the pity of it!
For a moment, he thought of praying that the horrible sympathy that
existed between him and the picture might cease. It had changed in
answer to a prayer; perhaps in answer to a prayer it might remain
unchanged. And yet, who, that knew anything about life, would
surrender the chance of remaining always young, however fantastic that
chance might be, or with what fateful consequences it might be fraught?
Besides, was it really under his control? Had it indeed been prayer
that had produced the substitution? Might there not be some curious
scientific reason for it all? If thought could exercise its influence
upon a living organism, might not thought exercise an influence upon
dead and inorganic things? Nay, without thought or conscious desire,
might not things external to ourselves vibrate in unison with our moods
and passions, atom calling to atom in secret love or strange affinity?
But the reason was of no importance. He would never again tempt by a
prayer any terrible power. If the picture was to alter, it was to
alter. That was all. Why inquire too closely into it?
For there would be a real pleasure in watching it. He would be able to
follow his mind into its secret places. This portrait would be to him
the most magical of mirrors. As it had revealed to him his own body,
so it would reveal to him his own soul. And when winter came upon it,
he would still be standing where spring trembles on the verge of
summer. When the blood crept from its face, and left behind a pallid
mask of chalk with leaden eyes, he would keep the glamour of boyhood.
Not one blossom of his loveliness would ever fade. Not one pulse of
his life would ever weaken. Like the gods of the Greeks, he would be
strong, and fleet, and joyous. What did it matter what happened to the
coloured image on the canvas? He would be safe. That was everything.
He drew the screen back into its former place in front of the picture,
smiling as he did so, and passed into his bedroom, where his valet was
already waiting for him. An hour later he was at the opera, and Lord
Henry was leaning over his chair.
| 5,159 | Chapter 8 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210228142327/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/doriangray/section4/ | Dorian does not awake until well after noon the next day. When he gets up, he goes to check the painting. In the light, the change is unmistakable; the face in the portrait has become crueler. While the stunned Dorian tries to come up with some rational explanation for the change, Lord Henry arrives with terrible news: Sibyl committed suicide the previous night. Dorian is stunned, but Lord Henry manages to convince him that he should not go to the police and explain his part in the girl's death. Lord Henry urges Dorian not to wallow in guilt but, rather, to regard Sibyl's suicide as a perfect artistic representation of undying love and appreciate it as such. Dorian, who feels numb rather than anguished, is convinced by his friend's seductive words and agrees to go to the opera with him that very night. When Lord Henry is gone, Dorian reflects that this incident is a turning point in his existence, and he resolves to accept a life of "ternal youth, infinite passion, pleasures subtle and secret, wild joy and wilder sins," in which his portrait, rather than his own body, will bear the marks of age and experience. Having made this resolution, he joins Lord Henry at the opera | Dorian's romance with Sibyl represents the possibility that he will not accept Lord Henry's philosophy and will instead learn to prize human beings and emotions over art. His love for her allows him to resist Lord Henry's seductive words, noting to Lord Henry, "When I am with her, I regret all that you have taught me. . . . he mere touch of Sibyl Vane's hand makes me forget you and all your wrong, fascinating, poisonous, delightful theories." But just as Lord Henry appreciates Dorian as a work of art rather than as a human being, what Dorian values most about Sibyl is her talent as an actress--her ability to portray an ideal, not her true self. The extent of Lord Henry's influence is painfully clear as Dorian heartlessly snubs Sibyl, who claims that her real love for him prohibits her from acting out such emotions onstage. Surely, to modern readers, Sibyl's devotion to Dorian--not to mention her grief over losing him--seems a bit melodramatic. She is a rather thinly drawn character, but she serves two important functions. First, she forces us to question what precisely art is and when its effects are good. Second, she shows the pernicious consequences of a philosophy that places beauty and self-pleasure above consideration for others. Sibyl's tragic fate enables us to be as critical of Wilde's philosophies as he himself was at the end of his life. Sibyl's claim that Dorian gives her "something higher, something of which all art is but a reflection" stands in undeniable contrast to Lord Henry's philosophy, in which art is the highest experience and life imitates art rather than vice versa. Indeed, time and again, Lord Henry delights in ignoring the significance of human emotions. Even though Sibyl's conception of art as a reflection of grand emotions counters Lord Henry's philosophy of art, it resonates throughout the remainder of the novel. Indeed, Sibyl's philosophy is echoed in the very portrait of Dorian, since it is a reflection of Dorian's true self. The answer to the narrator's question as to whether the changing portrait "ould ... teach to loathe his own soul" is yes, as Dorian grows increasingly uncomfortable over the course of the novel with what the disfigured portrait signifies about himself. As the novel progresses and the painting continues to register the effects of time and dissipation, we see the degree to which Dorian is undone by the sins that his portrait reflects and the degree to which he suffers for allowing the painting to act as a "visible emblem of conscience." The aging of Dorian's likeness in the portrait ultimately contradicts some of Lord Henry's--and Wilde's--beliefs about art: the painting does not exist in a moral vacuum. Instead, the painting both shows the deleterious effects of sin and gives Dorian a sense of freedom from morality; it thus influences and is influenced by morality. | 209 | 481 | [
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1,232 | false | sparknotes | all_chapterized_books/1232-chapters/15.txt | finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Prince/section_6_part_1.txt | The Prince.chapter xv | chapter xv | null | {"name": "Chapter XV", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210303115306/https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/prince/section7/", "summary": "Concerning Things for Which Men, and Princes Especially, Are Praised or Censured Machiavelli turns the discussion from the strength of states and principalities to the correct behavior of the prince. Machiavelli admits that this subject has been treated by others, but he argues that an original set of practical--rather than theoretical--rules is needed. Other philosophers have conceived republics built upon an idealized notion of how men should live rather than how men actually live. But truth strays far from the expectations of imagined ideals. Specifically, men never live every part of their life virtuously. A prince should not concern himself with living virtuously, but rather with acting so as to achieve the most practical benefit. In general, some personal characteristics will earn men praise, others condemnation. Courage, compassion, faith, craftiness, and generosity number among the qualities that receive praise. Cowardice, cruelty, stubbornness, and miserliness are usually met with condemnation. Ideally, a prince would possess all the qualities deemed \"good\" by other men. But this expectation is unrealistic. A prince's first job is to safeguard the state, and harboring \"bad\" characteristics is sometimes necessary for this end. Such vices are truly evil if they endanger the state, but when vices are employed in the proper interests of the state, a prince must not be influenced by condemnation from other men", "analysis": ""} |
It remains now to see what ought to be the rules of conduct for a prince
towards subject and friends. And as I know that many have written on
this point, I expect I shall be considered presumptuous in mentioning it
again, especially as in discussing it I shall depart from the methods of
other people. But, it being my intention to write a thing which shall
be useful to him who apprehends it, it appears to me more appropriate to
follow up the real truth of the matter than the imagination of it; for
many have pictured republics and principalities which in fact have never
been known or seen, because how one lives is so far distant from how one
ought to live, that he who neglects what is done for what ought to
be done, sooner effects his ruin than his preservation; for a man who
wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with
what destroys him among so much that is evil.
Hence it is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know
how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity.
Therefore, putting on one side imaginary things concerning a prince, and
discussing those which are real, I say that all men when they are spoken
of, and chiefly princes for being more highly placed, are remarkable
for some of those qualities which bring them either blame or praise; and
thus it is that one is reputed liberal, another miserly, using a Tuscan
term (because an avaricious person in our language is still he who
desires to possess by robbery, whilst we call one miserly who deprives
himself too much of the use of his own); one is reputed generous,
one rapacious; one cruel, one compassionate; one faithless, another
faithful; one effeminate and cowardly, another bold and brave; one
affable, another haughty; one lascivious, another chaste; one sincere,
another cunning; one hard, another easy; one grave, another frivolous;
one religious, another unbelieving, and the like. And I know that every
one will confess that it would be most praiseworthy in a prince to
exhibit all the above qualities that are considered good; but because
they can neither be entirely possessed nor observed, for human
conditions do not permit it, it is necessary for him to be sufficiently
prudent that he may know how to avoid the reproach of those vices which
would lose him his state; and also to keep himself, if it be possible,
from those which would not lose him it; but this not being possible, he
may with less hesitation abandon himself to them. And again, he need
not make himself uneasy at incurring a reproach for those vices without
which the state can only be saved with difficulty, for if everything is
considered carefully, it will be found that something which looks like
virtue, if followed, would be his ruin; whilst something else, which
looks like vice, yet followed brings him security and prosperity.
| 466 | Chapter XV | https://web.archive.org/web/20210303115306/https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/prince/section7/ | Concerning Things for Which Men, and Princes Especially, Are Praised or Censured Machiavelli turns the discussion from the strength of states and principalities to the correct behavior of the prince. Machiavelli admits that this subject has been treated by others, but he argues that an original set of practical--rather than theoretical--rules is needed. Other philosophers have conceived republics built upon an idealized notion of how men should live rather than how men actually live. But truth strays far from the expectations of imagined ideals. Specifically, men never live every part of their life virtuously. A prince should not concern himself with living virtuously, but rather with acting so as to achieve the most practical benefit. In general, some personal characteristics will earn men praise, others condemnation. Courage, compassion, faith, craftiness, and generosity number among the qualities that receive praise. Cowardice, cruelty, stubbornness, and miserliness are usually met with condemnation. Ideally, a prince would possess all the qualities deemed "good" by other men. But this expectation is unrealistic. A prince's first job is to safeguard the state, and harboring "bad" characteristics is sometimes necessary for this end. Such vices are truly evil if they endanger the state, but when vices are employed in the proper interests of the state, a prince must not be influenced by condemnation from other men | null | 219 | 1 | [
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5,658 | true | cliffnotes | all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/chapters_26_to_27.txt | finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Lord Jim/section_17_part_0.txt | Lord Jim.chapters 26-27 | chapters 26-27 | null | {"name": "Chapters 26-27", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219145744/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/l/lord-jim/summary-and-analysis/chapters-2627", "summary": "At this point, Marlow interrupts his narrative in order to introduce us to the incredible person of Doramin, the longtime friend of Stein. Doramin, Marlow says, was remarkable. He was an imposing, monumental hulk of a man, with proud, staring eyes. In contrast, his wife was light, delicate, quick, and a little witchlike, despite the fact that she was always fussing over him. Their only son, Dain Waris, was Jim's best friend. He was married at eighteen and was now twenty-five. He was attentive and deeply respectful of his parents, and he loved Jim and trusted him implicitly and without reservation. Because of their deep, warm, war-comrade sort of friendship, each of the men, Marlow says, was a \"captive\" of the other, just as Marlow observed earlier that Jim was a \"captive\" of Patusan. These, then, were Jim's most trusted allies, those to whom he would owe complete allegiance when he initiated his plan to bring peace to Patusan. He had no other choice than to try and bring peace to the island, he told Marlow; in fact, he felt compelled to try and bring peace to the island. \"It seemed to come to me. All at once I saw what I had to do.\" Everywhere that Jim looked, he saw fear. He realized that he would have to do something dramatic and daring in order to control both Rajah Allang and Sherif Ali. In a moment of almost mystical vision, Jim realized that he had \"the power to make peace\"; that was to be his purpose in Patusan. His plan was bold and audacious, but he believed that he could persuade enough of the natives who supported Doramin to help him destroy Sherif Ali's stockade. Not surprisingly, Dain Waris was the first native to support Jim's plan. First, two old and rusty \"seven-pound brass cannons\" had to be hauled by ingenious means up one of the mountains. From that vantage point, Jim could blow up Sherif Ali's camp on the other mountain, and then a large group of men would storm through the remains of Sherif Ali's camp. The men worked all night long in a superhuman effort to pull the enormously heavy cannons up the mountain, the noses of them \"tearing slowly through the bushes, like a wild pig rooting its way in the undergrowth.\" Sherif Ali watched Jim and the natives and thought that they were idiotic. But old Doramin was so fascinated by Jim's plan that he had himself carried up the hill in his armchair so that he could watch. Jim figured that if his plan didn't work, Doramin had decided that he wanted to die on the mountain. Nobody, Jim says, truly believed that his plan would work -- except Jim himself. Marlow says that after Jim's dramatically successful rout of Sherif Ali, he became a legend in Patusan; the natives believed that he had supernatural powers. Stories were told about Jim's literally carrying the enormous brass cannons up the mountain on his back. Jim laughed a \"Homeric peal of laughter\" when he related this tale to Marlow. Speaking of the enormous explosion, he said, \"You should have seen the splinters fly.\" Jim and Dain Waris were the first ones to invade the stockade, which was built so flimsily that it almost fell down before them. Instantly, Dain Waris saved Jim's life from the spear of a \"pockmarked tattooed native.\" The third man into the ruins of the stockade was young Tamb' Itam, and from that moment on, Tamb' Itam became inseparable from Jim. Symbolically, he would follow Jim everywhere, like, Marlow says, \"a morose shadow of darkness.\" Very soon, Jim made him \"headman,\" and all Patusan respected him and accepted him as a man of much influence. The rout was complete, but afterwards, it was, Jim said, \"an awful responsibility,\" for when success came, Jim realized almost instantly that his soul had been absorbed \"into the innermost life of the people.\" He was the epitome of a hero to the Patusan people. He had their \"blind trust.\" They were totally dependent on him. Their dependence was Jim's total responsibility. Jim was suddenly granted power. Thus, it was no wonder that Jim told Marlow that he had a sudden, jarring sense of isolation and loneliness. He had become \"an exceptional man.\" Every word that he spoke was \"the one truth of every passing day.\" From now on, the natives would look to Jim for Truth.", "analysis": "Chapter 26 establishes the fact that Doramin, his wife, and their son Dain Waris are a very closely knit family, with Dain Waris being the son of their later life. Likewise, Conrad is anxious to establish the close bond of friendship that exists between Lord Jim and Dain Waris. It should also perhaps be noted that although we are constantly told about the depth of this friendship between Dain Waris and Lord Jim, we seldom see it in operation except for the fact that Dain Waris was the first person to endorse Lord Jim's plan to bombard Sherif Ali's stronghold, and that it was Dain Waris who saved Jim's life. Of course, we are also told that Dain Waris \"not only trusted Jim, he understood him.\" The emphasis upon the closeness between Doramin and his son and upon the close friendship between Lord Jim and Dain Waris foreshadows the final moments in Lord Jim's life. Likewise, the pair of magnificent pistols on Doramin's knees will play a sinister part later on. These are the \"immense flintlock pistols\" which Stein gave Doramin in exchange for the ring which Doramin gave Stein, and these are the pistols which will be the instruments of death for Jim. Jim's desire to bring peace to the land becomes tantamount in his mind. His own fate and, later, his fame are both based upon the success of his attack against Sherif Ali. After the success of the bold plan to take the cannons up the mountain and after his routing Sherif Ali, Jim's fame becomes so great that some of the natives even report that he carried the cannons singlehandedly on his own back. After this military success, Jim's fame places him in a position where he is expected to settle everything -- even divorce cases: \"His word decided everything.\" Jim's victory, we realize, gave him a firm sense of his own worth and value: \"Thus he illustrated the moral effect of his victory in war. It was in truth immense.\""} |
'Doramin was one of the most remarkable men of his race I had ever seen.
His bulk for a Malay was immense, but he did not look merely fat; he
looked imposing, monumental. This motionless body, clad in rich stuffs,
coloured silks, gold embroideries; this huge head, enfolded in a
red-and-gold headkerchief; the flat, big, round face, wrinkled,
furrowed, with two semicircular heavy folds starting on each side of
wide, fierce nostrils, and enclosing a thick-lipped mouth; the throat
like a bull; the vast corrugated brow overhanging the staring proud
eyes--made a whole that, once seen, can never be forgotten. His
impassive repose (he seldom stirred a limb when once he sat down) was
like a display of dignity. He was never known to raise his voice. It
was a hoarse and powerful murmur, slightly veiled as if heard from a
distance. When he walked, two short, sturdy young fellows, naked to the
waist, in white sarongs and with black skull-caps on the backs of their
heads, sustained his elbows; they would ease him down and stand behind
his chair till he wanted to rise, when he would turn his head slowly,
as if with difficulty, to the right and to the left, and then they would
catch him under his armpits and help him up. For all that, there was
nothing of a cripple about him: on the contrary, all his ponderous
movements were like manifestations of a mighty deliberate force. It
was generally believed he consulted his wife as to public affairs; but
nobody, as far as I know, had ever heard them exchange a single word.
When they sat in state by the wide opening it was in silence. They could
see below them in the declining light the vast expanse of the forest
country, a dark sleeping sea of sombre green undulating as far as the
violet and purple range of mountains; the shining sinuosity of the river
like an immense letter S of beaten silver; the brown ribbon of houses
following the sweep of both banks, overtopped by the twin hills uprising
above the nearer tree-tops. They were wonderfully contrasted: she,
light, delicate, spare, quick, a little witch-like, with a touch of
motherly fussiness in her repose; he, facing her, immense and heavy,
like a figure of a man roughly fashioned of stone, with something
magnanimous and ruthless in his immobility. The son of these old people
was a most distinguished youth.
'They had him late in life. Perhaps he was not really so young as he
looked. Four- or five-and-twenty is not so young when a man is already
father of a family at eighteen. When he entered the large room, lined
and carpeted with fine mats, and with a high ceiling of white sheeting,
where the couple sat in state surrounded by a most deferential retinue,
he would make his way straight to Doramin, to kiss his hand--which the
other abandoned to him, majestically--and then would step across to
stand by his mother's chair. I suppose I may say they idolised him, but
I never caught them giving him an overt glance. Those, it is true, were
public functions. The room was generally thronged. The solemn formality
of greetings and leave-takings, the profound respect expressed in
gestures, on the faces, in the low whispers, is simply indescribable.
"It's well worth seeing," Jim had assured me while we were crossing the
river, on our way back. "They are like people in a book, aren't they?"
he said triumphantly. "And Dain Waris--their son--is the best
friend (barring you) I ever had. What Mr. Stein would call a good
'war-comrade.' I was in luck. Jove! I was in luck when I tumbled amongst
them at my last gasp." He meditated with bowed head, then rousing
himself he added--'"Of course I didn't go to sleep over it, but . . ."
He paused again. "It seemed to come to me," he murmured. "All at once I
saw what I had to do . . ."
'There was no doubt that it had come to him; and it had come through
war, too, as is natural, since this power that came to him was the power
to make peace. It is in this sense alone that might so often is right.
You must not think he had seen his way at once. When he arrived the
Bugis community was in a most critical position. "They were all afraid,"
he said to me--"each man afraid for himself; while I could see as plain
as possible that they must do something at once, if they did not want
to go under one after another, what between the Rajah and that vagabond
Sherif." But to see that was nothing. When he got his idea he had
to drive it into reluctant minds, through the bulwarks of fear, of
selfishness. He drove it in at last. And that was nothing. He had to
devise the means. He devised them--an audacious plan; and his task
was only half done. He had to inspire with his own confidence a lot
of people who had hidden and absurd reasons to hang back; he had to
conciliate imbecile jealousies, and argue away all sorts of senseless
mistrusts. Without the weight of Doramin's authority, and his son's
fiery enthusiasm, he would have failed. Dain Waris, the distinguished
youth, was the first to believe in him; theirs was one of those strange,
profound, rare friendships between brown and white, in which the very
difference of race seems to draw two human beings closer by some mystic
element of sympathy. Of Dain Waris, his own people said with pride that
he knew how to fight like a white man. This was true; he had that
sort of courage--the courage in the open, I may say--but he had also a
European mind. You meet them sometimes like that, and are surprised to
discover unexpectedly a familiar turn of thought, an unobscured vision,
a tenacity of purpose, a touch of altruism. Of small stature, but
admirably well proportioned, Dain Waris had a proud carriage, a
polished, easy bearing, a temperament like a clear flame. His dusky
face, with big black eyes, was in action expressive, and in repose
thoughtful. He was of a silent disposition; a firm glance, an ironic
smile, a courteous deliberation of manner seemed to hint at great
reserves of intelligence and power. Such beings open to the Western eye,
so often concerned with mere surfaces, the hidden possibilities of races
and lands over which hangs the mystery of unrecorded ages. He not only
trusted Jim, he understood him, I firmly believe. I speak of him because
he had captivated me. His--if I may say so--his caustic placidity,
and, at the same time, his intelligent sympathy with Jim's aspirations,
appealed to me. I seemed to behold the very origin of friendship. If
Jim took the lead, the other had captivated his leader. In fact, Jim
the leader was a captive in every sense. The land, the people, the
friendship, the love, were like the jealous guardians of his body.
Every day added a link to the fetters of that strange freedom. I felt
convinced of it, as from day to day I learned more of the story.
'The story! Haven't I heard the story? I've heard it on the march, in
camp (he made me scour the country after invisible game); I've listened
to a good part of it on one of the twin summits, after climbing the last
hundred feet or so on my hands and knees. Our escort (we had volunteer
followers from village to village) had camped meantime on a bit of level
ground half-way up the slope, and in the still breathless evening the
smell of wood-smoke reached our nostrils from below with the penetrating
delicacy of some choice scent. Voices also ascended, wonderful in their
distinct and immaterial clearness. Jim sat on the trunk of a felled
tree, and pulling out his pipe began to smoke. A new growth of grass and
bushes was springing up; there were traces of an earthwork under a mass
of thorny twigs. "It all started from here," he said, after a long and
meditative silence. On the other hill, two hundred yards across a sombre
precipice, I saw a line of high blackened stakes, showing here and there
ruinously--the remnants of Sherif Ali's impregnable camp.
'But it had been taken, though. That had been his idea. He had
mounted Doramin's old ordnance on the top of that hill; two rusty iron
7-pounders, a lot of small brass cannon--currency cannon. But if the
brass guns represent wealth, they can also, when crammed recklessly to
the muzzle, send a solid shot to some little distance. The thing was
to get them up there. He showed me where he had fastened the cables,
explained how he had improvised a rude capstan out of a hollowed log
turning upon a pointed stake, indicated with the bowl of his pipe the
outline of the earthwork. The last hundred feet of the ascent had been
the most difficult. He had made himself responsible for success on his
own head. He had induced the war party to work hard all night. Big
fires lighted at intervals blazed all down the slope, "but up here," he
explained, "the hoisting gang had to fly around in the dark." From the
top he saw men moving on the hillside like ants at work. He himself on
that night had kept on rushing down and climbing up like a squirrel,
directing, encouraging, watching all along the line. Old Doramin had
himself carried up the hill in his arm-chair. They put him down on the
level place upon the slope, and he sat there in the light of one of the
big fires--"amazing old chap--real old chieftain," said Jim, "with his
little fierce eyes--a pair of immense flintlock pistols on his knees.
Magnificent things, ebony, silver-mounted, with beautiful locks and
a calibre like an old blunderbuss. A present from Stein, it seems--in
exchange for that ring, you know. Used to belong to good old McNeil. God
only knows how _he_ came by them. There he sat, moving neither hand nor
foot, a flame of dry brushwood behind him, and lots of people rushing
about, shouting and pulling round him--the most solemn, imposing old
chap you can imagine. He wouldn't have had much chance if Sherif Ali had
let his infernal crew loose at us and stampeded my lot. Eh? Anyhow, he
had come up there to die if anything went wrong. No mistake! Jove! It
thrilled me to see him there--like a rock. But the Sherif must have
thought us mad, and never troubled to come and see how we got on. Nobody
believed it could be done. Why! I think the very chaps who pulled and
shoved and sweated over it did not believe it could be done! Upon my
word I don't think they did. . . ."
'He stood erect, the smouldering brier-wood in his clutch, with a smile
on his lips and a sparkle in his boyish eyes. I sat on the stump of a
tree at his feet, and below us stretched the land, the great expanse of
the forests, sombre under the sunshine, rolling like a sea, with glints
of winding rivers, the grey spots of villages, and here and there a
clearing, like an islet of light amongst the dark waves of continuous
tree-tops. A brooding gloom lay over this vast and monotonous landscape;
the light fell on it as if into an abyss. The land devoured the
sunshine; only far off, along the coast, the empty ocean, smooth and
polished within the faint haze, seemed to rise up to the sky in a wall
of steel.
'And there I was with him, high in the sunshine on the top of that
historic hill of his. He dominated the forest, the secular gloom, the
old mankind. He was like a figure set up on a pedestal, to represent in
his persistent youth the power, and perhaps the virtues, of races that
never grow old, that have emerged from the gloom. I don't know why he
should always have appeared to me symbolic. Perhaps this is the real
cause of my interest in his fate. I don't know whether it was exactly
fair to him to remember the incident which had given a new direction to
his life, but at that very moment I remembered very distinctly. It was
like a shadow in the light.'
'Already the legend had gifted him with supernatural powers. Yes, it
was said, there had been many ropes cunningly disposed, and a strange
contrivance that turned by the efforts of many men, and each gun went
up tearing slowly through the bushes, like a wild pig rooting its way in
the undergrowth, but . . . and the wisest shook their heads. There was
something occult in all this, no doubt; for what is the strength of
ropes and of men's arms? There is a rebellious soul in things which must
be overcome by powerful charms and incantations. Thus old Sura--a very
respectable householder of Patusan--with whom I had a quiet chat one
evening. However, Sura was a professional sorcerer also, who attended
all the rice sowings and reapings for miles around for the purpose of
subduing the stubborn souls of things. This occupation he seemed to
think a most arduous one, and perhaps the souls of things are more
stubborn than the souls of men. As to the simple folk of outlying
villages, they believed and said (as the most natural thing in the
world) that Jim had carried the guns up the hill on his back--two at a
time.
'This would make Jim stamp his foot in vexation and exclaim with an
exasperated little laugh, "What can you do with such silly beggars? They
will sit up half the night talking bally rot, and the greater the lie
the more they seem to like it." You could trace the subtle influence of
his surroundings in this irritation. It was part of his captivity. The
earnestness of his denials was amusing, and at last I said, "My dear
fellow, you don't suppose _I_ believe this." He looked at me quite
startled. "Well, no! I suppose not," he said, and burst into a Homeric
peal of laughter. "Well, anyhow the guns were there, and went off all
together at sunrise. Jove! You should have seen the splinters fly," he
cried. By his side Dain Waris, listening with a quiet smile, dropped his
eyelids and shuffled his feet a little. It appears that the success in
mounting the guns had given Jim's people such a feeling of confidence
that he ventured to leave the battery under charge of two elderly Bugis
who had seen some fighting in their day, and went to join Dain Waris and
the storming party who were concealed in the ravine. In the small hours
they began creeping up, and when two-thirds of the way up, lay in the
wet grass waiting for the appearance of the sun, which was the agreed
signal. He told me with what impatient anguishing emotion he watched the
swift coming of the dawn; how, heated with the work and the climbing,
he felt the cold dew chilling his very bones; how afraid he was he
would begin to shiver and shake like a leaf before the time came for
the advance. "It was the slowest half-hour in my life," he declared.
Gradually the silent stockade came out on the sky above him. Men
scattered all down the slope were crouching amongst the dark stones and
dripping bushes. Dain Waris was lying flattened by his side. "We
looked at each other," Jim said, resting a gentle hand on his friend's
shoulder. "He smiled at me as cheery as you please, and I dared not stir
my lips for fear I would break out into a shivering fit. 'Pon my word,
it's true! I had been streaming with perspiration when we took cover--so
you may imagine . . ." He declared, and I believe him, that he had no
fears as to the result. He was only anxious as to his ability to repress
these shivers. He didn't bother about the result. He was bound to get to
the top of that hill and stay there, whatever might happen. There could
be no going back for him. Those people had trusted him implicitly. Him
alone! His bare word. . . .
'I remember how, at this point, he paused with his eyes fixed upon me.
"As far as he knew, they never had an occasion to regret it yet,"
he said. "Never. He hoped to God they never would. Meantime--worse
luck!--they had got into the habit of taking his word for anything and
everything. I could have no idea! Why, only the other day an old fool he
had never seen in his life came from some village miles away to find
out if he should divorce his wife. Fact. Solemn word. That's the sort
of thing. . . He wouldn't have believed it. Would I? Squatted on the
verandah chewing betel-nut, sighing and spitting all over the place for
more than an hour, and as glum as an undertaker before he came out with
that dashed conundrum. That's the kind of thing that isn't so funny as
it looks. What was a fellow to say?--Good wife?--Yes. Good wife--old
though. Started a confounded long story about some brass pots. Been
living together for fifteen years--twenty years--could not tell. A long,
long time. Good wife. Beat her a little--not much--just a little, when
she was young. Had to--for the sake of his honour. Suddenly in her old
age she goes and lends three brass pots to her sister's son's wife, and
begins to abuse him every day in a loud voice. His enemies jeered at
him; his face was utterly blackened. Pots totally lost. Awfully cut up
about it. Impossible to fathom a story like that; told him to go home,
and promised to come along myself and settle it all. It's all very well
to grin, but it was the dashedest nuisance! A day's journey through the
forest, another day lost in coaxing a lot of silly villagers to get at
the rights of the affair. There was the making of a sanguinary shindy
in the thing. Every bally idiot took sides with one family or the other,
and one half of the village was ready to go for the other half with
anything that came handy. Honour bright! No joke! . . . Instead of
attending to their bally crops. Got him the infernal pots back of
course--and pacified all hands. No trouble to settle it. Of course not.
Could settle the deadliest quarrel in the country by crooking his little
finger. The trouble was to get at the truth of anything. Was not sure
to this day whether he had been fair to all parties. It worried him. And
the talk! Jove! There didn't seem to be any head or tail to it. Rather
storm a twenty-foot-high old stockade any day. Much! Child's play to
that other job. Wouldn't take so long either. Well, yes; a funny set
out, upon the whole--the fool looked old enough to be his grandfather.
But from another point of view it was no joke. His word decided
everything--ever since the smashing of Sherif Ali. An awful
responsibility," he repeated. "No, really--joking apart, had it been
three lives instead of three rotten brass pots it would have been the
same. . . ."
'Thus he illustrated the moral effect of his victory in war. It was in
truth immense. It had led him from strife to peace, and through death
into the innermost life of the people; but the gloom of the land spread
out under the sunshine preserved its appearance of inscrutable, of
secular repose. The sound of his fresh young voice--it's extraordinary
how very few signs of wear he showed--floated lightly, and passed away
over the unchanged face of the forests like the sound of the big guns
on that cold dewy morning when he had no other concern on earth but
the proper control of the chills in his body. With the first slant of
sun-rays along these immovable tree-tops the summit of one hill wreathed
itself, with heavy reports, in white clouds of smoke, and the other
burst into an amazing noise of yells, war-cries, shouts of anger, of
surprise, of dismay. Jim and Dain Waris were the first to lay their
hands on the stakes. The popular story has it that Jim with a touch
of one finger had thrown down the gate. He was, of course, anxious
to disclaim this achievement. The whole stockade--he would insist on
explaining to you--was a poor affair (Sherif Ali trusted mainly to the
inaccessible position); and, anyway, the thing had been already knocked
to pieces and only hung together by a miracle. He put his shoulder to it
like a little fool and went in head over heels. Jove! If it hadn't been
for Dain Waris, a pock-marked tattooed vagabond would have pinned him
with his spear to a baulk of timber like one of Stein's beetles. The
third man in, it seems, had been Tamb' Itam, Jim's own servant. This was
a Malay from the north, a stranger who had wandered into Patusan, and
had been forcibly detained by Rajah Allang as paddler of one of the
state boats. He had made a bolt of it at the first opportunity, and
finding a precarious refuge (but very little to eat) amongst the Bugis
settlers, had attached himself to Jim's person. His complexion was very
dark, his face flat, his eyes prominent and injected with bile. There
was something excessive, almost fanatical, in his devotion to his
"white lord." He was inseparable from Jim like a morose shadow. On state
occasions he would tread on his master's heels, one hand on the haft
of his kriss, keeping the common people at a distance by his truculent
brooding glances. Jim had made him the headman of his establishment, and
all Patusan respected and courted him as a person of much influence. At
the taking of the stockade he had distinguished himself greatly by the
methodical ferocity of his fighting. The storming party had come on so
quick--Jim said--that notwithstanding the panic of the garrison, there
was a "hot five minutes hand-to-hand inside that stockade, till some
bally ass set fire to the shelters of boughs and dry grass, and we all
had to clear out for dear life."
'The rout, it seems, had been complete. Doramin, waiting immovably in
his chair on the hillside, with the smoke of the guns spreading slowly
above his big head, received the news with a deep grunt. When informed
that his son was safe and leading the pursuit, he, without another
sound, made a mighty effort to rise; his attendants hurried to his help,
and, held up reverently, he shuffled with great dignity into a bit of
shade, where he laid himself down to sleep, covered entirely with a
piece of white sheeting. In Patusan the excitement was intense. Jim told
me that from the hill, turning his back on the stockade with its embers,
black ashes, and half-consumed corpses, he could see time after time the
open spaces between the houses on both sides of the stream fill suddenly
with a seething rush of people and get empty in a moment. His ears
caught feebly from below the tremendous din of gongs and drums; the wild
shouts of the crowd reached him in bursts of faint roaring. A lot of
streamers made a flutter as of little white, red, yellow birds amongst
the brown ridges of roofs. "You must have enjoyed it," I murmured,
feeling the stir of sympathetic emotion.
'"It was . . . it was immense! Immense!" he cried aloud, flinging his
arms open. The sudden movement startled me as though I had seen him bare
the secrets of his breast to the sunshine, to the brooding forests, to
the steely sea. Below us the town reposed in easy curves upon the banks
of a stream whose current seemed to sleep. "Immense!" he repeated for a
third time, speaking in a whisper, for himself alone.
'Immense! No doubt it was immense; the seal of success upon his words,
the conquered ground for the soles of his feet, the blind trust of
men, the belief in himself snatched from the fire, the solitude of his
achievement. All this, as I've warned you, gets dwarfed in the telling.
I can't with mere words convey to you the impression of his total and
utter isolation. I know, of course, he was in every sense alone of his
kind there, but the unsuspected qualities of his nature had brought him
in such close touch with his surroundings that this isolation seemed
only the effect of his power. His loneliness added to his stature. There
was nothing within sight to compare him with, as though he had been one
of those exceptional men who can be only measured by the greatness of
their fame; and his fame, remember, was the greatest thing around for
many a day's journey. You would have to paddle, pole, or track a long
weary way through the jungle before you passed beyond the reach of its
voice. Its voice was not the trumpeting of the disreputable goddess we
all know--not blatant--not brazen. It took its tone from the stillness
and gloom of the land without a past, where his word was the one truth
of every passing day. It shared something of the nature of that
silence through which it accompanied you into unexplored depths, heard
continuously by your side, penetrating, far-reaching--tinged with wonder
and mystery on the lips of whispering men.' | 3,982 | Chapters 26-27 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201219145744/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/l/lord-jim/summary-and-analysis/chapters-2627 | At this point, Marlow interrupts his narrative in order to introduce us to the incredible person of Doramin, the longtime friend of Stein. Doramin, Marlow says, was remarkable. He was an imposing, monumental hulk of a man, with proud, staring eyes. In contrast, his wife was light, delicate, quick, and a little witchlike, despite the fact that she was always fussing over him. Their only son, Dain Waris, was Jim's best friend. He was married at eighteen and was now twenty-five. He was attentive and deeply respectful of his parents, and he loved Jim and trusted him implicitly and without reservation. Because of their deep, warm, war-comrade sort of friendship, each of the men, Marlow says, was a "captive" of the other, just as Marlow observed earlier that Jim was a "captive" of Patusan. These, then, were Jim's most trusted allies, those to whom he would owe complete allegiance when he initiated his plan to bring peace to Patusan. He had no other choice than to try and bring peace to the island, he told Marlow; in fact, he felt compelled to try and bring peace to the island. "It seemed to come to me. All at once I saw what I had to do." Everywhere that Jim looked, he saw fear. He realized that he would have to do something dramatic and daring in order to control both Rajah Allang and Sherif Ali. In a moment of almost mystical vision, Jim realized that he had "the power to make peace"; that was to be his purpose in Patusan. His plan was bold and audacious, but he believed that he could persuade enough of the natives who supported Doramin to help him destroy Sherif Ali's stockade. Not surprisingly, Dain Waris was the first native to support Jim's plan. First, two old and rusty "seven-pound brass cannons" had to be hauled by ingenious means up one of the mountains. From that vantage point, Jim could blow up Sherif Ali's camp on the other mountain, and then a large group of men would storm through the remains of Sherif Ali's camp. The men worked all night long in a superhuman effort to pull the enormously heavy cannons up the mountain, the noses of them "tearing slowly through the bushes, like a wild pig rooting its way in the undergrowth." Sherif Ali watched Jim and the natives and thought that they were idiotic. But old Doramin was so fascinated by Jim's plan that he had himself carried up the hill in his armchair so that he could watch. Jim figured that if his plan didn't work, Doramin had decided that he wanted to die on the mountain. Nobody, Jim says, truly believed that his plan would work -- except Jim himself. Marlow says that after Jim's dramatically successful rout of Sherif Ali, he became a legend in Patusan; the natives believed that he had supernatural powers. Stories were told about Jim's literally carrying the enormous brass cannons up the mountain on his back. Jim laughed a "Homeric peal of laughter" when he related this tale to Marlow. Speaking of the enormous explosion, he said, "You should have seen the splinters fly." Jim and Dain Waris were the first ones to invade the stockade, which was built so flimsily that it almost fell down before them. Instantly, Dain Waris saved Jim's life from the spear of a "pockmarked tattooed native." The third man into the ruins of the stockade was young Tamb' Itam, and from that moment on, Tamb' Itam became inseparable from Jim. Symbolically, he would follow Jim everywhere, like, Marlow says, "a morose shadow of darkness." Very soon, Jim made him "headman," and all Patusan respected him and accepted him as a man of much influence. The rout was complete, but afterwards, it was, Jim said, "an awful responsibility," for when success came, Jim realized almost instantly that his soul had been absorbed "into the innermost life of the people." He was the epitome of a hero to the Patusan people. He had their "blind trust." They were totally dependent on him. Their dependence was Jim's total responsibility. Jim was suddenly granted power. Thus, it was no wonder that Jim told Marlow that he had a sudden, jarring sense of isolation and loneliness. He had become "an exceptional man." Every word that he spoke was "the one truth of every passing day." From now on, the natives would look to Jim for Truth. | Chapter 26 establishes the fact that Doramin, his wife, and their son Dain Waris are a very closely knit family, with Dain Waris being the son of their later life. Likewise, Conrad is anxious to establish the close bond of friendship that exists between Lord Jim and Dain Waris. It should also perhaps be noted that although we are constantly told about the depth of this friendship between Dain Waris and Lord Jim, we seldom see it in operation except for the fact that Dain Waris was the first person to endorse Lord Jim's plan to bombard Sherif Ali's stronghold, and that it was Dain Waris who saved Jim's life. Of course, we are also told that Dain Waris "not only trusted Jim, he understood him." The emphasis upon the closeness between Doramin and his son and upon the close friendship between Lord Jim and Dain Waris foreshadows the final moments in Lord Jim's life. Likewise, the pair of magnificent pistols on Doramin's knees will play a sinister part later on. These are the "immense flintlock pistols" which Stein gave Doramin in exchange for the ring which Doramin gave Stein, and these are the pistols which will be the instruments of death for Jim. Jim's desire to bring peace to the land becomes tantamount in his mind. His own fate and, later, his fame are both based upon the success of his attack against Sherif Ali. After the success of the bold plan to take the cannons up the mountain and after his routing Sherif Ali, Jim's fame becomes so great that some of the natives even report that he carried the cannons singlehandedly on his own back. After this military success, Jim's fame places him in a position where he is expected to settle everything -- even divorce cases: "His word decided everything." Jim's victory, we realize, gave him a firm sense of his own worth and value: "Thus he illustrated the moral effect of his victory in war. It was in truth immense." | 741 | 336 | [
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