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cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/chapters_36_to_37.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Lord Jim/section_21_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapters 36-37

chapters 36-37

{"name": "Chapters 36-37", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219145744/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/l/lord-jim/summary-and-analysis/chapters-3637", "summary": "Marlow ends his story. The men drift off the verandah quietly, without queries or comments about Marlow's incomplete story of a white man who chose to go into a dark, savage jungle in order to regain his self-worth. The question, however, remains: what was the ultimate fate of someone who was \"one of them,\" and yet who was someone who chose to achieve greatness in an alien world, and yet in a world of his own making, a world in which he had accepted enormous responsibility for peace, and for life and death. Only one man of those on the verandah is ever to hear the last of the story. More than two years later, this man received a thick packet, addressed in Marlow's handwriting. It arrived in the midst of a driving rainstorm on a winter's evening. Inside the packet were four separate enclosures: several pages of close handwriting, pinned together; a loose sheet of paper with a few words in handwriting that the man was not familiar with; a letter from Marlow; and another letter, yellow and frayed. The man turned first to Marlow's letter. Marlow tells the man who is reading the letter that he was always reluctant to admit that Jim had indeed \"mastered his fate.\" Moreover, Marlow says, you prophesied that one day Jim would feel disgust with the honor which he had acquired in his \"new world.\" According to Marlow, this man said long ago that Jim had, in effect, sold his soul for a clean, pure slate that was granted to him by some \"brutes\" -- meaning the brown, and yellow, and black Malay natives. Marlow writes that Jim himself said two years ago that he had no message for \"home\"; however, it is clear that Jim did make an attempt to send a \"message.\" It is Jim's writing, Marlow says, on the gray sheet of \"foolscap\" paper. Marlow says that one of the first things that Jim did after he, Marlow, left Patusan was to carry out a plan of defense for \"his people.\" He had a deep ditch dug and surrounded it with a strong, spiked fence, with Doramin's cannons positioned at its four corners. This fortress was a place of safety, a place where \"every faithful partisan could rally in case of some sudden danger.\" Jim called this structure \"The Fort, Patusan.\" Those words are on the sheet of foolscap, along with fragments of two messages that Jim had attempted to write: \"An awful thing has happened\" and \"I must now at once . . .\" And then there is a blotch, as if Jim's pen sputtered. In the packet, there is also a letter to Jim from his father, the parson, who writes about what each member of the family is doing. It is a comfortable letter, the father talking easily about faith and virtue and cautioning his son \"not to give way to temptation.\" At the moment of \"giving way,\" his father says, one succumbs to \"total depravity and everlasting ruin.\" He admonishes Jim never \"to do anything which you believe to be wrong.\" The letter arrived just before Jim sailed aboard the Patna. The last document is another letter from Marlow; it is the story of Jim's last days, pieced together from fragments which Marlow learned. It reveals what happened to Jim after Marlow left him on the beach. There is pain in Marlow's words as he writes about Jim's fate. He says that he can scarcely believe that he will never again hear Jim's voice, never see \"his smooth tan-and-pink face . . . the youthful eyes darkened by excitement to a profound, unfathomable blue.\" The key figure in Jim's tragic end was named Brown, \"Gentleman Brown,\" as he called himself, even though he had a fierce reputation as an immoral and dangerous buccaneer. Marlow listened to Brown's story as Brown lay dying of asthma in a shack in Bangkok. Jim, Brown said, was nothing more than a \"hollow sham,\" adding that Jim didn't have \"enough devil in him\" to fight like a man. Brown bragged about having made an end of Lord Jim. Later that night, Brown died. Marlow says that he learned even more about Jim when he returned some eight months earlier to see his old friend Stein. At Stein's, he saw a Malay native, one from Patusan. It was Jim's \"morose shadow of darkness,\" his bodyguard, Tamb' Itam. Startled at seeing Marlow, Tamb' Itam. hung his head, and then he blurted out, \"He would not fight. He would not fight.\" Marlow found Stein studying his butterfly collection, and Stein asked Marlow to come and talk to Jewel. In particular, he asked Marlow to ask her to forgive Jim. Jewel was sitting in Stein's big reception room, dressed in white. The crystals of Stein's chandelier above her twinkled like icicles. Marlow sensed Jewel's remote, icy despair. Seemingly, she was \"frozen\" with unforgiving anger toward Jim. Despite Jim's promises, he did leave her. He could have fought for his life; he could have fled. But he did neither. He chose, deliberately, to die. Thus, according to Jewel's logic, Jim chose to leave her. \"He was like the others. He was false,\" she says. At this point, Marlow's letter ends, and the story continues on the sheets of paper that Marlow included, piecing together information which he gathered from Brown, from Jewel, and from Tamb' Itam.", "analysis": "This chapter presents a type of transition from the earlier narration by Marlow to a type of narration presented through documents and letters, \"pieced together by\" Marlow and sent to one of the men on the verandah who listened to Marlow's story. The time of the receipt of the packet is some two years after the events of the last chapter. Conrad's use of these narrative devices and the introduction of an anonymous recipient of this material is perhaps the most awkward and unaesthetic aspect of the novel. This method of bringing the novel to a climax is, for the modern reader, terribly distracting and unjustified as a narrative technique, and the introduction of the anonymous recipient of the letter is totally unwarranted -- we simply don't care about this person. The whole chapter is out of place. In Chapter 37, as is typical of this novel, Conrad jumps forward in his narration, and we hear about the death of Jim before we hear about the events surrounding Jim's death. We are also introduced to Gentleman Brown, the instrument of Jim's death. In Gentleman Brown, we meet the epitome of Jim's nemesis -- a person who reeks of pure evil. At this point, we are not prepared for someone who thoroughly and irrationally hates Jim for no other reason than the fact that Jim is a good and honorable man. Had Jim screamed at Brown, \"Hands off my plunder,\" Brown would have respected him as another pirate or as another mercenary, but Brown has never before encountered so perfect and so honorable a gentleman. Thus, Brown can only respond to Jim with disgust. On his deathbed, Brown is ultimately pleased that he \"paid out the fellow\" and that finally he did \"make an end of him after all.\" Conrad gives us this information before we see the encounter between Jim and Brown in order to let us know that Jim should have handled Brown in an entirely different manner. In other words, the reader thoroughly dislikes Brown after this introduction to him, and he wishes futilely that Jim would have followed the advice of his associates who wanted him to destroy Brown. This chapter also confirms Jewel's earlier fear that Jim eventually would, like all the other white men, finally leave Patusan. But note that before meeting Jewel at Stein's house, Marlow meets Tamb' Itam, who cries out to Marlow that Jim \"would not fight. He would not fight.\" To the incredibly loyal native, Jim's refusal to fight was totally incomprehensible and therefore unforgivable. The same is also true for Jewel: upon seeing Marlow, she immediately cries out that \"He has left me . . . you always leave us -- for your own ends.\" She also feels that \"It would have been easy to die with him.\" Jim's death confirms her earlier statements and fears. She could have accepted anything that Jim might have decided to do -- if his decision had been made with survival being uppermost in his mind. Jewel wanted Jim to save his own life, to fight for survival. She could have forgiven Jim anything -- except one unalterable fact: Jim deliberately chose death over a life with her. Because of this decision, she can never forgive him. The shock and horror of Jim's choice of death and honor over life and love is unfathomable to Jewel. Not surprisingly, it has changed her nature. Jewel has changed from \"passion into stone.\" She has been betrayed by Jim, and she will never understand or ever recover from his betrayal of her."}

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.

Chapters 36-37

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219145744/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/l/lord-jim/summary-and-analysis/chapters-3637

Marlow ends his story. The men drift off the verandah quietly, without queries or comments about Marlow's incomplete story of a white man who chose to go into a dark, savage jungle in order to regain his self-worth. The question, however, remains: what was the ultimate fate of someone who was "one of them," and yet who was someone who chose to achieve greatness in an alien world, and yet in a world of his own making, a world in which he had accepted enormous responsibility for peace, and for life and death. Only one man of those on the verandah is ever to hear the last of the story. More than two years later, this man received a thick packet, addressed in Marlow's handwriting. It arrived in the midst of a driving rainstorm on a winter's evening. Inside the packet were four separate enclosures: several pages of close handwriting, pinned together; a loose sheet of paper with a few words in handwriting that the man was not familiar with; a letter from Marlow; and another letter, yellow and frayed. The man turned first to Marlow's letter. Marlow tells the man who is reading the letter that he was always reluctant to admit that Jim had indeed "mastered his fate." Moreover, Marlow says, you prophesied that one day Jim would feel disgust with the honor which he had acquired in his "new world." According to Marlow, this man said long ago that Jim had, in effect, sold his soul for a clean, pure slate that was granted to him by some "brutes" -- meaning the brown, and yellow, and black Malay natives. Marlow writes that Jim himself said two years ago that he had no message for "home"; however, it is clear that Jim did make an attempt to send a "message." It is Jim's writing, Marlow says, on the gray sheet of "foolscap" paper. Marlow says that one of the first things that Jim did after he, Marlow, left Patusan was to carry out a plan of defense for "his people." He had a deep ditch dug and surrounded it with a strong, spiked fence, with Doramin's cannons positioned at its four corners. This fortress was a place of safety, a place where "every faithful partisan could rally in case of some sudden danger." Jim called this structure "The Fort, Patusan." Those words are on the sheet of foolscap, along with fragments of two messages that Jim had attempted to write: "An awful thing has happened" and "I must now at once . . ." And then there is a blotch, as if Jim's pen sputtered. In the packet, there is also a letter to Jim from his father, the parson, who writes about what each member of the family is doing. It is a comfortable letter, the father talking easily about faith and virtue and cautioning his son "not to give way to temptation." At the moment of "giving way," his father says, one succumbs to "total depravity and everlasting ruin." He admonishes Jim never "to do anything which you believe to be wrong." The letter arrived just before Jim sailed aboard the Patna. The last document is another letter from Marlow; it is the story of Jim's last days, pieced together from fragments which Marlow learned. It reveals what happened to Jim after Marlow left him on the beach. There is pain in Marlow's words as he writes about Jim's fate. He says that he can scarcely believe that he will never again hear Jim's voice, never see "his smooth tan-and-pink face . . . the youthful eyes darkened by excitement to a profound, unfathomable blue." The key figure in Jim's tragic end was named Brown, "Gentleman Brown," as he called himself, even though he had a fierce reputation as an immoral and dangerous buccaneer. Marlow listened to Brown's story as Brown lay dying of asthma in a shack in Bangkok. Jim, Brown said, was nothing more than a "hollow sham," adding that Jim didn't have "enough devil in him" to fight like a man. Brown bragged about having made an end of Lord Jim. Later that night, Brown died. Marlow says that he learned even more about Jim when he returned some eight months earlier to see his old friend Stein. At Stein's, he saw a Malay native, one from Patusan. It was Jim's "morose shadow of darkness," his bodyguard, Tamb' Itam. Startled at seeing Marlow, Tamb' Itam. hung his head, and then he blurted out, "He would not fight. He would not fight." Marlow found Stein studying his butterfly collection, and Stein asked Marlow to come and talk to Jewel. In particular, he asked Marlow to ask her to forgive Jim. Jewel was sitting in Stein's big reception room, dressed in white. The crystals of Stein's chandelier above her twinkled like icicles. Marlow sensed Jewel's remote, icy despair. Seemingly, she was "frozen" with unforgiving anger toward Jim. Despite Jim's promises, he did leave her. He could have fought for his life; he could have fled. But he did neither. He chose, deliberately, to die. Thus, according to Jewel's logic, Jim chose to leave her. "He was like the others. He was false," she says. At this point, Marlow's letter ends, and the story continues on the sheets of paper that Marlow included, piecing together information which he gathered from Brown, from Jewel, and from Tamb' Itam.

This chapter presents a type of transition from the earlier narration by Marlow to a type of narration presented through documents and letters, "pieced together by" Marlow and sent to one of the men on the verandah who listened to Marlow's story. The time of the receipt of the packet is some two years after the events of the last chapter. Conrad's use of these narrative devices and the introduction of an anonymous recipient of this material is perhaps the most awkward and unaesthetic aspect of the novel. This method of bringing the novel to a climax is, for the modern reader, terribly distracting and unjustified as a narrative technique, and the introduction of the anonymous recipient of the letter is totally unwarranted -- we simply don't care about this person. The whole chapter is out of place. In Chapter 37, as is typical of this novel, Conrad jumps forward in his narration, and we hear about the death of Jim before we hear about the events surrounding Jim's death. We are also introduced to Gentleman Brown, the instrument of Jim's death. In Gentleman Brown, we meet the epitome of Jim's nemesis -- a person who reeks of pure evil. At this point, we are not prepared for someone who thoroughly and irrationally hates Jim for no other reason than the fact that Jim is a good and honorable man. Had Jim screamed at Brown, "Hands off my plunder," Brown would have respected him as another pirate or as another mercenary, but Brown has never before encountered so perfect and so honorable a gentleman. Thus, Brown can only respond to Jim with disgust. On his deathbed, Brown is ultimately pleased that he "paid out the fellow" and that finally he did "make an end of him after all." Conrad gives us this information before we see the encounter between Jim and Brown in order to let us know that Jim should have handled Brown in an entirely different manner. In other words, the reader thoroughly dislikes Brown after this introduction to him, and he wishes futilely that Jim would have followed the advice of his associates who wanted him to destroy Brown. This chapter also confirms Jewel's earlier fear that Jim eventually would, like all the other white men, finally leave Patusan. But note that before meeting Jewel at Stein's house, Marlow meets Tamb' Itam, who cries out to Marlow that Jim "would not fight. He would not fight." To the incredibly loyal native, Jim's refusal to fight was totally incomprehensible and therefore unforgivable. The same is also true for Jewel: upon seeing Marlow, she immediately cries out that "He has left me . . . you always leave us -- for your own ends." She also feels that "It would have been easy to die with him." Jim's death confirms her earlier statements and fears. She could have accepted anything that Jim might have decided to do -- if his decision had been made with survival being uppermost in his mind. Jewel wanted Jim to save his own life, to fight for survival. She could have forgiven Jim anything -- except one unalterable fact: Jim deliberately chose death over a life with her. Because of this decision, she can never forgive him. The shock and horror of Jim's choice of death and honor over life and love is unfathomable to Jewel. Not surprisingly, it has changed her nature. Jewel has changed from "passion into stone." She has been betrayed by Jim, and she will never understand or ever recover from his betrayal of her.

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/04.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_1_part_1.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 4

chapter 4

{"name": "CHAPTER 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820050202/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmTessD14.asp", "summary": "Joan refers to the \"complete fortune teller\" and is delighted to discover that Tess's future lies with nobility. She reveals this information to her husband when she joins him at Rolliver's Inn. She also tells him of her eagerness to send Tess to Trantridge, where their distant relations stay. Joan believes that Tess will be accepted into their family, a situation, which would brighten her matrimonial prospects. Abraham, Tess's younger brother, overhears his parent's conversation and reveals it to his sister. Little Abraham, who is fascinated with stars, feels that if Tess marries and becomes rich, he may some day own a spy-glass to draw the stars nearer. Since her father is in ill health and not doing well after his drinking at Rolliver's, Tess and Abraham leave early the next day to deliver the beehives to Casterbridge. On the way, their wagon is involved in an accident, and Prince, their horse, is killed. Tess blames herself for the terrible loss. A farmer takes the children on to the market and then delivers the dead Prince to Marlott. John refuses to sell the dead horse and works harder in burying him than he has worked in months.", "analysis": "Notes In this chapter, Tess is again pictured as the responsible member of the Durbeyfield family. Knowing that her father does not feel like delivering the beehives, she volunteers to go herself. Since she is leaving very early in the morning in order to accomplish her task, she wisely and responsibly takes Abraham with her for company. When Prince is killed in the accident, she blames herself much more harshly than her parents blame her; but she is really the only one who understands that the loss of the horse means a great interruption to the family and a loss of future income. Tess is also the only one who is not intrigued with the idea of her marrying a wealthy gentleman. Her parents view it as a way to end their poverty and misery. To Abraham, a wealthy marriage for Tess might mean a spyglass for him, a way to draw the stars nearer. But Tess is not a dreamer; instead, she is firmly rooted in the realities and concerns of the present. She knows her mother lives in an imaginary world of fortune-telling and her father drinks too much, works too little, and makes irrational decisions like the one to rent a carriage to take him home in Chapter 1 and the one to bury Prince rather than selling his body for cash that is much needed by the family. If the family is to survive the present, Tess must not dream about her future, but take care of the family's current needs"}

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.

CHAPTER 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820050202/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmTessD14.asp

Joan refers to the "complete fortune teller" and is delighted to discover that Tess's future lies with nobility. She reveals this information to her husband when she joins him at Rolliver's Inn. She also tells him of her eagerness to send Tess to Trantridge, where their distant relations stay. Joan believes that Tess will be accepted into their family, a situation, which would brighten her matrimonial prospects. Abraham, Tess's younger brother, overhears his parent's conversation and reveals it to his sister. Little Abraham, who is fascinated with stars, feels that if Tess marries and becomes rich, he may some day own a spy-glass to draw the stars nearer. Since her father is in ill health and not doing well after his drinking at Rolliver's, Tess and Abraham leave early the next day to deliver the beehives to Casterbridge. On the way, their wagon is involved in an accident, and Prince, their horse, is killed. Tess blames herself for the terrible loss. A farmer takes the children on to the market and then delivers the dead Prince to Marlott. John refuses to sell the dead horse and works harder in burying him than he has worked in months.

Notes In this chapter, Tess is again pictured as the responsible member of the Durbeyfield family. Knowing that her father does not feel like delivering the beehives, she volunteers to go herself. Since she is leaving very early in the morning in order to accomplish her task, she wisely and responsibly takes Abraham with her for company. When Prince is killed in the accident, she blames herself much more harshly than her parents blame her; but she is really the only one who understands that the loss of the horse means a great interruption to the family and a loss of future income. Tess is also the only one who is not intrigued with the idea of her marrying a wealthy gentleman. Her parents view it as a way to end their poverty and misery. To Abraham, a wealthy marriage for Tess might mean a spyglass for him, a way to draw the stars nearer. But Tess is not a dreamer; instead, she is firmly rooted in the realities and concerns of the present. She knows her mother lives in an imaginary world of fortune-telling and her father drinks too much, works too little, and makes irrational decisions like the one to rent a carriage to take him home in Chapter 1 and the one to bury Prince rather than selling his body for cash that is much needed by the family. If the family is to survive the present, Tess must not dream about her future, but take care of the family's current needs

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/12.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Sense and Sensibility/section_11_part_0.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 12

chapter 12

{"name": "Chapter 12", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820034609/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmSenseSensibility27.asp", "summary": "Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters are busy attending parties and balls. Marianne is in her element. She is overjoyed in the company of Willoughby, who showers much affection and attention on her. Elinor even feels left out at times. Deprived of friends of her own age, she is often thrown in the company of Mrs. Jennings and Lady Middleton. At such times she welcomes the presence of Colonel Brandon. Brandon often talks of Marianne and asks Elinor about her sister's preferences.", "analysis": "Notes Jane Austen paints the picture of an eighteenth-century upper middle-class society. The Dashwoods and Middletons are shown to be busy attending parties and balls. Their main occupation is socializing, and they take pleasure in entertaining people. Every young girl waits for a respectable young man to woo her, and her parents hope for a match between them. They lead a leisurely life, perhaps unusual to the modern reader. Marianne is exhilarated by the looks and manners of her lover. She does not care to understand his essential nature. Obsessed with Willoughby, she ignores Colonel Brandon and unconsciously hurts him. Blinded by her infatuation for Willoughby, she is not able to realize the worth of the Colonel or detect the intensity of his feelings. This chapter again emphasizes the difference in attitudes between Willoughby and Colonel Brandon. Both men are attracted to Marianne. Willoughby displays his affection by wooing Marianne, like a dashing hero would, while Colonel Brandon admires his lady love from a distance and silently hopes to win her favor. Willoughby is interested only in flirting with Marianne, but the Colonel, like a sincere person, looks forward to a lasting relationship. CHAPTER 12 Summary Marianne gets carried away by Willoughby's showy gestures. When he offers her a horse, she accepts it readily and talks about it to her sister. Elinor is shocked to learn this and asks Marianne to decline the offer, as it would prove too costly for them. Elinor observes Willoughby's behavior towards her sister and detects a note of intimacy in it. Margaret tells Elinor about her suspicion of an engagement between Marianne and Willoughby. Later, at Mrs. Jennings' insistence, Margaret gives a hint about Elinor's attachment to Edward, much to Elinor's embarrassment. Notes The chapter hints at the extent of the involvement of Marianne with Willoughby. Willoughby tries to impress Marianne by offering her a horse as a gift, and Marianne foolishly accepts the offer without giving a thought to the expenditure involved. Willoughby's superficiality and Marianne's gullibility are exposed in this episode. Chapter 12 also reveals the character of the youngest of the Dashwood girls. Margaret, one of the minor characters in the novel, is otherwise ignored by Austen. Only a few chapters give a glimpse into her personality. Margaret, like a typical teenager, gets excited over little things and jumps to conclusions easily. She derives pleasure from revealing secrets. She informs Elinor about the impending marriage between Marianne and Willoughby because she saw the young man taking a lock of hair from her sister . At the Park, she gives hints about the relationship between Elinor and Edward to Mrs. Jennings, much to the embarrassment of her sister. Like a reckless teenager, she is always in a hurry to impart information not meant to be disclosed publicly. CHAPTER 13 Summary Everyone is eagerly looking forward to their picnic at Whitewell. However, on the morning of the outing, a letter arrives for Colonel Brandon and alters the situation. The letter disturbs Brandon, and he informs the others about his decision to leave immediately for the town. The picnic is canceled, much to the disappointment of all, since it is not possible to proceed to Whitewell without the assistance of the Colonel. Sir John Middleton suggests that they should go for a ride in the carriage around the countryside. Marianne and Willoughby take a separate carriage. They visit Allenham on the sly. When Elinor learns about their visit, she is angry with Marianne for not observing the rules of propriety. Marianne justifies her action. Notes An element of suspense is introduced in this chapter. After the Colonel reads the letter, he turns grave and decides to leave for the town immediately. He evades the questions of Mrs. Jennings and declines to postpone his visit. After he leaves, Mrs. Jennings hints at the possibility of his visiting his illegitimate daughter, Miss Williams. Through this bit of information, Austen arouses the curiosity of the reader regarding the mysterious past of Colonel Brandon. Marianne and Willoughby are insensitive to the feelings of the Colonel and fail to sympathize with his plight. They criticize Brandon for spoiling the afternoon. Colonel Brandon comes across as a man in control of his emotions. Even though he is disturbed by the contents of the letter, he does not reveal his misery to others. Like a gentleman, he excuses himself from the party and bows to Marianne before taking his leave. His silence speaks volumes. The chapter relates one more incident which creates a clash between the good sense of Elinor and the sensibility of Marianne. Marianne makes a secret visit to Allenham with Willoughby but does not feel guilty about what she has done. Elinor's sense of decorum causes her to condemn her sister's actions, as she does not approve of Marianne's visiting a stranger's house with a man to whom she is not even engaged, at least not openly."}

As Elinor and Marianne were walking together the next morning the latter communicated a piece of news to her sister, which in spite of all that she knew before of Marianne's imprudence and want of thought, surprised her by its extravagant testimony of both. Marianne told her, with the greatest delight, that Willoughby had given her a horse, one that he had bred himself on his estate in Somersetshire, and which was exactly calculated to carry a woman. Without considering that it was not in her mother's plan to keep any horse, that if she were to alter her resolution in favour of this gift, she must buy another for the servant, and keep a servant to ride it, and after all, build a stable to receive them, she had accepted the present without hesitation, and told her sister of it in raptures. "He intends to send his groom into Somersetshire immediately for it," she added, "and when it arrives we will ride every day. You shall share its use with me. Imagine to yourself, my dear Elinor, the delight of a gallop on some of these downs." Most unwilling was she to awaken from such a dream of felicity to comprehend all the unhappy truths which attended the affair; and for some time she refused to submit to them. As to an additional servant, the expense would be a trifle; Mama she was sure would never object to it; and any horse would do for HIM; he might always get one at the park; as to a stable, the merest shed would be sufficient. Elinor then ventured to doubt the propriety of her receiving such a present from a man so little, or at least so lately known to her. This was too much. "You are mistaken, Elinor," said she warmly, "in supposing I know very little of Willoughby. I have not known him long indeed, but I am much better acquainted with him, than I am with any other creature in the world, except yourself and mama. It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy;--it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others. I should hold myself guilty of greater impropriety in accepting a horse from my brother, than from Willoughby. Of John I know very little, though we have lived together for years; but of Willoughby my judgment has long been formed." Elinor thought it wisest to touch that point no more. She knew her sister's temper. Opposition on so tender a subject would only attach her the more to her own opinion. But by an appeal to her affection for her mother, by representing the inconveniences which that indulgent mother must draw on herself, if (as would probably be the case) she consented to this increase of establishment, Marianne was shortly subdued; and she promised not to tempt her mother to such imprudent kindness by mentioning the offer, and to tell Willoughby when she saw him next, that it must be declined. She was faithful to her word; and when Willoughby called at the cottage, the same day, Elinor heard her express her disappointment to him in a low voice, on being obliged to forego the acceptance of his present. The reasons for this alteration were at the same time related, and they were such as to make further entreaty on his side impossible. His concern however was very apparent; and after expressing it with earnestness, he added, in the same low voice,--"But, Marianne, the horse is still yours, though you cannot use it now. I shall keep it only till you can claim it. When you leave Barton to form your own establishment in a more lasting home, Queen Mab shall receive you." This was all overheard by Miss Dashwood; and in the whole of the sentence, in his manner of pronouncing it, and in his addressing her sister by her Christian name alone, she instantly saw an intimacy so decided, a meaning so direct, as marked a perfect agreement between them. From that moment she doubted not of their being engaged to each other; and the belief of it created no other surprise than that she, or any of their friends, should be left by tempers so frank, to discover it by accident. Margaret related something to her the next day, which placed this matter in a still clearer light. Willoughby had spent the preceding evening with them, and Margaret, by being left some time in the parlour with only him and Marianne, had had opportunity for observations, which, with a most important face, she communicated to her eldest sister, when they were next by themselves. "Oh, Elinor!" she cried, "I have such a secret to tell you about Marianne. I am sure she will be married to Mr. Willoughby very soon." "You have said so," replied Elinor, "almost every day since they first met on High-church Down; and they had not known each other a week, I believe, before you were certain that Marianne wore his picture round her neck; but it turned out to be only the miniature of our great uncle." "But indeed this is quite another thing. I am sure they will be married very soon, for he has got a lock of her hair." "Take care, Margaret. It may be only the hair of some great uncle of HIS." "But, indeed, Elinor, it is Marianne's. I am almost sure it is, for I saw him cut it off. Last night after tea, when you and mama went out of the room, they were whispering and talking together as fast as could be, and he seemed to be begging something of her, and presently he took up her scissors and cut off a long lock of her hair, for it was all tumbled down her back; and he kissed it, and folded it up in a piece of white paper; and put it into his pocket-book." For such particulars, stated on such authority, Elinor could not withhold her credit; nor was she disposed to it, for the circumstance was in perfect unison with what she had heard and seen herself. Margaret's sagacity was not always displayed in a way so satisfactory to her sister. When Mrs. Jennings attacked her one evening at the park, to give the name of the young man who was Elinor's particular favourite, which had been long a matter of great curiosity to her, Margaret answered by looking at her sister, and saying, "I must not tell, may I, Elinor?" This of course made every body laugh; and Elinor tried to laugh too. But the effort was painful. She was convinced that Margaret had fixed on a person whose name she could not bear with composure to become a standing joke with Mrs. Jennings. Marianne felt for her most sincerely; but she did more harm than good to the cause, by turning very red and saying in an angry manner to Margaret, "Remember that whatever your conjectures may be, you have no right to repeat them." "I never had any conjectures about it," replied Margaret; "it was you who told me of it yourself." This increased the mirth of the company, and Margaret was eagerly pressed to say something more. "Oh! pray, Miss Margaret, let us know all about it," said Mrs. Jennings. "What is the gentleman's name?" "I must not tell, ma'am. But I know very well what it is; and I know where he is too." "Yes, yes, we can guess where he is; at his own house at Norland to be sure. He is the curate of the parish I dare say." "No, THAT he is not. He is of no profession at all." "Margaret," said Marianne with great warmth, "you know that all this is an invention of your own, and that there is no such person in existence." "Well, then, he is lately dead, Marianne, for I am sure there was such a man once, and his name begins with an F." Most grateful did Elinor feel to Lady Middleton for observing, at this moment, "that it rained very hard," though she believed the interruption to proceed less from any attention to her, than from her ladyship's great dislike of all such inelegant subjects of raillery as delighted her husband and mother. The idea however started by her, was immediately pursued by Colonel Brandon, who was on every occasion mindful of the feelings of others; and much was said on the subject of rain by both of them. Willoughby opened the piano-forte, and asked Marianne to sit down to it; and thus amidst the various endeavours of different people to quit the topic, it fell to the ground. But not so easily did Elinor recover from the alarm into which it had thrown her. A party was formed this evening for going on the following day to see a very fine place about twelve miles from Barton, belonging to a brother-in-law of Colonel Brandon, without whose interest it could not be seen, as the proprietor, who was then abroad, had left strict orders on that head. The grounds were declared to be highly beautiful, and Sir John, who was particularly warm in their praise, might be allowed to be a tolerable judge, for he had formed parties to visit them, at least, twice every summer for the last ten years. They contained a noble piece of water; a sail on which was to a form a great part of the morning's amusement; cold provisions were to be taken, open carriages only to be employed, and every thing conducted in the usual style of a complete party of pleasure. To some few of the company it appeared rather a bold undertaking, considering the time of year, and that it had rained every day for the last fortnight;--and Mrs. Dashwood, who had already a cold, was persuaded by Elinor to stay at home.

Chapter 12

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820034609/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmSenseSensibility27.asp

Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters are busy attending parties and balls. Marianne is in her element. She is overjoyed in the company of Willoughby, who showers much affection and attention on her. Elinor even feels left out at times. Deprived of friends of her own age, she is often thrown in the company of Mrs. Jennings and Lady Middleton. At such times she welcomes the presence of Colonel Brandon. Brandon often talks of Marianne and asks Elinor about her sister's preferences.

Notes Jane Austen paints the picture of an eighteenth-century upper middle-class society. The Dashwoods and Middletons are shown to be busy attending parties and balls. Their main occupation is socializing, and they take pleasure in entertaining people. Every young girl waits for a respectable young man to woo her, and her parents hope for a match between them. They lead a leisurely life, perhaps unusual to the modern reader. Marianne is exhilarated by the looks and manners of her lover. She does not care to understand his essential nature. Obsessed with Willoughby, she ignores Colonel Brandon and unconsciously hurts him. Blinded by her infatuation for Willoughby, she is not able to realize the worth of the Colonel or detect the intensity of his feelings. This chapter again emphasizes the difference in attitudes between Willoughby and Colonel Brandon. Both men are attracted to Marianne. Willoughby displays his affection by wooing Marianne, like a dashing hero would, while Colonel Brandon admires his lady love from a distance and silently hopes to win her favor. Willoughby is interested only in flirting with Marianne, but the Colonel, like a sincere person, looks forward to a lasting relationship. CHAPTER 12 Summary Marianne gets carried away by Willoughby's showy gestures. When he offers her a horse, she accepts it readily and talks about it to her sister. Elinor is shocked to learn this and asks Marianne to decline the offer, as it would prove too costly for them. Elinor observes Willoughby's behavior towards her sister and detects a note of intimacy in it. Margaret tells Elinor about her suspicion of an engagement between Marianne and Willoughby. Later, at Mrs. Jennings' insistence, Margaret gives a hint about Elinor's attachment to Edward, much to Elinor's embarrassment. Notes The chapter hints at the extent of the involvement of Marianne with Willoughby. Willoughby tries to impress Marianne by offering her a horse as a gift, and Marianne foolishly accepts the offer without giving a thought to the expenditure involved. Willoughby's superficiality and Marianne's gullibility are exposed in this episode. Chapter 12 also reveals the character of the youngest of the Dashwood girls. Margaret, one of the minor characters in the novel, is otherwise ignored by Austen. Only a few chapters give a glimpse into her personality. Margaret, like a typical teenager, gets excited over little things and jumps to conclusions easily. She derives pleasure from revealing secrets. She informs Elinor about the impending marriage between Marianne and Willoughby because she saw the young man taking a lock of hair from her sister . At the Park, she gives hints about the relationship between Elinor and Edward to Mrs. Jennings, much to the embarrassment of her sister. Like a reckless teenager, she is always in a hurry to impart information not meant to be disclosed publicly. CHAPTER 13 Summary Everyone is eagerly looking forward to their picnic at Whitewell. However, on the morning of the outing, a letter arrives for Colonel Brandon and alters the situation. The letter disturbs Brandon, and he informs the others about his decision to leave immediately for the town. The picnic is canceled, much to the disappointment of all, since it is not possible to proceed to Whitewell without the assistance of the Colonel. Sir John Middleton suggests that they should go for a ride in the carriage around the countryside. Marianne and Willoughby take a separate carriage. They visit Allenham on the sly. When Elinor learns about their visit, she is angry with Marianne for not observing the rules of propriety. Marianne justifies her action. Notes An element of suspense is introduced in this chapter. After the Colonel reads the letter, he turns grave and decides to leave for the town immediately. He evades the questions of Mrs. Jennings and declines to postpone his visit. After he leaves, Mrs. Jennings hints at the possibility of his visiting his illegitimate daughter, Miss Williams. Through this bit of information, Austen arouses the curiosity of the reader regarding the mysterious past of Colonel Brandon. Marianne and Willoughby are insensitive to the feelings of the Colonel and fail to sympathize with his plight. They criticize Brandon for spoiling the afternoon. Colonel Brandon comes across as a man in control of his emotions. Even though he is disturbed by the contents of the letter, he does not reveal his misery to others. Like a gentleman, he excuses himself from the party and bows to Marianne before taking his leave. His silence speaks volumes. The chapter relates one more incident which creates a clash between the good sense of Elinor and the sensibility of Marianne. Marianne makes a secret visit to Allenham with Willoughby but does not feel guilty about what she has done. Elinor's sense of decorum causes her to condemn her sister's actions, as she does not approve of Marianne's visiting a stranger's house with a man to whom she is not even engaged, at least not openly.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/2166-chapters/04.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/King Solomon's Mines/section_2_part_0.txt

King Solomon's Mines.chapter 4

chapter 4

{"name": "Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200804024551/https://www.gradesaver.com/king-solomons-mines/study-guide/summary-chapter-4", "summary": "Quatermain relates how the newly formed party journeys from Durban to Sitanda's Kraal, a trek of over a thousand miles. The journey takes nearly four months, during which they encounter events common to such an expedition. By the time they reach Inyata, they are forced to leave their wagon since eight of the twenty oxen have perished or been lost. The wagon is left in the care of the two Zulu servants, Goza and Tom, who are instructed to seek out a Scottish missionary in the area to take care of the wagon. The hunting party of Quatermain, Sir Henry, Captain Good, Umbopa, Khiva and Ventvogel--along with several bearers carrying their belongings--continue their trip. Along the way, Umbopa further proves his value by chanting an upbeat Zulu song promising a good end to the journey. About two weeks' march from Inyata, the party enters a beautiful area full of wild giraffes. As the giraffes gallop away, Captain Good tries for a shot at them on a whim; to his surprise, he manages to hit a distant giraffe in the spine and kill it with his single shot. Although Quatermain declares the shot lucky and not characteristic of Good's usual hunting prowess in his narrative, he nonetheless relates how this amazing shot gives Good a reputation for accuracy among the rest of the hunting party. The men camp that night and, prior to sleep, hear the low growl of a lion nearby. They also hear an elephant; this leads Sir Henry to consider pausing in their quest for his lost brother long enough to hunt for a day or two. During the night they are awakened by a fearful noise and splashing from the nearby river--they discover it to be the lion and his would-be prey, an antelope, locked in the throes of their death-struggle. Both animals die, killed by the ferocity or fear of each other, and Quatermain's party reaps the benefit of their animosity by skinning both animals and filleting the antelope for food. The next day the party encounters a herd of elephants, which they fire upon. Sir Henry fells his elephant in one shot. Quatermain's target runs away after being struck, forcing the hunter to pursue it to take it down. Captain Good hits the bull elephant, but instead of fleeing it turns on its attacker and charges Good. Once the bull has passed, the party chooses to follow the herd rather than the wounded bull elephant. In all, Quatermain's party collects eight elephants. In the meantime, Captain Good has run afoul of the wounded bull elephant. Quatermain and his fellows hear the enraged elephant, then see it crashing through the greenery in hot pursuit of Captain Good and Khiva. Good falls--slipping on his over-\"civilized\" polished boots--and is nearly done for, but Khiva draws the bull's attention by throwing his spear at it. The bull elephant turns its ire on Khiva, crushing him under one foot while pulling him in half with its trunk. Captain Good is moved to anguish by Khiva's sacrifice, and Quatermain almost weeps, but the implacable Umbopa stares thoughtfully at Khiva's remains and states \"he is dead, but he died like a man.\"", "analysis": "The mixed European attitude toward Africans is again expressed through Quatermain's account, particularly touching on the actions of Umbopa. When Umpoba begins the chant which keeps the weary travelers' moral high, Quatermain says of him, \"He was a cheerful savage, was Umpoba, in a dignified sort of way, when he had not got one of his fits of brooding, and had wonderful knack of keeping one's spirits up. We all got very fond of him\" . This combination of dignity, cheer, and brooding continues to mystify Quatermain throughout the rest of the journey. By connecting the word \"dignity\" to Umbopa again , Haggard sets the reader up for the future reveal of Umbopa's true heritage. The incident of the elephant hunt establishes the danger of Quatermain's usual line of work, thus giving credence to his motivations for taking the money offered by Sir Henry to establish his son's medical practice. Quatermain attempts to live his life knowing that he will one day die--but cannot prevent it--and so he lives it to its fullest, doing what he knows how to do well. The problem of Colonialism may be symbolized in the seemingly random incident of the lion and the antelope. Quatermain and the others see: On the grass there lay a sable antelope bull--the most beautiful of all the African antelopes--quite dead, and transfixed by its great curved horns was a magnificent black-maned lion, also dead. what had happened evidently was this. The sable antelope had come down to drink at the pool where the lion--no doubt the same we had heard--had been lying in wait. While the antelope was drinking the lion had sprung upon him, but was received upon the sharp curved horns and transfixed. I once saw the same thing happen before. The lion, unable to free himself, had torn and bitten at the back and neck of the bull, which, maddened with fear and pain, had rushed on till it dropped dead. While easily counted as merely an interesting detail pulled from Haggard's own life, it is telling that the lion is one of the symbols associated with England, while the antelope--a prominent species in Africa--is sable . The one has attacked the other to get what it wants from it, but in the process has let itself become entangled with the would-be prey and killed along with it. The similarities to George Orwell's later work \"Shooting an Elephant\" are striking. Quatermain's seeming jealousy at Captain Good's \"lucky\" shot further contrasts the two men: Quatermain is a rugged, world-worn hunter of many years' hard experience, while Good is a fastidious Naval officer who has no business making expert shots in Quatermain's demesne. Quatermain notes specifically how \"Good fell a victim to his passion for civilized dress\" when attempting to evade the charging bull elephant, pointing out how seriously out of his element the Captain truly is. However, Good's medical skills are brought to the fore, giving the over-dignified Briton a more practical function on the journey, particularly in Quatermain's eyes."}

Now I do not propose to narrate at full length all the incidents of our long travel up to Sitanda's Kraal, near the junction of the Lukanga and Kalukwe Rivers. It was a journey of more than a thousand miles from Durban, the last three hundred or so of which we had to make on foot, owing to the frequent presence of the dreadful "tsetse" fly, whose bite is fatal to all animals except donkeys and men. We left Durban at the end of January, and it was in the second week of May that we camped near Sitanda's Kraal. Our adventures on the way were many and various, but as they are of the sort which befall every African hunter--with one exception to be presently detailed--I shall not set them down here, lest I should render this history too wearisome. At Inyati, the outlying trading station in the Matabele country, of which Lobengula (a great and cruel scoundrel) is king, with many regrets we parted from our comfortable wagon. Only twelve oxen remained to us out of the beautiful span of twenty which I had bought at Durban. One we lost from the bite of a cobra, three had perished from "poverty" and the want of water, one strayed, and the other three died from eating the poisonous herb called "tulip." Five more sickened from this cause, but we managed to cure them with doses of an infusion made by boiling down the tulip leaves. If administered in time this is a very effective antidote. The wagon and the oxen we left in the immediate charge of Goza and Tom, our driver and leader, both trustworthy boys, requesting a worthy Scotch missionary who lived in this distant place to keep an eye on them. Then, accompanied by Umbopa, Khiva, Ventvoegel, and half a dozen bearers whom we hired on the spot, we started off on foot upon our wild quest. I remember we were all a little silent on the occasion of this departure, and I think that each of us was wondering if we should ever see our wagon again; for my part I never expected to do so. For a while we tramped on in silence, till Umbopa, who was marching in front, broke into a Zulu chant about how some brave men, tired of life and the tameness of things, started off into a vast wilderness to find new things or die, and how, lo and behold! when they had travelled far into the wilderness they found that it was not a wilderness at all, but a beautiful place full of young wives and fat cattle, of game to hunt and enemies to kill. Then we all laughed and took it for a good omen. Umbopa was a cheerful savage, in a dignified sort of way, when he was not suffering from one of his fits of brooding, and he had a wonderful knack of keeping up our spirits. We all grew very fond of him. And now for the one adventure to which I am going to treat myself, for I do dearly love a hunting yarn. About a fortnight's march from Inyati we came across a peculiarly beautiful bit of well-watered woodland country. The kloofs in the hills were covered with dense bush, "idoro" bush as the natives call it, and in some places, with the "wacht-een-beche," or "wait-a-little thorn," and there were great quantities of the lovely "machabell" tree, laden with refreshing yellow fruit having enormous stones. This tree is the elephant's favourite food, and there were not wanting signs that the great brutes had been about, for not only was their spoor frequent, but in many places the trees were broken down and even uprooted. The elephant is a destructive feeder. One evening, after a long day's march, we came to a spot of great loveliness. At the foot of a bush-clad hill lay a dry river-bed, in which, however, were to be found pools of crystal water all trodden round with the hoof-prints of game. Facing this hill was a park-like plain, where grew clumps of flat-topped mimosa, varied with occasional glossy-leaved machabells, and all round stretched the sea of pathless, silent bush. As we emerged into this river-bed path suddenly we started a troop of tall giraffes, who galloped, or rather sailed off, in their strange gait, their tails screwed up over their backs, and their hoofs rattling like castanets. They were about three hundred yards from us, and therefore practically out of shot, but Good, who was walking ahead, and who had an express loaded with solid ball in his hand, could not resist temptation. Lifting his gun, he let drive at the last, a young cow. By some extraordinary chance the ball struck it full on the back of the neck, shattering the spinal column, and that giraffe went rolling head over heels just like a rabbit. I never saw a more curious thing. "Curse it!" said Good--for I am sorry to say he had a habit of using strong language when excited--contracted, no doubt, in the course of his nautical career; "curse it! I've killed him." "_Ou_, Bougwan," ejaculated the Kafirs; "_ou! ou!_" They called Good "Bougwan," or Glass Eye, because of his eye-glass. "Oh, 'Bougwan!'" re-echoed Sir Henry and I, and from that day Good's reputation as a marvellous shot was established, at any rate among the Kafirs. Really he was a bad one, but whenever he missed we overlooked it for the sake of that giraffe. Having set some of the "boys" to cut off the best of the giraffe's meat, we went to work to build a "scherm" near one of the pools and about a hundred yards to its right. This is done by cutting a quantity of thorn bushes and piling them in the shape of a circular hedge. Then the space enclosed is smoothed, and dry tambouki grass, if obtainable, is made into a bed in the centre, and a fire or fires lighted. By the time the "scherm" was finished the moon peeped up, and our dinners of giraffe steaks and roasted marrow-bones were ready. How we enjoyed those marrow-bones, though it was rather a job to crack them! I know of no greater luxury than giraffe marrow, unless it is elephant's heart, and we had that on the morrow. We ate our simple meal by the light of the moon, pausing at times to thank Good for his wonderful shot; then we began to smoke and yarn, and a curious picture we must have made squatting there round the fire. I, with my short grizzled hair sticking up straight, and Sir Henry with his yellow locks, which were getting rather long, were rather a contrast, especially as I am thin, and short, and dark, weighing only nine stone and a half, and Sir Henry is tall, and broad, and fair, and weighs fifteen. But perhaps the most curious-looking of the three, taking all the circumstances of the case into consideration, was Captain John Good, R.N. There he sat upon a leather bag, looking just as though he had come in from a comfortable day's shooting in a civilised country, absolutely clean, tidy, and well dressed. He wore a shooting suit of brown tweed, with a hat to match, and neat gaiters. As usual, he was beautifully shaved, his eye-glass and his false teeth appeared to be in perfect order, and altogether he looked the neatest man I ever had to do with in the wilderness. He even sported a collar, of which he had a supply, made of white gutta-percha. "You see, they weigh so little," he said to me innocently, when I expressed my astonishment at the fact; "and I always like to turn out like a gentleman." Ah! if he could have foreseen the future and the raiment prepared for him. Well, there we three sat yarning away in the beautiful moonlight, and watching the Kafirs a few yards off sucking their intoxicating "daccha" from a pipe of which the mouthpiece was made of the horn of an eland, till one by one they rolled themselves up in their blankets and went to sleep by the fire, that is, all except Umbopa, who was a little apart, his chin resting on his hand, and thinking deeply. I noticed that he never mixed much with the other Kafirs. Presently, from the depths of the bush behind us, came a loud "_woof_, _woof_!" "That's a lion," said I, and we all started up to listen. Hardly had we done so, when from the pool, about a hundred yards off, we heard the strident trumpeting of an elephant. "_Unkungunklovo_! _Indlovu_!" "Elephant! Elephant!" whispered the Kafirs, and a few minutes afterwards we saw a succession of vast shadowy forms moving slowly from the direction of the water towards the bush. Up jumped Good, burning for slaughter, and thinking, perhaps, that it was as easy to kill elephant as he had found it to shoot giraffe, but I caught him by the arm and pulled him down. "It's no good," I whispered, "let them go." "It seems that we are in a paradise of game. I vote we stop here a day or two, and have a go at them," said Sir Henry, presently. I was rather surprised, for hitherto Sir Henry had always been for pushing forward as fast as possible, more especially since we ascertained at Inyati that about two years ago an Englishman of the name of Neville _had_ sold his wagon there, and gone on up country. But I suppose his hunter instincts got the better of him for a while. Good jumped at the idea, for he was longing to have a shot at those elephants; and so, to speak the truth, did I, for it went against my conscience to let such a herd as that escape without a pull at them. "All right, my hearties," said I. "I think we want a little recreation. And now let's turn in, for we ought to be off by dawn, and then perhaps we may catch them feeding before they move on." The others agreed, and we proceeded to make our preparations. Good took off his clothes, shook them, put his eye-glass and his false teeth into his trousers pocket, and folding each article neatly, placed it out of the dew under a corner of his mackintosh sheet. Sir Henry and I contented ourselves with rougher arrangements, and soon were curled up in our blankets, and dropping off into the dreamless sleep that rewards the traveller. Going, going, go--What was that? Suddenly, from the direction of the water came sounds of violent scuffling, and next instant there broke upon our ears a succession of the most awful roars. There was no mistaking their origin; only a lion could make such a noise as that. We all jumped up and looked towards the water, in the direction of which we saw a confused mass, yellow and black in colour, staggering and struggling towards us. We seized our rifles, and slipping on our veldtschoons, that is shoes made of untanned hide, ran out of the scherm. By this time the mass had fallen, and was rolling over and over on the ground, and when we reached the spot it struggled no longer, but lay quite still. Now we saw what it was. On the grass there lay a sable antelope bull--the most beautiful of all the African antelopes--quite dead, and transfixed by its great curved horns was a magnificent black-maned lion, also dead. Evidently what had happened was this: The sable antelope had come down to drink at the pool where the lion--no doubt the same which we had heard--was lying in wait. While the antelope drank, the lion had sprung upon him, only to be received upon the sharp curved horns and transfixed. Once before I saw a similar thing happen. Then the lion, unable to free himself, had torn and bitten at the back and neck of the bull, which, maddened with fear and pain, had rushed on until it dropped dead. As soon as we had examined the beasts sufficiently we called the Kafirs, and between us managed to drag their carcases up to the scherm. After that we went in and lay down, to wake no more till dawn. With the first light we were up and making ready for the fray. We took with us the three eight-bore rifles, a good supply of ammunition, and our large water-bottles, filled with weak cold tea, which I have always found the best stuff to shoot on. After swallowing a little breakfast we started, Umbopa, Khiva, and Ventvoegel accompanying us. The other Kafirs we left with instructions to skin the lion and the sable antelope, and to cut up the latter. We had no difficulty in finding the broad elephant trail, which Ventvoegel, after examination, pronounced to have been made by between twenty and thirty elephants, most of them full-grown bulls. But the herd had moved on some way during the night, and it was nine o'clock, and already very hot, before, by the broken trees, bruised leaves and bark, and smoking droppings, we knew that we could not be far from them. Presently we caught sight of the herd, which numbered, as Ventvoegel had said, between twenty and thirty, standing in a hollow, having finished their morning meal, and flapping their great ears. It was a splendid sight, for they were only about two hundred yards from us. Taking a handful of dry grass, I threw it into the air to see how the wind was; for if once they winded us I knew they would be off before we could get a shot. Finding that, if anything, it blew from the elephants to us, we crept on stealthily, and thanks to the cover managed to get within forty yards or so of the great brutes. Just in front of us, and broadside on, stood three splendid bulls, one of them with enormous tusks. I whispered to the others that I would take the middle one; Sir Henry covering the elephant to the left, and Good the bull with the big tusks. "Now," I whispered. Boom! boom! boom! went the three heavy rifles, and down came Sir Henry's elephant dead as a hammer, shot right through the heart. Mine fell on to its knees and I thought that he was going to die, but in another moment he was up and off, tearing along straight past me. As he went I gave him the second barrel in the ribs, and this brought him down in good earnest. Hastily slipping in two fresh cartridges I ran close up to him, and a ball through the brain put an end to the poor brute's struggles. Then I turned to see how Good had fared with the big bull, which I had heard screaming with rage and pain as I gave mine its quietus. On reaching the captain I found him in a great state of excitement. It appeared that on receiving the bullet the bull had turned and come straight for his assailant, who had barely time to get out of his way, and then charged on blindly past him, in the direction of our encampment. Meanwhile the herd had crashed off in wild alarm in the other direction. For awhile we debated whether to go after the wounded bull or to follow the herd, and finally deciding for the latter alternative, departed, thinking that we had seen the last of those big tusks. I have often wished since that we had. It was easy work to follow the elephants, for they had left a trail like a carriage road behind them, crushing down the thick bush in their furious flight as though it were tambouki grass. But to come up with them was another matter, and we had struggled on under the broiling sun for over two hours before we found them. With the exception of one bull, they were standing together, and I could see, from their unquiet way and the manner in which they kept lifting their trunks to test the air, that they were on the look-out for mischief. The solitary bull stood fifty yards or so to this side of the herd, over which he was evidently keeping sentry, and about sixty yards from us. Thinking that he would see or wind us, and that it would probably start them off again if we tried to get nearer, especially as the ground was rather open, we all aimed at this bull, and at my whispered word, we fired. The three shots took effect, and down he went dead. Again the herd started, but unfortunately for them about a hundred yards further on was a nullah, or dried-out water track, with steep banks, a place very much resembling the one where the Prince Imperial was killed in Zululand. Into this the elephants plunged, and when we reached the edge we found them struggling in wild confusion to get up the other bank, filling the air with their screams, and trumpeting as they pushed one another aside in their selfish panic, just like so many human beings. Now was our opportunity, and firing away as quickly as we could load, we killed five of the poor beasts, and no doubt should have bagged the whole herd, had they not suddenly given up their attempts to climb the bank and rushed headlong down the nullah. We were too tired to follow them, and perhaps also a little sick of slaughter, eight elephants being a pretty good bag for one day. So after we were rested a little, and the Kafirs had cut out the hearts of two of the dead elephants for supper, we started homewards, very well pleased with our day's work, having made up our minds to send the bearers on the morrow to chop away the tusks. Shortly after we re-passed the spot where Good had wounded the patriarchal bull we came across a herd of eland, but did not shoot at them, as we had plenty of meat. They trotted past us, and then stopped behind a little patch of bush about a hundred yards away, wheeling round to look at us. As Good was anxious to get a near view of them, never having seen an eland close, he handed his rifle to Umbopa, and, followed by Khiva, strolled up to the patch of bush. We sat down and waited for him, not sorry of the excuse for a little rest. The sun was just going down in its reddest glory, and Sir Henry and I were admiring the lovely scene, when suddenly we heard an elephant scream, and saw its huge and rushing form with uplifted trunk and tail silhouetted against the great fiery globe of the sun. Next second we saw something else, and that was Good and Khiva tearing back towards us with the wounded bull--for it was he--charging after them. For a moment we did not dare to fire--though at that distance it would have been of little use if we had done so--for fear of hitting one of them, and the next a dreadful thing happened--Good fell a victim to his passion for civilised dress. Had he consented to discard his trousers and gaiters like the rest of us, and to hunt in a flannel shirt and a pair of veldt-schoons, it would have been all right. But as it was, his trousers cumbered him in that desperate race, and presently, when he was about sixty yards from us, his boot, polished by the dry grass, slipped, and down he went on his face right in front of the elephant. We gave a gasp, for we knew that he must die, and ran as hard as we could towards him. In three seconds it had ended, but not as we thought. Khiva, the Zulu boy, saw his master fall, and brave lad as he was, turned and flung his assegai straight into the elephant's face. It stuck in his trunk. With a scream of pain, the brute seized the poor Zulu, hurled him to the earth, and placing one huge foot on to his body about the middle, twined its trunk round his upper part and _tore him in two_. We rushed up mad with horror, and fired again and again, till presently the elephant fell upon the fragments of the Zulu. As for Good, he rose and wrung his hands over the brave man who had given his life to save him, and, though I am an old hand, I felt a lump grow in my throat. Umbopa stood contemplating the huge dead elephant and the mangled remains of poor Khiva. "Ah, well," he said presently, "he is dead, but he died like a man!"

Chapter 4

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Quatermain relates how the newly formed party journeys from Durban to Sitanda's Kraal, a trek of over a thousand miles. The journey takes nearly four months, during which they encounter events common to such an expedition. By the time they reach Inyata, they are forced to leave their wagon since eight of the twenty oxen have perished or been lost. The wagon is left in the care of the two Zulu servants, Goza and Tom, who are instructed to seek out a Scottish missionary in the area to take care of the wagon. The hunting party of Quatermain, Sir Henry, Captain Good, Umbopa, Khiva and Ventvogel--along with several bearers carrying their belongings--continue their trip. Along the way, Umbopa further proves his value by chanting an upbeat Zulu song promising a good end to the journey. About two weeks' march from Inyata, the party enters a beautiful area full of wild giraffes. As the giraffes gallop away, Captain Good tries for a shot at them on a whim; to his surprise, he manages to hit a distant giraffe in the spine and kill it with his single shot. Although Quatermain declares the shot lucky and not characteristic of Good's usual hunting prowess in his narrative, he nonetheless relates how this amazing shot gives Good a reputation for accuracy among the rest of the hunting party. The men camp that night and, prior to sleep, hear the low growl of a lion nearby. They also hear an elephant; this leads Sir Henry to consider pausing in their quest for his lost brother long enough to hunt for a day or two. During the night they are awakened by a fearful noise and splashing from the nearby river--they discover it to be the lion and his would-be prey, an antelope, locked in the throes of their death-struggle. Both animals die, killed by the ferocity or fear of each other, and Quatermain's party reaps the benefit of their animosity by skinning both animals and filleting the antelope for food. The next day the party encounters a herd of elephants, which they fire upon. Sir Henry fells his elephant in one shot. Quatermain's target runs away after being struck, forcing the hunter to pursue it to take it down. Captain Good hits the bull elephant, but instead of fleeing it turns on its attacker and charges Good. Once the bull has passed, the party chooses to follow the herd rather than the wounded bull elephant. In all, Quatermain's party collects eight elephants. In the meantime, Captain Good has run afoul of the wounded bull elephant. Quatermain and his fellows hear the enraged elephant, then see it crashing through the greenery in hot pursuit of Captain Good and Khiva. Good falls--slipping on his over-"civilized" polished boots--and is nearly done for, but Khiva draws the bull's attention by throwing his spear at it. The bull elephant turns its ire on Khiva, crushing him under one foot while pulling him in half with its trunk. Captain Good is moved to anguish by Khiva's sacrifice, and Quatermain almost weeps, but the implacable Umbopa stares thoughtfully at Khiva's remains and states "he is dead, but he died like a man."

The mixed European attitude toward Africans is again expressed through Quatermain's account, particularly touching on the actions of Umbopa. When Umpoba begins the chant which keeps the weary travelers' moral high, Quatermain says of him, "He was a cheerful savage, was Umpoba, in a dignified sort of way, when he had not got one of his fits of brooding, and had wonderful knack of keeping one's spirits up. We all got very fond of him" . This combination of dignity, cheer, and brooding continues to mystify Quatermain throughout the rest of the journey. By connecting the word "dignity" to Umbopa again , Haggard sets the reader up for the future reveal of Umbopa's true heritage. The incident of the elephant hunt establishes the danger of Quatermain's usual line of work, thus giving credence to his motivations for taking the money offered by Sir Henry to establish his son's medical practice. Quatermain attempts to live his life knowing that he will one day die--but cannot prevent it--and so he lives it to its fullest, doing what he knows how to do well. The problem of Colonialism may be symbolized in the seemingly random incident of the lion and the antelope. Quatermain and the others see: On the grass there lay a sable antelope bull--the most beautiful of all the African antelopes--quite dead, and transfixed by its great curved horns was a magnificent black-maned lion, also dead. what had happened evidently was this. The sable antelope had come down to drink at the pool where the lion--no doubt the same we had heard--had been lying in wait. While the antelope was drinking the lion had sprung upon him, but was received upon the sharp curved horns and transfixed. I once saw the same thing happen before. The lion, unable to free himself, had torn and bitten at the back and neck of the bull, which, maddened with fear and pain, had rushed on till it dropped dead. While easily counted as merely an interesting detail pulled from Haggard's own life, it is telling that the lion is one of the symbols associated with England, while the antelope--a prominent species in Africa--is sable . The one has attacked the other to get what it wants from it, but in the process has let itself become entangled with the would-be prey and killed along with it. The similarities to George Orwell's later work "Shooting an Elephant" are striking. Quatermain's seeming jealousy at Captain Good's "lucky" shot further contrasts the two men: Quatermain is a rugged, world-worn hunter of many years' hard experience, while Good is a fastidious Naval officer who has no business making expert shots in Quatermain's demesne. Quatermain notes specifically how "Good fell a victim to his passion for civilized dress" when attempting to evade the charging bull elephant, pointing out how seriously out of his element the Captain truly is. However, Good's medical skills are brought to the fore, giving the over-dignified Briton a more practical function on the journey, particularly in Quatermain's eyes.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/20.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_2_part_5.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 20

chapter 20

{"name": "Chapter 20", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-3-chapters-16-24", "summary": "Tess had never in her recent life been so happy and would possibly never be so happy again. She and Tess stand between predilection and love. For Angel, Tess represents a visionary essence of woman, and calls her Artemis, Demeter, and other fanciful names, but she insists that he call her simply Tess. Tess seems to exhibit a dignified largeness of disposition and physique. The two are always the first to awake at the dairy house, where they feel an impressive isolation, as if they are Adam and Eve.", "analysis": "Hardy makes explicit that Tess's time at Talbothays dairy is an idyllic respite from her normal toil and hardship, yet states that this happiness will be short-lived, foreshadowing greater adversity for Tess Durbeyfield. Hardy compares Angel and Tess to Adam and Eve in the mornings, thus foreshadowing a later fall from perfection. It is the idealism and perfection that Tess finds at Talbothays that leads to this shaky foundation for her happiness; Angel Clare adores Tess as a representation of perfection. To Angel, Tess is a goddess such as Artemis or Demeter, a symbol of perfection rather than a person with obvious faults and foibles. There is a great irony in Angel's adoration for Tess; Angel exalts Tess as a goddess for her strength and disposition, yet this perfection comes from the adversity stemming from her greatest weakness"}

The season developed and matured. Another year's instalment of flowers, leaves, nightingales, thrushes, finches, and such ephemeral creatures, took up their positions where only a year ago others had stood in their place when these were nothing more than germs and inorganic particles. Rays from the sunrise drew forth the buds and stretched them into long stalks, lifted up sap in noiseless streams, opened petals, and sucked out scents in invisible jets and breathings. Dairyman Crick's household of maids and men lived on comfortably, placidly, even merrily. Their position was perhaps the happiest of all positions in the social scale, being above the line at which neediness ends, and below the line at which the _convenances_ begin to cramp natural feelings, and the stress of threadbare modishness makes too little of enough. Thus passed the leafy time when arborescence seems to be the one thing aimed at out of doors. Tess and Clare unconsciously studied each other, ever balanced on the edge of a passion, yet apparently keeping out of it. All the while they were converging, under an irresistible law, as surely as two streams in one vale. Tess had never in her recent life been so happy as she was now, possibly never would be so happy again. She was, for one thing, physically and mentally suited among these new surroundings. The sapling which had rooted down to a poisonous stratum on the spot of its sowing had been transplanted to a deeper soil. Moreover she, and Clare also, stood as yet on the debatable land between predilection and love; where no profundities have been reached; no reflections have set in, awkwardly inquiring, "Whither does this new current tend to carry me? What does it mean to my future? How does it stand towards my past?" Tess was the merest stray phenomenon to Angel Clare as yet--a rosy, warming apparition which had only just acquired the attribute of persistence in his consciousness. So he allowed his mind to be occupied with her, deeming his preoccupation to be no more than a philosopher's regard of an exceedingly novel, fresh, and interesting specimen of womankind. They met continually; they could not help it. They met daily in that strange and solemn interval, the twilight of the morning, in the violet or pink dawn; for it was necessary to rise early, so very early, here. Milking was done betimes; and before the milking came the skimming, which began at a little past three. It usually fell to the lot of some one or other of them to wake the rest, the first being aroused by an alarm-clock; and, as Tess was the latest arrival, and they soon discovered that she could be depended upon not to sleep though the alarm as others did, this task was thrust most frequently upon her. No sooner had the hour of three struck and whizzed, than she left her room and ran to the dairyman's door; then up the ladder to Angel's, calling him in a loud whisper; then woke her fellow-milkmaids. By the time that Tess was dressed Clare was downstairs and out in the humid air. The remaining maids and the dairyman usually gave themselves another turn on the pillow, and did not appear till a quarter of an hour later. The gray half-tones of daybreak are not the gray half-tones of the day's close, though the degree of their shade may be the same. In the twilight of the morning, light seems active, darkness passive; in the twilight of evening it is the darkness which is active and crescent, and the light which is the drowsy reverse. Being so often--possibly not always by chance--the first two persons to get up at the dairy-house, they seemed to themselves the first persons up of all the world. In these early days of her residence here Tess did not skim, but went out of doors at once after rising, where he was generally awaiting her. The spectral, half-compounded, aqueous light which pervaded the open mead impressed them with a feeling of isolation, as if they were Adam and Eve. At this dim inceptive stage of the day Tess seemed to Clare to exhibit a dignified largeness both of disposition and physique, an almost regnant power, possibly because he knew that at that preternatural time hardly any woman so well endowed in person as she was likely to be walking in the open air within the boundaries of his horizon; very few in all England. Fair women are usually asleep at mid-summer dawns. She was close at hand, and the rest were nowhere. The mixed, singular, luminous gloom in which they walked along together to the spot where the cows lay often made him think of the Resurrection hour. He little thought that the Magdalen might be at his side. Whilst all the landscape was in neutral shade his companion's face, which was the focus of his eyes, rising above the mist stratum, seemed to have a sort of phosphorescence upon it. She looked ghostly, as if she were merely a soul at large. In reality her face, without appearing to do so, had caught the cold gleam of day from the north-east; his own face, though he did not think of it, wore the same aspect to her. It was then, as has been said, that she impressed him most deeply. She was no longer the milkmaid, but a visionary essence of woman--a whole sex condensed into one typical form. He called her Artemis, Demeter, and other fanciful names half teasingly, which she did not like because she did not understand them. "Call me Tess," she would say askance; and he did. Then it would grow lighter, and her features would become simply feminine; they had changed from those of a divinity who could confer bliss to those of a being who craved it. At these non-human hours they could get quite close to the waterfowl. Herons came, with a great bold noise as of opening doors and shutters, out of the boughs of a plantation which they frequented at the side of the mead; or, if already on the spot, hardily maintained their standing in the water as the pair walked by, watching them by moving their heads round in a slow, horizontal, passionless wheel, like the turn of puppets by clockwork. They could then see the faint summer fogs in layers, woolly, level, and apparently no thicker than counterpanes, spread about the meadows in detached remnants of small extent. On the gray moisture of the grass were marks where the cows had lain through the night--dark-green islands of dry herbage the size of their carcasses, in the general sea of dew. From each island proceeded a serpentine trail, by which the cow had rambled away to feed after getting up, at the end of which trail they found her; the snoring puff from her nostrils, when she recognized them, making an intenser little fog of her own amid the prevailing one. Then they drove the animals back to the barton, or sat down to milk them on the spot, as the case might require. Or perhaps the summer fog was more general, and the meadows lay like a white sea, out of which the scattered trees rose like dangerous rocks. Birds would soar through it into the upper radiance, and hang on the wing sunning themselves, or alight on the wet rails subdividing the mead, which now shone like glass rods. Minute diamonds of moisture from the mist hung, too, upon Tess's eyelashes, and drops upon her hair, like seed pearls. When the day grew quite strong and commonplace these dried off her; moreover, Tess then lost her strange and ethereal beauty; her teeth, lips, and eyes scintillated in the sunbeams and she was again the dazzlingly fair dairymaid only, who had to hold her own against the other women of the world. About this time they would hear Dairyman Crick's voice, lecturing the non-resident milkers for arriving late, and speaking sharply to old Deborah Fyander for not washing her hands. "For Heaven's sake, pop thy hands under the pump, Deb! Upon my soul, if the London folk only knowed of thee and thy slovenly ways, they'd swaller their milk and butter more mincing than they do a'ready; and that's saying a good deal." The milking progressed, till towards the end Tess and Clare, in common with the rest, could hear the heavy breakfast table dragged out from the wall in the kitchen by Mrs Crick, this being the invariable preliminary to each meal; the same horrible scrape accompanying its return journey when the table had been cleared.

Chapter 20

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-3-chapters-16-24

Tess had never in her recent life been so happy and would possibly never be so happy again. She and Tess stand between predilection and love. For Angel, Tess represents a visionary essence of woman, and calls her Artemis, Demeter, and other fanciful names, but she insists that he call her simply Tess. Tess seems to exhibit a dignified largeness of disposition and physique. The two are always the first to awake at the dairy house, where they feel an impressive isolation, as if they are Adam and Eve.

Hardy makes explicit that Tess's time at Talbothays dairy is an idyllic respite from her normal toil and hardship, yet states that this happiness will be short-lived, foreshadowing greater adversity for Tess Durbeyfield. Hardy compares Angel and Tess to Adam and Eve in the mornings, thus foreshadowing a later fall from perfection. It is the idealism and perfection that Tess finds at Talbothays that leads to this shaky foundation for her happiness; Angel Clare adores Tess as a representation of perfection. To Angel, Tess is a goddess such as Artemis or Demeter, a symbol of perfection rather than a person with obvious faults and foibles. There is a great irony in Angel's adoration for Tess; Angel exalts Tess as a goddess for her strength and disposition, yet this perfection comes from the adversity stemming from her greatest weakness

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/11012-chapters/chapters_10_to_11.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man/section_4_part_0.txt

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.chapters 10-11

chapters 10-11

{"name": "Chapters X-XI", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180424054150/http://www.gradesaver.com/the-autobiography-of-an-excolored-man/study-guide/summary-chapters-x-xi", "summary": "On the boat back to America, the narrator meets a large, dignified African American man, , a graduate of Howard University. They strike up a friendship and discuss the race question. The doctor is \"broad-minded\" and believes that \"Negroes\" are progressing, although he sympathizes with certain aspects of the white, Southern perspective. The narrator stays with his new friend in Boston for a few days and then accompanies him to Washington D.C., where the doctor lives. The narrator becomes quickly acquainted with the doctor's friends, all educated African Americans, who earn \"good salaries and a reasonable amount of leisure time to draw from\" . The doctor, meanwhile, is very critical of who he deems \"the worst\" of the race. The narrator reflects positively on his time in Washington but then moves on to Macon, Georgia. On the way, he ends up in the smoking car of the train. The men gathered there are cordial and convivial; they include a Jewish cigar maker, a white professor, an ex-Union soldier, and a boisterous Texan planter. The race question comes up. The Jewish man takes neither side but listens and comments politely. The professor is flustered and does not participate. The argument is mostly between the old soldier and the Texan. The Texan does not believe in racial equality at all while the Union soldier argues for it. The Texan tries to claim the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race, but the soldier ably and eloquently explains that all of the accomplishments of the Anglo-Saxons are built on discoveries made by other races. The Texan is impressed, but jovially says his mind will never be changed. The narrator cannot help but admire his steadfastness, but also hopes that the mental attitudes of Southerners can be changed one day. In Macon, the narrator decides to leave his things behind and travel through the country. He sees rural African Americans for the first time and is not impressed. He is also annoyed with the poor cooking and accommodations of the South, wondering if his millionaire friend was right. He discourses for some time on the differences between the North and the South in their feelings on \"the colored man\". While he is in the South, the narrator also attends a \"big meeting\", which is a large religious gathering. It is a boisterous and exciting atmosphere. The narrator observes one impressive preacher, John Brown, and a music leader, Singing Johnson. Brown demonstrates \"all the arts and tricks of oratory\" and holds his listeners spellbound with his sermons about heaven and hell. Meanwhile, Johnson knows all of the spiritual songs and is a master at leading the congregation. The narrator marvels at the wonder of his songs' production. He feels inspired by this meeting. The narrator decides to stay with a young African American schoolteacher for a few days. This man strikes the narrator as being too earnest about the race question, but intelligent and ambitious nonetheless. They retire to a boarding house but the narrator is stirred awake by a frantic sounds outside. He hears a rumor from the people flowing past the house that a crime has been committed. Defying the schoolteacher's warnings, the narrator leaves the house and joins a crowd at the station. It is mostly white people with some black people at the fringes. A \"poor wretch\", a black man, is dragged into the circle. The white people throw up a fiendish \"rebel yell\", resembling \"savage beasts\". They tie the man to a stake and burn him alive. The narrator is horrified and dazed, but he is also humiliated that he is part of a race that can be victim to such horrible crimes. He is also in disbelief at how \"a people that can find in its conscience any excuse whatever for slowly burning to death a human being, or for tolerating such an act, can be entrusted with the salvation of a race\". He ultimately decides that he will not claim or declaim his blackness and will simply pass for whatever people assume his race to be. He departs for New York. Back in New York, the narrator feels lost but decides to amuse himself for a few days before looking for a job. This endeavor is depressing and he decides to enroll in business school. It is not long before he becomes a clerk in a wholesale house. He lives frugally and then begins investing in real estate, at which he is extremely successful. He passes for white and is content with this until the day he falls in love with a woman. She is a singer and the narrator describes her as \"the most dazzlingly white thing I have ever seen\". They begin courting and he decides he wants to marry her; this makes him wonder if he should tell her the truth about his face. He agonizes over this decision for some time. One Sunday afternoon the narrator and the girl run into Shiny on the street. Now a professor, Shiny is in town to work in a summer school before getting married. The girl is very kind to Shiny and interested in him after he leaves, and the narrator therefore feels comfortable that she will accept his secret. He tells her and she is shocked into silence until she begins weeping. This, the narrator says, is the only moment he ever feels \"absolute regret at being colored\". The girl goes away for the summer and they do not have any communication. The narrator is heart-sick. A few months later, he learns she is back in town and they run into each other at the theater. They meet again at another party and there she confesses that she loves him too. The two are married and have two children; unfortunately, the girl dies in the second childbirth. The narrator claims he will never marry again and devotes his life to his children. He expresses ambivalence about his \"present position in the world\". On the one hand, he is glad he passes as white for his children's sake. On the other hand, he sees prominent African Americans like Booker T. Washington and feels like an insignificant white man who has managed to make some money, a choice which deprived him of standing up for his race. He ends the novel by wondering if \"I have chosen the lesser part...I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage\". In this section, the narrator travels to Europe and falls in love with Paris. However, he realizes that he needs to get back to his musical career and become a composer. He decides that the best place to do this is in the South, where he can be inspired by the African American music scene. The narrator's confusion and vacillation between being black or white permeates all of his decisions; his ambivalence suggests that he will not ever achieve a hegemonic racial identity. In these last two chapters of the novel, there are multiple depictions of African Americans. The narrator meets the doctor, who the narrator believes represents the best of the race, but back in the South, he is embarrassed by the downtrodden African Americans who populate the streets. He is inspired by the magnetic, impassioned, and authentic personages of Singing Johnson and John Brown, but is disgusted by the absolute debasement of a poor black man who is lynched by a white crowd. In this climactic moment, the anguished narrator comes to the conclusion that he can no longer live openly as a biracial man and that he will be content to pass for white. He decidedly rejects his heritage and embraces a life based on earning money and avoiding the difficulties and indignities that arise from being biracial. It is a willful self-denial seems to haunt him by the end of his story. By the end of the novel, the narrator's goals of making music that represents the traditions of his people and embracing his dual heritage are a distant memory. He is heavy with isolation and remorse. Because the narrator is biracial, he is able to critique both races according to Du Bois's theory of double consciousness. However, he rejects that potential source of power. He is ashamed of his blackness and wants to hide it. The critic Donald Goellnicht writes, \"so complete is the obliteration of an African heritage, so complete is the cultural assimilation to Euro-American values, that psychical bondage is obviated; the compliant subject policies himself.\" The narrative is destabilized by the inversion of what the reader assumes will occur -the narrator's becoming a \"race man\", a man like the doctor on the ship. His ultimate choice to pass as white is unpredictable and disappointing to many readers. On the other hand, it is possible to view the narrator's choice to pass as a veritable slap in the face to fixed notions of the racial divide. The narrator has an African American parent but is able to live and make money in a society dominated by white people without their even knowing it. This begs the question - does it even matter that the narrator is half-black? The marriage between the narrator and his wife would have fallen under the category of miscegenation if he revealed his racial background. The mere fact that the narrator chooses to pass as white may be viewed as a profound example of power and autonomy. He is an individual who chooses the path that he believes is right for himself and, later, for his family. Many critics have claimed that the novel is \"ironic\", but if it is, it is better viewed as a postmodern form of irony that does not rely on a stable referent. The act of \"passing\" can be held up to this standard as well. Passing implies that a person must be racially homogenous, but most cases do not fall neatly on one side of the racial divide. Passing could be intentional or unintentional; it was not just an imposter trying to cross the color line. As critic Neil Brooks explains, \"the physical manifestation of a psychological quest to understand oneself in a society where to be black was often not to have one consistent self, but to have a double self.\" The narrator's multiple identities and contradictions end up becoming his identity. He chooses the easier path but as a result, he cannot achieve any closure. This closure is a trope of the modernist reading of literature, but here is precisely why a postmodernist reading is more appropriate: \"the narrator has created a world where all is organized around himself, but it can never truly be organized because the self he has placed at the center is as unstable as the external world he seeks to control.\" The narrator's lack of a name also underscores his lack of a stable identity. This may indicate that he does not want to be labeled and participate in social classifications. Having always touted himself as the best at whatever he does, his namelessness is one further way for the narrator to overcome society's barriers and achieve material success. The tragedy of his choice is that he can be neither black nor white, and society still propagates arbitrary categorizations that, Brooks writes, \"cannot be applied adequately to the personal narratives of its individual members.\" Since the narrator never embraces a stable identity, the act of passing becomes that identity. His \"freedom from the societal meta-narratives of race\" brings with it \"the chaos of a disordered universe, which is also central to postmodern theory.\" Try as he might, the narrator can never bring closure to his own story. Overall, the novel proffers the idea that ambiguity about race is certainly part of a larger conversation, but that it is ultimately irresolvable.", "analysis": ""}

Among the first of my fellow-passengers of whom I took any particular notice was a tall, broad-shouldered, almost gigantic, colored man. His dark-brown face was clean-shaven; he was well-dressed and bore a decidedly distinguished air. In fact, if he was not handsome, he at least compelled admiration for his fine physical proportions. He attracted general attention as he strode the deck in a sort of majestic loneliness. I became curious to know who he was and determined to strike up an acquaintance with him at the first opportune moment. The chance came a day or two later. He was sitting in the smoking-room, with a cigar, which had gone out, in his mouth, reading a novel. I sat down beside him and, offering him a fresh cigar, said: "You don't mind my telling you something unpleasant, do you?" He looked at me with a smile, accepted the proffered cigar, and replied in a voice which comported perfectly with his size and appearance: "I think my curiosity overcomes any objections I might have." "Well," I said, "have you noticed that the man who sat at your right in the saloon during the first meal has not sat there since?" He frowned slightly without answering my question. "Well," I continued, "he asked the steward to remove him; and not only that, he attempted to persuade a number of the passengers to protest against your presence in the dining-saloon." The big man at my side took a long draw from his cigar, threw his head back, and slowly blew a great cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. Then turning to me he said: "Do you know, I don't object to anyone's having prejudices so long as those prejudices don't interfere with my personal liberty. Now, the man you are speaking of had a perfect right to change his seat if I in any way interfered with his appetite or his digestion. I should have no reason to complain if he removed to the farthest corner of the saloon, or even if he got off the ship; but when his prejudice attempts to move _me_ one foot, one inch, out of the place where I am comfortably located, then I object." On the word "object" he brought his great fist down on the table in front of us with such a crash that everyone in the room turned to look. We both covered up the slight embarrassment with a laugh and strolled out on the deck. We walked the deck for an hour or more, discussing different phases of the Negro question. In referring to the race I used the personal pronoun "we"; my companion made no comment about it, nor evinced any surprise, except to raise his eyebrows slightly the first time he caught the significance of the word. He was the broadest-minded colored man I have ever talked with on the Negro question. He even went so far as to sympathize with and offer excuses for some white Southern points of view. I asked him what were his main reasons for being so hopeful. He replied: "In spite of all that is written, said, and done, this great, big, incontrovertible fact stands out--the Negro is progressing, and that disproves all the arguments in the world that he is incapable of progress. I was born in slavery, and at emancipation was set adrift a ragged, penniless bit of humanity. I have seen the Negro in every grade, and I know what I am talking about. Our detractors point to the increase of crime as evidence against us; certainly we have progressed in crime as in other things; what less could be expected? And yet, in this respect, we are far from the point which has been reached by the more highly civilized white race. As we continue to progress, crime among us will gradually lose much of its brutal, vulgar, I might say healthy, aspect, and become more delicate, refined, and subtle. Then it will be less shocking and noticeable, although more dangerous to society." Then dropping his tone of irony, he continued with some show of eloquence: "But, above all, when I am discouraged and disheartened, I have this to fall back on: if there is a principle of right in the world, which finally prevails, and I believe that there is; if there is a merciful but justice-loving God in heaven, and I believe that there is, we shall win; for we have right on our side, while those who oppose us can defend themselves by nothing in the moral law, nor even by anything in the enlightened thought of the present age." For several days, together with other topics, we discussed the race problem, not only of the United States, but as it affected native Africans and Jews. Finally, before we reached Boston, our conversation had grown familiar and personal. I had told him something of my past and much about my intentions for the future. I learned that he was a physician, a graduate of Howard University, Washington, and had done post-graduate work in Philadelphia; and this was his second trip abroad to attend professional courses. He had practiced for some years in the city of Washington, and though he did not say so, I gathered that his practice was a lucrative one. Before we left the ship, he had made me promise that I would stop two or three days in Washington before going on south. We put up at a hotel in Boston for a couple of days and visited several of my new friend's acquaintances; they were all people of education and culture and, apparently, of means. I could not help being struck by the great difference between them and the same class of colored people in the South. In speech and thought they were genuine Yankees. The difference was especially noticeable in their speech. There was none of that heavy-tongued enunciation which characterizes even the best-educated colored people of the South. It is remarkable, after all, what an adaptable creature the Negro is. I have seen the black West Indian gentleman in London, and he is in speech and manners a perfect Englishman. I have seen natives of Haiti and Martinique in Paris, and they are more Frenchy than a Frenchman. I have no doubt that the Negro would make a good Chinaman, with exception of the pigtail. My stay in Washington, instead of being two or three days, was two or three weeks. This was my first visit to the national capital, and I was, of course, interested in seeing the public buildings and something of the working of the government; but most of my time I spent with the doctor among his friends and acquaintances. The social phase of life among colored people is more developed in Washington than in any other city in the country. This is on account of the large number of individuals earning good salaries and having a reasonable amount of leisure time to draw from. There are dozens of physicians and lawyers, scores of school teachers, and hundreds of clerks in the departments. As to the colored department clerks, I think it fair to say that in educational equipment they average above the white clerks of the same grade; for, whereas a colored college graduate will seek such a job, the white university man goes into one of the many higher vocations which are open to him. In a previous chapter I spoke of social life among colored people; so there is no need to take it up again here. But there is one thing I did not mention: among Negroes themselves there is the peculiar inconsistency of a color question. Its existence is rarely admitted and hardly ever mentioned; it may not be too strong a statement to say that the greater portion of the race is unconscious of its influence; yet this influence, though silent, is constant. It is evidenced most plainly in marriage selection; thus the black men generally marry women fairer than themselves; while, on the other hand, the dark women of stronger mental endowment are very often married to light-complexioned men; the effect is a tendency toward lighter complexions, especially among the more active elements in the race. Some might claim that this is a tacit admission of colored people among themselves of their own inferiority judged by the color line. I do not think so. What I have termed an inconsistency is, after all, most natural; it is, in fact, a tendency in accordance with what might be called an economic necessity. So far as racial differences go, the United States puts a greater premium on color, or, better, lack of color, than upon anything else in the world. To paraphrase, "Have a white skin, and all things else may be added unto you." I have seen advertisements in newspapers for waiters, bell-boys, or elevator men, which read: "Light-colored man wanted." It is this tremendous pressure which the sentiment of the country exerts that is operating on the race. There is involved not only the question of higher opportunity, but often the question of earning a livelihood; and so I say it is not strange, but a natural tendency. Nor is it any more a sacrifice of self-respect that a black man should give to his children every advantage he can which complexion of the skin carries than that the new or vulgar rich should purchase for their children the advantages which ancestry, aristocracy, and social position carry. I once heard a colored man sum it up in these words: "It's no disgrace to be black, but it's often very inconvenient." Washington shows the Negro not only at his best, but also at his worst. As I drove around with the doctor, he commented rather harshly on those of the latter class which we saw. He remarked: "You see those lazy, loafing, good-for-nothing darkies; they're not worth digging graves for; yet they are the ones who create impressions of the race for the casual observer. It's because they are always in evidence on the street corners, while the rest of us are hard at work, and you know a dozen loafing darkies make a bigger crowd and a worse impression in this country than fifty white men of the same class. But they ought not to represent the race. We are the race, and the race ought to be judged by us, not by them. Every race and every nation should be judged by the best it has been able to produce, not by the worst." The recollection of my stay in Washington is a pleasure to me now. In company with the doctor I visited Howard University, the public schools, the excellent colored hospital, with which he was in some way connected, if I remember correctly, and many comfortable and even elegant homes. It was with some reluctance that I continued my journey south. The doctor was very kind in giving me letters to people in Richmond and Nashville when I told him that I intended to stop in both of these cities. In Richmond a man who was then editing a very creditable colored newspaper gave me a great deal of his time and made my stay there of three or four days very pleasant. In Nashville I spent a whole day at Fisk University, the home of the "Jubilee Singers," and was more than repaid for my time. Among my letters of introduction was one to a very prosperous physician. He drove me about the city and introduced me to a number of people. From Nashville I went to Atlanta, where I stayed long enough to gratify an old desire to see Atlanta University again. I then continued my journey to Macon. During the trip from Nashville to Atlanta I went into the smoking-compartment of the car to smoke a cigar. I was traveling in a Pullman, not because of an abundance of funds, but because through my experience with my millionaire a certain amount of comfort and luxury had become a necessity to me whenever it was obtainable. When I entered the car, I found only a couple of men there; but in a half-hour there were half a dozen or more. From the general conversation I learned that a fat Jewish-looking man was a cigar manufacturer, and was experimenting in growing Havana tobacco in Florida; that a slender bespectacled young man was from Ohio and a professor in some State institution in Alabama; that a white-mustached, well-dressed man was an old Union soldier who had fought through the Civil War; and that a tall, raw-boned, red-faced man, who seemed bent on leaving nobody in ignorance of the fact that he was from Texas, was a cotton planter. In the North men may ride together for hours in a "smoker" and unless they are acquainted with each other never exchange a word; in the South men thrown together in such manner are friends in fifteen minutes. There is always present a warm-hearted cordiality which will melt down the most frigid reserve. It may be because Southerners are very much like Frenchmen in that they must talk; and not only must they talk, but they must express their opinions. The talk in the car was for a while miscellaneous--on the weather, crops, business prospects; the old Union soldier had invested capital in Atlanta, and he predicted that that city would soon be one of the greatest in the country. Finally the conversation drifted to politics; then, as a natural sequence, turned upon the Negro question. In the discussion of the race question the diplomacy of the Jew was something to be admired; he had the faculty of agreeing with everybody without losing his allegiance to any side. He knew that to sanction Negro oppression would be to sanction Jewish oppression and would expose him to a shot along that line from the old soldier, who stood firmly on the ground of equal rights and opportunity to all men; long traditions and business instincts told him when in Rome to act as a Roman. Altogether his position was a delicate one, and I gave him credit for the skill he displayed in maintaining it. The young professor was apologetic. He had had the same views as the G.A.R. man; but a year in the South had opened his eyes, and he had to confess that the problem could hardly be handled any better than it was being handled by the Southern whites. To which the G.A.R. man responded somewhat rudely that he had spent ten times as many years in the South as his young friend and that he could easily understand how holding a position in a State institution in Alabama would bring about a change of views. The professor turned very red and had very little more to say. The Texan was fierce, eloquent, and profane in his argument, and, in a lower sense, there was a direct logic in what he said, which was convincing; it was only by taking higher ground, by dealing in what Southerners call "theories," that he could be combated. Occasionally some one of the several other men in the "smoker" would throw in a remark to reinforce what he said, but he really didn't need any help; he was sufficient in himself. In the course of a short time the controversy narrowed itself down to an argument between the old soldier and the Texan. The latter maintained hotly that the Civil War was a criminal mistake on the part of the North and that the humiliation which the South suffered during Reconstruction could never be forgotten. The Union man retorted just as hotly that the South was responsible for the war and that the spirit of unforgetfulness on its part was the greatest cause of present friction; that it seemed to be the one great aim of the South to convince the North that the latter made a mistake in fighting to preserve the Union and liberate the slaves. "Can you imagine," he went on to say, "what would have been the condition of things eventually if there had been no war, and the South had been allowed to follow its course? Instead of one great, prosperous country with nothing before it but the conquests of peace, a score of petty republics, as in Central and South America, wasting their energies in war with each other or in revolutions." "Well," replied the Texan, "anything--no country at all--is better than having niggers over you. But anyhow, the war was fought and the niggers were freed; for it's no use beating around the bush, the niggers, and not the Union, was the cause of it; and now do you believe that all the niggers on earth are worth the good white blood that was spilt? You freed the nigger and you gave him the ballot, but you couldn't make a citizen out of him. He don't know what he's voting for, and we buy 'em like so many hogs. You're giving 'em education, but that only makes slick rascals out of 'em." "Don't fancy for a moment," said the Northern man, "that you have any monopoly in buying ignorant votes. The same thing is done on a larger scale in New York and Boston, and in Chicago and San Francisco; and they are not black votes either. As to education's making the Negro worse, you might just as well tell me that religion does the same thing. And, by the way, how many educated colored men do you know personally?" The Texan admitted that he knew only one, and added that he was in the penitentiary. "But," he said, "do you mean to claim, ballot or no ballot, education or no education, that niggers are the equals of white men?" "That's not the question," answered the other, "but if the Negro is so distinctly inferior, it is a strange thing to me that it takes such tremendous effort on the part of the white man to make him realize it, and to keep him in the same place into which inferior men naturally fall. However, let us grant for sake of argument that the Negro is inferior in every respect to the white man; that fact only increases our moral responsibility in regard to our actions toward him. Inequalities of numbers, wealth, and power, even of intelligence and morals, should make no difference in the essential rights of men." "If he's inferior and weaker, and is shoved to the wall, that's his own look-out," said the Texan. "That's the law of nature; and he's bound to go to the wall; for no race in the world has ever been able to stand competition with the Anglo-Saxon. The Anglo-Saxon race has always been and always will be the masters of the world, and the niggers in the South ain't going to change all the records of history." "My friend," said the old soldier slowly, "if you have studied history, will you tell me, as confidentially between white men, what the Anglo-Saxon has ever done?" The Texan was too much astonished by the question to venture any reply. His opponent continued: "Can you name a single one of the great fundamental and original intellectual achievements which have raised man in the scale of civilization that may be credited to the Anglo-Saxon? The art of letters, of poetry, of music, of sculpture, of painting, of the drama, of architecture; the science of mathematics, of astronomy, of philosophy, of logic, of physics, of chemistry, the use of the metals, and the principles of mechanics, were all invented or discovered by darker and what we now call inferior races and nations. We have carried many of these to their highest point of perfection, but the foundation was laid by others. Do you know the only original contribution to civilization we can claim is what we have done in steam and electricity and in making implements of war more deadly? And there we worked largely on principles which we did not discover. Why, we didn't even originate the religion we use. We are a great race, the greatest in the world today, but we ought to remember that we are standing on a pile of past races, and enjoy our position with a little less show of arrogance. We are simply having our turn at the game, and we were a long time getting to it. After all, racial supremacy is merely a matter of dates in history. The man here who belongs to what is, all in all, the greatest race the world ever produced, is almost ashamed to own it. If the Anglo-Saxon is the source of everything good and great in the human race from the beginning, why wasn't the German forest the birthplace of civilization, rather than the valley of the Nile?" The Texan was somewhat disconcerted, for the argument had passed a little beyond his limits, but he swung it back to where he was sure of his ground by saying: "All that may be true, but it hasn't got much to do with us and the niggers here in the South. We've got 'em here, and we've got 'em to live with, and it's a question of white man or nigger, no middle ground. You want us to treat niggers as equals. Do you want to see 'em sitting around in our parlors? Do you want to see a mulatto South? To bring it right home to you, would you let your daughter marry a nigger?" "No, I wouldn't consent to my daughter's marrying a nigger, but that doesn't prevent my treating a black man fairly. And I don't see what fair treatment has to do with niggers sitting around in your parlors; they can't come there unless they're invited. Out of all the white men I know, only a hundred or so have the privilege of sitting around in my parlor. As to the mulatto South, if you Southerners have one boast that is stronger than another, it is your women; you put them on a pinnacle of purity and virtue and bow down in a chivalric worship before them; yet you talk and act as though, should you treat the Negro fairly and take the anti-inter-marriage laws off your statute books, these same women would rush into the arms of black lovers and husbands. It's a wonder to me that they don't rise up and resent the insult." "Colonel," said the Texan, as he reached into his handbag and brought out a large flask of whisky, "you might argue from now until hell freezes over, and you might convince me that you're right, but you'll never convince me that I'm wrong. All you say sounds very good, but it's got nothing to do with facts. You can say what men ought to be, but they ain't that; so there you are. Down here in the South we're up against facts, and we're meeting 'em like facts. We don't believe the nigger is or ever will be the equal of the white man, and we ain't going to treat him as an equal; I'll be damned if we will. Have a drink." Everybody except the professor partook of the generous Texan's flask, and the argument closed in a general laugh and good feeling. I went back into the main part of the car with the conversation on my mind. Here I had before me the bald, raw, naked aspects of the race question in the South; and, in consideration of the step I was just taking, it was far from encouraging. The sentiments of the Texan--and he expressed the sentiments of the South--fell upon me like a chill. I was sick at heart. Yet I must confess that underneath it all I felt a certain sort of admiration for the man who could not be swayed from what he held as his principles. Contrasted with him, the young Ohio professor was indeed a pitiable character. And all along, in spite of myself, I have been compelled to accord the same kind of admiration to the Southern white man for the manner in which he defends not only his virtues, but his vices. He knows that, judged by a high standard, he is narrow and prejudiced, that he is guilty of unfairness, oppression, and cruelty, but this he defends as stoutly as he would his better qualities. This same spirit obtains in a great degree among the blacks; they, too, defend their faults and failings. This they generally do whenever white people are concerned. And yet among themselves they are their own most merciless critics. I have never heard the race so terribly arraigned as I have by colored speakers to strictly colored audiences. It is the spirit of the South to defend everything belonging to it. The North is too cosmopolitan and tolerant for such a spirit. If you should say to an Easterner that Paris is a gayer city than New York, he would be likely to agree with you, or at least to let you have your own way; but to suggest to a South Carolinian that Boston is a nicer city to live in than Charleston would be to stir his greatest depths of argument and eloquence. But to-day, as I think over that smoking-car argument, I can see it in a different light. The Texan's position does not render things so hopeless, for it indicates that the main difficulty of the race question does not lie so much in the actual condition of the blacks as it does in the mental attitude of the whites; and a mental attitude, especially one not based on truth, can be changed more easily than actual conditions. That is to say, the burden of the question is not that the whites are struggling to save ten million despondent and moribund people from sinking into a hopeless slough of ignorance, poverty, and barbarity in their very midst, but that they are unwilling to open certain doors of opportunity and to accord certain treatment to ten million aspiring, education-and-property-acquiring people. In a word, the difficulty of the problem is not so much due to the facts presented as to the hypothesis assumed for its solution. In this it is similar to the problem of the solar system. By a complex, confusing, and almost contradictory mathematical process, by the use of zigzags instead of straight lines, the earth can be proved to be the center of things celestial; but by an operation so simple that it can be comprehended by a schoolboy, its position can be verified among the other worlds which revolve about the sun, and its movements harmonized with the laws of the universe. So, when the white race assumes as a hypothesis that it is the main object of creation and that all things else are merely subsidiary to its well-being, sophism, subterfuge, perversion of conscience, arrogance, injustice, oppression, cruelty, sacrifice of human blood, all are required to maintain the position, and its dealings with other races become indeed a problem, a problem which, if based on a hypothesis of common humanity, could be solved by the simple rules of justice. When I reached Macon, I decided to leave my trunk and all my surplus belongings, to pack my bag, and strike out into the interior. This I did; and by train, by mule and ox-cart, I traveled through many counties. This was my first real experience among rural colored people, and all that I saw was interesting to me; but there was a great deal which does not require description at my hands; for log cabins and plantations and dialect-speaking "darkies" are perhaps better known in American literature than any other single picture of our national life. Indeed, they form an ideal and exclusive literary concept of the American Negro to such an extent that it is almost impossible to get the reading public to recognize him in any other setting; so I shall endeavor to avoid giving the reader any already overworked and hackneyed descriptions. This generally accepted literary ideal of the American Negro constitutes what is really an obstacle in the way of the thoughtful and progressive element of the race. His character has been established as a happy-go-lucky, laughing, shuffling, banjo-picking being, and the reading public has not yet been prevailed upon to take him seriously. His efforts to elevate himself socially are looked upon as a sort of absurd caricature of "white civilization." A novel dealing with colored people who lived in respectable homes and amidst a fair degree of culture and who naturally acted "just like white folks" would be taken in a comic-opera sense. In this respect the Negro is much in the position of a great comedian who gives up the lighter roles to play tragedy. No matter how well he may portray the deeper passions, the public is loath to give him up in his old character; they even conspire to make him a failure in serious work, in order to force him back into comedy. In the same respect, the public is not too much to be blamed, for great comedians are far more scarce than mediocre tragedians; every amateur actor is a tragedian. However, this very fact constitutes the opportunity of the future Negro novelist and poet to give the country something new and unknown, in depicting the life, the ambitions, the struggles, and the passions of those of their race who are striving to break the narrow limits of traditions. A beginning has already been made in that remarkable book by Dr. Du Bois, _The Souls of Black Folk_. Much, too, that I saw while on this trip, in spite of my enthusiasm, was disheartening. Often I thought of what my millionaire had said to me, and wished myself back in Europe. The houses in which I had to stay were generally uncomfortable, sometimes worse. I often had to sleep in a division or compartment with several other people. Once or twice I was not so fortunate as to find divisions; everybody slept on pallets on the floor. Frequently I was able to lie down and contemplate the stars which were in their zenith. The food was at times so distasteful and poorly cooked that I could not eat it. I remember that once I lived for a week or more on buttermilk, on account of not being able to stomach the fat bacon, the rank turnip-tops, and the heavy damp mixture of meal, salt, and water which was called corn bread. It was only my ambition to do the work which I had planned that kept me steadfast to my purpose. Occasionally I would meet with some signs of progress and uplift in even one of these back-wood settlements--houses built of boards, with windows, and divided into rooms; decent food, and a fair standard of living. This condition was due to the fact that there was in the community some exceptionally capable Negro farmer whose thrift served as an example. As I went about among these dull, simple people--the great majority of them hard working, in their relations with the whites submissive, faithful, and often affectionate, negatively content with their lot--and contrasted them with those of the race who had been quickened by the forces of thought, I could not but appreciate the logic of the position held by those Southern leaders who have been bold enough to proclaim against the education of the Negro. They are consistent in their public speech with Southern sentiment and desires. Those public men of the South who have not been daring or heedless enough to defy the ideals of twentieth-century civilization and of modern humanitarianism and philanthropy, find themselves in the embarrassing situation of preaching one thing and praying for another. They are in the position of the fashionable woman who is compelled by the laws of polite society to say to her dearest enemy: "How happy I am to see you!" And yet in this respect how perplexing is Southern character; for, in opposition to the above, it may be said that the claim of the Southern whites that they love the Negro better than the Northern whites do is in a manner true. Northern white people love the Negro in a sort of abstract way, as a race; through a sense of justice, charity, and philanthropy, they will liberally assist in his elevation. A number of them have heroically spent their lives in this effort (and just here I wish to say that when the colored people reach the monument-building stage, they should not forget the men and women who went South after the war and founded schools for them). Yet, generally speaking, they have no particular liking for individuals of the race. Southern white people despise the Negro as a race, and will do nothing to aid in his elevation as such; but for certain individuals they have a strong affection, and are helpful to them in many ways. With these individual members of the race they live on terms of the greatest intimacy; they entrust to them their children, their family treasures, and their family secrets; in trouble they often go to them for comfort and counsel; in sickness they often rely upon their care. This affectionate relation between the Southern whites and those blacks who come into close touch with them has not been overdrawn even in fiction. This perplexity of Southern character extends even to the intermixture of the races. That is spoken of as though it were dreaded worse than smallpox, leprosy, or the plague. Yet, when I was in Jacksonville, I knew several prominent families there with large colored branches, which went by the same name and were known and acknowledged as blood relatives. And what is more, there seemed to exist between these black brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts a decidedly friendly feeling. I said above that Southern whites would do nothing for the Negro as a race. I know the South claims that it has spent millions for the education of the blacks, and that it has of its own free will shouldered this awful burden. It seems to be forgetful of the fact that these millions have been taken from the public tax funds for education, and that the law of political economy which recognizes the land owner as the one who really pays the taxes is not tenable. It would be just as reasonable for the relatively few land owners of Manhattan to complain that they had to stand the financial burden of the education of the thousands and thousands of children whose parents pay rent for tenements and flats. Let the millions of producing and consuming Negroes be taken out of the South, and it would be quickly seen how much less of public funds there would be to appropriate for education or any other purpose. In thus traveling about through the country I was sometimes amused on arriving at some little railroad-station town to be taken for and treated as a white man, and six hours later, when it was learned that I was stopping at the house of the colored preacher or school teacher, to note the attitude of the whole town change. At times this led even to embarrassment. Yet it cannot be so embarrassing for a colored man to be taken for white as for a white man to be taken for colored; and I have heard of several cases of the latter kind. All this while I was gathering material for work, jotting down in my note-book themes and melodies, and trying to catch the spirit of the Negro in his relatively primitive state. I began to feel the necessity of hurrying so that I might get back to some city like Nashville to begin my compositions and at the same time earn at least a living by teaching and performing before my funds gave out. At the last settlement in which I stopped I found a mine of material. This was due to the fact that "big meeting" was in progress. "Big meeting" is an institution something like camp-meeting, the difference being that it is held in a permanent church, and not in a temporary structure. All the churches of some one denomination--of course, either Methodist or Baptist--in a county, or, perhaps, in several adjoining counties, are closed, and the congregations unite at some centrally located church for a series of meetings lasting a week. It is really a social as well as a religious function. The people come in great numbers, making the trip, according to their financial status, in buggies drawn by sleek, fleet-footed mules, in ox-carts, or on foot. It was amusing to see some of the latter class trudging down the hot and dusty road, with their shoes, which were brand-new, strung across their shoulders. When they got near the church, they sat on the side of the road and, with many grimaces, tenderly packed their feet into those instruments of torture. This furnished, indeed, a trying test of their religion. The famous preachers come from near and far and take turns in warning sinners of the day of wrath. Food, in the form of those two Southern luxuries, fried chicken and roast pork, is plentiful, and no one need go hungry. On the opening Sunday the women are immaculate in starched stiff white dresses adorned with ribbons, either red or blue. Even a great many of the men wear streamers of vari-colored ribbons in the buttonholes of their coats. A few of them carefully cultivate a forelock of hair by wrapping it in twine, and on such festive occasions decorate it with a narrow ribbon streamer. Big meetings afford a fine opportunity to the younger people to meet each other dressed in their Sunday clothes, and much rustic courting, which is as enjoyable as any other kind, is indulged in. This big meeting which I was lucky enough to catch was particularly well attended; the extra large attendance was due principally to two attractions, a man by the name of John Brown, who was renowned as the most powerful preacher for miles around; and a wonderful leader of singing, who was known as "Singing Johnson." These two men were a study and a revelation to me. They caused me to reflect upon how great an influence their types have been in the development of the Negro in America. Both these types are now looked upon generally with condescension or contempt by the progressive element among the colored people; but it should never be forgotten that it was they who led the race from paganism and kept it steadfast to Christianity through all the long, dark years of slavery. John Brown was a jet-black man of medium size, with a strikingly intelligent head and face, and a voice like an organ peal. He preached each night after several lesser lights had successively held the pulpit during an hour or so. As far as subject-matter is concerned, all of the sermons were alike: each began with the fall of man, ran through various trials and tribulations of the Hebrew children, on to the redemption by Christ, and ended with a fervid picture of the judgment day and the fate of the damned. But John Brown possessed magnetism and an imagination so free and daring that he was able to carry through what the other preachers would not attempt. He knew all the arts and tricks of oratory, the modulation of the voice to almost a whisper, the pause for effect, the rise through light, rapid-fire sentences to the terrific, thundering outburst of an electrifying climax. In addition, he had the intuition of a born theatrical manager. Night after night this man held me fascinated. He convinced me that, after all, eloquence consists more in the manner of saying than in what is said. It is largely a matter of tone pictures. The most striking example of John Brown's magnetism and imagination was his "heavenly march"; I shall never forget how it impressed me when I heard it. He opened his sermon in the usual way; then, proclaiming to his listeners that he was going to take them on the heavenly march, he seized the Bible under his arm and began to pace up and down the pulpit platform. The congregation immediately began with their feet a tramp, tramp, tramp, in time with the preacher's march in the pulpit, all the while singing in an undertone a hymn about marching to Zion. Suddenly he cried: "Halt!" Every foot stopped with the precision of a company of well-drilled soldiers, and the singing ceased. The morning star had been reached. Here the preacher described the beauties of that celestial body. Then the march, the tramp, tramp, tramp, and the singing were again taken up. Another "Halt!" They had reached the evening star. And so on, past the sun and moon--the intensity of religious emotion all the time increasing--along the milky way, on up to the gates of heaven. Here the halt was longer, and the preacher described at length the gates and walls of the New Jerusalem. Then he took his hearers through the pearly gates, along the golden streets, pointing out the glories of the city, pausing occasionally to greet some patriarchal members of the church, well-known to most of his listeners in life, who had had "the tears wiped from their eyes, were clad in robes of spotless white, with crowns of gold upon their heads and harps within their hands," and ended his march before the great white throne. To the reader this may sound ridiculous, but listened to under the circumstances, it was highly and effectively dramatic. I was a more or less sophisticated and non-religious man of the world, but the torrent of the preacher's words, moving with the rhythm and glowing with the eloquence of primitive poetry, swept me along, and I, too, felt like joining in the shouts of "Amen! Hallelujah!" John Brown's powers in describing the delights of heaven were no greater than those in depicting the horrors of hell. I saw great, strapping fellows trembling and weeping like children at the "mourners' bench." His warnings to sinners were truly terrible. I shall never forget one expression that he used, which for originality and aptness could not be excelled. In my opinion, it is more graphic and, for us, far more expressive than St. Paul's "It is hard to kick against the pricks." He struck the attitude of a pugilist and thundered out: "Young man, your arm's too short to box with God!" Interesting as was John Brown to me, the other man, "Singing Johnson," was more so. He was a small, dark-brown, one-eyed man, with a clear, strong, high-pitched voice, a leader of singing, a maker of songs, a man who could improvise at the moment lines to fit the occasion. Not so striking a figure as John Brown, but, at "big meetings," equally important. It is indispensable to the success of the singing, when the congregation is a large one made up of people from different communities, to have someone with a strong voice who knows just what hymn to sing and when to sing it, who can pitch it in the right key, and who has all the leading lines committed to memory. Sometimes it devolves upon the leader to "sing down" a long-winded or uninteresting speaker. Committing to memory the leading lines of all the Negro spiritual songs is no easy task, for they run up into the hundreds. But the accomplished leader must know them all, because the congregation sings only the refrains and repeats; every ear in the church is fixed upon him, and if he becomes mixed in his lines or forgets them, the responsibility falls directly on his shoulders. For example, most of these hymns are constructed to be sung in the following manner: Leader. _Swing low, sweet chariot._ Congregation. _Coming for to carry me home._ Leader. _Swing low, sweet chariot._ Congregation. _Coming for to carry me home._ Leader. _I look over yonder, what do I see?_ Congregation. _Coming for to carry me home._ Leader. _Two little angels coming after me._ Congregation. _Coming for to carry me home...._ The solitary and plaintive voice of the leader is answered by a sound like the roll of the sea, producing a most curious effect. In only a few of these songs do the leader and the congregation start off together. Such a song is the well-known "Steal away to Jesus." The leader and the congregation begin with part-singing: _Steal away, steal away, Steal away to Jesus; Steal away, steal away home, I ain't got long to stay here._ Then the leader alone or the congregation in unison: _My Lord he calls me, He calls me by the thunder, The trumpet sounds within-a my soul._ Then all together: _I ain't got long to stay here._ The leader and the congregation again take up the opening refrain; then the leader sings three more leading lines alone, and so on almost _ad infinitum_. It will be seen that even here most of the work falls upon the leader, for the congregation sings the same lines over and over, while his memory and ingenuity are taxed to keep the songs going. Generally the parts taken up by the congregation are sung in a three-part harmony, the women singing the soprano and a transposed tenor, the men with high voices singing the melody, and those with low voices a thundering bass. In a few of these songs, however, the leading part is sung in unison by the whole congregation, down to the last line, which is harmonized. The effect of this is intensely thrilling. Such a hymn is "Go down, Moses." It stirs the heart like a trumpet call. "Singing Johnson" was an ideal leader, and his services were in great demand. He spent his time going about the country from one church to another. He received his support in much the same way as the preachers--part of a collection, food and lodging. All of his leisure time he devoted to originating new words and melodies and new lines for old songs. He always sang with his eyes--or, to be more exact, his eye--closed, indicating the _tempo_ by swinging his head to and fro. He was a great judge of the proper hymn to sing at a particular moment; and I noticed several times, when the preacher reached a certain climax, or expressed a certain sentiment, that Johnson broke in with a line or two of some appropriate hymn. The speaker understood and would pause until the singing ceased. As I listened to the singing of these songs, the wonder of their production grew upon me more and more. How did the men who originated them manage to do it? The sentiments are easily accounted for; they are mostly taken from the Bible; but the melodies, where did they come from? Some of them so weirdly sweet, and others so wonderfully strong. Take, for instance, "Go down, Moses." I doubt that there is a stronger theme in the whole musical literature of the world. And so many of these songs contain more than mere melody; there is sounded in them that elusive undertone, the note in music which is not heard with the ears. I sat often with the tears rolling down my cheeks and my heart melted within me. Any musical person who has never heard a Negro congregation under the spell of religious fervor sing these old songs has missed one of the most thrilling emotions which the human heart may experience. Anyone who without shedding tears can listen to Negroes sing "Nobody knows de trouble I see, Nobody knows but Jesus" must indeed have a heart of stone. As yet, the Negroes themselves do not fully appreciate these old slave songs. The educated classes are rather ashamed of them and prefer to sing hymns from books. This feeling is natural; they are still too close to the conditions under which the songs were produced; but the day will come when this slave music will be the most treasured heritage of the American Negro. At the close of the "big meeting" I left the settlement where it was being held, full of enthusiasm. I was in that frame of mind which, in the artistic temperament, amounts to inspiration. I was now ready and anxious to get to some place where I might settle down to work, and give expression to the ideas which were teeming in my head; but I strayed into another deviation from my path of life as I had it marked out, which led me upon an entirely different road. Instead of going to the nearest and most convenient railroad station, I accepted the invitation of a young man who had been present the closing Sunday at the meeting to drive with him some miles farther to the town in which he taught school, and there take the train. My conversation with this young man as we drove along through the country was extremely interesting. He had been a student in one of the Negro colleges--strange coincidence, in the very college, as I learned through him, in which "Shiny" was now a professor. I was, of course, curious to hear about my boyhood friend; and had it not been vacation time, and that I was not sure that I should find him, I should have gone out of my way to pay him a visit; but I determined to write to him as soon as the school opened. My companion talked to me about his work among the people, of his hopes and his discouragements. He was tremendously in earnest; I might say, too much so. In fact, it may be said that the majority of intelligent colored people are, in some degree, too much in earnest over the race question. They assume and carry so much that their progress is at times impeded and they are unable to see things in their proper proportions. In many instances a slight exercise of the sense of humor would save much anxiety of soul. Anyone who marks the general tone of editorials in colored newspapers is apt to be impressed with this idea. If the mass of Negroes took their present and future as seriously as do the most of their leaders, the race would be in no mental condition to sustain the terrible pressure which it undergoes; it would sink of its own weight. Yet it must be acknowledged that in the making of a race overseriousness is a far lesser failing than its reverse, and even the faults resulting from it lean toward the right. We drove into the town just before dark. As we passed a large, unpainted church, my companion pointed it out as the place where he held his school. I promised that I would go there with him the next morning and visit awhile. The town was of that kind which hardly requires or deserves description; a straggling line of brick and wooden stores on one side of the railroad track and some cottages of various sizes on the other side constituted about the whole of it. The young school teacher boarded at the best house in the place owned by a colored man. It was painted, had glass windows, contained "store bought" furniture, an organ, and lamps with chimneys. The owner held a job of some kind on the railroad. After supper it was not long before everybody was sleepy. I occupied the room with the school teacher. In a few minutes after we got into the room he was in bed and asleep; but I took advantage of the unusual luxury of a lamp which gave light, and sat looking over my notes and jotting down some ideas which were still fresh in my mind. Suddenly I became conscious of that sense of alarm which is always aroused by the sound of hurrying footsteps on the silence of the night. I stopped work and looked at my watch. It was after eleven. I listened, straining every nerve to hear above the tumult of my quickening pulse. I caught the murmur of voices, then the gallop of a horse, then of another and another. Now thoroughly alarmed, I woke my companion, and together we both listened. After a moment he put out the light and softly opened the window-blind, and we cautiously peeped out. We saw men moving in one direction, and from the mutterings we vaguely caught the rumor that some terrible crime had been committed. I put on my coat and hat. My friend did all in his power to dissuade me from venturing out, but it was impossible for me to remain in the house under such tense excitement. My nerves would not have stood it. Perhaps what bravery I exercised in going out was due to the fact that I felt sure my identity as a colored man had not yet become known in the town. I went out and, following the drift, reached the railroad station. There was gathered there a crowd of men, all white, and others were steadily arriving, seemingly from all the surrounding country. How did the news spread so quickly? I watched these men moving under the yellow glare of the kerosene lamps about the station, stern, comparatively silent, all of them armed, some of them in boots and spurs; fierce, determined men. I had come to know the type well, blond, tall, and lean, with ragged mustache and beard, and glittering gray eyes. At the first suggestion of daylight they began to disperse in groups, going in several directions. There was no extra noise or excitement, no loud talking, only swift, sharp words of command given by those who seemed to be accepted as leaders by mutual understanding. In fact, the impression made upon me was that everything was being done in quite an orderly manner. In spite of so many leaving, the crowd around the station continued to grow; at sunrise there were a great many women and children. By this time I also noticed some colored people; a few seemed to be going about customary tasks; several were standing on the outskirts of the crowd; but the gathering of Negroes usually seen in such towns was missing. Before noon they brought him in. Two horsemen rode abreast; between them, half dragged, the poor wretch made his way through the dust. His hands were tied behind him, and ropes around his body were fastened to the saddle horns of his double guard. The men who at midnight had been stern and silent were now emitting that terror-instilling sound known as the "rebel yell." A space was quickly cleared in the crowd, and a rope placed about his neck, when from somewhere came the suggestion, "Burn him!" It ran like an electric current. Have you ever witnessed the transformation of human beings into savage beasts? Nothing can be more terrible. A railroad tie was sunk into the ground, the rope was removed, and a chain brought and securely coiled around the victim and the stake. There he stood, a man only in form and stature, every sign of degeneracy stamped upon his countenance. His eyes were dull and vacant, indicating not a single ray of thought. Evidently the realization of his fearful fate had robbed him of whatever reasoning power he had ever possessed. He was too stunned and stupefied even to tremble. Fuel was brought from everywhere, oil, the torch; the flames crouched for an instant as though to gather strength, then leaped up as high as their victim's head. He squirmed, he writhed, strained at his chains, then gave out cries and groans that I shall always hear. The cries and groans were choked off by the fire and smoke; but his eyes, bulging from their sockets, rolled from side to side, appealing in vain for help. Some of the crowd yelled and cheered, others seemed appalled at what they had done, and there were those who turned away sickened at the sight. I was fixed to the spot where I stood, powerless to take my eyes from what I did not want to see. It was over before I realized that time had elapsed. Before I could make myself believe that what I saw was really happening, I was looking at a scorched post, a smoldering fire, blackened bones, charred fragments sifting down through coils of chain; and the smell of burnt flesh--human flesh--was in my nostrils. I walked a short distance away and sat down in order to clear my dazed mind. A great wave of humiliation and shame swept over me. Shame that I belonged to a race that could be so dealt with; and shame for my country, that it, the great example of democracy to the world, should be the only civilized, if not the only state on earth, where a human being would be burned alive. My heart turned bitter within me. I could understand why Negroes are led to sympathize with even their worst criminals and to protect them when possible. By all the impulses of normal human nature they can and should do nothing less. Whenever I hear protests from the South that it should be left alone to deal with the Negro question, my thoughts go back to that scene of brutality and savagery. I do not see how a people that can find in its conscience any excuse whatever for slowly burning to death a human being, or for tolerating such an act, can be entrusted with the salvation of a race. Of course, there are in the South men of liberal thought who do not approve lynching, but I wonder how long they will endure the limits which are placed upon free speech. They still cower and tremble before "Southern opinion." Even so late as the recent Atlanta riot those men who were brave enough to speak a word in behalf of justice and humanity felt called upon, by way of apology, to preface what they said with a glowing rhetorical tribute to the Anglo-Saxon's superiority and to refer to the "great and impassable gulf" between the races "fixed by the Creator at the foundation of the world." The question of the relative qualities of the two races is still an open one. The reference to the "great gulf" loses force in face of the fact that there are in this country perhaps three or four million people with the blood of both races in their veins; but I fail to see the pertinency of either statement subsequent to the beating and murdering of scores of innocent people in the streets of a civilized and Christian city. The Southern whites are in many respects a great people. Looked at from a certain point of view, they are picturesque. If one will put oneself in a romantic frame of mind, one can admire their notions of chivalry and bravery and justice. In this same frame of mind an intelligent man can go to the theatre and applaud the impossible hero, who with his single sword slays everybody in the play except the equally impossible heroine. So can an ordinary peace-loving citizen sit by a comfortable fire and read with enjoyment of the bloody deeds of pirates and the fierce brutality of Vikings. This is the way in which we gratify the old, underlying animal instincts and passions; but we should shudder with horror at the mere idea of such practices being realities in this day of enlightened and humanitarianized thought. The Southern whites are not yet living quite in the present age; many of their general ideas hark back to a former century, some of them to the Dark Ages. In the light of other days they are sometimes magnificent. Today they are often cruel and ludicrous. How long I sat with bitter thoughts running through my mind I do not know; perhaps an hour or more. When I decided to get up and go back to the house, I found that I could hardly stand on my feet. I was as weak as a man who had lost blood. However, I dragged myself along, with the central idea of a general plan well fixed in my mind. I did not find my school teacher friend at home, so I did not see him again. I swallowed a few mouthfuls of food, packed my bag, and caught the afternoon train. When I reached Macon, I stopped only long enough to get the main part of my luggage and to buy a ticket for New York. All along the journey I was occupied in debating with myself the step which I had decided to take. I argued that to forsake one's race to better one's condition was no less worthy an action than to forsake one's country for the same purpose. I finally made up my mind that I would neither disclaim the black race nor claim the white race; but that I would change my name, raise a mustache, and let the world take me for what it would; that it was not necessary for me to go about with a label of inferiority pasted across my forehead. All the while I understood that it was not discouragement or fear or search for a larger field of action and opportunity that was driving me out of the Negro race. I knew that it was shame, unbearable shame. Shame at being identified with a people that could with impunity be treated worse than animals. For certainly the law would restrain and punish the malicious burning alive of animals. So once again I found myself gazing at the towers of New York and wondering what future that city held in store for me. I have now reached that part of my narrative where I must be brief and touch only on important facts; therefore the reader must make up his mind to pardon skips and jumps and meager details. When I reached New York, I was completely lost. I could not have felt more a stranger had I been suddenly dropped into Constantinople. I knew not where to turn or how to strike out. I was so oppressed by a feeling of loneliness that the temptation to visit my old home in Connecticut was well-nigh irresistible. I reasoned, however, that unless I found my old music teacher, I should be, after so many years of absence, as much of a stranger there as in New York; and, furthermore, that in view of the step which I had decided to take, such a visit would be injudicious. I remembered, too, that I had some property there in the shape of a piano and a few books, but decided that it would not be worth what it might cost me to take possession. By reason of the fact that my living expenses in the South had been very small, I still had nearly four hundred dollars of my capital left. In contemplation of this, my natural and acquired Bohemian tastes asserted themselves, and I decided to have a couple of weeks' good time before worrying seriously about the future. I went to Coney Island and the other resorts, took in the pre-season shows along Broadway, and ate at first-class restaurants; but I shunned the old Sixth Avenue district as though it were pest-infected. My few days of pleasure made appalling inroads upon what cash I had, and caused me to see that it required a good deal of money to live in New York as I wished to live and that I should have to find, very soon, some more or less profitable employment. I was sure that unknown, without friends or prestige, it would be useless to try to establish myself as a teacher of music; so I gave that means of earning a livelihood scarcely any consideration. And even had I considered it possible to secure pupils, as I then felt, I should have hesitated about taking up a work in which the chances for any considerable financial success are necessarily so small. I had made up my mind that since I was not going to be a Negro, I would avail myself of every possible opportunity to make a white man's success; and that, if it can be summed up in any one word, means "money." I watched the "want" columns in the newspapers and answered a number of advertisements, but in each case found the positions were such as I could not fill or did not want. I also spent several dollars for "ads" which brought me no replies. In this way I came to know the hopes and disappointments of a large and pitiable class of humanity in this great city, the people who look for work through the newspapers. After some days of this sort of experience I concluded that the main difficulty with me was that I was not prepared for what I wanted to do. I then decided upon a course which, for an artist, showed an uncommon amount of practical sense and judgment. I made up my mind to enter a business college. I took a small room, ate at lunch counters, in order to economize, and pursued my studies with the zeal that I have always been able to put into any work upon which I set my heart. Yet, in spite of all my economy, when I had been at the school for several months, my funds gave out completely. I reached the point where I could not afford sufficient food for each day. In this plight I was glad to get, through one of the teachers, a job as an ordinary clerk in a downtown wholesale house. I did my work faithfully, and received a raise of salary before I expected it. I even managed to save a little money out of my modest earnings. In fact, I began then to contract the money fever, which later took strong possession of me. I kept my eyes open, watching for a chance to better my condition. It finally came in the form of a position with a house which was at the time establishing a South American department. My knowledge of Spanish was, of course, the principal cause of my good luck; and it did more for me: it placed me where the other clerks were practically put out of competition with me. I was not slow in taking advantage of the opportunity to make myself indispensable to the firm. What an interesting and absorbing game is money-making! After each deposit at my savings-bank I used to sit and figure out, all over again, my principal and interest, and make calculations on what the increase would be in such and such time. Out of this I derived a great deal of pleasure. I denied myself as much as possible in order to swell my savings. As much as I enjoyed smoking, I limited myself to an occasional cigar, and that was generally of a variety which in my old days at the "Club" was known as a "Henry Mud." Drinking I cut out altogether, but that was no great sacrifice. The day on which I was able to figure up a thousand dollars marked an epoch in my life. And this was not because I had never before had money. In my gambling days and while I was with my millionaire I handled sums running high up into the hundreds; but they had come to me like fairy godmother's gifts, and at a time when my conception of money was that it was made only to spend. Here, on the other hand, was a thousand dollars which I had earned by days of honest and patient work, a thousand dollars which I had carefully watched grow from the first dollar; and I experienced, in owning them, a pride and satisfaction which to me was an entirely new sensation. As my capital went over the thousand-dollar mark, I was puzzled to know what to do with it, how to put it to the most advantageous use. I turned down first one scheme and then another, as though they had been devised for the sole purpose of gobbling up my money. I finally listened to a friend who advised me to put all I had in New York real estate; and under his guidance I took equity in a piece of property on which stood a rickety old tenement-house. I did not regret following this friend's advice, for in something like six months I disposed of my equity for more than double my investment. From that time on I devoted myself to the study of New York real estate and watched for opportunities to make similar investments. In spite of two or three speculations which did not turn out well, I have been remarkably successful. Today I am the owner and part-owner of several flat-houses. I have changed my place of employment four times since returning to New York, and each change has been a decided advancement. Concerning the position which I now hold I shall say nothing except that it pays extremely well. As my outlook on the world grew brighter, I began to mingle in the social circles of the men with whom I came in contact; and gradually, by a process of elimination, I reached a grade of society of no small degree of culture. My appearance was always good and my ability to play on the piano, especially ragtime, which was then at the height of its vogue, made me a welcome guest. The anomaly of my social position often appealed strongly to my sense of humor. I frequently smiled inwardly at some remark not altogether complimentary to people of color; and more than once I felt like declaiming: "I am a colored man. Do I not disprove the theory that one drop of Negro blood renders a man unfit?" Many a night when I returned to my room after an enjoyable evening, I laughed heartily over what struck me as the capital joke I was playing. Then I met her, and what I had regarded as a joke was gradually changed into the most serious question of my life. I first saw her at a musical which was given one evening at a house to which I was frequently invited. I did not notice her among the other guests before she came forward and sang two sad little songs. When she began, I was out in the hallway, where many of the men were gathered; but with the first few notes I crowded with others into the doorway to see who the singer was. When I saw the girl, the surprise which I had felt at the first sound of her voice was heightened; she was almost tall and quite slender, with lustrous yellow hair and eyes so blue as to appear almost black. She was as white as a lily, and she was dressed in white. Indeed, she seemed to me the most dazzlingly white thing I had ever seen. But it was not her delicate beauty which attracted me most; it was her voice, a voice which made one wonder how tones of such passionate color could come from so fragile a body. I determined that when the program was over, I would seek an introduction to her; but at the moment, instead of being the easy man of the world, I became again the bashful boy of fourteen, and my courage failed me. I contented myself with hovering as near her as politeness would permit; near enough to hear her voice, which in conversation was low, yet thrilling, like the deeper middle tones of a flute. I watched the men gather round her talking and laughing in an easy manner, and wondered how it was possible for them to do it. But destiny, my special destiny, was at work. I was standing near, talking with affected gaiety to several young ladies, who, however, must have remarked my preoccupation; for my second sense of hearing was alert to what was being said by the group of which the girl in white was the center, when I heard her say: "I think his playing of Chopin is exquisite." And one of my friends in the group replied: "You haven't met him? Allow me----" Then turning to me, "Old man, when you have a moment I wish you to meet Miss ----." I don't know what she said to me or what I said to her. I can remember that I tried to be clever, and experienced a growing conviction that I was making myself appear more and more idiotic. I am certain, too, that, in spite of my Italian-like complexion, I was as red as a beet. Instead of taking the car, I walked home. I needed the air and exercise as a sort of sedative. I am not sure whether my troubled condition of mind was due to the fact that I had been struck by love or to the feeling that I had made a bad impression upon her. As the weeks went by, and when I had met her several more times, I came to know that I was seriously in love; and then began for me days of worry, for I had more than the usual doubts and fears of a young man in love to contend with. Up to this time I had assumed and played my role as a white man with a certain degree of nonchalance, a carelessness as to the outcome, which made the whole thing more amusing to me than serious; but now I ceased to regard "being a white man" as a sort of practical joke. My acting had called for mere external effects. Now I began to doubt my ability to play the part. I watched her to see if she was scrutinizing me, to see if she was looking for anything in me which made me differ from the other men she knew. In place of an old inward feeling of superiority over many of my friends I began to doubt myself. I began even to wonder if I really was like the men I associated with; if there was not, after all, an indefinable something which marked a difference. But, in spite of my doubts and timidity, my affair progressed, and I finally felt sufficiently encouraged to decide to ask her to marry me. Then began the hardest struggle of my life, whether to ask her to marry me under false colors or to tell her the whole truth. My sense of what was exigent made me feel there was no necessity of saying anything; but my inborn sense of honor rebelled at even indirect deception in this case. But however much I moralized on the question, I found it more and more difficult to reach the point of confession. The dread that I might lose her took possession of me each time I sought to speak, and rendered it impossible for me to do so. That moral courage requires more than physical courage is no mere poetic fancy. I am sure I should have found it easier to take the place of a gladiator, no matter how fierce the Numidian lion, than to tell that slender girl that I had Negro blood in my veins. The fact which I had at times wished to cry out, I now wished to hide forever. During this time we were drawn together a great deal by the mutual bond of music. She loved to hear me play Chopin and was herself far from being a poor performer of his compositions. I think I carried her every new song that was published which I thought suitable to her voice, and played the accompaniment for her. Over these songs we were like two innocent children with new toys. She had never been anything but innocent; but my innocence was a transformation wrought by my love for her, love which melted away my cynicism and whitened my sullied soul and gave me back the wholesome dreams of my boyhood. My artistic temperament also underwent an awakening. I spent many hours at my piano, playing over old and new composers. I also wrote several little pieces in a more or less Chopinesque style, which I dedicated to her. And so the weeks and months went by. Often words of love trembled on my lips, but I dared not utter them, because I knew they would have to be followed by other words which I had not the courage to frame. There might have been some other woman in my set whom I could have fallen in love with and asked to marry me without a word of explanation; but the more I knew this girl, the less could I find it in my heart to deceive her. And yet, in spite of this specter that was constantly looming up before me, I could never have believed that life held such happiness as was contained in those dream days of love. One Saturday afternoon, in early June, I was coming up Fifth Avenue, and at the corner of Twenty-third Street I met her. She had been shopping. We stopped to chat for a moment, and I suggested that we spend half an hour at the Eden Musee. We were standing leaning on the rail in front of a group of figures, more interested in what we had to say to each other than in the group, when my attention became fixed upon a man who stood at my side studying his catalogue. It took me only an instant to recognize in him my old friend "Shiny." My first impulse was to change my position at once. As quick as a flash I considered all the risks I might run in speaking to him, and most especially the delicate question of introducing him to her. I confess that in my embarrassment and confusion I felt small and mean. But before I could decide what to do, he looked around at me and, after an instant, quietly asked: "Pardon me; but isn't this----?" The nobler part in me responded to the sound of his voice and I took his hand in a hearty clasp. Whatever fears I had felt were quickly banished, for he seemed, at a glance, to divine my situation, and let drop no word that would have aroused suspicion as to the truth. With a slight misgiving I presented him to her and was again relieved of fear. She received the introduction in her usual gracious manner, and without the least hesitancy or embarrassment joined in the conversation. An amusing part about the introduction was that I was upon the point of introducing him as "Shiny," and stammered a second or two before I could recall his name. We chatted for some fifteen minutes. He was spending his vacation north, with the intention of doing four or six weeks' work in one of the summer schools; he was also going to take a bride back with him in the fall. He asked me about myself, but in so diplomatic a way that I found no difficulty in answering him. The polish of his language and he unpedantic manner in which he revealed his culture greatly impressed her; and after we had left the Musee she showed it by questioning me about him. I was surprised at the amount of interest a refined black man could arouse. Even after changes in the conversation she reverted several times to the subject of "Shiny." Whether it was more than mere curiosity I could not tell, but I was convinced that she herself knew very little about prejudice. Just why it should have done so I do not know, but somehow the "Shiny" incident gave me encouragement and confidence to cast the die of my fate. I reasoned, however, that since I wanted to marry her only, and since it concerned her alone, I would divulge my secret to no one else, not even her parents. One evening, a few days afterwards, at her home we were going over some new songs and compositions when she asked me, as she often did, to play the Thirteenth Nocturne. When I began, she drew a chair near to my right and sat leaning with her elbow on the end of the piano, her chin resting on her hand, and her eyes reflecting the emotions which the music awoke in her. An impulse which I could not control rushed over me, a wave of exultation, the music under my fingers sank almost to a whisper, and calling her for the first time by her Christian name, but without daring to look at her, I said: "I love you, I love you, I love you." My fingers were trembling so that I ceased playing. I felt her hand creep to mine, and when I looked at her, her eyes were glistening with tears. I understood, and could scarcely resist the longing to take her in my arms; but I remembered, remembered that which has been the sacrificial altar of so much happiness--Duty; and bending over her hand in mine, I said: "Yes, I love you; but there is something more, too, that I must tell you." Then I told her, in what words I do not know, the truth. I felt her hand grow cold, and when I looked up, she was gazing at me with a wild, fixed stare as though I was some object she had never seen. Under the strange light in her eyes I felt that I was growing black and thick-featured and crimp-haired. She appeared not to have comprehended what I had said. Her lips trembled and she attempted to say something to me, but the words stuck in her throat. Then, dropping her head on the piano, she began to weep with great sobs that shook her frail body. I tried to console her, and blurted out incoherent words of love, but this seemed only to increase her distress, and when I left her, she was still weeping. When I got into the street, I felt very much as I did the night after meeting my father and sister at the opera in Paris, even a similar desperate inclination to get drunk; but my self-control was stronger. This was the only time in my life that I ever felt absolute regret at being colored, that I cursed the drops of African blood in my veins and wished that I were really white. When I reached my rooms, I sat and smoked several cigars while I tried to think out the significance of what had occurred. I reviewed the whole history of our acquaintance, recalled each smile she had given me, each word she had said to me that nourished my hope. I went over the scene we had just gone through, trying to draw from it what was in my favor and what was against me. I was rewarded by feeling confident that she loved me, but I could not estimate what was the effect upon her of my confession. At last, nervous and unhappy, I wrote her a letter, which I dropped into the mail-box before going to bed, in which I said: I understand, understand even better than you, and so I suffer even more than you. But why should either of us suffer for what neither of us is to blame for? If there is any blame, it belongs to me and I can only make the old, yet strongest plea that can be offered, I love you; and I know that my love, my great love, infinitely overbalances that blame and blots it out. What is it that stands in the way of our happiness? It is not what you feel or what I feel; it is not what you are or what I am. It is what others feel and are. But, oh! is that a fair price? In all the endeavors and struggles of life, in all our strivings and longings, there is only one thing worth seeking, only one thing worth winning, and that is love. It is not always found; but when it is, there is nothing in all the world for which it can be profitably exchanged. The second morning after, I received a note from her which stated briefly that she was going up into New Hampshire to spend the summer with relatives there. She made no reference to what had passed between us; nor did she say exactly when she would leave the city. The note contained no single word that gave me any clue to her feelings. I could gather hope only from the fact that she had written at all. On the same evening, with a degree of trepidation which rendered me almost frightened, I went to her house. I met her mother, who told me that she had left for the country that very afternoon. Her mother treated me in her usual pleasant manner, which fact greatly reassured me; and I left the house with a vague sense of hope stirring in my breast, which sprang from the conviction that she had not yet divulged my secret. But that hope did not remain with me long. I waited one, two, three weeks, nervously examining my mail every day, looking for some word from her. All of the letters received by me seemed so insignificant, so worthless, because there was none from her. The slight buoyancy of spirit which I had felt gradually dissolved into gloomy heart-sickness. I became preoccupied; I lost appetite, lost sleep, and lost ambition. Several of my friends intimated to me that perhaps I was working too hard. She stayed away the whole summer. I did not go to the house, but saw her father at various times, and he was as friendly as ever. Even after I knew that she was back in town, I did not go to see her. I determined to wait for some word or sign. I had finally taken refuge and comfort in my pride, pride which, I suppose, I came by naturally enough. The first time I saw her after her return was one night at the theatre. She and her mother sat in company with a young man whom I knew slightly, not many seats away from me. Never did she appear more beautiful; and yet, it may have been my fancy, she seemed a trifle paler, and there was a suggestion of haggardness in her countenance. But that only heightened her beauty; the very delicacy of her charm melted down the strength of my pride. My situation made me feel weak and powerless, like a man trying with his bare hands to break the iron bars of his prison cell. When the performance was over, I hurried out and placed myself where, unobserved, I could see her as she passed out. The haughtiness of spirit in which I had sought relief was all gone, and I was willing and ready to undergo any humiliation. Shortly afterward we met at a progressive card party, and during the evening we were thrown together at one of the tables as partners. This was really our first meeting since the eventful night at her house. Strangely enough, in spite of our mutual nervousness, we won every trick of the game, and one of our opponents jokingly quoted the old saw: "Lucky at cards, unlucky in love." Our eyes met and I am sure that in the momentary glance my whole soul went out to her in one great plea. She lowered her eyes and uttered a nervous little laugh. During the rest of the game I fully merited the unexpressed and expressed abuse of my various partners; for my eyes followed her wherever she was and I played whatever card my fingers happened to touch. Later in the evening she went to the piano and began to play very softly, as to herself, the opening bars of the Thirteenth Nocturne. I felt that the psychic moment of my life had come, a moment which, if lost, could never be called back; and, in as careless a manner as I could assume, I sauntered over to the piano and stood almost bending over her. She continued playing, but, in a voice that was almost a whisper, she called me by my Christian name and said: "I love you, I love you, I love you." I took her place at the piano and played the Nocturne in a manner that silenced the chatter of the company both in and out of the room, involuntarily closing it with the major triad. We were married the following spring, and went to Europe for several months. It was a double joy for me to be in France again under such conditions. First there came to us a little girl, with hair and eyes dark like mine, but who is growing to have ways like her mother. Two years later there came a boy, who has my temperament, but is fair like his mother, a little golden-headed god, with a face and head that would have delighted the heart of an old Italian master. And this boy, with his mother's eyes and features, occupies an inner sanctuary of my heart; for it was for him that she gave all; and that is the second sacred sorrow of my life. The few years of our married life were supremely happy, and perhaps she was even happier than I; for after our marriage, in spite of all the wealth of her love which she lavished upon me, there came a new dread to haunt me, a dread which I cannot explain and which was unfounded, but one that never left me. I was in constant fear that she would discover in me some shortcoming which she would unconsciously attribute to my blood rather than to a failing of human nature. But no cloud ever came to mar our life together; her loss to me is irreparable. My children need a mother's care, but I shall never marry again. It is to my children that I have devoted my life. I no longer have the same fear for myself of my secret's being found out, for since my wife's death I have gradually dropped out of social life; but there is nothing I would not suffer to keep the brand from being placed upon them. It is difficult for me to analyze my feelings concerning my present position in the world. Sometimes it seems to me that I have never really been a Negro, that I have been only a privileged spectator of their inner life; at other times I feel that I have been a coward, a deserter, and I am possessed by a strange longing for my mother's people. Several years ago I attended a great meeting in the interest of Hampton Institute at Carnegie Hall. The Hampton students sang the old songs and awoke memories that left me sad. Among the speakers were R.C. Ogden, ex-Ambassador Choate, and Mark Twain; but the greatest interest of the audience was centered in Booker T. Washington, and not because he so much surpassed the others in eloquence, but because of what he represented with so much earnestness and faith. And it is this that all of that small but gallant band of colored men who are publicly fighting the cause of their race have behind them. Even those who oppose them know that these men have the eternal principles of right on their side, and they will be victors even though they should go down in defeat. Beside them I feel small and selfish. I am an ordinarily successful white man who has made a little money. They are men who are making history and a race. I, too, might have taken part in a work so glorious. My love for my children makes me glad that I am what I am and keeps me from desiring to be otherwise; and yet, when I sometimes open a little box in which I still keep my fast yellowing manuscripts, the only tangible remnants of a vanished dream, a dead ambition, a sacrificed talent, I cannot repress the thought that, after all, I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage.

Chapters X-XI

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On the boat back to America, the narrator meets a large, dignified African American man, , a graduate of Howard University. They strike up a friendship and discuss the race question. The doctor is "broad-minded" and believes that "Negroes" are progressing, although he sympathizes with certain aspects of the white, Southern perspective. The narrator stays with his new friend in Boston for a few days and then accompanies him to Washington D.C., where the doctor lives. The narrator becomes quickly acquainted with the doctor's friends, all educated African Americans, who earn "good salaries and a reasonable amount of leisure time to draw from" . The doctor, meanwhile, is very critical of who he deems "the worst" of the race. The narrator reflects positively on his time in Washington but then moves on to Macon, Georgia. On the way, he ends up in the smoking car of the train. The men gathered there are cordial and convivial; they include a Jewish cigar maker, a white professor, an ex-Union soldier, and a boisterous Texan planter. The race question comes up. The Jewish man takes neither side but listens and comments politely. The professor is flustered and does not participate. The argument is mostly between the old soldier and the Texan. The Texan does not believe in racial equality at all while the Union soldier argues for it. The Texan tries to claim the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race, but the soldier ably and eloquently explains that all of the accomplishments of the Anglo-Saxons are built on discoveries made by other races. The Texan is impressed, but jovially says his mind will never be changed. The narrator cannot help but admire his steadfastness, but also hopes that the mental attitudes of Southerners can be changed one day. In Macon, the narrator decides to leave his things behind and travel through the country. He sees rural African Americans for the first time and is not impressed. He is also annoyed with the poor cooking and accommodations of the South, wondering if his millionaire friend was right. He discourses for some time on the differences between the North and the South in their feelings on "the colored man". While he is in the South, the narrator also attends a "big meeting", which is a large religious gathering. It is a boisterous and exciting atmosphere. The narrator observes one impressive preacher, John Brown, and a music leader, Singing Johnson. Brown demonstrates "all the arts and tricks of oratory" and holds his listeners spellbound with his sermons about heaven and hell. Meanwhile, Johnson knows all of the spiritual songs and is a master at leading the congregation. The narrator marvels at the wonder of his songs' production. He feels inspired by this meeting. The narrator decides to stay with a young African American schoolteacher for a few days. This man strikes the narrator as being too earnest about the race question, but intelligent and ambitious nonetheless. They retire to a boarding house but the narrator is stirred awake by a frantic sounds outside. He hears a rumor from the people flowing past the house that a crime has been committed. Defying the schoolteacher's warnings, the narrator leaves the house and joins a crowd at the station. It is mostly white people with some black people at the fringes. A "poor wretch", a black man, is dragged into the circle. The white people throw up a fiendish "rebel yell", resembling "savage beasts". They tie the man to a stake and burn him alive. The narrator is horrified and dazed, but he is also humiliated that he is part of a race that can be victim to such horrible crimes. He is also in disbelief at how "a people that can find in its conscience any excuse whatever for slowly burning to death a human being, or for tolerating such an act, can be entrusted with the salvation of a race". He ultimately decides that he will not claim or declaim his blackness and will simply pass for whatever people assume his race to be. He departs for New York. Back in New York, the narrator feels lost but decides to amuse himself for a few days before looking for a job. This endeavor is depressing and he decides to enroll in business school. It is not long before he becomes a clerk in a wholesale house. He lives frugally and then begins investing in real estate, at which he is extremely successful. He passes for white and is content with this until the day he falls in love with a woman. She is a singer and the narrator describes her as "the most dazzlingly white thing I have ever seen". They begin courting and he decides he wants to marry her; this makes him wonder if he should tell her the truth about his face. He agonizes over this decision for some time. One Sunday afternoon the narrator and the girl run into Shiny on the street. Now a professor, Shiny is in town to work in a summer school before getting married. The girl is very kind to Shiny and interested in him after he leaves, and the narrator therefore feels comfortable that she will accept his secret. He tells her and she is shocked into silence until she begins weeping. This, the narrator says, is the only moment he ever feels "absolute regret at being colored". The girl goes away for the summer and they do not have any communication. The narrator is heart-sick. A few months later, he learns she is back in town and they run into each other at the theater. They meet again at another party and there she confesses that she loves him too. The two are married and have two children; unfortunately, the girl dies in the second childbirth. The narrator claims he will never marry again and devotes his life to his children. He expresses ambivalence about his "present position in the world". On the one hand, he is glad he passes as white for his children's sake. On the other hand, he sees prominent African Americans like Booker T. Washington and feels like an insignificant white man who has managed to make some money, a choice which deprived him of standing up for his race. He ends the novel by wondering if "I have chosen the lesser part...I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage". In this section, the narrator travels to Europe and falls in love with Paris. However, he realizes that he needs to get back to his musical career and become a composer. He decides that the best place to do this is in the South, where he can be inspired by the African American music scene. The narrator's confusion and vacillation between being black or white permeates all of his decisions; his ambivalence suggests that he will not ever achieve a hegemonic racial identity. In these last two chapters of the novel, there are multiple depictions of African Americans. The narrator meets the doctor, who the narrator believes represents the best of the race, but back in the South, he is embarrassed by the downtrodden African Americans who populate the streets. He is inspired by the magnetic, impassioned, and authentic personages of Singing Johnson and John Brown, but is disgusted by the absolute debasement of a poor black man who is lynched by a white crowd. In this climactic moment, the anguished narrator comes to the conclusion that he can no longer live openly as a biracial man and that he will be content to pass for white. He decidedly rejects his heritage and embraces a life based on earning money and avoiding the difficulties and indignities that arise from being biracial. It is a willful self-denial seems to haunt him by the end of his story. By the end of the novel, the narrator's goals of making music that represents the traditions of his people and embracing his dual heritage are a distant memory. He is heavy with isolation and remorse. Because the narrator is biracial, he is able to critique both races according to Du Bois's theory of double consciousness. However, he rejects that potential source of power. He is ashamed of his blackness and wants to hide it. The critic Donald Goellnicht writes, "so complete is the obliteration of an African heritage, so complete is the cultural assimilation to Euro-American values, that psychical bondage is obviated; the compliant subject policies himself." The narrative is destabilized by the inversion of what the reader assumes will occur -the narrator's becoming a "race man", a man like the doctor on the ship. His ultimate choice to pass as white is unpredictable and disappointing to many readers. On the other hand, it is possible to view the narrator's choice to pass as a veritable slap in the face to fixed notions of the racial divide. The narrator has an African American parent but is able to live and make money in a society dominated by white people without their even knowing it. This begs the question - does it even matter that the narrator is half-black? The marriage between the narrator and his wife would have fallen under the category of miscegenation if he revealed his racial background. The mere fact that the narrator chooses to pass as white may be viewed as a profound example of power and autonomy. He is an individual who chooses the path that he believes is right for himself and, later, for his family. Many critics have claimed that the novel is "ironic", but if it is, it is better viewed as a postmodern form of irony that does not rely on a stable referent. The act of "passing" can be held up to this standard as well. Passing implies that a person must be racially homogenous, but most cases do not fall neatly on one side of the racial divide. Passing could be intentional or unintentional; it was not just an imposter trying to cross the color line. As critic Neil Brooks explains, "the physical manifestation of a psychological quest to understand oneself in a society where to be black was often not to have one consistent self, but to have a double self." The narrator's multiple identities and contradictions end up becoming his identity. He chooses the easier path but as a result, he cannot achieve any closure. This closure is a trope of the modernist reading of literature, but here is precisely why a postmodernist reading is more appropriate: "the narrator has created a world where all is organized around himself, but it can never truly be organized because the self he has placed at the center is as unstable as the external world he seeks to control." The narrator's lack of a name also underscores his lack of a stable identity. This may indicate that he does not want to be labeled and participate in social classifications. Having always touted himself as the best at whatever he does, his namelessness is one further way for the narrator to overcome society's barriers and achieve material success. The tragedy of his choice is that he can be neither black nor white, and society still propagates arbitrary categorizations that, Brooks writes, "cannot be applied adequately to the personal narratives of its individual members." Since the narrator never embraces a stable identity, the act of passing becomes that identity. His "freedom from the societal meta-narratives of race" brings with it "the chaos of a disordered universe, which is also central to postmodern theory." Try as he might, the narrator can never bring closure to his own story. Overall, the novel proffers the idea that ambiguity about race is certainly part of a larger conversation, but that it is ultimately irresolvable.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1232-chapters/09.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Prince/section_9_part_0.txt

The Prince.chapter 9

chapter 9

{"name": "Chapter 9", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210420060055/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/prince-machiavelli/summary/chapter-9", "summary": "Rulers that come to power because of the support of the people are the total opposite of bloody conquers. Everyone loves 'em. They're not too smart, or even extra lucky, but just enough to get by. Our new ruler has three options for his new place: a monarchy where power goes to the nobles, a republic where power goes to the people, and anarchy. In monarchies, either the nobles or the people decide to concentrate all the power in one person, the king. Seems simple enough, but a king who comes to power because of the nobles will have a hard time. After all, the nobles have lots of power to throw around, too. Remember, you don't want anyone who can compete with you around, and these are the people with the weapons. What are the regular people going to do to you? Poke you with their potatoes? Bottom line: be friends with the people, because the nobles have too many tricks up their sleeves. More on nobles. There are two kinds, those who are totally 100% loyally part of your fan club and those who aren't. Out of those who aren't, there are two kinds. Those who are just scaredy-cats , and those who are planning something. The latter are the ones to watch out for because they will turn on you at the drop of a hat. Okay, back to the people. You need to be on their side. It's pretty easy, actually, because they basically just don't want to be oppressed and tortured. Also, if they thought you were going to be super mean, and you turn out to be okay, they will love you even more than if they loved you from the start. They're easy to please. Some people say that it's a bad idea to depend on the support of the people. Machiavelli just doesn't agree--he says that's only the case if you're stupid and think they'll fight for you or rescue you. That's not going to happen. But they can support you and not turn against you. Problems for the ruler supported by the people? When they want to become an absolute ruler, they need either give direct command or rule though other people who they give power to. The problem is, these people aren't always the most trustworthy--before you know it, everything is up in flames. So, make sure your people always need not only your government , but you specifically, and everything will be okay.", "analysis": ""}

But coming to the other point--where a leading citizen becomes the prince of his country, not by wickedness or any intolerable violence, but by the favour of his fellow citizens--this may be called a civil principality: nor is genius or fortune altogether necessary to attain to it, but rather a happy shrewdness. I say then that such a principality is obtained either by the favour of the people or by the favour of the nobles. Because in all cities these two distinct parties are found, and from this it arises that the people do not wish to be ruled nor oppressed by the nobles, and the nobles wish to rule and oppress the people; and from these two opposite desires there arises in cities one of three results, either a principality, self-government, or anarchy. A principality is created either by the people or by the nobles, accordingly as one or other of them has the opportunity; for the nobles, seeing they cannot withstand the people, begin to cry up the reputation of one of themselves, and they make him a prince, so that under his shadow they can give vent to their ambitions. The people, finding they cannot resist the nobles, also cry up the reputation of one of themselves, and make him a prince so as to be defended by his authority. He who obtains sovereignty by the assistance of the nobles maintains himself with more difficulty than he who comes to it by the aid of the people, because the former finds himself with many around him who consider themselves his equals, and because of this he can neither rule nor manage them to his liking. But he who reaches sovereignty by popular favour finds himself alone, and has none around him, or few, who are not prepared to obey him. Besides this, one cannot by fair dealing, and without injury to others, satisfy the nobles, but you can satisfy the people, for their object is more righteous than that of the nobles, the latter wishing to oppress, while the former only desire not to be oppressed. It is to be added also that a prince can never secure himself against a hostile people, because of there being too many, whilst from the nobles he can secure himself, as they are few in number. The worst that a prince may expect from a hostile people is to be abandoned by them; but from hostile nobles he has not only to fear abandonment, but also that they will rise against him; for they, being in these affairs more far-seeing and astute, always come forward in time to save themselves, and to obtain favours from him whom they expect to prevail. Further, the prince is compelled to live always with the same people, but he can do well without the same nobles, being able to make and unmake them daily, and to give or take away authority when it pleases him. Therefore, to make this point clearer, I say that the nobles ought to be looked at mainly in two ways: that is to say, they either shape their course in such a way as binds them entirely to your fortune, or they do not. Those who so bind themselves, and are not rapacious, ought to be honoured and loved; those who do not bind themselves may be dealt with in two ways; they may fail to do this through pusillanimity and a natural want of courage, in which case you ought to make use of them, especially of those who are of good counsel; and thus, whilst in prosperity you honour them, in adversity you do not have to fear them. But when for their own ambitious ends they shun binding themselves, it is a token that they are giving more thought to themselves than to you, and a prince ought to guard against such, and to fear them as if they were open enemies, because in adversity they always help to ruin him. Therefore, one who becomes a prince through the favour of the people ought to keep them friendly, and this he can easily do seeing they only ask not to be oppressed by him. But one who, in opposition to the people, becomes a prince by the favour of the nobles, ought, above everything, to seek to win the people over to himself, and this he may easily do if he takes them under his protection. Because men, when they receive good from him of whom they were expecting evil, are bound more closely to their benefactor; thus the people quickly become more devoted to him than if he had been raised to the principality by their favours; and the prince can win their affections in many ways, but as these vary according to the circumstances one cannot give fixed rules, so I omit them; but, I repeat, it is necessary for a prince to have the people friendly, otherwise he has no security in adversity. Nabis,(*) Prince of the Spartans, sustained the attack of all Greece, and of a victorious Roman army, and against them he defended his country and his government; and for the overcoming of this peril it was only necessary for him to make himself secure against a few, but this would not have been sufficient had the people been hostile. And do not let any one impugn this statement with the trite proverb that "He who builds on the people, builds on the mud," for this is true when a private citizen makes a foundation there, and persuades himself that the people will free him when he is oppressed by his enemies or by the magistrates; wherein he would find himself very often deceived, as happened to the Gracchi in Rome and to Messer Giorgio Scali(+) in Florence. But granted a prince who has established himself as above, who can command, and is a man of courage, undismayed in adversity, who does not fail in other qualifications, and who, by his resolution and energy, keeps the whole people encouraged--such a one will never find himself deceived in them, and it will be shown that he has laid his foundations well. (*) Nabis, tyrant of Sparta, conquered by the Romans under Flamininus in 195 B.C.; killed 192 B.C. (+) Messer Giorgio Scali. This event is to be found in Machiavelli's "Florentine History," Book III. These principalities are liable to danger when they are passing from the civil to the absolute order of government, for such princes either rule personally or through magistrates. In the latter case their government is weaker and more insecure, because it rests entirely on the goodwill of those citizens who are raised to the magistracy, and who, especially in troubled times, can destroy the government with great ease, either by intrigue or open defiance; and the prince has not the chance amid tumults to exercise absolute authority, because the citizens and subjects, accustomed to receive orders from magistrates, are not of a mind to obey him amid these confusions, and there will always be in doubtful times a scarcity of men whom he can trust. For such a prince cannot rely upon what he observes in quiet times, when citizens have need of the state, because then every one agrees with him; they all promise, and when death is far distant they all wish to die for him; but in troubled times, when the state has need of its citizens, then he finds but few. And so much the more is this experiment dangerous, inasmuch as it can only be tried once. Therefore a wise prince ought to adopt such a course that his citizens will always in every sort and kind of circumstance have need of the state and of him, and then he will always find them faithful.

Chapter 9

https://web.archive.org/web/20210420060055/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/prince-machiavelli/summary/chapter-9

Rulers that come to power because of the support of the people are the total opposite of bloody conquers. Everyone loves 'em. They're not too smart, or even extra lucky, but just enough to get by. Our new ruler has three options for his new place: a monarchy where power goes to the nobles, a republic where power goes to the people, and anarchy. In monarchies, either the nobles or the people decide to concentrate all the power in one person, the king. Seems simple enough, but a king who comes to power because of the nobles will have a hard time. After all, the nobles have lots of power to throw around, too. Remember, you don't want anyone who can compete with you around, and these are the people with the weapons. What are the regular people going to do to you? Poke you with their potatoes? Bottom line: be friends with the people, because the nobles have too many tricks up their sleeves. More on nobles. There are two kinds, those who are totally 100% loyally part of your fan club and those who aren't. Out of those who aren't, there are two kinds. Those who are just scaredy-cats , and those who are planning something. The latter are the ones to watch out for because they will turn on you at the drop of a hat. Okay, back to the people. You need to be on their side. It's pretty easy, actually, because they basically just don't want to be oppressed and tortured. Also, if they thought you were going to be super mean, and you turn out to be okay, they will love you even more than if they loved you from the start. They're easy to please. Some people say that it's a bad idea to depend on the support of the people. Machiavelli just doesn't agree--he says that's only the case if you're stupid and think they'll fight for you or rescue you. That's not going to happen. But they can support you and not turn against you. Problems for the ruler supported by the people? When they want to become an absolute ruler, they need either give direct command or rule though other people who they give power to. The problem is, these people aren't always the most trustworthy--before you know it, everything is up in flames. So, make sure your people always need not only your government , but you specifically, and everything will be okay.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/chapters_1_to_2.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/Lord Jim/section_0_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapters 1-2

chapters 1-2

{"name": "Chapters 1 and 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210126121516/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/lordjim/section1/", "summary": "Jim is a popular, if somewhat mysterious, young man working as a water-clerk in various Eastern seaports. He is described as assertive, attractive, and possessing \"Ability in the abstract,\" yet he also is prone to leaving jobs without notice, and, we are told, works as a water-clerk only because he is \"a seaman in exile from the sea.\" A brief biographical sketch is given of Jim's early life: the son of an English country parson, he is sent to a merchant marine academy after \"a course of light holiday literature\" leads him to declare his interest in the sea. Quickly proving his merit, he soon sets out to sea on training ships, where he spends free time lost in daydreams, \"liv in his mind the sea-life of light literature.\" His fantasies typically involve acts of heroism: rescuing people, putting down mutinies, conquering savages. One winter's day he is aboard a training ship in port, fantasizing about becoming a hero, when a commotion arises on deck. A collision has occurred nearby, and a boat is launched from his ship to rescue survivors. Jim is not one of the rescuers aboard the ship's boat, and his disappointment is bitter. His captain consoles him, telling him to be quicker next time. After two years of training, Jim goes to sea aboard the first of a series of merchant ships. His abilities lead to quick promotion, and he soon finds himself \"chief mate of a fine ship,\" although he is still very young and has not yet been truly tested by the sea. His first encounter with \"the anger of the sea\" causes him to be injured by a falling spar. Disabled, he spends days in his bunk as the storm rages, not fantasizing about heroics but instead confronting the brutal nature of pain, fear, and physical existence. He is left behind, still lamed, at the next port of call, where he spends some time recuperating, then engages as chief mate on the Patna, a decaying steamer ferrying a boatload of Muslim pilgrims to Mecca and commanded by a crazed German skipper. The Patna leaves port and turns into the open ocean. The voyage begins in a mood of eerie calm and isolation, the sea flat, the white crew \"isolated from the human cargo\" of pilgrims.", "analysis": "Commentary The opening chapters of Lord Jim make reference to three distinct moments in time: the apparent present time of Jim's employment as a water-clerk, a continuous span of years in the past from the time he leaves home to his shipping aboard the Patna, and a moment that seems to be in the future, when he will leave the seaside and venture into the Malay forest. The as-yet-unnamed narrator, whom we will meet in Chapter 4, seems to have a nearly omnipotent knowledge of Jim's story; he hints that we will see him transform from \"just Jim\" to \"Tuan Jim,\" or \"Lord Jim,\" although he offers no clues as to how this will occur. For the time being, the narrator instead invokes a series of literary paradigms within which Jim's story may or may not fit. First, the story begins in medias res, or in the middle of things, in the interlude between the two major episodes of the novel. This is the classic opening strategy of novels within the epic genre. Will Jim's story prove to be an epic, perhaps like Homer's Odyssey, another work which begins with a displaced sailor far from home? The marked interest in only one individual--Jim--and the lack of any secondary characters means that this will not be a classical epic, since classical epic is typically more interested in sweeping social events involving groups of people. The sketch of Jim's early life and education suggest that Lord Jim may share features with biography, or perhaps bildungsroman . The bildungsroman often seeks to trace an individual's development through his or her reading, which is certainly the case here, although Jim is reading light popular literature rather than the more serious tomes usually cited in this genre. The reiterated attention to Jim's propensity for daydreaming and the emphasis on his innate \"Ability\" are, in their way, tropes of Romanticism, a mode that requires imagination and inborn genius above all else in its heroes. Finally, too, there is a certain pre-modernist aspect to Jim's introduction. Like Leopold Bloom in Ulysses, Jim derives many of his ideas from popular literature and culture. Conrad's language, too, with its density of abstract terms and local allusions , can be difficult in the same way as the language of Virginia Woolf or William Faulkner. Above all, the narrator makes the suggestion that there is a fundamental void at the heart of this text. Much is left unexplained, and that which is explained is seemingly accidental; for example, Jim only ships on the Patna because he has been injured aboard another ship and left behind far from home. Conrad also invokes the problematic historical circumstances of colonialism by situating his hero in a part of the world where nearly every square foot of land has been claimed by a European power, and by putting him in the employ of men who \"love. . .short passages, good deck-chairs, large native crews, and the distinction of being white.\" This section of the novel ends with the image of a small island of whiteness aboard a ship full of dark-skinned Muslims, isolated in the middle of a human ocean as well as a literal one. While Jim and the rest of the Patna's crew are placed in a position of seeming superiority as the ship's officers, they are nevertheless economically dependent on the hordes below the deck, just as many European countries were at the time economically reliant on the natural resources of their colonies."}

He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull. His voice was deep, loud, and his manner displayed a kind of dogged self-assertion which had nothing aggressive in it. It seemed a necessity, and it was directed apparently as much at himself as at anybody else. He was spotlessly neat, apparelled in immaculate white from shoes to hat, and in the various Eastern ports where he got his living as ship-chandler's water-clerk he was very popular. A water-clerk need not pass an examination in anything under the sun, but he must have Ability in the abstract and demonstrate it practically. His work consists in racing under sail, steam, or oars against other water-clerks for any ship about to anchor, greeting her captain cheerily, forcing upon him a card--the business card of the ship-chandler--and on his first visit on shore piloting him firmly but without ostentation to a vast, cavern-like shop which is full of things that are eaten and drunk on board ship; where you can get everything to make her seaworthy and beautiful, from a set of chain-hooks for her cable to a book of gold-leaf for the carvings of her stern; and where her commander is received like a brother by a ship-chandler he has never seen before. There is a cool parlour, easy-chairs, bottles, cigars, writing implements, a copy of harbour regulations, and a warmth of welcome that melts the salt of a three months' passage out of a seaman's heart. The connection thus begun is kept up, as long as the ship remains in harbour, by the daily visits of the water-clerk. To the captain he is faithful like a friend and attentive like a son, with the patience of Job, the unselfish devotion of a woman, and the jollity of a boon companion. Later on the bill is sent in. It is a beautiful and humane occupation. Therefore good water-clerks are scarce. When a water-clerk who possesses Ability in the abstract has also the advantage of having been brought up to the sea, he is worth to his employer a lot of money and some humouring. Jim had always good wages and as much humouring as would have bought the fidelity of a fiend. Nevertheless, with black ingratitude he would throw up the job suddenly and depart. To his employers the reasons he gave were obviously inadequate. They said 'Confounded fool!' as soon as his back was turned. This was their criticism on his exquisite sensibility. To the white men in the waterside business and to the captains of ships he was just Jim--nothing more. He had, of course, another name, but he was anxious that it should not be pronounced. His incognito, which had as many holes as a sieve, was not meant to hide a personality but a fact. When the fact broke through the incognito he would leave suddenly the seaport where he happened to be at the time and go to another--generally farther east. He kept to seaports because he was a seaman in exile from the sea, and had Ability in the abstract, which is good for no other work but that of a water-clerk. He retreated in good order towards the rising sun, and the fact followed him casually but inevitably. Thus in the course of years he was known successively in Bombay, in Calcutta, in Rangoon, in Penang, in Batavia--and in each of these halting-places was just Jim the water-clerk. Afterwards, when his keen perception of the Intolerable drove him away for good from seaports and white men, even into the virgin forest, the Malays of the jungle village, where he had elected to conceal his deplorable faculty, added a word to the monosyllable of his incognito. They called him Tuan Jim: as one might say--Lord Jim. Originally he came from a parsonage. Many commanders of fine merchant-ships come from these abodes of piety and peace. Jim's father possessed such certain knowledge of the Unknowable as made for the righteousness of people in cottages without disturbing the ease of mind of those whom an unerring Providence enables to live in mansions. The little church on a hill had the mossy greyness of a rock seen through a ragged screen of leaves. It had stood there for centuries, but the trees around probably remembered the laying of the first stone. Below, the red front of the rectory gleamed with a warm tint in the midst of grass-plots, flower-beds, and fir-trees, with an orchard at the back, a paved stable-yard to the left, and the sloping glass of greenhouses tacked along a wall of bricks. The living had belonged to the family for generations; but Jim was one of five sons, and when after a course of light holiday literature his vocation for the sea had declared itself, he was sent at once to a 'training-ship for officers of the mercantile marine.' He learned there a little trigonometry and how to cross top-gallant yards. He was generally liked. He had the third place in navigation and pulled stroke in the first cutter. Having a steady head with an excellent physique, he was very smart aloft. His station was in the fore-top, and often from there he looked down, with the contempt of a man destined to shine in the midst of dangers, at the peaceful multitude of roofs cut in two by the brown tide of the stream, while scattered on the outskirts of the surrounding plain the factory chimneys rose perpendicular against a grimy sky, each slender like a pencil, and belching out smoke like a volcano. He could see the big ships departing, the broad-beamed ferries constantly on the move, the little boats floating far below his feet, with the hazy splendour of the sea in the distance, and the hope of a stirring life in the world of adventure. On the lower deck in the babel of two hundred voices he would forget himself, and beforehand live in his mind the sea-life of light literature. He saw himself saving people from sinking ships, cutting away masts in a hurricane, swimming through a surf with a line; or as a lonely castaway, barefooted and half naked, walking on uncovered reefs in search of shellfish to stave off starvation. He confronted savages on tropical shores, quelled mutinies on the high seas, and in a small boat upon the ocean kept up the hearts of despairing men--always an example of devotion to duty, and as unflinching as a hero in a book. 'Something's up. Come along.' He leaped to his feet. The boys were streaming up the ladders. Above could be heard a great scurrying about and shouting, and when he got through the hatchway he stood still--as if confounded. It was the dusk of a winter's day. The gale had freshened since noon, stopping the traffic on the river, and now blew with the strength of a hurricane in fitful bursts that boomed like salvoes of great guns firing over the ocean. The rain slanted in sheets that flicked and subsided, and between whiles Jim had threatening glimpses of the tumbling tide, the small craft jumbled and tossing along the shore, the motionless buildings in the driving mist, the broad ferry-boats pitching ponderously at anchor, the vast landing-stages heaving up and down and smothered in sprays. The next gust seemed to blow all this away. The air was full of flying water. There was a fierce purpose in the gale, a furious earnestness in the screech of the wind, in the brutal tumult of earth and sky, that seemed directed at him, and made him hold his breath in awe. He stood still. It seemed to him he was whirled around. He was jostled. 'Man the cutter!' Boys rushed past him. A coaster running in for shelter had crashed through a schooner at anchor, and one of the ship's instructors had seen the accident. A mob of boys clambered on the rails, clustered round the davits. 'Collision. Just ahead of us. Mr. Symons saw it.' A push made him stagger against the mizzen-mast, and he caught hold of a rope. The old training-ship chained to her moorings quivered all over, bowing gently head to wind, and with her scanty rigging humming in a deep bass the breathless song of her youth at sea. 'Lower away!' He saw the boat, manned, drop swiftly below the rail, and rushed after her. He heard a splash. 'Let go; clear the falls!' He leaned over. The river alongside seethed in frothy streaks. The cutter could be seen in the falling darkness under the spell of tide and wind, that for a moment held her bound, and tossing abreast of the ship. A yelling voice in her reached him faintly: 'Keep stroke, you young whelps, if you want to save anybody! Keep stroke!' And suddenly she lifted high her bow, and, leaping with raised oars over a wave, broke the spell cast upon her by the wind and tide. Jim felt his shoulder gripped firmly. 'Too late, youngster.' The captain of the ship laid a restraining hand on that boy, who seemed on the point of leaping overboard, and Jim looked up with the pain of conscious defeat in his eyes. The captain smiled sympathetically. 'Better luck next time. This will teach you to be smart.' A shrill cheer greeted the cutter. She came dancing back half full of water, and with two exhausted men washing about on her bottom boards. The tumult and the menace of wind and sea now appeared very contemptible to Jim, increasing the regret of his awe at their inefficient menace. Now he knew what to think of it. It seemed to him he cared nothing for the gale. He could affront greater perils. He would do so--better than anybody. Not a particle of fear was left. Nevertheless he brooded apart that evening while the bowman of the cutter--a boy with a face like a girl's and big grey eyes--was the hero of the lower deck. Eager questioners crowded round him. He narrated: 'I just saw his head bobbing, and I dashed my boat-hook in the water. It caught in his breeches and I nearly went overboard, as I thought I would, only old Symons let go the tiller and grabbed my legs--the boat nearly swamped. Old Symons is a fine old chap. I don't mind a bit him being grumpy with us. He swore at me all the time he held my leg, but that was only his way of telling me to stick to the boat-hook. Old Symons is awfully excitable--isn't he? No--not the little fair chap--the other, the big one with a beard. When we pulled him in he groaned, "Oh, my leg! oh, my leg!" and turned up his eyes. Fancy such a big chap fainting like a girl. Would any of you fellows faint for a jab with a boat-hook?--I wouldn't. It went into his leg so far.' He showed the boat-hook, which he had carried below for the purpose, and produced a sensation. 'No, silly! It was not his flesh that held him--his breeches did. Lots of blood, of course.' Jim thought it a pitiful display of vanity. The gale had ministered to a heroism as spurious as its own pretence of terror. He felt angry with the brutal tumult of earth and sky for taking him unawares and checking unfairly a generous readiness for narrow escapes. Otherwise he was rather glad he had not gone into the cutter, since a lower achievement had served the turn. He had enlarged his knowledge more than those who had done the work. When all men flinched, then--he felt sure--he alone would know how to deal with the spurious menace of wind and seas. He knew what to think of it. Seen dispassionately, it seemed contemptible. He could detect no trace of emotion in himself, and the final effect of a staggering event was that, unnoticed and apart from the noisy crowd of boys, he exulted with fresh certitude in his avidity for adventure, and in a sense of many-sided courage. 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.

Chapters 1 and 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20210126121516/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/lordjim/section1/

Jim is a popular, if somewhat mysterious, young man working as a water-clerk in various Eastern seaports. He is described as assertive, attractive, and possessing "Ability in the abstract," yet he also is prone to leaving jobs without notice, and, we are told, works as a water-clerk only because he is "a seaman in exile from the sea." A brief biographical sketch is given of Jim's early life: the son of an English country parson, he is sent to a merchant marine academy after "a course of light holiday literature" leads him to declare his interest in the sea. Quickly proving his merit, he soon sets out to sea on training ships, where he spends free time lost in daydreams, "liv in his mind the sea-life of light literature." His fantasies typically involve acts of heroism: rescuing people, putting down mutinies, conquering savages. One winter's day he is aboard a training ship in port, fantasizing about becoming a hero, when a commotion arises on deck. A collision has occurred nearby, and a boat is launched from his ship to rescue survivors. Jim is not one of the rescuers aboard the ship's boat, and his disappointment is bitter. His captain consoles him, telling him to be quicker next time. After two years of training, Jim goes to sea aboard the first of a series of merchant ships. His abilities lead to quick promotion, and he soon finds himself "chief mate of a fine ship," although he is still very young and has not yet been truly tested by the sea. His first encounter with "the anger of the sea" causes him to be injured by a falling spar. Disabled, he spends days in his bunk as the storm rages, not fantasizing about heroics but instead confronting the brutal nature of pain, fear, and physical existence. He is left behind, still lamed, at the next port of call, where he spends some time recuperating, then engages as chief mate on the Patna, a decaying steamer ferrying a boatload of Muslim pilgrims to Mecca and commanded by a crazed German skipper. The Patna leaves port and turns into the open ocean. The voyage begins in a mood of eerie calm and isolation, the sea flat, the white crew "isolated from the human cargo" of pilgrims.

Commentary The opening chapters of Lord Jim make reference to three distinct moments in time: the apparent present time of Jim's employment as a water-clerk, a continuous span of years in the past from the time he leaves home to his shipping aboard the Patna, and a moment that seems to be in the future, when he will leave the seaside and venture into the Malay forest. The as-yet-unnamed narrator, whom we will meet in Chapter 4, seems to have a nearly omnipotent knowledge of Jim's story; he hints that we will see him transform from "just Jim" to "Tuan Jim," or "Lord Jim," although he offers no clues as to how this will occur. For the time being, the narrator instead invokes a series of literary paradigms within which Jim's story may or may not fit. First, the story begins in medias res, or in the middle of things, in the interlude between the two major episodes of the novel. This is the classic opening strategy of novels within the epic genre. Will Jim's story prove to be an epic, perhaps like Homer's Odyssey, another work which begins with a displaced sailor far from home? The marked interest in only one individual--Jim--and the lack of any secondary characters means that this will not be a classical epic, since classical epic is typically more interested in sweeping social events involving groups of people. The sketch of Jim's early life and education suggest that Lord Jim may share features with biography, or perhaps bildungsroman . The bildungsroman often seeks to trace an individual's development through his or her reading, which is certainly the case here, although Jim is reading light popular literature rather than the more serious tomes usually cited in this genre. The reiterated attention to Jim's propensity for daydreaming and the emphasis on his innate "Ability" are, in their way, tropes of Romanticism, a mode that requires imagination and inborn genius above all else in its heroes. Finally, too, there is a certain pre-modernist aspect to Jim's introduction. Like Leopold Bloom in Ulysses, Jim derives many of his ideas from popular literature and culture. Conrad's language, too, with its density of abstract terms and local allusions , can be difficult in the same way as the language of Virginia Woolf or William Faulkner. Above all, the narrator makes the suggestion that there is a fundamental void at the heart of this text. Much is left unexplained, and that which is explained is seemingly accidental; for example, Jim only ships on the Patna because he has been injured aboard another ship and left behind far from home. Conrad also invokes the problematic historical circumstances of colonialism by situating his hero in a part of the world where nearly every square foot of land has been claimed by a European power, and by putting him in the employ of men who "love. . .short passages, good deck-chairs, large native crews, and the distinction of being white." This section of the novel ends with the image of a small island of whiteness aboard a ship full of dark-skinned Muslims, isolated in the middle of a human ocean as well as a literal one. While Jim and the rest of the Patna's crew are placed in a position of seeming superiority as the ship's officers, they are nevertheless economically dependent on the hordes below the deck, just as many European countries were at the time economically reliant on the natural resources of their colonies.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/23042-chapters/4.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Tempest/section_4_part_0.txt

The Tempest.act ii.scene ii

act ii, scene ii

{"name": "Act II, scene ii", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210131162607/https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/tempest/section5/", "summary": "Caliban enters with a load of wood, and thunder sounds in the background. Caliban curses and describes the torments that Prospero's spirits subject him to: they pinch, bite, and prick him, especially when he curses. As he is thinking of these spirits, Caliban sees Trinculo and imagines him to be one of the spirits. Hoping to avoid pinching, he lies down and covers himself with his cloak. Trinculo hears the thunder and looks about for some cover from the storm. The only thing he sees is the cloak-covered Caliban on the ground. He is not so much repulsed by Caliban as curious. He cannot decide whether Caliban is a \"man or a fish\" . He thinks of a time when he traveled to England and witnessed freak-shows there. Caliban, he thinks, would bring him a lot of money in England. Thunder sounds again and Trinculo decides that the best shelter in sight is beneath Caliban's cloak, and so he joins the man-monster there. Stephano enters singing and drinking. He hears Caliban cry out to Trinculo, \"Do not torment me! O!\" . Hearing this and seeing the four legs sticking out from the cloak, Stephano thinks the two men are a four-legged monster with a fever. He decides to relieve this fever with a drink. Caliban continues to resist Trinculo, whom he still thinks is a spirit tormenting him. Trinculo recognizes Stephano's voice and says so. Stephano, of course, assumes for a moment that the monster has two heads, and he promises to pour liquor in both mouths. Trinculo now calls out to Stephano, and Stephano pulls his friend out from under the cloak. While the two men discuss how they arrived safely on shore, Caliban enjoys the liquor and begs to worship Stephano. The men take full advantage of Caliban's drunkenness, mocking him as a \"most ridiculous monster\" as he promises to lead them around and show them the isle.", "analysis": "Analysis Trinculo and Stephano are the last new characters to be introduced in the play. They act as comic foils to the main action, and will in later acts become specific parodies of Antonio and Sebastian. At this point, their role is to present comically some of the more serious issues in the play concerning Prospero and Caliban. In Act I, scene ii, Prospero calls Caliban a \"slave\" , \"thou earth\" , \"Filth\" , and \"Hag-seed\" . Stephano and Trinculo's epithet of choice in Act II, scene ii and thereafter is \"monster.\" But while these two make quite clear that Caliban is seen as less than human by the Europeans on the island, they also treat him more humanely than Prospero does. Stephano and Trinculo, a butler and a jester respectively, remain at the low end of the social scale in the play, and have little difficulty finding friendship with the strange islander they meet. \" Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows,\" says Trinculo , and then hastens to crawl beneath Caliban's garment in order to get out of the rain. The similarity, socially and perhaps physically as well, between Trinculo and Caliban is further emphasized when Stephano, drunk, initially mistakes the two for a single monster: \"This is some monster of the isle with four legs\" . More important than the emphasis on the way in which Caliban seems to others more monster than man, is the way in which this scene dramatizes the initial encounter between an almost completely isolated, \"primitive\" culture and a foreign, \"civilized\" one. The reader discovers during Caliban and Prospero's confrontation in Act I, scene ii that Prospero initially \"made much of\" Caliban ; that he gave Caliban \"Water with berries in't\" ; that Caliban showed him around the island; and that Prospero later imprisoned Caliban, after he had taken all he could take from him. The reader can see these events in Act II, scene ii, with Trinculo and Stephano in the place of Prospero. Stephano calls Caliban a \"brave monster,\" as they set off singing around the island. In addition, Stephano and Trinculo give Caliban wine, which Caliban finds to be a \"celestial liquor\" . Moreover, Caliban initially mistakes Stephano and Trinculo for Prospero's spirits, but alcohol convinces him that Stephano is a \"brave god\" and decides unconditionally to \"kneel to him\" . This scene shows the foreign, civilized culture as decadent and manipulative: Stephano immediately plans to \"inherit\" the island , using Caliban to show him all its virtues. Stephano and Trinculo are a grotesque, parodic version of Prospero upon his arrival twelve years ago. Godlike in the eyes of the native, they slash and burn their way to power. By this point, Caliban has begun to resemble a parody of himself. Whereas he would \"gabble like / A thing most brutish\" upon Prospero's arrival, because he did not know language, he now is willfully inarticulate in his drunkenness. Immediately putting aside his fear that these men are spirits sent to do him harm, Caliban puts his trust in them for all the wrong reasons. What makes Caliban's behavior in this scene so tragic is that we might expect him, especially after his eloquent curses of Prospero in Act I, scene ii, to know better."}

SCENE II. _Another part of the island._ _Enter CALIBAN with a burden of wood. A noise of thunder heard._ _Cal._ All the infections that the sun sucks up From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him By inch-meal a disease! His spirits hear me, And yet I needs must curse. But they'll nor pinch, Fright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i' the mire, 5 Nor lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark Out of my way, unless he bid 'em: but For every trifle are they set upon me; Sometime like apes, that mow and chatter at me, And after bite me; then like hedgehogs, which 10 Lie tumbling in my barefoot way, and mount Their pricks at my footfall; sometime am I All wound with adders, who with cloven tongues Do hiss me into madness. _Enter TRINCULO._ Lo, now, lo! Here comes a spirit of his, and to torment me 15 For bringing wood in slowly. I'll fall flat; Perchance he will not mind me. _Trin._ Here's neither bush nor shrub, to bear off any weather at all, and another storm brewing; I hear it sing i' the wind: yond same black cloud, yond huge one, looks 20 like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor. If it should thunder as it did before, I know not where to hide my head: yond same cloud cannot choose but fall by pailfuls. What have we here? a man or a fish? dead or alive? A fish: he smells like a fish; a very ancient and fish-like smell; a kind 25 of not of the newest Poor-John. A strange fish! Were I in England now, as once I was, and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver: there would this monster make a man; any strange beast there makes a man: when they will not give a doit to 30 relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian. Legged like a man! and his fins like arms! Warm o' my troth! I do now let loose my opinion; hold it no longer: this is no fish, but an islander, that hath lately suffered by a thunderbolt. [_Thunder._] Alas, the storm is come 35 again! my best way is to creep under his gaberdine; there is no other shelter hereabout: misery acquaints a man with strange bed-fellows. I will here shroud till the dregs of the storm be past. _Enter STEPHANO, singing: a bottle in his hand._ _Ste._ I shall no more to sea, to sea, 40 Here shall I die a-shore,-- This is a very scurvy tune to sing at a man's funeral: well, here's my comfort. [_Drinks._ [_Sings._ The master, the swabber, the boatswain, and I, The gunner, and his mate, 45 Loved Mall, Meg, and Marian, and Margery, But none of us cared for Kate; For she had a tongue with a tang, Would cry to a sailor, Go hang! She loved not the savour of tar nor of pitch; 50 Yet a tailor might scratch her where'er she did itch. Then, to sea, boys, and let her go hang! This is a scurvy tune too: but here's my comfort. [_Drinks._ _Cal._ Do not torment me:--O! _Ste._ What's the matter? Have we devils here? Do 55 you put tricks upon 's with savages and men of Ind, ha? I have not scaped drowning, to be afeard now of your four legs; for it hath been said, As proper a man as ever went on four legs cannot make him give ground; and it shall be said so again, while Stephano breathes at's nostrils. 60 _Cal._ The spirit torments me:--O! _Ste._ This is some monster of the isle with four legs, who hath got, as I take it, an ague. Where the devil should he learn our language? I will give him some relief, if it be but for that. If I can recover him, and keep him tame, and 65 get to Naples with him, he's a present for any emperor that ever trod on neat's-leather. _Cal._ Do not torment me, prithee; I'll bring my wood home faster. _Ste._ He's in his fit now, and does not talk after the 70 wisest. He shall taste of my bottle: if he have never drunk wine afore, it will go near to remove his fit. If I can recover him, and keep him tame, I will not take too much for him; he shall pay for him that hath him, and that soundly. _Cal._ Thou dost me yet but little hurt; thou wilt anon, I 75 know it by thy trembling: now Prosper works upon thee. _Ste._ Come on your ways; open your mouth; here is that which will give language to you, cat: open your mouth; this will shake your shaking, I can tell you, and that soundly: you cannot tell who's your friend: open your chaps again. 80 _Trin._ I should know that voice: it should be--but he is drowned; and these are devils:--O defend me! _Ste._ Four legs and two voices,--a most delicate monster! His forward voice, now, is to speak well of his friend; his backward voice is to utter foul speeches and to detract. 85 If all the wine in my bottle will recover him, I will help his ague. Come:--Amen! I will pour some in thy other mouth. _Trin._ Stephano! _Ste._ Doth thy other mouth call me? Mercy, mercy! 90 This is a devil, and no monster: I will leave him; I have no long spoon. _Trin._ Stephano! If thou beest Stephano, touch me, and speak to me; for I am Trinculo,--be not afeard,--thy good friend Trinculo. 95 _Ste._ If thou beest Trinculo, come forth: I'll pull thee by the lesser legs: if any be Trinculo's legs, these are they. Thou art very Trinculo indeed! How earnest thou to be the siege of this moon-calf? can he vent Trinculos? _Trin._ I took him to be killed with a thunder-stroke. 100 But art thou not drowned, Stephano? I hope, now, thou art not drowned. Is the storm overblown? I hid me under the dead moon-calf's gaberdine for fear of the storm. And art thou living, Stephano? O Stephano, two Neapolitans scaped! 105 _Ste._ Prithee, do not turn me about; my stomach is not constant. _Cal._ [_aside_] These be fine things, an if they be not sprites. That's a brave god, and bears celestial liquor: I will kneel to him. 110 _Ste._ How didst thou 'scape? How camest thou hither? swear, by this bottle, how thou camest hither. I escaped upon a butt of sack, which the sailors heaved o'erboard, by this bottle! which I made of the bark of a tree with mine own hands, since I was cast ashore. 115 _Cal._ I'll swear, upon that bottle, to be thy true subject; for the liquor is not earthly. _Ste._ Here; swear, then, how thou escapedst. _Trin._ Swum ashore, man, like a duck: I can swim like a duck, I'll be sworn. 120 _Ste._ Here, kiss the book. Though thou canst swim like a duck, thou art made like a goose. _Trin._ O Stephano, hast any more of this? _Ste._ The whole butt, man: my cellar is in a rock by the sea-side, where my wine is hid. How now, moon-calf! 125 how does thine ague? _Cal._ Hast thou not dropp'd from heaven? _Ste._ Out o' the moon, I do assure thee: I was the man i' the moon when time was. _Cal._ I have seen thee in her, and I do adore thee: 130 My mistress show'd me thee, and thy dog, and thy bush. _Ste._ Come, swear to that; kiss the book: I will furnish it anon with new contents: swear. _Trin._ By this good light, this is a very shallow monster! I afeard of him! A very weak monster! The 135 man i' the moon! A most poor credulous monster! Well drawn, monster, in good sooth! _Cal._ I'll show thee every fertile inch o' th' island; And I will kiss thy foot: I prithee, be my god. _Trin._ By this light, a most perfidious and drunken 140 monster! when's god's asleep, he'll rob his bottle. _Cal._ I'll kiss thy foot; I'll swear myself thy subject. _Ste._ Come on, then; down, and swear. _Trin._ I shall laugh myself to death at this puppy-headed monster. A most scurvy monster! I could find in 145 my heart to beat him,-- _Ste._ Come, kiss. _Trin._ But that the poor monster's in drink: an abominable monster! _Cal._ I'll show thee the best springs; I'll pluck thee berries; 150 I'll fish for thee, and get thee wood enough. A plague upon the tyrant that I serve! I'll bear him no more sticks, but follow thee, Thou wondrous man. _Trin._ A most ridiculous monster, to make a wonder 155 of a poor drunkard! _Cal._ I prithee, let me bring thee where crabs grow; And I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts; Show thee a jay's nest, and instruct thee how To snare the nimble marmoset; I'll bring thee 160 To clustering filberts, and sometimes I'll get thee Young scamels from the rock. Wilt thou go with me? _Ste._ I prithee now, lead the way, without any more talking. Trinculo, the king and all our company else being drowned, we will inherit here: here; bear my bottle: fellow 165 Trinculo, we'll fill him by and by again. _Cal. sings drunkenly._] Farewell, master; farewell, farewell! _Trin._ A howling monster; a drunken monster! _Cal._ No more dams I'll make for fish; Nor fetch in firing 170 At requiring; Nor scrape trencher, nor wash dish: 'Ban, 'Ban, Cacaliban Has a new master:--get a new man. Freedom, hey-day! hey-day, freedom! freedom, hey-day, 175 freedom! _Ste._ O brave monster! Lead the way. [_Exeunt._ Notes: II, 2. 4: _nor_] F1 F2. _not_ F3 F4. 15: _and_] _now_ Pope. _sent_ Edd. conj. (so Dryden). 21: _foul_] _full_ Upton conj. 35: [Thunder] Capell. 38: _dregs_] _drench_ Collier MS. 40: SCENE III. Pope. [a bottle in his hand] Capell.] 46: _and Marian_] _Mirian_ Pope. 56: _savages_] _salvages_ Ff. 60: _at's nostrils_] Edd. _at 'nostrils_ F1. _at nostrils_ F2 F3 F4. _at his nostrils_ Pope. 78: _you, cat_] _you Cat_ Ff. _a cat_ Hanmer. _your cat_ Edd. conj. 84: _well_] F1 om. F2 F3 F4. 115, 116: Steevens prints as verse, _I'll ... thy True ... earthly._ 118: _swear, then, how thou escapedst_] _swear then: how escapedst thou?_ Pope. 119: _Swum_] _Swom_ Ff. 131: _and thy dog, and thy bush_] _thy dog and bush_ Steevens. 133: _new_] F1. _the new_ F2 F3 F4. 135: _weak_] F1. _shallow_ F2 F3 F4. 138: _island_] F1. _isle_ F2 F3 F4. 150-154, 157-162, printed as verse by Pope (after Dryden). 162: _scamels_] _shamois_ Theobald. _seamalls, stannels_ id. conj. 163: Ste.] F1. Cal. F2 F3 F4. 165: Before _here; bear my bottle_ Capell inserts [To Cal.]. See note (XII). 172: _trencher_] Pope (after Dryden). _trenchering_ Ff. 175: _hey-day_] Rowe. _high-day_ Ff.

Act II, scene ii

https://web.archive.org/web/20210131162607/https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/tempest/section5/

Caliban enters with a load of wood, and thunder sounds in the background. Caliban curses and describes the torments that Prospero's spirits subject him to: they pinch, bite, and prick him, especially when he curses. As he is thinking of these spirits, Caliban sees Trinculo and imagines him to be one of the spirits. Hoping to avoid pinching, he lies down and covers himself with his cloak. Trinculo hears the thunder and looks about for some cover from the storm. The only thing he sees is the cloak-covered Caliban on the ground. He is not so much repulsed by Caliban as curious. He cannot decide whether Caliban is a "man or a fish" . He thinks of a time when he traveled to England and witnessed freak-shows there. Caliban, he thinks, would bring him a lot of money in England. Thunder sounds again and Trinculo decides that the best shelter in sight is beneath Caliban's cloak, and so he joins the man-monster there. Stephano enters singing and drinking. He hears Caliban cry out to Trinculo, "Do not torment me! O!" . Hearing this and seeing the four legs sticking out from the cloak, Stephano thinks the two men are a four-legged monster with a fever. He decides to relieve this fever with a drink. Caliban continues to resist Trinculo, whom he still thinks is a spirit tormenting him. Trinculo recognizes Stephano's voice and says so. Stephano, of course, assumes for a moment that the monster has two heads, and he promises to pour liquor in both mouths. Trinculo now calls out to Stephano, and Stephano pulls his friend out from under the cloak. While the two men discuss how they arrived safely on shore, Caliban enjoys the liquor and begs to worship Stephano. The men take full advantage of Caliban's drunkenness, mocking him as a "most ridiculous monster" as he promises to lead them around and show them the isle.

Analysis Trinculo and Stephano are the last new characters to be introduced in the play. They act as comic foils to the main action, and will in later acts become specific parodies of Antonio and Sebastian. At this point, their role is to present comically some of the more serious issues in the play concerning Prospero and Caliban. In Act I, scene ii, Prospero calls Caliban a "slave" , "thou earth" , "Filth" , and "Hag-seed" . Stephano and Trinculo's epithet of choice in Act II, scene ii and thereafter is "monster." But while these two make quite clear that Caliban is seen as less than human by the Europeans on the island, they also treat him more humanely than Prospero does. Stephano and Trinculo, a butler and a jester respectively, remain at the low end of the social scale in the play, and have little difficulty finding friendship with the strange islander they meet. " Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows," says Trinculo , and then hastens to crawl beneath Caliban's garment in order to get out of the rain. The similarity, socially and perhaps physically as well, between Trinculo and Caliban is further emphasized when Stephano, drunk, initially mistakes the two for a single monster: "This is some monster of the isle with four legs" . More important than the emphasis on the way in which Caliban seems to others more monster than man, is the way in which this scene dramatizes the initial encounter between an almost completely isolated, "primitive" culture and a foreign, "civilized" one. The reader discovers during Caliban and Prospero's confrontation in Act I, scene ii that Prospero initially "made much of" Caliban ; that he gave Caliban "Water with berries in't" ; that Caliban showed him around the island; and that Prospero later imprisoned Caliban, after he had taken all he could take from him. The reader can see these events in Act II, scene ii, with Trinculo and Stephano in the place of Prospero. Stephano calls Caliban a "brave monster," as they set off singing around the island. In addition, Stephano and Trinculo give Caliban wine, which Caliban finds to be a "celestial liquor" . Moreover, Caliban initially mistakes Stephano and Trinculo for Prospero's spirits, but alcohol convinces him that Stephano is a "brave god" and decides unconditionally to "kneel to him" . This scene shows the foreign, civilized culture as decadent and manipulative: Stephano immediately plans to "inherit" the island , using Caliban to show him all its virtues. Stephano and Trinculo are a grotesque, parodic version of Prospero upon his arrival twelve years ago. Godlike in the eyes of the native, they slash and burn their way to power. By this point, Caliban has begun to resemble a parody of himself. Whereas he would "gabble like / A thing most brutish" upon Prospero's arrival, because he did not know language, he now is willfully inarticulate in his drunkenness. Immediately putting aside his fear that these men are spirits sent to do him harm, Caliban puts his trust in them for all the wrong reasons. What makes Caliban's behavior in this scene so tragic is that we might expect him, especially after his eloquent curses of Prospero in Act I, scene ii, to know better.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/chapters_19_to_22.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Lord Jim/section_6_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapters 19-22

chapters 19-22

{"name": "Chapters 19-22", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422054542/https://www.gradesaver.com/lord-jim/study-guide/summary-chapters-19-22", "summary": "Marlow notes that the irony of Jim's \"retreat\" is that he becomes famous for being an eccentric \"rolling stone\" who mysteriously disappears from his work at a moment's notice. In Bangkok, Marlow discovers, Jim is hired by the Yucker Brothers, who charter ships and deal in teak. Schomberg, an Alsatian hotelkeeper, who was boarding Jim, informs Marlow of what has happened to Jim in the city. There was a barroom scuffle with a cross-eyed Dane who was drunk; he had made some remark that had set Jim off. No one had heard what had been said, but Jim had pushed the Dane into the water, from the verandah of the bar. Marlow expresses concern about the possible degradation of Jim's character, so he arranges for Jim to have a position as a water-clerk at De Jongh's. He asks Jim if maybe he wants to head West or go to California for a fresh start. But Jim doesn't think there is any point to that. What he wants, more than anything, is another opportunity. This is where Marlow decides to consult with his friend Stein, a wealthy and respected merchant and head of a large inter-island business called Stein & Co. The company consists of a small fleet of schooners and native craft, and it deals in island produce on a large scale. Stein is trustworthy and intelligent, with a student's face and a spirited personality, and is a collector of butterflies. Marlow describes him as \"solitary, but not misanthropic\" . His history had been that of a romantic, as well as tragic. Born in Bavaria and then becoming a revolutionary by the age of twenty-two, Stein traveled to Tripoli, and then he assisted a Dutch naturalist, collecting insects and birds for four years. The Dutchman had gone home, and Stein eventually met a benevolent Scotsman named Alexander M'Neil. The old trader had been friends with the queen of the native court of the Wajo States, and he introduced Stein as his son, so that he would inherit the trade in the event of his death. The queen passed, and during the political intrigues that followed with regard to the succession to the throne, Stein assisted the party of the younger son, his very good friend, \"my poor Mohammed Bonso.\" Stein married this friend's sister, \"the Princess,\" having a daughter with her named Emma. As quickly as a flaming match is extinguished--as Stein dramatically illustrates to Marlow--his friend was assassinated, and his wife and daughter both died of an infectious fever. In a key scene of the novel, as Stein examines a seven-inch-long butterfly in one of his glass cases, an insect with white veins and a yellow-spotted border, he offers the story of how he came upon it. One afternoon, he was ambushed, and after successfully beating the men who had tried to kill him, he saw the butterfly. It flew. This story presents Marlow with his opening to discuss, instead, a specimen of man: Jim's case. Stein, after listening, concludes: \"He is romantic.\" The following conversation discusses the subtle questions of how to be, how to live, and the nature of the \"romantic.\" In the end, though, Marlow concludes that no one is more romantic than Stein. As Marlow and Stein eventually turn to the practical matter of what to do about Jim, the narrative shifts, and Marlow asks his audience if they have ever heard of Patusan, the remote place where Stein sends Jim. Stein does know the intricacies of the place, and he explains to Marlow that there was a woman there, a Dutch-Malay girl, educated, who had a tragic history. Her unfortunate marriage to Cornelius, a man for whom Stein shows evident dislike, caused sympathy in Stein. He had made Cornelius the manager of the trade post in Patusan for his wife's sake. In the end, however, the appointment had been bad for business, and the wife had died anyway. The result of telling the story is that Jim is to be sent to Patusan to relieve Cornelius of the post. The narrative then leaps toward an ambiguous assertion of Jim's success in Patusan. Marlow goes to visit him there, and upon seeing Jim he is struck by the change that has come over him: \"He appeared like a creature not only of another kind but of another essence\" . Jim states that his first day in Patusan had almost been his last, but that the chance was his at last. He had proved himself; he had achieved for himself a dream.", "analysis": "When Marlow learns of Jim's barroom brawl, the implication is that Jim's obsession regarding his own failure has begun to express itself bitterly in moments of violence. This is not unlike the manner in which Jim's later foil, Brown, will be presented. In other words, at this point Jim, without prospect of another opportunity to prove his worth in the world, is in danger of slipping away from the positive category, \"one of us.\" Marlow, however, continually serves as Jim's ally and seeks help from his illustrious friend Stein, a colorfully romantic character who has lived a fairy tale, having been given odd opportunities that have flourished into a life where he was even married to a princess. Stein had a family, a best friend, and a high place with a native court, and the fantastical feel to his entire story is striking against the thus far relatively bleak picture of Jim's failure, life at sea, and uninspiring work. Stein, a romantic figure, is a good, solitary man, not friendless because he seems to be a close friend of Marlow. Although he has weathered tragedy, he has reemerged as a highly successful merchant. The poignancy of the scene derived from the vision of butterflies and from the look into a man's spectacular past, is offset by Stein's sorrow: despite it all, the most precious of his dreams were never realized. The scene between Marlow and Stein is thus punctuated with a sense of illumination and beauty. Stein lights a match and then extinguishes it to illustrate the fleeting nature of his past, his family, and life itself. Fortune's wheel first spun in his favor and then just as easily reversed his luck. When the reader learns the fantastical story in which Stein defeats multiple men who tried to ambush him, the romanticism is soon replaced with the romantic flight of a mysterious and rare butterfly. That butterfly is now spread beneath a glass case, and when one considers its beauty and perfection--a perfection only the artist Nature can make--one is struck by the similarity between the specimen butterfly and the specimen man, perhaps recalling Hamlet's meditation upon the human skull in Shakespeare's play. Stein, indeed, refers to the words of \"your great poet\" . He states that the question for the romantic is not how to be cured, but rather how one is to live . According to Stein, the romantic seizes the opportunity, just as he had seized, in the wake of an ambush, a rare butterfly. To be cured is, in a way, to grow out of one's dreams and to set them aside, allowing for disenchantment in maturity. This is likely to be Marlow's as well as the general case, yet for Stein, in spite of his tragic experiences, the idea is to live and to remain a romantic at heart. Stein clings to the butterflies, to his dreams, fueling a merchant empire, continuing to live for his romantic vision. The question of how to live also echoes against the earlier statement by the French lieutenant that one does not die of being afraid. In conquering fear, one may die, but one may also continue to live in a higher fashion. At the same time, Stein follows these considerations with something that takes on a maxim-like quality in the novel: \"A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea\" . Remembering the comment by Chester that Jim was a \"man overboard,\" achieving the dream is like falling into the sea, a kind of death of the old self. At the same time, the image is not particularly hopeful; death appears inevitable. The juxtaposition of the butterfly in the glass case as a specimen of Nature and Jim as a specimen of man is crucial, because it points to two particular artists. While Nature creates masterpieces, man, according to Stein, is not a masterpiece. Man is never perfect. The ultimate paradox of the novel, then, is that the novel functions as a masterful painting of the man Jim in all his imperfections, so intimately and delicately captured, with the fineness of detail expressed by Nature in its butterflies. In this portrait, the man achieves a kind of perfection nevertheless. The wholeness of a man, with all of his contradictions, spells the kind of truth art seeks to capture. While butterflies become increasingly fragile beneath their glass cases, indicative of the fragility of beauty and of illusion, the art of the novel, the art of language, and, ultimately, the art of life itself, impresses upon time a kind of permanence. As Stein and Marlow discuss Jim in an abstract and idyllic way, Stein insists, in the end, on a practical solution. This refers back to the fact presented early in the novel that Jim has \"Ability in the abstract.\" The problem is then how \"Ability\" is to be expressed in Jim's world. In Stein's case, the reader can assume that he has been quite successful reading his own situation, as well as expressing his abilities in the world, given his status and success. Hence, in the cyclical way that life seems to move in this novel, Stein passes an opportunity to Jim, reflecting the way that Stein himself had been visited by opportunity. Stein perceptively decides to send Jim to Patusan, a remote place where the news of his failure is unlikely to penetrate. Jim leaps at the chance. But knowing how Stein's dream had closed, readers see that the tragedy of Jim's new life in Patusan is already foreshadowed."}

'I have told you these two episodes at length to show his manner of dealing with himself under the new conditions of his life. There were many others of the sort, more than I could count on the fingers of my two hands. They were all equally tinged by a high-minded absurdity of intention which made their futility profound and touching. To fling away your daily bread so as to get your hands free for a grapple with a ghost may be an act of prosaic heroism. Men had done it before (though we who have lived know full well that it is not the haunted soul but the hungry body that makes an outcast), and men who had eaten and meant to eat every day had applauded the creditable folly. He was indeed unfortunate, for all his recklessness could not carry him out from under the shadow. There was always a doubt of his courage. The truth seems to be that it is impossible to lay the ghost of a fact. You can face it or shirk it--and I have come across a man or two who could wink at their familiar shades. Obviously Jim was not of the winking sort; but what I could never make up my mind about was whether his line of conduct amounted to shirking his ghost or to facing him out. 'I strained my mental eyesight only to discover that, as with the complexion of all our actions, the shade of difference was so delicate that it was impossible to say. It might have been flight and it might have been a mode of combat. To the common mind he became known as a rolling stone, because this was the funniest part: he did after a time become perfectly known, and even notorious, within the circle of his wanderings (which had a diameter of, say, three thousand miles), in the same way as an eccentric character is known to a whole countryside. For instance, in Bankok, where he found employment with Yucker Brothers, charterers and teak merchants, it was almost pathetic to see him go about in sunshine hugging his secret, which was known to the very up-country logs on the river. Schomberg, the keeper of the hotel where he boarded, a hirsute Alsatian of manly bearing and an irrepressible retailer of all the scandalous gossip of the place, would, with both elbows on the table, impart an adorned version of the story to any guest who cared to imbibe knowledge along with the more costly liquors. "And, mind you, the nicest fellow you could meet," would be his generous conclusion; "quite superior." It says a lot for the casual crowd that frequented Schomberg's establishment that Jim managed to hang out in Bankok for a whole six months. I remarked that people, perfect strangers, took to him as one takes to a nice child. His manner was reserved, but it was as though his personal appearance, his hair, his eyes, his smile, made friends for him wherever he went. And, of course, he was no fool. I heard Siegmund Yucker (native of Switzerland), a gentle creature ravaged by a cruel dyspepsia, and so frightfully lame that his head swung through a quarter of a circle at every step he took, declare appreciatively that for one so young he was "of great gabasidy," as though it had been a mere question of cubic contents. "Why not send him up country?" I suggested anxiously. (Yucker Brothers had concessions and teak forests in the interior.) "If he has capacity, as you say, he will soon get hold of the work. And physically he is very fit. His health is always excellent." "Ach! It's a great ting in dis goundry to be vree vrom tispep-shia," sighed poor Yucker enviously, casting a stealthy glance at the pit of his ruined stomach. I left him drumming pensively on his desk and muttering, "Es ist ein' Idee. Es ist ein' Idee." Unfortunately, that very evening an unpleasant affair took place in the hotel. 'I don't know that I blame Jim very much, but it was a truly regrettable incident. It belonged to the lamentable species of bar-room scuffles, and the other party to it was a cross-eyed Dane of sorts whose visiting-card recited, under his misbegotten name: first lieutenant in the Royal Siamese Navy. The fellow, of course, was utterly hopeless at billiards, but did not like to be beaten, I suppose. He had had enough to drink to turn nasty after the sixth game, and make some scornful remark at Jim's expense. Most of the people there didn't hear what was said, and those who had heard seemed to have had all precise recollection scared out of them by the appalling nature of the consequences that immediately ensued. It was very lucky for the Dane that he could swim, because the room opened on a verandah and the Menam flowed below very wide and black. A boat-load of Chinamen, bound, as likely as not, on some thieving expedition, fished out the officer of the King of Siam, and Jim turned up at about midnight on board my ship without a hat. "Everybody in the room seemed to know," he said, gasping yet from the contest, as it were. He was rather sorry, on general principles, for what had happened, though in this case there had been, he said, "no option." But what dismayed him was to find the nature of his burden as well known to everybody as though he had gone about all that time carrying it on his shoulders. Naturally after this he couldn't remain in the place. He was universally condemned for the brutal violence, so unbecoming a man in his delicate position; some maintained he had been disgracefully drunk at the time; others criticised his want of tact. Even Schomberg was very much annoyed. "He is a very nice young man," he said argumentatively to me, "but the lieutenant is a first-rate fellow too. He dines every night at my table d'hote, you know. And there's a billiard-cue broken. I can't allow that. First thing this morning I went over with my apologies to the lieutenant, and I think I've made it all right for myself; but only think, captain, if everybody started such games! Why, the man might have been drowned! And here I can't run out into the next street and buy a new cue. I've got to write to Europe for them. No, no! A temper like that won't do!" . . . He was extremely sore on the subject. 'This was the worst incident of all in his--his retreat. Nobody could deplore it more than myself; for if, as somebody said hearing him mentioned, "Oh yes! I know. He has knocked about a good deal out here," yet he had somehow avoided being battered and chipped in the process. This last affair, however, made me seriously uneasy, because if his exquisite sensibilities were to go the length of involving him in pot-house shindies, he would lose his name of an inoffensive, if aggravating, fool, and acquire that of a common loafer. For all my confidence in him I could not help reflecting that in such cases from the name to the thing itself is but a step. I suppose you will understand that by that time I could not think of washing my hands of him. I took him away from Bankok in my ship, and we had a longish passage. It was pitiful to see how he shrank within himself. A seaman, even if a mere passenger, takes an interest in a ship, and looks at the sea-life around him with the critical enjoyment of a painter, for instance, looking at another man's work. In every sense of the expression he is "on deck"; but my Jim, for the most part, skulked down below as though he had been a stowaway. He infected me so that I avoided speaking on professional matters, such as would suggest themselves naturally to two sailors during a passage. For whole days we did not exchange a word; I felt extremely unwilling to give orders to my officers in his presence. Often, when alone with him on deck or in the cabin, we didn't know what to do with our eyes. 'I placed him with De Jongh, as you know, glad enough to dispose of him in any way, yet persuaded that his position was now growing intolerable. He had lost some of that elasticity which had enabled him to rebound back into his uncompromising position after every overthrow. One day, coming ashore, I saw him standing on the quay; the water of the roadstead and the sea in the offing made one smooth ascending plane, and the outermost ships at anchor seemed to ride motionless in the sky. He was waiting for his boat, which was being loaded at our feet with packages of small stores for some vessel ready to leave. After exchanging greetings, we remained silent--side by side. "Jove!" he said suddenly, "this is killing work." 'He smiled at me; I must say he generally could manage a smile. I made no reply. I knew very well he was not alluding to his duties; he had an easy time of it with De Jongh. Nevertheless, as soon as he had spoken I became completely convinced that the work was killing. I did not even look at him. "Would you like," said I, "to leave this part of the world altogether; try California or the West Coast? I'll see what I can do . . ." He interrupted me a little scornfully. "What difference would it make?" . . . I felt at once convinced that he was right. It would make no difference; it was not relief he wanted; I seemed to perceive dimly that what he wanted, what he was, as it were, waiting for, was something not easy to define--something in the nature of an opportunity. I had given him many opportunities, but they had been merely opportunities to earn his bread. Yet what more could any man do? The position struck me as hopeless, and poor Brierly's saying recurred to me, "Let him creep twenty feet underground and stay there." Better that, I thought, than this waiting above ground for the impossible. Yet one could not be sure even of that. There and then, before his boat was three oars' lengths away from the quay, I had made up my mind to go and consult Stein in the evening. 'This Stein was a wealthy and respected merchant. His "house" (because it was a house, Stein & Co., and there was some sort of partner who, as Stein said, "looked after the Moluccas") had a large inter-island business, with a lot of trading posts established in the most out-of-the-way places for collecting the produce. His wealth and his respectability were not exactly the reasons why I was anxious to seek his advice. I desired to confide my difficulty to him because he was one of the most trustworthy men I had ever known. The gentle light of a simple, unwearied, as it were, and intelligent good-nature illumined his long hairless face. It had deep downward folds, and was pale as of a man who had always led a sedentary life--which was indeed very far from being the case. His hair was thin, and brushed back from a massive and lofty forehead. One fancied that at twenty he must have looked very much like what he was now at threescore. It was a student's face; only the eyebrows nearly all white, thick and bushy, together with the resolute searching glance that came from under them, were not in accord with his, I may say, learned appearance. He was tall and loose-jointed; his slight stoop, together with an innocent smile, made him appear benevolently ready to lend you his ear; his long arms with pale big hands had rare deliberate gestures of a pointing out, demonstrating kind. I speak of him at length, because under this exterior, and in conjunction with an upright and indulgent nature, this man possessed an intrepidity of spirit and a physical courage that could have been called reckless had it not been like a natural function of the body--say good digestion, for instance--completely unconscious of itself. It is sometimes said of a man that he carries his life in his hand. Such a saying would have been inadequate if applied to him; during the early part of his existence in the East he had been playing ball with it. All this was in the past, but I knew the story of his life and the origin of his fortune. He was also a naturalist of some distinction, or perhaps I should say a learned collector. Entomology was his special study. His collection of Buprestidae and Longicorns--beetles all--horrible miniature monsters, looking malevolent in death and immobility, and his cabinet of butterflies, beautiful and hovering under the glass of cases on lifeless wings, had spread his fame far over the earth. The name of this merchant, adventurer, sometime adviser of a Malay sultan (to whom he never alluded otherwise than as "my poor Mohammed Bonso"), had, on account of a few bushels of dead insects, become known to learned persons in Europe, who could have had no conception, and certainly would not have cared to know anything, of his life or character. I, who knew, considered him an eminently suitable person to receive my confidences about Jim's difficulties as well as my own.''Late in the evening I entered his study, after traversing an imposing but empty dining-room very dimly lit. The house was silent. I was preceded by an elderly grim Javanese servant in a sort of livery of white jacket and yellow sarong, who, after throwing the door open, exclaimed low, "O master!" and stepping aside, vanished in a mysterious way as though he had been a ghost only momentarily embodied for that particular service. Stein turned round with the chair, and in the same movement his spectacles seemed to get pushed up on his forehead. He welcomed me in his quiet and humorous voice. Only one corner of the vast room, the corner in which stood his writing-desk, was strongly lighted by a shaded reading-lamp, and the rest of the spacious apartment melted into shapeless gloom like a cavern. Narrow shelves filled with dark boxes of uniform shape and colour ran round the walls, not from floor to ceiling, but in a sombre belt about four feet broad. Catacombs of beetles. Wooden tablets were hung above at irregular intervals. The light reached one of them, and the word Coleoptera written in gold letters glittered mysteriously upon a vast dimness. The glass cases containing the collection of butterflies were ranged in three long rows upon slender-legged little tables. One of these cases had been removed from its place and stood on the desk, which was bestrewn with oblong slips of paper blackened with minute handwriting. '"So you see me--so," he said. His hand hovered over the case where a butterfly in solitary grandeur spread out dark bronze wings, seven inches or more across, with exquisite white veinings and a gorgeous border of yellow spots. "Only one specimen like this they have in _your_ London, and then--no more. To my small native town this my collection I shall bequeath. Something of me. The best." 'He bent forward in the chair and gazed intently, his chin over the front of the case. I stood at his back. "Marvellous," he whispered, and seemed to forget my presence. His history was curious. He had been born in Bavaria, and when a youth of twenty-two had taken an active part in the revolutionary movement of 1848. Heavily compromised, he managed to make his escape, and at first found a refuge with a poor republican watchmaker in Trieste. From there he made his way to Tripoli with a stock of cheap watches to hawk about,--not a very great opening truly, but it turned out lucky enough, because it was there he came upon a Dutch traveller--a rather famous man, I believe, but I don't remember his name. It was that naturalist who, engaging him as a sort of assistant, took him to the East. They travelled in the Archipelago together and separately, collecting insects and birds, for four years or more. Then the naturalist went home, and Stein, having no home to go to, remained with an old trader he had come across in his journeys in the interior of Celebes--if Celebes may be said to have an interior. This old Scotsman, the only white man allowed to reside in the country at the time, was a privileged friend of the chief ruler of Wajo States, who was a woman. I often heard Stein relate how that chap, who was slightly paralysed on one side, had introduced him to the native court a short time before another stroke carried him off. He was a heavy man with a patriarchal white beard, and of imposing stature. He came into the council-hall where all the rajahs, pangerans, and headmen were assembled, with the queen, a fat wrinkled woman (very free in her speech, Stein said), reclining on a high couch under a canopy. He dragged his leg, thumping with his stick, and grasped Stein's arm, leading him right up to the couch. "Look, queen, and you rajahs, this is my son," he proclaimed in a stentorian voice. "I have traded with your fathers, and when I die he shall trade with you and your sons." 'By means of this simple formality Stein inherited the Scotsman's privileged position and all his stock-in-trade, together with a fortified house on the banks of the only navigable river in the country. Shortly afterwards the old queen, who was so free in her speech, died, and the country became disturbed by various pretenders to the throne. Stein joined the party of a younger son, the one of whom thirty years later he never spoke otherwise but as "my poor Mohammed Bonso." They both became the heroes of innumerable exploits; they had wonderful adventures, and once stood a siege in the Scotsman's house for a month, with only a score of followers against a whole army. I believe the natives talk of that war to this day. Meantime, it seems, Stein never failed to annex on his own account every butterfly or beetle he could lay hands on. After some eight years of war, negotiations, false truces, sudden outbreaks, reconciliation, treachery, and so on, and just as peace seemed at last permanently established, his "poor Mohammed Bonso" was assassinated at the gate of his own royal residence while dismounting in the highest spirits on his return from a successful deer-hunt. This event rendered Stein's position extremely insecure, but he would have stayed perhaps had it not been that a short time afterwards he lost Mohammed's sister ("my dear wife the princess," he used to say solemnly), by whom he had had a daughter--mother and child both dying within three days of each other from some infectious fever. He left the country, which this cruel loss had made unbearable to him. Thus ended the first and adventurous part of his existence. What followed was so different that, but for the reality of sorrow which remained with him, this strange part must have resembled a dream. He had a little money; he started life afresh, and in the course of years acquired a considerable fortune. At first he had travelled a good deal amongst the islands, but age had stolen upon him, and of late he seldom left his spacious house three miles out of town, with an extensive garden, and surrounded by stables, offices, and bamboo cottages for his servants and dependants, of whom he had many. He drove in his buggy every morning to town, where he had an office with white and Chinese clerks. He owned a small fleet of schooners and native craft, and dealt in island produce on a large scale. For the rest he lived solitary, but not misanthropic, with his books and his collection, classing and arranging specimens, corresponding with entomologists in Europe, writing up a descriptive catalogue of his treasures. Such was the history of the man whom I had come to consult upon Jim's case without any definite hope. Simply to hear what he would have to say would have been a relief. I was very anxious, but I respected the intense, almost passionate, absorption with which he looked at a butterfly, as though on the bronze sheen of these frail wings, in the white tracings, in the gorgeous markings, he could see other things, an image of something as perishable and defying destruction as these delicate and lifeless tissues displaying a splendour unmarred by death. '"Marvellous!" he repeated, looking up at me. "Look! The beauty--but that is nothing--look at the accuracy, the harmony. And so fragile! And so strong! And so exact! This is Nature--the balance of colossal forces. Every star is so--and every blade of grass stands so--and the mighty Kosmos ib perfect equilibrium produces--this. This wonder; this masterpiece of Nature--the great artist." '"Never heard an entomologist go on like this," I observed cheerfully. "Masterpiece! And what of man?" '"Man is amazing, but he is not a masterpiece," he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the glass case. "Perhaps the artist was a little mad. Eh? What do you think? Sometimes it seems to me that man is come where he is not wanted, where there is no place for him; for if not, why should he want all the place? Why should he run about here and there making a great noise about himself, talking about the stars, disturbing the blades of grass? . . ." '"Catching butterflies," I chimed in. 'He smiled, threw himself back in his chair, and stretched his legs. "Sit down," he said. "I captured this rare specimen myself one very fine morning. And I had a very big emotion. You don't know what it is for a collector to capture such a rare specimen. You can't know." 'I smiled at my ease in a rocking-chair. His eyes seemed to look far beyond the wall at which they stared; and he narrated how, one night, a messenger arrived from his "poor Mohammed," requiring his presence at the "residenz"--as he called it--which was distant some nine or ten miles by a bridle-path over a cultivated plain, with patches of forest here and there. Early in the morning he started from his fortified house, after embracing his little Emma, and leaving the "princess," his wife, in command. He described how she came with him as far as the gate, walking with one hand on the neck of his horse; she had on a white jacket, gold pins in her hair, and a brown leather belt over her left shoulder with a revolver in it. "She talked as women will talk," he said, "telling me to be careful, and to try to get back before dark, and what a great wickedness it was for me to go alone. We were at war, and the country was not safe; my men were putting up bullet-proof shutters to the house and loading their rifles, and she begged me to have no fear for her. She could defend the house against anybody till I returned. And I laughed with pleasure a little. I liked to see her so brave and young and strong. I too was young then. At the gate she caught hold of my hand and gave it one squeeze and fell back. I made my horse stand still outside till I heard the bars of the gate put up behind me. There was a great enemy of mine, a great noble--and a great rascal too--roaming with a band in the neighbourhood. I cantered for four or five miles; there had been rain in the night, but the musts had gone up, up--and the face of the earth was clean; it lay smiling to me, so fresh and innocent--like a little child. Suddenly somebody fires a volley--twenty shots at least it seemed to me. I hear bullets sing in my ear, and my hat jumps to the back of my head. It was a little intrigue, you understand. They got my poor Mohammed to send for me and then laid that ambush. I see it all in a minute, and I think--This wants a little management. My pony snort, jump, and stand, and I fall slowly forward with my head on his mane. He begins to walk, and with one eye I could see over his neck a faint cloud of smoke hanging in front of a clump of bamboos to my left. I think--Aha! my friends, why you not wait long enough before you shoot? This is not yet gelungen. Oh no! I get hold of my revolver with my right hand--quiet--quiet. After all, there were only seven of these rascals. They get up from the grass and start running with their sarongs tucked up, waving spears above their heads, and yelling to each other to look out and catch the horse, because I was dead. I let them come as close as the door here, and then bang, bang, bang--take aim each time too. One more shot I fire at a man's back, but I miss. Too far already. And then I sit alone on my horse with the clean earth smiling at me, and there are the bodies of three men lying on the ground. One was curled up like a dog, another on his back had an arm over his eyes as if to keep off the sun, and the third man he draws up his leg very slowly and makes it with one kick straight again. I watch him very carefully from my horse, but there is no more--bleibt ganz ruhig--keep still, so. And as I looked at his face for some sign of life I observed something like a faint shadow pass over his forehead. It was the shadow of this butterfly. Look at the form of the wing. This species fly high with a strong flight. I raised my eyes and I saw him fluttering away. I think--Can it be possible? And then I lost him. I dismounted and went on very slow, leading my horse and holding my revolver with one hand and my eyes darting up and down and right and left, everywhere! At last I saw him sitting on a small heap of dirt ten feet away. At once my heart began to beat quick. I let go my horse, keep my revolver in one hand, and with the other snatch my soft felt hat off my head. One step. Steady. Another step. Flop! I got him! When I got up I shook like a leaf with excitement, and when I opened these beautiful wings and made sure what a rare and so extraordinary perfect specimen I had, my head went round and my legs became so weak with emotion that I had to sit on the ground. I had greatly desired to possess myself of a specimen of that species when collecting for the professor. I took long journeys and underwent great privations; I had dreamed of him in my sleep, and here suddenly I had him in my fingers--for myself! In the words of the poet" (he pronounced it "boet")-- "'So halt' ich's endlich denn in meinen Handen, Und nenn' es in gewissem Sinne mein.'" He gave to the last word the emphasis of a suddenly lowered voice, and withdrew his eyes slowly from my face. He began to charge a long-stemmed pipe busily and in silence, then, pausing with his thumb on the orifice of the bowl, looked again at me significantly. '"Yes, my good friend. On that day I had nothing to desire; I had greatly annoyed my principal enemy; I was young, strong; I had friendship; I had the love" (he said "lof") "of woman, a child I had, to make my heart very full--and even what I had once dreamed in my sleep had come into my hand too!" 'He struck a match, which flared violently. His thoughtful placid face twitched once. '"Friend, wife, child," he said slowly, gazing at the small flame--"phoo!" The match was blown out. He sighed and turned again to the glass case. The frail and beautiful wings quivered faintly, as if his breath had for an instant called back to life that gorgeous object of his dreams. '"The work," he began suddenly, pointing to the scattered slips, and in his usual gentle and cheery tone, "is making great progress. I have been this rare specimen describing. . . . Na! And what is your good news?" '"To tell you the truth, Stein," I said with an effort that surprised me, "I came here to describe a specimen. . . ." '"Butterfly?" he asked, with an unbelieving and humorous eagerness. '"Nothing so perfect," I answered, feeling suddenly dispirited with all sorts of doubts. "A man!" '"Ach so!" he murmured, and his smiling countenance, turned to me, became grave. Then after looking at me for a while he said slowly, "Well--I am a man too." 'Here you have him as he was; he knew how to be so generously encouraging as to make a scrupulous man hesitate on the brink of confidence; but if I did hesitate it was not for long. 'He heard me out, sitting with crossed legs. Sometimes his head would disappear completely in a great eruption of smoke, and a sympathetic growl would come out from the cloud. When I finished he uncrossed his legs, laid down his pipe, leaned forward towards me earnestly with his elbows on the arms of his chair, the tips of his fingers together. '"I understand very well. He is romantic." 'He had diagnosed the case for me, and at first I was quite startled to find how simple it was; and indeed our conference resembled so much a medical consultation--Stein, of learned aspect, sitting in an arm-chair before his desk; I, anxious, in another, facing him, but a little to one side--that it seemed natural to ask-- '"What's good for it?" 'He lifted up a long forefinger. '"There is only one remedy! One thing alone can us from being ourselves cure!" The finger came down on the desk with a smart rap. The case which he had made to look so simple before became if possible still simpler--and altogether hopeless. There was a pause. "Yes," said I, "strictly speaking, the question is not how to get cured, but how to live." 'He approved with his head, a little sadly as it seemed. "Ja! ja! In general, adapting the words of your great poet: That is the question. . . ." He went on nodding sympathetically. . . . "How to be! Ach! How to be." 'He stood up with the tips of his fingers resting on the desk. '"We want in so many different ways to be," he began again. "This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it; but man he will never on his heap of mud keep still. He want to be so, and again he want to be so. . . ." He moved his hand up, then down. . . . "He wants to be a saint, and he wants to be a devil--and every time he shuts his eyes he sees himself as a very fine fellow--so fine as he can never be. . . . In a dream. . . ." 'He lowered the glass lid, the automatic lock clicked sharply, and taking up the case in both hands he bore it religiously away to its place, passing out of the bright circle of the lamp into the ring of fainter light--into shapeless dusk at last. It had an odd effect--as if these few steps had carried him out of this concrete and perplexed world. His tall form, as though robbed of its substance, hovered noiselessly over invisible things with stooping and indefinite movements; his voice, heard in that remoteness where he could be glimpsed mysteriously busy with immaterial cares, was no longer incisive, seemed to roll voluminous and grave--mellowed by distance. '"And because you not always can keep your eyes shut there comes the real trouble--the heart pain--the world pain. I tell you, my friend, it is not good for you to find you cannot make your dream come true, for the reason that you not strong enough are, or not clever enough. . . . Ja! . . . And all the time you are such a fine fellow too! Wie? Was? Gott im Himmel! How can that be? Ha! ha! ha!" 'The shadow prowling amongst the graves of butterflies laughed boisterously. '"Yes! Very funny this terrible thing is. A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavour to do, he drowns--nicht wahr? . . . No! I tell you! The way is to the destructive element submit yourself, and with the exertions of your hands and feet in the water make the deep, deep sea keep you up. So if you ask me--how to be?" 'His voice leaped up extraordinarily strong, as though away there in the dusk he had been inspired by some whisper of knowledge. "I will tell you! For that too there is only one way." 'With a hasty swish-swish of his slippers he loomed up in the ring of faint light, and suddenly appeared in the bright circle of the lamp. His extended hand aimed at my breast like a pistol; his deepset eyes seemed to pierce through me, but his twitching lips uttered no word, and the austere exaltation of a certitude seen in the dusk vanished from his face. The hand that had been pointing at my breast fell, and by-and-by, coming a step nearer, he laid it gently on my shoulder. There were things, he said mournfully, that perhaps could never be told, only he had lived so much alone that sometimes he forgot--he forgot. The light had destroyed the assurance which had inspired him in the distant shadows. He sat down and, with both elbows on the desk, rubbed his forehead. "And yet it is true--it is true. In the destructive element immerse." . . . He spoke in a subdued tone, without looking at me, one hand on each side of his face. "That was the way. To follow the dream, and again to follow the dream--and so--ewig--usque ad finem. . . ." The whisper of his conviction seemed to open before me a vast and uncertain expanse, as of a crepuscular horizon on a plain at dawn--or was it, perchance, at the coming of the night? One had not the courage to decide; but it was a charming and deceptive light, throwing the impalpable poesy of its dimness over pitfalls--over graves. His life had begun in sacrifice, in enthusiasm for generous ideas; he had travelled very far, on various ways, on strange paths, and whatever he followed it had been without faltering, and therefore without shame and without regret. In so far he was right. That was the way, no doubt. Yet for all that, the great plain on which men wander amongst graves and pitfalls remained very desolate under the impalpable poesy of its crepuscular light, overshadowed in the centre, circled with a bright edge as if surrounded by an abyss full of flames. When at last I broke the silence it was to express the opinion that no one could be more romantic than himself. 'He shook his head slowly, and afterwards looked at me with a patient and inquiring glance. It was a shame, he said. There we were sitting and talking like two boys, instead of putting our heads together to find something practical--a practical remedy--for the evil--for the great evil--he repeated, with a humorous and indulgent smile. For all that, our talk did not grow more practical. We avoided pronouncing Jim's name as though we had tried to keep flesh and blood out of our discussion, or he were nothing but an erring spirit, a suffering and nameless shade. "Na!" said Stein, rising. "To-night you sleep here, and in the morning we shall do something practical--practical. . . ." He lit a two-branched candlestick and led the way. We passed through empty dark rooms, escorted by gleams from the lights Stein carried. They glided along the waxed floors, sweeping here and there over the polished surface of a table, leaped upon a fragmentary curve of a piece of furniture, or flashed perpendicularly in and out of distant mirrors, while the forms of two men and the flicker of two flames could be seen for a moment stealing silently across the depths of a crystalline void. He walked slowly a pace in advance with stooping courtesy; there was a profound, as it were a listening, quietude on his face; the long flaxen locks mixed with white threads were scattered thinly upon his slightly bowed neck. '"He is romantic--romantic," he repeated. "And that is very bad--very bad. . . . Very good, too," he added. "But _is he_?" I queried. '"Gewiss," he said, and stood still holding up the candelabrum, but without looking at me. "Evident! What is it that by inward pain makes him know himself? What is it that for you and me makes him--exist?" 'At that moment it was difficult to believe in Jim's existence--starting from a country parsonage, blurred by crowds of men as by clouds of dust, silenced by the clashing claims of life and death in a material world--but his imperishable reality came to me with a convincing, with an irresistible force! I saw it vividly, as though in our progress through the lofty silent rooms amongst fleeting gleams of light and the sudden revelations of human figures stealing with flickering flames within unfathomable and pellucid depths, we had approached nearer to absolute Truth, which, like Beauty itself, floats elusive, obscure, half submerged, in the silent still waters of mystery. "Perhaps he is," I admitted with a slight laugh, whose unexpectedly loud reverberation made me lower my voice directly; "but I am sure you are." With his head dropping on his breast and the light held high he began to walk again. "Well--I exist, too," he said. 'He preceded me. My eyes followed his movements, but what I did see was not the head of the firm, the welcome guest at afternoon receptions, the correspondent of learned societies, the entertainer of stray naturalists; I saw only the reality of his destiny, which he had known how to follow with unfaltering footsteps, that life begun in humble surroundings, rich in generous enthusiasms, in friendship, love, war--in all the exalted elements of romance. At the door of my room he faced me. "Yes," I said, as though carrying on a discussion, "and amongst other things you dreamed foolishly of a certain butterfly; but when one fine morning your dream came in your way you did not let the splendid opportunity escape. Did you? Whereas he . . ." Stein lifted his hand. "And do you know how many opportunities I let escape; how many dreams I had lost that had come in my way?" He shook his head regretfully. "It seems to me that some would have been very fine--if I had made them come true. Do you know how many? Perhaps I myself don't know." "Whether his were fine or not," I said, "he knows of one which he certainly did not catch." "Everybody knows of one or two like that," said Stein; "and that is the trouble--the great trouble. . . ." 'He shook hands on the threshold, peered into my room under his raised arm. "Sleep well. And to-morrow we must do something practical--practical. . . ." 'Though his own room was beyond mine I saw him return the way he came. He was going back to his butterflies.' 'I don't suppose any of you have ever heard of Patusan?' Marlow resumed, after a silence occupied in the careful lighting of a cigar. 'It does not matter; there's many a heavenly body in the lot crowding upon us of a night that mankind had never heard of, it being outside the sphere of its activities and of no earthly importance to anybody but to the astronomers who are paid to talk learnedly about its composition, weight, path--the irregularities of its conduct, the aberrations of its light--a sort of scientific scandal-mongering. Thus with Patusan. It was referred to knowingly in the inner government circles in Batavia, especially as to its irregularities and aberrations, and it was known by name to some few, very few, in the mercantile world. Nobody, however, had been there, and I suspect no one desired to go there in person, just as an astronomer, I should fancy, would strongly object to being transported into a distant heavenly body, where, parted from his earthly emoluments, he would be bewildered by the view of an unfamiliar heavens. However, neither heavenly bodies nor astronomers have anything to do with Patusan. It was Jim who went there. I only meant you to understand that had Stein arranged to send him into a star of the fifth magnitude the change could not have been greater. He left his earthly failings behind him and what sort of reputation he had, and there was a totally new set of conditions for his imaginative faculty to work upon. Entirely new, entirely remarkable. And he got hold of them in a remarkable way. 'Stein was the man who knew more about Patusan than anybody else. More than was known in the government circles I suspect. I have no doubt he had been there, either in his butterfly-hunting days or later on, when he tried in his incorrigible way to season with a pinch of romance the fattening dishes of his commercial kitchen. There were very few places in the Archipelago he had not seen in the original dusk of their being, before light (and even electric light) had been carried into them for the sake of better morality and--and--well--the greater profit, too. It was at breakfast of the morning following our talk about Jim that he mentioned the place, after I had quoted poor Brierly's remark: "Let him creep twenty feet underground and stay there." He looked up at me with interested attention, as though I had been a rare insect. "This could be done, too," he remarked, sipping his coffee. "Bury him in some sort," I explained. "One doesn't like to do it of course, but it would be the best thing, seeing what he is." "Yes; he is young," Stein mused. "The youngest human being now in existence," I affirmed. "Schon. There's Patusan," he went on in the same tone. . . . "And the woman is dead now," he added incomprehensibly. 'Of course I don't know that story; I can only guess that once before Patusan had been used as a grave for some sin, transgression, or misfortune. It is impossible to suspect Stein. The only woman that had ever existed for him was the Malay girl he called "My wife the princess," or, more rarely, in moments of expansion, "the mother of my Emma." Who was the woman he had mentioned in connection with Patusan I can't say; but from his allusions I understand she had been an educated and very good-looking Dutch-Malay girl, with a tragic or perhaps only a pitiful history, whose most painful part no doubt was her marriage with a Malacca Portuguese who had been clerk in some commercial house in the Dutch colonies. I gathered from Stein that this man was an unsatisfactory person in more ways than one, all being more or less indefinite and offensive. It was solely for his wife's sake that Stein had appointed him manager of Stein & Co.'s trading post in Patusan; but commercially the arrangement was not a success, at any rate for the firm, and now the woman had died, Stein was disposed to try another agent there. The Portuguese, whose name was Cornelius, considered himself a very deserving but ill-used person, entitled by his abilities to a better position. This man Jim would have to relieve. "But I don't think he will go away from the place," remarked Stein. "That has nothing to do with me. It was only for the sake of the woman that I . . . But as I think there is a daughter left, I shall let him, if he likes to stay, keep the old house." 'Patusan is a remote district of a native-ruled state, and the chief settlement bears the same name. At a point on the river about forty miles from the sea, where the first houses come into view, there can be seen rising above the level of the forests the summits of two steep hills very close together, and separated by what looks like a deep fissure, the cleavage of some mighty stroke. As a matter of fact, the valley between is nothing but a narrow ravine; the appearance from the settlement is of one irregularly conical hill split in two, and with the two halves leaning slightly apart. On the third day after the full, the moon, as seen from the open space in front of Jim's house (he had a very fine house in the native style when I visited him), rose exactly behind these hills, its diffused light at first throwing the two masses into intensely black relief, and then the nearly perfect disc, glowing ruddily, appeared, gliding upwards between the sides of the chasm, till it floated away above the summits, as if escaping from a yawning grave in gentle triumph. "Wonderful effect," said Jim by my side. "Worth seeing. Is it not?" 'And this question was put with a note of personal pride that made me smile, as though he had had a hand in regulating that unique spectacle. He had regulated so many things in Patusan--things that would have appeared as much beyond his control as the motions of the moon and the stars. 'It was inconceivable. That was the distinctive quality of the part into which Stein and I had tumbled him unwittingly, with no other notion than to get him out of the way; out of his own way, be it understood. That was our main purpose, though, I own, I might have had another motive which had influenced me a little. I was about to go home for a time; and it may be I desired, more than I was aware of myself, to dispose of him--to dispose of him, you understand--before I left. I was going home, and he had come to me from there, with his miserable trouble and his shadowy claim, like a man panting under a burden in a mist. I cannot say I had ever seen him distinctly--not even to this day, after I had my last view of him; but it seemed to me that the less I understood the more I was bound to him in the name of that doubt which is the inseparable part of our knowledge. I did not know so much more about myself. And then, I repeat, I was going home--to that home distant enough for all its hearthstones to be like one hearthstone, by which the humblest of us has the right to sit. We wander in our thousands over the face of the earth, the illustrious and the obscure, earning beyond the seas our fame, our money, or only a crust of bread; but it seems to me that for each of us going home must be like going to render an account. We return to face our superiors, our kindred, our friends--those whom we obey, and those whom we love; but even they who have neither, the most free, lonely, irresponsible and bereft of ties,--even those for whom home holds no dear face, no familiar voice,--even they have to meet the spirit that dwells within the land, under its sky, in its air, in its valleys, and on its rises, in its fields, in its waters and its trees--a mute friend, judge, and inspirer. Say what you like, to get its joy, to breathe its peace, to face its truth, one must return with a clear conscience. All this may seem to you sheer sentimentalism; and indeed very few of us have the will or the capacity to look consciously under the surface of familiar emotions. There are the girls we love, the men we look up to, the tenderness, the friendships, the opportunities, the pleasures! But the fact remains that you must touch your reward with clean hands, lest it turn to dead leaves, to thorns, in your grasp. I think it is the lonely, without a fireside or an affection they may call their own, those who return not to a dwelling but to the land itself, to meet its disembodied, eternal, and unchangeable spirit--it is those who understand best its severity, its saving power, the grace of its secular right to our fidelity, to our obedience. Yes! few of us understand, but we all feel it though, and I say _all_ without exception, because those who do not feel do not count. Each blade of grass has its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is man rooted to the land from which he draws his faith together with his life. I don't know how much Jim understood; but I know he felt, he felt confusedly but powerfully, the demand of some such truth or some such illusion--I don't care how you call it, there is so little difference, and the difference means so little. The thing is that in virtue of his feeling he mattered. He would never go home now. Not he. Never. Had he been capable of picturesque manifestations he would have shuddered at the thought and made you shudder too. But he was not of that sort, though he was expressive enough in his way. Before the idea of going home he would grow desperately stiff and immovable, with lowered chin and pouted lips, and with those candid blue eyes of his glowering darkly under a frown, as if before something unbearable, as if before something revolting. There was imagination in that hard skull of his, over which the thick clustering hair fitted like a cap. As to me, I have no imagination (I would be more certain about him today, if I had), and I do not mean to imply that I figured to myself the spirit of the land uprising above the white cliffs of Dover, to ask me what I--returning with no bones broken, so to speak--had done with my very young brother. I could not make such a mistake. I knew very well he was of those about whom there is no inquiry; I had seen better men go out, disappear, vanish utterly, without provoking a sound of curiosity or sorrow. The spirit of the land, as becomes the ruler of great enterprises, is careless of innumerable lives. Woe to the stragglers! We exist only in so far as we hang together. He had straggled in a way; he had not hung on; but he was aware of it with an intensity that made him touching, just as a man's more intense life makes his death more touching than the death of a tree. I happened to be handy, and I happened to be touched. That's all there is to it. I was concerned as to the way he would go out. It would have hurt me if, for instance, he had taken to drink. The earth is so small that I was afraid of, some day, being waylaid by a blear-eyed, swollen-faced, besmirched loafer, with no soles to his canvas shoes, and with a flutter of rags about the elbows, who, on the strength of old acquaintance, would ask for a loan of five dollars. You know the awful jaunty bearing of these scarecrows coming to you from a decent past, the rasping careless voice, the half-averted impudent glances--those meetings more trying to a man who believes in the solidarity of our lives than the sight of an impenitent death-bed to a priest. That, to tell you the truth, was the only danger I could see for him and for me; but I also mistrusted my want of imagination. It might even come to something worse, in some way it was beyond my powers of fancy to foresee. He wouldn't let me forget how imaginative he was, and your imaginative people swing farther in any direction, as if given a longer scope of cable in the uneasy anchorage of life. They do. They take to drink too. It may be I was belittling him by such a fear. How could I tell? Even Stein could say no more than that he was romantic. I only knew he was one of us. And what business had he to be romantic? I am telling you so much about my own instinctive feelings and bemused reflections because there remains so little to be told of him. He existed for me, and after all it is only through me that he exists for you. I've led him out by the hand; I have paraded him before you. Were my commonplace fears unjust? I won't say--not even now. You may be able to tell better, since the proverb has it that the onlookers see most of the game. At any rate, they were superfluous. He did not go out, not at all; on the contrary, he came on wonderfully, came on straight as a die and in excellent form, which showed that he could stay as well as spurt. I ought to be delighted, for it is a victory in which I had taken my part; but I am not so pleased as I would have expected to be. I ask myself whether his rush had really carried him out of that mist in which he loomed interesting if not very big, with floating outlines--a straggler yearning inconsolably for his humble place in the ranks. And besides, the last word is not said,--probably shall never be said. Are not our lives too short for that full utterance which through all our stammerings is of course our only and abiding intention? I have given up expecting those last words, whose ring, if they could only be pronounced, would shake both heaven and earth. There is never time to say our last word--the last word of our love, of our desire, faith, remorse, submissions, revolt. The heaven and the earth must not be shaken, I suppose--at least, not by us who know so many truths about either. My last words about Jim shall be few. I affirm he had achieved greatness; but the thing would be dwarfed in the telling, or rather in the hearing. Frankly, it is not my words that I mistrust but your minds. I could be eloquent were I not afraid you fellows had starved your imaginations to feed your bodies. I do not mean to be offensive; it is respectable to have no illusions--and safe--and profitable--and dull. Yet you, too, in your time must have known the intensity of life, that light of glamour created in the shock of trifles, as amazing as the glow of sparks struck from a cold stone--and as short-lived, alas!' '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.'

Chapters 19-22

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422054542/https://www.gradesaver.com/lord-jim/study-guide/summary-chapters-19-22

Marlow notes that the irony of Jim's "retreat" is that he becomes famous for being an eccentric "rolling stone" who mysteriously disappears from his work at a moment's notice. In Bangkok, Marlow discovers, Jim is hired by the Yucker Brothers, who charter ships and deal in teak. Schomberg, an Alsatian hotelkeeper, who was boarding Jim, informs Marlow of what has happened to Jim in the city. There was a barroom scuffle with a cross-eyed Dane who was drunk; he had made some remark that had set Jim off. No one had heard what had been said, but Jim had pushed the Dane into the water, from the verandah of the bar. Marlow expresses concern about the possible degradation of Jim's character, so he arranges for Jim to have a position as a water-clerk at De Jongh's. He asks Jim if maybe he wants to head West or go to California for a fresh start. But Jim doesn't think there is any point to that. What he wants, more than anything, is another opportunity. This is where Marlow decides to consult with his friend Stein, a wealthy and respected merchant and head of a large inter-island business called Stein & Co. The company consists of a small fleet of schooners and native craft, and it deals in island produce on a large scale. Stein is trustworthy and intelligent, with a student's face and a spirited personality, and is a collector of butterflies. Marlow describes him as "solitary, but not misanthropic" . His history had been that of a romantic, as well as tragic. Born in Bavaria and then becoming a revolutionary by the age of twenty-two, Stein traveled to Tripoli, and then he assisted a Dutch naturalist, collecting insects and birds for four years. The Dutchman had gone home, and Stein eventually met a benevolent Scotsman named Alexander M'Neil. The old trader had been friends with the queen of the native court of the Wajo States, and he introduced Stein as his son, so that he would inherit the trade in the event of his death. The queen passed, and during the political intrigues that followed with regard to the succession to the throne, Stein assisted the party of the younger son, his very good friend, "my poor Mohammed Bonso." Stein married this friend's sister, "the Princess," having a daughter with her named Emma. As quickly as a flaming match is extinguished--as Stein dramatically illustrates to Marlow--his friend was assassinated, and his wife and daughter both died of an infectious fever. In a key scene of the novel, as Stein examines a seven-inch-long butterfly in one of his glass cases, an insect with white veins and a yellow-spotted border, he offers the story of how he came upon it. One afternoon, he was ambushed, and after successfully beating the men who had tried to kill him, he saw the butterfly. It flew. This story presents Marlow with his opening to discuss, instead, a specimen of man: Jim's case. Stein, after listening, concludes: "He is romantic." The following conversation discusses the subtle questions of how to be, how to live, and the nature of the "romantic." In the end, though, Marlow concludes that no one is more romantic than Stein. As Marlow and Stein eventually turn to the practical matter of what to do about Jim, the narrative shifts, and Marlow asks his audience if they have ever heard of Patusan, the remote place where Stein sends Jim. Stein does know the intricacies of the place, and he explains to Marlow that there was a woman there, a Dutch-Malay girl, educated, who had a tragic history. Her unfortunate marriage to Cornelius, a man for whom Stein shows evident dislike, caused sympathy in Stein. He had made Cornelius the manager of the trade post in Patusan for his wife's sake. In the end, however, the appointment had been bad for business, and the wife had died anyway. The result of telling the story is that Jim is to be sent to Patusan to relieve Cornelius of the post. The narrative then leaps toward an ambiguous assertion of Jim's success in Patusan. Marlow goes to visit him there, and upon seeing Jim he is struck by the change that has come over him: "He appeared like a creature not only of another kind but of another essence" . Jim states that his first day in Patusan had almost been his last, but that the chance was his at last. He had proved himself; he had achieved for himself a dream.

When Marlow learns of Jim's barroom brawl, the implication is that Jim's obsession regarding his own failure has begun to express itself bitterly in moments of violence. This is not unlike the manner in which Jim's later foil, Brown, will be presented. In other words, at this point Jim, without prospect of another opportunity to prove his worth in the world, is in danger of slipping away from the positive category, "one of us." Marlow, however, continually serves as Jim's ally and seeks help from his illustrious friend Stein, a colorfully romantic character who has lived a fairy tale, having been given odd opportunities that have flourished into a life where he was even married to a princess. Stein had a family, a best friend, and a high place with a native court, and the fantastical feel to his entire story is striking against the thus far relatively bleak picture of Jim's failure, life at sea, and uninspiring work. Stein, a romantic figure, is a good, solitary man, not friendless because he seems to be a close friend of Marlow. Although he has weathered tragedy, he has reemerged as a highly successful merchant. The poignancy of the scene derived from the vision of butterflies and from the look into a man's spectacular past, is offset by Stein's sorrow: despite it all, the most precious of his dreams were never realized. The scene between Marlow and Stein is thus punctuated with a sense of illumination and beauty. Stein lights a match and then extinguishes it to illustrate the fleeting nature of his past, his family, and life itself. Fortune's wheel first spun in his favor and then just as easily reversed his luck. When the reader learns the fantastical story in which Stein defeats multiple men who tried to ambush him, the romanticism is soon replaced with the romantic flight of a mysterious and rare butterfly. That butterfly is now spread beneath a glass case, and when one considers its beauty and perfection--a perfection only the artist Nature can make--one is struck by the similarity between the specimen butterfly and the specimen man, perhaps recalling Hamlet's meditation upon the human skull in Shakespeare's play. Stein, indeed, refers to the words of "your great poet" . He states that the question for the romantic is not how to be cured, but rather how one is to live . According to Stein, the romantic seizes the opportunity, just as he had seized, in the wake of an ambush, a rare butterfly. To be cured is, in a way, to grow out of one's dreams and to set them aside, allowing for disenchantment in maturity. This is likely to be Marlow's as well as the general case, yet for Stein, in spite of his tragic experiences, the idea is to live and to remain a romantic at heart. Stein clings to the butterflies, to his dreams, fueling a merchant empire, continuing to live for his romantic vision. The question of how to live also echoes against the earlier statement by the French lieutenant that one does not die of being afraid. In conquering fear, one may die, but one may also continue to live in a higher fashion. At the same time, Stein follows these considerations with something that takes on a maxim-like quality in the novel: "A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea" . Remembering the comment by Chester that Jim was a "man overboard," achieving the dream is like falling into the sea, a kind of death of the old self. At the same time, the image is not particularly hopeful; death appears inevitable. The juxtaposition of the butterfly in the glass case as a specimen of Nature and Jim as a specimen of man is crucial, because it points to two particular artists. While Nature creates masterpieces, man, according to Stein, is not a masterpiece. Man is never perfect. The ultimate paradox of the novel, then, is that the novel functions as a masterful painting of the man Jim in all his imperfections, so intimately and delicately captured, with the fineness of detail expressed by Nature in its butterflies. In this portrait, the man achieves a kind of perfection nevertheless. The wholeness of a man, with all of his contradictions, spells the kind of truth art seeks to capture. While butterflies become increasingly fragile beneath their glass cases, indicative of the fragility of beauty and of illusion, the art of the novel, the art of language, and, ultimately, the art of life itself, impresses upon time a kind of permanence. As Stein and Marlow discuss Jim in an abstract and idyllic way, Stein insists, in the end, on a practical solution. This refers back to the fact presented early in the novel that Jim has "Ability in the abstract." The problem is then how "Ability" is to be expressed in Jim's world. In Stein's case, the reader can assume that he has been quite successful reading his own situation, as well as expressing his abilities in the world, given his status and success. Hence, in the cyclical way that life seems to move in this novel, Stein passes an opportunity to Jim, reflecting the way that Stein himself had been visited by opportunity. Stein perceptively decides to send Jim to Patusan, a remote place where the news of his failure is unlikely to penetrate. Jim leaps at the chance. But knowing how Stein's dream had closed, readers see that the tragedy of Jim's new life in Patusan is already foreshadowed.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/35.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Lord Jim/section_34_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapter 35

chapter 35

{"name": "Chapter 35", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-35", "summary": "After the world's worst vacation, Marlow splits from Patusan. Jim accompanies Marlow to the shore to see him off and starts to give Marlow a message to take back home to his family. But at the last moment he stops himself and opts to just say good-bye. As he describes how he watched Jim waving from shore, Marlow tells us that this is the last time he ever saw Jim. So ends the storytelling session on the verandah.", "analysis": ""}

'But next morning, at the first bend of the river shutting off the houses of Patusan, all this dropped out of my sight bodily, with its colour, its design, and its meaning, like a picture created by fancy on a canvas, upon which, after long contemplation, you turn your back for the last time. It remains in the memory motionless, unfaded, with its life arrested, in an unchanging light. There are the ambitions, the fears, the hate, the hopes, and they remain in my mind just as I had seen them--intense and as if for ever suspended in their expression. I had turned away from the picture and was going back to the world where events move, men change, light flickers, life flows in a clear stream, no matter whether over mud or over stones. I wasn't going to dive into it; I would have enough to do to keep my head above the surface. But as to what I was leaving behind, I cannot imagine any alteration. The immense and magnanimous Doramin and his little motherly witch of a wife, gazing together upon the land and nursing secretly their dreams of parental ambition; Tunku Allang, wizened and greatly perplexed; Dain Waris, intelligent and brave, with his faith in Jim, with his firm glance and his ironic friendliness; the girl, absorbed in her frightened, suspicious adoration; Tamb' Itam, surly and faithful; Cornelius, leaning his forehead against the fence under the moonlight--I am certain of them. They exist as if under an enchanter's wand. But the figure round which all these are grouped--that one lives, and I am not certain of him. No magician's wand can immobilise him under my eyes. He is one of us. 'Jim, as I've told you, accompanied me on the first stage of my journey back to the world he had renounced, and the way at times seemed to lead through the very heart of untouched wilderness. The empty reaches sparkled under the high sun; between the high walls of vegetation the heat drowsed upon the water, and the boat, impelled vigorously, cut her way through the air that seemed to have settled dense and warm under the shelter of lofty trees. 'The shadow of the impending separation had already put an immense space between us, and when we spoke it was with an effort, as if to force our low voices across a vast and increasing distance. The boat fairly flew; we sweltered side by side in the stagnant superheated air; the smell of mud, of mush, the primeval smell of fecund earth, seemed to sting our faces; till suddenly at a bend it was as if a great hand far away had lifted a heavy curtain, had flung open un immense portal. The light itself seemed to stir, the sky above our heads widened, a far-off murmur reached our ears, a freshness enveloped us, filled our lungs, quickened our thoughts, our blood, our regrets--and, straight ahead, the forests sank down against the dark-blue ridge of the sea. 'I breathed deeply, I revelled in the vastness of the opened horizon, in the different atmosphere that seemed to vibrate with the toil of life, with the energy of an impeccable world. This sky and this sea were open to me. The girl was right--there was a sign, a call in them--something to which I responded with every fibre of my being. I let my eyes roam through space, like a man released from bonds who stretches his cramped limbs, runs, leaps, responds to the inspiring elation of freedom. "This is glorious!" I cried, and then I looked at the sinner by my side. He sat with his head sunk on his breast and said "Yes," without raising his eyes, as if afraid to see writ large on the clear sky of the offing the reproach of his romantic conscience. 'I remember the smallest details of that afternoon. We landed on a bit of white beach. It was backed by a low cliff wooded on the brow, draped in creepers to the very foot. Below us the plain of the sea, of a serene and intense blue, stretched with a slight upward tilt to the thread-like horizon drawn at the height of our eyes. Great waves of glitter blew lightly along the pitted dark surface, as swift as feathers chased by the breeze. A chain of islands sat broken and massive facing the wide estuary, displayed in a sheet of pale glassy water reflecting faithfully the contour of the shore. High in the colourless sunshine a solitary bird, all black, hovered, dropping and soaring above the same spot with a slight rocking motion of the wings. A ragged, sooty bunch of flimsy mat hovels was perched over its own inverted image upon a crooked multitude of high piles the colour of ebony. A tiny black canoe put off from amongst them with two tiny men, all black, who toiled exceedingly, striking down at the pale water: and the canoe seemed to slide painfully on a mirror. This bunch of miserable hovels was the fishing village that boasted of the white lord's especial protection, and the two men crossing over were the old headman and his son-in-law. They landed and walked up to us on the white sand, lean, dark-brown as if dried in smoke, with ashy patches on the skin of their naked shoulders and breasts. Their heads were bound in dirty but carefully folded headkerchiefs, and the old man began at once to state a complaint, voluble, stretching a lank arm, screwing up at Jim his old bleared eyes confidently. The Rajah's people would not leave them alone; there had been some trouble about a lot of turtles' eggs his people had collected on the islets there--and leaning at arm's-length upon his paddle, he pointed with a brown skinny hand over the sea. Jim listened for a time without looking up, and at last told him gently to wait. He would hear him by-and-by. They withdrew obediently to some little distance, and sat on their heels, with their paddles lying before them on the sand; the silvery gleams in their eyes followed our movements patiently; and the immensity of the outspread sea, the stillness of the coast, passing north and south beyond the limits of my vision, made up one colossal Presence watching us four dwarfs isolated on a strip of glistening sand. '"The trouble is," remarked Jim moodily, "that for generations these beggars of fishermen in that village there had been considered as the Rajah's personal slaves--and the old rip can't get it into his head that . . ." 'He paused. "That you have changed all that," I said. '"Yes I've changed all that," he muttered in a gloomy voice. '"You have had your opportunity," I pursued. '"Have I?" he said. "Well, yes. I suppose so. Yes. I have got back my confidence in myself--a good name--yet sometimes I wish . . . No! I shall hold what I've got. Can't expect anything more." He flung his arm out towards the sea. "Not out there anyhow." He stamped his foot upon the sand. "This is my limit, because nothing less will do." 'We continued pacing the beach. "Yes, I've changed all that," he went on, with a sidelong glance at the two patient squatting fishermen; "but only try to think what it would be if I went away. Jove! can't you see it? Hell loose. No! To-morrow I shall go and take my chance of drinking that silly old Tunku Allang's coffee, and I shall make no end of fuss over these rotten turtles' eggs. No. I can't say--enough. Never. I must go on, go on for ever holding up my end, to feel sure that nothing can touch me. I must stick to their belief in me to feel safe and to--to" . . . He cast about for a word, seemed to look for it on the sea . . . "to keep in touch with" . . . His voice sank suddenly to a murmur . . . "with those whom, perhaps, I shall never see any more. With--with--you, for instance." 'I was profoundly humbled by his words. "For God's sake," I said, "don't set me up, my dear fellow; just look to yourself." I felt a gratitude, an affection, for that straggler whose eyes had singled me out, keeping my place in the ranks of an insignificant multitude. How little that was to boast of, after all! I turned my burning face away; under the low sun, glowing, darkened and crimson, like un ember snatched from the fire, the sea lay outspread, offering all its immense stillness to the approach of the fiery orb. Twice he was going to speak, but checked himself; at last, as if he had found a formula-- '"I shall be faithful," he said quietly. "I shall be faithful," he repeated, without looking at me, but for the first time letting his eyes wander upon the waters, whose blueness had changed to a gloomy purple under the fires of sunset. Ah! he was romantic, romantic. I recalled some words of Stein's. . . . "In the destructive element immerse! . . . To follow the dream, and again to follow the dream--and so--always--usque ad finem . . ." He was romantic, but none the less true. Who could tell what forms, what visions, what faces, what forgiveness he could see in the glow of the west! . . . A small boat, leaving the schooner, moved slowly, with a regular beat of two oars, towards the sandbank to take me off. "And then there's Jewel," he said, out of the great silence of earth, sky, and sea, which had mastered my very thoughts so that his voice made me start. "There's Jewel." "Yes," I murmured. "I need not tell you what she is to me," he pursued. "You've seen. In time she will come to understand . . ." "I hope so," I interrupted. "She trusts me, too," he mused, and then changed his tone. "When shall we meet next, I wonder?" he said. '"Never--unless you come out," I answered, avoiding his glance. He didn't seem to be surprised; he kept very quiet for a while. '"Good-bye, then," he said, after a pause. "Perhaps it's just as well." 'We shook hands, and I walked to the boat, which waited with her nose on the beach. The schooner, her mainsail set and jib-sheet to windward, curveted on the purple sea; there was a rosy tinge on her sails. "Will you be going home again soon?" asked Jim, just as I swung my leg over the gunwale. "In a year or so if I live," I said. The forefoot grated on the sand, the boat floated, the wet oars flashed and dipped once, twice. Jim, at the water's edge, raised his voice. "Tell them . . ." he began. I signed to the men to cease rowing, and waited in wonder. Tell who? The half-submerged sun faced him; I could see its red gleam in his eyes that looked dumbly at me. . . . "No--nothing," he said, and with a slight wave of his hand motioned the boat away. I did not look again at the shore till I had clambered on board the schooner. 'By that time the sun had set. The twilight lay over the east, and the coast, turned black, extended infinitely its sombre wall that seemed the very stronghold of the night; the western horizon was one great blaze of gold and crimson in which a big detached cloud floated dark and still, casting a slaty shadow on the water beneath, and I saw Jim on the beach watching the schooner fall off and gather headway. 'The two half-naked fishermen had arisen as soon as I had gone; they were no doubt pouring the plaint of their trifling, miserable, oppressed lives into the ears of the white lord, and no doubt he was listening to it, making it his own, for was it not a part of his luck--the luck "from the word Go"--the luck to which he had assured me he was so completely equal? They, too, I should think, were in luck, and I was sure their pertinacity would be equal to it. Their dark-skinned bodies vanished on the dark background long before I had lost sight of their protector. He was white from head to foot, and remained persistently visible with the stronghold of the night at his back, the sea at his feet, the opportunity by his side--still veiled. What do you say? Was it still veiled? I don't know. For me that white figure in the stillness of coast and sea seemed to stand at the heart of a vast enigma. The twilight was ebbing fast from the sky above his head, the strip of sand had sunk already under his feet, he himself appeared no bigger than a child--then only a speck, a tiny white speck, that seemed to catch all the light left in a darkened world. . . . And, suddenly, I lost him. . . .

Chapter 35

https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-35

After the world's worst vacation, Marlow splits from Patusan. Jim accompanies Marlow to the shore to see him off and starts to give Marlow a message to take back home to his family. But at the last moment he stops himself and opts to just say good-bye. As he describes how he watched Jim waving from shore, Marlow tells us that this is the last time he ever saw Jim. So ends the storytelling session on the verandah.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/1232-chapters/18.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/The Prince/section_16_part_0.txt

The Prince.chapter 18

chapter 18

{"name": "Chapter 18", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201108110625/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/p/the-prince/summary-and-analysis/chapter-18", "summary": "Everyone knows that princes should keep their word, but we see that the princes who have accomplished the most have been accomplished at deception. A prince may fight with laws, which is the way of human beings, or with force, which is the way of animals. A prince should imitate the fox in cunning as well as the lion in strength. A wise prince should never keep his word when it would go against his interest, because he can expect others to do the same. In order to pull it off, you must be a good liar, but you will always find people willing to be deceived. To sum it up, it is useful to seem to be virtuous, but you must be ready to act the opposite way if the situation requires it. A prince should do good if he can, but be ready to do evil if he must. Yet a prince must be careful to always act in a way that appears virtuous, for many can see you, but few know how you really are. If a ruler conquers and maintains his state, everyone will praise him, judging his actions by their outcome.", "analysis": "This chapter concludes Machiavelli's discussion of the qualities a prince should display. Keeping his feet firmly in the real world, as he promised, he begins by stating that even though everyone assumes princes should keep their word, experience shows that those who do not keep their word get the better of those who do. This is Machiavelli's justification for deceit: Because you can expect other princes not to honor their word to you, you should not feel obligated to honor your word to them. Sebastian de Grazia, writing about this chapter, refers to Machiavelli's precept as the \"Un-Golden Rule\"--do unto others as you can expect they will do unto you. In this bestial world, princes must act like beasts, imitating the clever fox, instead of relying only on strength, as does the lion. In a world full of deceivers, there must also be someone to deceive, and Machiavelli finds that there are plenty of people willing to overlook all kinds of deceit as long as their state is peaceful and prosperous. The prince's control of his public image gets special attention in this chapter. A prince must always appear to be truthful, merciful, and religious, even if he must sometimes act in the opposite way. Interestingly, these are the very same qualities he condemns Agathocles for lacking in Chapter 8, but here, he advises the prince to dispense with them when necessary. But the great mass of people will never see the prince as he really is; they will see only the image he projects. The few insiders who know the prince's true nature will do nothing to harm him as long as the people support him, and the people will support him as long as he has been successful. Here, Machiavelli sounds remarkably like a modern spin doctor advising a politician on how to get good press. Glossary Chiron the wisest of all centaurs , famous for his knowledge of medicine: he is the teacher of Asclepius, Achilles, and Hercules. prince who is not named the reference is to King Ferdinand of Spain, who had a wide reputation for being deceptive and crafty."}

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.

Chapter 18

https://web.archive.org/web/20201108110625/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/p/the-prince/summary-and-analysis/chapter-18

Everyone knows that princes should keep their word, but we see that the princes who have accomplished the most have been accomplished at deception. A prince may fight with laws, which is the way of human beings, or with force, which is the way of animals. A prince should imitate the fox in cunning as well as the lion in strength. A wise prince should never keep his word when it would go against his interest, because he can expect others to do the same. In order to pull it off, you must be a good liar, but you will always find people willing to be deceived. To sum it up, it is useful to seem to be virtuous, but you must be ready to act the opposite way if the situation requires it. A prince should do good if he can, but be ready to do evil if he must. Yet a prince must be careful to always act in a way that appears virtuous, for many can see you, but few know how you really are. If a ruler conquers and maintains his state, everyone will praise him, judging his actions by their outcome.

This chapter concludes Machiavelli's discussion of the qualities a prince should display. Keeping his feet firmly in the real world, as he promised, he begins by stating that even though everyone assumes princes should keep their word, experience shows that those who do not keep their word get the better of those who do. This is Machiavelli's justification for deceit: Because you can expect other princes not to honor their word to you, you should not feel obligated to honor your word to them. Sebastian de Grazia, writing about this chapter, refers to Machiavelli's precept as the "Un-Golden Rule"--do unto others as you can expect they will do unto you. In this bestial world, princes must act like beasts, imitating the clever fox, instead of relying only on strength, as does the lion. In a world full of deceivers, there must also be someone to deceive, and Machiavelli finds that there are plenty of people willing to overlook all kinds of deceit as long as their state is peaceful and prosperous. The prince's control of his public image gets special attention in this chapter. A prince must always appear to be truthful, merciful, and religious, even if he must sometimes act in the opposite way. Interestingly, these are the very same qualities he condemns Agathocles for lacking in Chapter 8, but here, he advises the prince to dispense with them when necessary. But the great mass of people will never see the prince as he really is; they will see only the image he projects. The few insiders who know the prince's true nature will do nothing to harm him as long as the people support him, and the people will support him as long as he has been successful. Here, Machiavelli sounds remarkably like a modern spin doctor advising a politician on how to get good press. Glossary Chiron the wisest of all centaurs , famous for his knowledge of medicine: he is the teacher of Asclepius, Achilles, and Hercules. prince who is not named the reference is to King Ferdinand of Spain, who had a wide reputation for being deceptive and crafty.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/chapters_24_to_25.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Lord Jim/section_16_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapters 24-25

chapters 24-25

{"name": "Chapters 24-25", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219145744/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/l/lord-jim/summary-and-analysis/chapters-2425", "summary": "Two years later, Marlow visited Patusan, carrying a message from Stein to Jim, which instructed Jim to set up a proper trading post. Marlow marveled at the misty ocean, the swampy plains, and the far-off blue mountain peaks. He stopped at a fishing village and engaged an old man who seemed to be the village's head man to pilot him upriver. Most of the old man's talk on the way up was about \"Tuan Jim,\" or Lord Jim, a man of whom he spoke with warm, glowing familiarity and simple awe. Clearly, all the villagers loved and trusted Jim. In fact, most of them believed that he had supernatural powers. In the short time that Jim had lived in Patusan, many legends had grown up around him. Marlow was told, for example, that on the day Jim arrived, the tide rose two hours before its usual time in order to carry Jim upriver. Later, when Jim and Marlow were sitting on the verandah of Jim's house, Marlow listened to Jim's version of his arrival at Patusan. Jim had sat on the tin luggage box during the entire voyage, his unloaded revolver on his lap. It was an exhausting journey, he said, the boat scissoring through crocodiles, and the jungle seeming to be continually formidable and ominous. Near the end of the journey, he dozed. When he awakened, he noticed that his three paddlers had disappeared. Almost immediately, he was taken prisoner by armed men who escorted him to Rajah Allang, the little \"used-up\" despot. Jim paused, and Marlow reflected that the \"experiment\" had turned out remarkably well. There was none of Jim's former hypersensitivity to guilt and anguish. Instead, Jim seemed to have conquered his urge to punish himself. He had won the trust, the friendship, and the love of the natives. And he had even attained a kind of fame. As Jim talked to Marlow, Marlow noted Jim's deep and fierce love for the land. To leave Patusan would be, Jim said, \"harder than dying.\" According to Marlow, Jim had become both Patusan's master and its captive. On their way to meet Rajah Allang, Jim pointed out to Marlow a filthy stockade in which he was held captive for three days. On the third day, he said, he did the only thing he could do: he tried to escape. At that moment of their conversation, however, they met Rajah Allang. Marlow says that he was immediately impressed with the man's respectful attitude toward Jim, who only two years before had been this man's prisoner. Jim and Marlow witnessed Rajah Allang's solving a village problem, and then they were offered coffee. Marlow was reluctant to drink his, fearing that it might be poisoned, but Jim unperturbedly sipped his coffee. Later, Jim told Marlow that he had to constantly prove that he was worthy of their trust. He had to drink their coffee. He had to take the risk -- \"take it every month\" -- the natives trusted him to do that. Jim said that Rajah Allang was most likely afraid of Jim precisely because Jim was not afraid to drink the Rajah's coffee. After Jim escaped from Rajah Allang's stockade two years ago and found safety with Doramin, he learned about the warring factions that seemed to rule Patusan. They were: Rajah Allang, from whom Jim had just escaped; he brought blood and fiery destruction on any villager who attempted to trade with the outside world. Rajah Allang wanted to be the exclusive trader in Patusan. Stein's friend Doramin was the \"second chief\" in Patusan. Years ago, he was elected by \"his people,\" immigrants from the Dutch West Indies; his party opposed Rajah Allang's terrorizing monopoly on trading. The other \"leader\" of Patusan was a half-breed Arab, Sherif Ali. He incited the interior tribes with religious fervor, and his followers practiced guerrilla warfare. He had a camp on the summit of one of Patusan's twin mountains, where he hung over the village \"like a hawk over a poultry yard.\" Of the three powers that controlled Patusan, Sherif Ali was the most dangerous -- to Rajah Allang's people, and to the Bugis Malays under old Doramin.", "analysis": "Again in these chapters, Conrad skips about from past time to present time . We witness a scene when Marlow visits Jim, and then the narrator returns to a past time, when Jim first arrived in Patusan. Marlow even hints of future occurrences and tells the story of Jim's arrival from a distance of many years, and so it seems natural to him to call up, first, one experience and then another -- without due regard for their time sequences. By the time of Marlow's arrival, the natives are calling Jim \"Tuan Jim\" or, in English, Lord Jim, and we are told that Jim has won their respect and, in some cases, their awe; already, many legendary stories have grown up around Lord Jim. Without our knowing how Lord Jim accomplished it, we are informed that he had indeed achieved a type of greatness -- complete trust and ultimate respect in this outpost. \"He was approaching greatness as genuine as any man ever achieved.\" When Jim first arrived, we hear from Marlow that Jim had been held captive for three days, and Marlow points out that had he Jim) been killed then, the entire province of Patusan \"would have been the loser.\" Even Jim recognizes his greatness and appreciates the fact that now, \"there is not one where I am not trusted.\" Lord Jim has at last, finally, found his niche in the universe, and he will never leave Patusan, the place where he is honored and trusted, respected and loved. In addition to Jim's newfound self-assurance and happiness, Marlow noticed other differences in Jim. He was now more intellectually alert; there was an eloquence and \"a dignity in his constitutional reticence\" and a \"high seriousness\" in his actions that showed \"how deeply, how solemnly\" he felt about his work at Patusan. Marlow concluded that Jim had indeed found himself. When Jim took Marlow to the place where Rajah Allang, who had held him prisoner, lived, Jim showed great courage in drinking coffee once a month with the Rajah -- even though he knew that it might be poisoned. Lord Jim then told Marlow of his escape -- of another \"Jump,\" which this time led him to a bog where, for awhile, he was stuck in mud and slime. When he emerged, he was symbolically covered with filth, but even in this disgusting condition, he ran to Doramin's stockade where he showed him the ring and was accepted into Doramin's family, thus symbolically emerging from the filth and slime to begin anew a new, clean, productive life. The symbolism is obvious: the \"jump\" that takes Jim deep into the vile slime and mud of the creek represents the jump from the Patna which immersed Jim deep into vile shame and everlasting remorse."}

'The coast of Patusan (I saw it nearly two years afterwards) is straight and sombre, and faces a misty ocean. Red trails are seen like cataracts of rust streaming under the dark-green foliage of bushes and creepers clothing the low cliffs. Swampy plains open out at the mouth of rivers, with a view of jagged blue peaks beyond the vast forests. In the offing a chain of islands, dark, crumbling shapes, stand out in the everlasting sunlit haze like the remnants of a wall breached by the sea. 'There is a village of fisher-folk at the mouth of the Batu Kring branch of the estuary. The river, which had been closed so long, was open then, and Stein's little schooner, in which I had my passage, worked her way up in three tides without being exposed to a fusillade from "irresponsive parties." Such a state of affairs belonged already to ancient history, if I could believe the elderly headman of the fishing village, who came on board to act as a sort of pilot. He talked to me (the second white man he had ever seen) with confidence, and most of his talk was about the first white man he had ever seen. He called him Tuan Jim, and the tone of his references was made remarkable by a strange mixture of familiarity and awe. They, in the village, were under that lord's special protection, which showed that Jim bore no grudge. If he had warned me that I would hear of him it was perfectly true. I was hearing of him. There was already a story that the tide had turned two hours before its time to help him on his journey up the river. The talkative old man himself had steered the canoe and had marvelled at the phenomenon. Moreover, all the glory was in his family. His son and his son-in-law had paddled; but they were only youths without experience, who did not notice the speed of the canoe till he pointed out to them the amazing fact. 'Jim's coming to that fishing village was a blessing; but to them, as to many of us, the blessing came heralded by terrors. So many generations had been released since the last white man had visited the river that the very tradition had been lost. The appearance of the being that descended upon them and demanded inflexibly to be taken up to Patusan was discomposing; his insistence was alarming; his generosity more than suspicious. It was an unheard-of request. There was no precedent. What would the Rajah say to this? What would he do to them? The best part of the night was spent in consultation; but the immediate risk from the anger of that strange man seemed so great that at last a cranky dug-out was got ready. The women shrieked with grief as it put off. A fearless old hag cursed the stranger. 'He sat in it, as I've told you, on his tin box, nursing the unloaded revolver on his lap. He sat with precaution--than which there is nothing more fatiguing--and thus entered the land he was destined to fill with the fame of his virtues, from the blue peaks inland to the white ribbon of surf on the coast. At the first bend he lost sight of the sea with its labouring waves for ever rising, sinking, and vanishing to rise again--the very image of struggling mankind--and faced the immovable forests rooted deep in the soil, soaring towards the sunshine, everlasting in the shadowy might of their tradition, like life itself. And his opportunity sat veiled by his side like an Eastern bride waiting to be uncovered by the hand of the master. He too was the heir of a shadowy and mighty tradition! He told me, however, that he had never in his life felt so depressed and tired as in that canoe. All the movement he dared to allow himself was to reach, as it were by stealth, after the shell of half a cocoa-nut floating between his shoes, and bale some of the water out with a carefully restrained action. He discovered how hard the lid of a block-tin case was to sit upon. He had heroic health; but several times during that journey he experienced fits of giddiness, and between whiles he speculated hazily as to the size of the blister the sun was raising on his back. For amusement he tried by looking ahead to decide whether the muddy object he saw lying on the water's edge was a log of wood or an alligator. Only very soon he had to give that up. No fun in it. Always alligator. One of them flopped into the river and all but capsized the canoe. But this excitement was over directly. Then in a long empty reach he was very grateful to a troop of monkeys who came right down on the bank and made an insulting hullabaloo on his passage. Such was the way in which he was approaching greatness as genuine as any man ever achieved. Principally, he longed for sunset; and meantime his three paddlers were preparing to put into execution their plan of delivering him up to the Rajah. '"I suppose I must have been stupid with fatigue, or perhaps I did doze off for a time," he said. The first thing he knew was his canoe coming to the bank. He became instantaneously aware of the forest having been left behind, of the first houses being visible higher up, of a stockade on his left, and of his boatmen leaping out together upon a low point of land and taking to their heels. Instinctively he leaped out after them. At first he thought himself deserted for some inconceivable reason, but he heard excited shouts, a gate swung open, and a lot of people poured out, making towards him. At the same time a boat full of armed men appeared on the river and came alongside his empty canoe, thus shutting off his retreat. '"I was too startled to be quite cool--don't you know? and if that revolver had been loaded I would have shot somebody--perhaps two, three bodies, and that would have been the end of me. But it wasn't. . . ." "Why not?" I asked. "Well, I couldn't fight the whole population, and I wasn't coming to them as if I were afraid of my life," he said, with just a faint hint of his stubborn sulkiness in the glance he gave me. I refrained from pointing out to him that they could not have known the chambers were actually empty. He had to satisfy himself in his own way. . . . "Anyhow it wasn't," he repeated good-humouredly, "and so I just stood still and asked them what was the matter. That seemed to strike them dumb. I saw some of these thieves going off with my box. That long-legged old scoundrel Kassim (I'll show him to you to-morrow) ran out fussing to me about the Rajah wanting to see me. I said, 'All right.' I too wanted to see the Rajah, and I simply walked in through the gate and--and--here I am." He laughed, and then with unexpected emphasis, "And do you know what's the best in it?" he asked. "I'll tell you. It's the knowledge that had I been wiped out it is this place that would have been the loser." 'He spoke thus to me before his house on that evening I've mentioned--after we had watched the moon float away above the chasm between the hills like an ascending spirit out of a grave; its sheen descended, cold and pale, like the ghost of dead sunlight. There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery. It is to our sunshine, which--say what you like--is all we have to live by, what the echo is to the sound: misleading and confusing whether the note be mocking or sad. It robs all forms of matter--which, after all, is our domain--of their substance, and gives a sinister reality to shadows alone. And the shadows were very real around us, but Jim by my side looked very stalwart, as though nothing--not even the occult power of moonlight--could rob him of his reality in my eyes. Perhaps, indeed, nothing could touch him since he had survived the assault of the dark powers. All was silent, all was still; even on the river the moonbeams slept as on a pool. It was the moment of high water, a moment of immobility that accentuated the utter isolation of this lost corner of the earth. The houses crowding along the wide shining sweep without ripple or glitter, stepping into the water in a line of jostling, vague, grey, silvery forms mingled with black masses of shadow, were like a spectral herd of shapeless creatures pressing forward to drink in a spectral and lifeless stream. Here and there a red gleam twinkled within the bamboo walls, warm, like a living spark, significant of human affections, of shelter, of repose. 'He confessed to me that he often watched these tiny warm gleams go out one by one, that he loved to see people go to sleep under his eyes, confident in the security of to-morrow. "Peaceful here, eh?" he asked. He was not eloquent, but there was a deep meaning in the words that followed. "Look at these houses; there's not one where I am not trusted. Jove! I told you I would hang on. Ask any man, woman, or child . . ." He paused. "Well, I am all right anyhow." 'I observed quickly that he had found that out in the end. I had been sure of it, I added. He shook his head. "Were you?" He pressed my arm lightly above the elbow. "Well, then--you were right." 'There was elation and pride, there was awe almost, in that low exclamation. "Jove!" he cried, "only think what it is to me." Again he pressed my arm. "And you asked me whether I thought of leaving. Good God! I! want to leave! Especially now after what you told me of Mr. Stein's . . . Leave! Why! That's what I was afraid of. It would have been--it would have been harder than dying. No--on my word. Don't laugh. I must feel--every day, every time I open my eyes--that I am trusted--that nobody has a right--don't you know? Leave! For where? What for? To get what?" 'I had told him (indeed it was the main object of my visit) that it was Stein's intention to present him at once with the house and the stock of trading goods, on certain easy conditions which would make the transaction perfectly regular and valid. He began to snort and plunge at first. "Confound your delicacy!" I shouted. "It isn't Stein at all. It's giving you what you had made for yourself. And in any case keep your remarks for McNeil--when you meet him in the other world. I hope it won't happen soon. . . ." He had to give in to my arguments, because all his conquests, the trust, the fame, the friendships, the love--all these things that made him master had made him a captive, too. He looked with an owner's eye at the peace of the evening, at the river, at the houses, at the everlasting life of the forests, at the life of the old mankind, at the secrets of the land, at the pride of his own heart; but it was they that possessed him and made him their own to the innermost thought, to the slightest stir of blood, to his last breath. 'It was something to be proud of. I, too, was proud--for him, if not so certain of the fabulous value of the bargain. It was wonderful. It was not so much of his fearlessness that I thought. It is strange how little account I took of it: as if it had been something too conventional to be at the root of the matter. No. I was more struck by the other gifts he had displayed. He had proved his grasp of the unfamiliar situation, his intellectual alertness in that field of thought. There was his readiness, too! Amazing. And all this had come to him in a manner like keen scent to a well-bred hound. He was not eloquent, but there was a dignity in this constitutional reticence, there was a high seriousness in his stammerings. He had still his old trick of stubborn blushing. Now and then, though, a word, a sentence, would escape him that showed how deeply, how solemnly, he felt about that work which had given him the certitude of rehabilitation. That is why he seemed to love the land and the people with a sort of fierce egoism, with a contemptuous tenderness.' '"This is where I was prisoner for three days," he murmured to me (it was on the occasion of our visit to the Rajah), while we were making our way slowly through a kind of awestruck riot of dependants across Tunku Allang's courtyard. "Filthy place, isn't it? And I couldn't get anything to eat either, unless I made a row about it, and then it was only a small plate of rice and a fried fish not much bigger than a stickleback--confound them! Jove! I've been hungry prowling inside this stinking enclosure with some of these vagabonds shoving their mugs right under my nose. I had given up that famous revolver of yours at the first demand. Glad to get rid of the bally thing. Look like a fool walking about with an empty shooting-iron in my hand." At that moment we came into the presence, and he became unflinchingly grave and complimentary with his late captor. Oh! magnificent! I want to laugh when I think of it. But I was impressed, too. The old disreputable Tunku Allang could not help showing his fear (he was no hero, for all the tales of his hot youth he was fond of telling); and at the same time there was a wistful confidence in his manner towards his late prisoner. Note! Even where he would be most hated he was still trusted. Jim--as far as I could follow the conversation--was improving the occasion by the delivery of a lecture. Some poor villagers had been waylaid and robbed while on their way to Doramin's house with a few pieces of gum or beeswax which they wished to exchange for rice. "It was Doramin who was a thief," burst out the Rajah. A shaking fury seemed to enter that old frail body. He writhed weirdly on his mat, gesticulating with his hands and feet, tossing the tangled strings of his mop--an impotent incarnation of rage. There were staring eyes and dropping jaws all around us. Jim began to speak. Resolutely, coolly, and for some time he enlarged upon the text that no man should be prevented from getting his food and his children's food honestly. The other sat like a tailor at his board, one palm on each knee, his head low, and fixing Jim through the grey hair that fell over his very eyes. When Jim had done there was a great stillness. Nobody seemed to breathe even; no one made a sound till the old Rajah sighed faintly, and looking up, with a toss of his head, said quickly, "You hear, my people! No more of these little games." This decree was received in profound silence. A rather heavy man, evidently in a position of confidence, with intelligent eyes, a bony, broad, very dark face, and a cheerily of officious manner (I learned later on he was the executioner), presented to us two cups of coffee on a brass tray, which he took from the hands of an inferior attendant. "You needn't drink," muttered Jim very rapidly. I didn't perceive the meaning at first, and only looked at him. He took a good sip and sat composedly, holding the saucer in his left hand. In a moment I felt excessively annoyed. "Why the devil," I whispered, smiling at him amiably, "do you expose me to such a stupid risk?" I drank, of course, there was nothing for it, while he gave no sign, and almost immediately afterwards we took our leave. While we were going down the courtyard to our boat, escorted by the intelligent and cheery executioner, Jim said he was very sorry. It was the barest chance, of course. Personally he thought nothing of poison. The remotest chance. He was--he assured me--considered to be infinitely more useful than dangerous, and so . . . "But the Rajah is afraid of you abominably. Anybody can see that," I argued with, I own, a certain peevishness, and all the time watching anxiously for the first twist of some sort of ghastly colic. I was awfully disgusted. "If I am to do any good here and preserve my position," he said, taking his seat by my side in the boat, "I must stand the risk: I take it once every month, at least. Many people trust me to do that--for them. Afraid of me! That's just it. Most likely he is afraid of me because I am not afraid of his coffee." Then showing me a place on the north front of the stockade where the pointed tops of several stakes were broken, "This is where I leaped over on my third day in Patusan. They haven't put new stakes there yet. Good leap, eh?" A moment later we passed the mouth of a muddy creek. "This is my second leap. I had a bit of a run and took this one flying, but fell short. Thought I would leave my skin there. Lost my shoes struggling. And all the time I was thinking to myself how beastly it would be to get a jab with a bally long spear while sticking in the mud like this. I remember how sick I felt wriggling in that slime. I mean really sick--as if I had bitten something rotten." 'That's how it was--and the opportunity ran by his side, leaped over the gap, floundered in the mud . . . still veiled. The unexpectedness of his coming was the only thing, you understand, that saved him from being at once dispatched with krisses and flung into the river. They had him, but it was like getting hold of an apparition, a wraith, a portent. What did it mean? What to do with it? Was it too late to conciliate him? Hadn't he better be killed without more delay? But what would happen then? Wretched old Allang went nearly mad with apprehension and through the difficulty of making up his mind. Several times the council was broken up, and the advisers made a break helter-skelter for the door and out on to the verandah. One--it is said--even jumped down to the ground--fifteen feet, I should judge--and broke his leg. The royal governor of Patusan had bizarre mannerisms, and one of them was to introduce boastful rhapsodies into every arduous discussion, when, getting gradually excited, he would end by flying off his perch with a kriss in his hand. But, barring such interruptions, the deliberations upon Jim's fate went on night and day. 'Meanwhile he wandered about the courtyard, shunned by some, glared at by others, but watched by all, and practically at the mercy of the first casual ragamuffin with a chopper, in there. He took possession of a small tumble-down shed to sleep in; the effluvia of filth and rotten matter incommoded him greatly: it seems he had not lost his appetite though, because--he told me--he had been hungry all the blessed time. Now and again "some fussy ass" deputed from the council-room would come out running to him, and in honeyed tones would administer amazing interrogatories: "Were the Dutch coming to take the country? Would the white man like to go back down the river? What was the object of coming to such a miserable country? The Rajah wanted to know whether the white man could repair a watch?" They did actually bring out to him a nickel clock of New England make, and out of sheer unbearable boredom he busied himself in trying to get the alarum to work. It was apparently when thus occupied in his shed that the true perception of his extreme peril dawned upon him. He dropped the thing--he says--"like a hot potato," and walked out hastily, without the slightest idea of what he would, or indeed could, do. He only knew that the position was intolerable. He strolled aimlessly beyond a sort of ramshackle little granary on posts, and his eyes fell on the broken stakes of the palisade; and then--he says--at once, without any mental process as it were, without any stir of emotion, he set about his escape as if executing a plan matured for a month. He walked off carelessly to give himself a good run, and when he faced about there was some dignitary, with two spearmen in attendance, close at his elbow ready with a question. He started off "from under his very nose," went over "like a bird," and landed on the other side with a fall that jarred all his bones and seemed to split his head. He picked himself up instantly. He never thought of anything at the time; all he could remember--he said--was a great yell; the first houses of Patusan were before him four hundred yards away; he saw the creek, and as it were mechanically put on more pace. The earth seemed fairly to fly backwards under his feet. He took off from the last dry spot, felt himself flying through the air, felt himself, without any shock, planted upright in an extremely soft and sticky mudbank. It was only when he tried to move his legs and found he couldn't that, in his own words, "he came to himself." He began to think of the "bally long spears." As a matter of fact, considering that the people inside the stockade had to run to the gate, then get down to the landing-place, get into boats, and pull round a point of land, he had more advance than he imagined. Besides, it being low water, the creek was without water--you couldn't call it dry--and practically he was safe for a time from everything but a very long shot perhaps. The higher firm ground was about six feet in front of him. "I thought I would have to die there all the same," he said. He reached and grabbed desperately with his hands, and only succeeded in gathering a horrible cold shiny heap of slime against his breast--up to his very chin. It seemed to him he was burying himself alive, and then he struck out madly, scattering the mud with his fists. It fell on his head, on his face, over his eyes, into his mouth. He told me that he remembered suddenly the courtyard, as you remember a place where you had been very happy years ago. He longed--so he said--to be back there again, mending the clock. Mending the clock--that was the idea. He made efforts, tremendous sobbing, gasping efforts, efforts that seemed to burst his eyeballs in their sockets and make him blind, and culminating into one mighty supreme effort in the darkness to crack the earth asunder, to throw it off his limbs--and he felt himself creeping feebly up the bank. He lay full length on the firm ground and saw the light, the sky. Then as a sort of happy thought the notion came to him that he would go to sleep. He will have it that he _did_ actually go to sleep; that he slept--perhaps for a minute, perhaps for twenty seconds, or only for one second, but he recollects distinctly the violent convulsive start of awakening. He remained lying still for a while, and then he arose muddy from head to foot and stood there, thinking he was alone of his kind for hundreds of miles, alone, with no help, no sympathy, no pity to expect from any one, like a hunted animal. The first houses were not more than twenty yards from him; and it was the desperate screaming of a frightened woman trying to carry off a child that started him again. He pelted straight on in his socks, beplastered with filth out of all semblance to a human being. He traversed more than half the length of the settlement. The nimbler women fled right and left, the slower men just dropped whatever they had in their hands, and remained petrified with dropping jaws. He was a flying terror. He says he noticed the little children trying to run for life, falling on their little stomachs and kicking. He swerved between two houses up a slope, clambered in desperation over a barricade of felled trees (there wasn't a week without some fight in Patusan at that time), burst through a fence into a maize-patch, where a scared boy flung a stick at him, blundered upon a path, and ran all at once into the arms of several startled men. He just had breath enough to gasp out, "Doramin! Doramin!" He remembers being half-carried, half-rushed to the top of the slope, and in a vast enclosure with palms and fruit trees being run up to a large man sitting massively in a chair in the midst of the greatest possible commotion and excitement. He fumbled in mud and clothes to produce the ring, and, finding himself suddenly on his back, wondered who had knocked him down. They had simply let him go--don't you know?--but he couldn't stand. At the foot of the slope random shots were fired, and above the roofs of the settlement there rose a dull roar of amazement. But he was safe. Doramin's people were barricading the gate and pouring water down his throat; Doramin's old wife, full of business and commiseration, was issuing shrill orders to her girls. "The old woman," he said softly, "made a to-do over me as if I had been her own son. They put me into an immense bed--her state bed--and she ran in and out wiping her eyes to give me pats on the back. I must have been a pitiful object. I just lay there like a log for I don't know how long." 'He seemed to have a great liking for Doramin's old wife. She on her side had taken a motherly fancy to him. She had a round, nut-brown, soft face, all fine wrinkles, large, bright red lips (she chewed betel assiduously), and screwed up, winking, benevolent eyes. She was constantly in movement, scolding busily and ordering unceasingly a troop of young women with clear brown faces and big grave eyes, her daughters, her servants, her slave-girls. You know how it is in these households: it's generally impossible to tell the difference. She was very spare, and even her ample outer garment, fastened in front with jewelled clasps, had somehow a skimpy effect. Her dark bare feet were thrust into yellow straw slippers of Chinese make. I have seen her myself flitting about with her extremely thick, long, grey hair falling about her shoulders. She uttered homely shrewd sayings, was of noble birth, and was eccentric and arbitrary. In the afternoon she would sit in a very roomy arm-chair, opposite her husband, gazing steadily through a wide opening in the wall which gave an extensive view of the settlement and the river. 'She invariably tucked up her feet under her, but old Doramin sat squarely, sat imposingly as a mountain sits on a plain. He was only of the nakhoda or merchant class, but the respect shown to him and the dignity of his bearing were very striking. He was the chief of the second power in Patusan. The immigrants from Celebes (about sixty families that, with dependants and so on, could muster some two hundred men "wearing the kriss") had elected him years ago for their head. The men of that race are intelligent, enterprising, revengeful, but with a more frank courage than the other Malays, and restless under oppression. They formed the party opposed to the Rajah. Of course the quarrels were for trade. This was the primary cause of faction fights, of the sudden outbreaks that would fill this or that part of the settlement with smoke, flame, the noise of shots and shrieks. Villages were burnt, men were dragged into the Rajah's stockade to be killed or tortured for the crime of trading with anybody else but himself. Only a day or two before Jim's arrival several heads of households in the very fishing village that was afterwards taken under his especial protection had been driven over the cliffs by a party of the Rajah's spearmen, on suspicion of having been collecting edible birds' nests for a Celebes trader. Rajah Allang pretended to be the only trader in his country, and the penalty for the breach of the monopoly was death; but his idea of trading was indistinguishable from the commonest forms of robbery. His cruelty and rapacity had no other bounds than his cowardice, and he was afraid of the organised power of the Celebes men, only--till Jim came--he was not afraid enough to keep quiet. He struck at them through his subjects, and thought himself pathetically in the right. The situation was complicated by a wandering stranger, an Arab half-breed, who, I believe, on purely religious grounds, had incited the tribes in the interior (the bush-folk, as Jim himself called them) to rise, and had established himself in a fortified camp on the summit of one of the twin hills. He hung over the town of Patusan like a hawk over a poultry-yard, but he devastated the open country. Whole villages, deserted, rotted on their blackened posts over the banks of clear streams, dropping piecemeal into the water the grass of their walls, the leaves of their roofs, with a curious effect of natural decay as if they had been a form of vegetation stricken by a blight at its very root. The two parties in Patusan were not sure which one this partisan most desired to plunder. The Rajah intrigued with him feebly. Some of the Bugis settlers, weary with endless insecurity, were half inclined to call him in. The younger spirits amongst them, chaffing, advised to "get Sherif Ali with his wild men and drive the Rajah Allang out of the country." Doramin restrained them with difficulty. He was growing old, and, though his influence had not diminished, the situation was getting beyond him. This was the state of affairs when Jim, bolting from the Rajah's stockade, appeared before the chief of the Bugis, produced the ring, and was received, in a manner of speaking, into the heart of the community.'

Chapters 24-25

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Two years later, Marlow visited Patusan, carrying a message from Stein to Jim, which instructed Jim to set up a proper trading post. Marlow marveled at the misty ocean, the swampy plains, and the far-off blue mountain peaks. He stopped at a fishing village and engaged an old man who seemed to be the village's head man to pilot him upriver. Most of the old man's talk on the way up was about "Tuan Jim," or Lord Jim, a man of whom he spoke with warm, glowing familiarity and simple awe. Clearly, all the villagers loved and trusted Jim. In fact, most of them believed that he had supernatural powers. In the short time that Jim had lived in Patusan, many legends had grown up around him. Marlow was told, for example, that on the day Jim arrived, the tide rose two hours before its usual time in order to carry Jim upriver. Later, when Jim and Marlow were sitting on the verandah of Jim's house, Marlow listened to Jim's version of his arrival at Patusan. Jim had sat on the tin luggage box during the entire voyage, his unloaded revolver on his lap. It was an exhausting journey, he said, the boat scissoring through crocodiles, and the jungle seeming to be continually formidable and ominous. Near the end of the journey, he dozed. When he awakened, he noticed that his three paddlers had disappeared. Almost immediately, he was taken prisoner by armed men who escorted him to Rajah Allang, the little "used-up" despot. Jim paused, and Marlow reflected that the "experiment" had turned out remarkably well. There was none of Jim's former hypersensitivity to guilt and anguish. Instead, Jim seemed to have conquered his urge to punish himself. He had won the trust, the friendship, and the love of the natives. And he had even attained a kind of fame. As Jim talked to Marlow, Marlow noted Jim's deep and fierce love for the land. To leave Patusan would be, Jim said, "harder than dying." According to Marlow, Jim had become both Patusan's master and its captive. On their way to meet Rajah Allang, Jim pointed out to Marlow a filthy stockade in which he was held captive for three days. On the third day, he said, he did the only thing he could do: he tried to escape. At that moment of their conversation, however, they met Rajah Allang. Marlow says that he was immediately impressed with the man's respectful attitude toward Jim, who only two years before had been this man's prisoner. Jim and Marlow witnessed Rajah Allang's solving a village problem, and then they were offered coffee. Marlow was reluctant to drink his, fearing that it might be poisoned, but Jim unperturbedly sipped his coffee. Later, Jim told Marlow that he had to constantly prove that he was worthy of their trust. He had to drink their coffee. He had to take the risk -- "take it every month" -- the natives trusted him to do that. Jim said that Rajah Allang was most likely afraid of Jim precisely because Jim was not afraid to drink the Rajah's coffee. After Jim escaped from Rajah Allang's stockade two years ago and found safety with Doramin, he learned about the warring factions that seemed to rule Patusan. They were: Rajah Allang, from whom Jim had just escaped; he brought blood and fiery destruction on any villager who attempted to trade with the outside world. Rajah Allang wanted to be the exclusive trader in Patusan. Stein's friend Doramin was the "second chief" in Patusan. Years ago, he was elected by "his people," immigrants from the Dutch West Indies; his party opposed Rajah Allang's terrorizing monopoly on trading. The other "leader" of Patusan was a half-breed Arab, Sherif Ali. He incited the interior tribes with religious fervor, and his followers practiced guerrilla warfare. He had a camp on the summit of one of Patusan's twin mountains, where he hung over the village "like a hawk over a poultry yard." Of the three powers that controlled Patusan, Sherif Ali was the most dangerous -- to Rajah Allang's people, and to the Bugis Malays under old Doramin.

Again in these chapters, Conrad skips about from past time to present time . We witness a scene when Marlow visits Jim, and then the narrator returns to a past time, when Jim first arrived in Patusan. Marlow even hints of future occurrences and tells the story of Jim's arrival from a distance of many years, and so it seems natural to him to call up, first, one experience and then another -- without due regard for their time sequences. By the time of Marlow's arrival, the natives are calling Jim "Tuan Jim" or, in English, Lord Jim, and we are told that Jim has won their respect and, in some cases, their awe; already, many legendary stories have grown up around Lord Jim. Without our knowing how Lord Jim accomplished it, we are informed that he had indeed achieved a type of greatness -- complete trust and ultimate respect in this outpost. "He was approaching greatness as genuine as any man ever achieved." When Jim first arrived, we hear from Marlow that Jim had been held captive for three days, and Marlow points out that had he Jim) been killed then, the entire province of Patusan "would have been the loser." Even Jim recognizes his greatness and appreciates the fact that now, "there is not one where I am not trusted." Lord Jim has at last, finally, found his niche in the universe, and he will never leave Patusan, the place where he is honored and trusted, respected and loved. In addition to Jim's newfound self-assurance and happiness, Marlow noticed other differences in Jim. He was now more intellectually alert; there was an eloquence and "a dignity in his constitutional reticence" and a "high seriousness" in his actions that showed "how deeply, how solemnly" he felt about his work at Patusan. Marlow concluded that Jim had indeed found himself. When Jim took Marlow to the place where Rajah Allang, who had held him prisoner, lived, Jim showed great courage in drinking coffee once a month with the Rajah -- even though he knew that it might be poisoned. Lord Jim then told Marlow of his escape -- of another "Jump," which this time led him to a bog where, for awhile, he was stuck in mud and slime. When he emerged, he was symbolically covered with filth, but even in this disgusting condition, he ran to Doramin's stockade where he showed him the ring and was accepted into Doramin's family, thus symbolically emerging from the filth and slime to begin anew a new, clean, productive life. The symbolism is obvious: the "jump" that takes Jim deep into the vile slime and mud of the creek represents the jump from the Patna which immersed Jim deep into vile shame and everlasting remorse.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/72.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_13_part_4.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 11.chapter 3

book 11, chapter 3

{"name": "book 11, Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section14/", "summary": "A Little Demon Lise is nearly hysterical when Alyosha goes in to see her. After they decided to become engaged, she changed her mind and broke off the engagement, and now, she says, she does not even respect Alyosha, because she cannot respect anyone or anything. She says that she wants to die because the world is so loathsome. She describes speaking to a \"certain man\" about this subject and says that the man laughed at her and left. She asks if the man despised her, and Alyosha says that he did not. As Alyosha rises to leave, Lise gives him a note for Ivan. When Alyosha is gone, she slams her finger in the door, crushing her fingernail. As she looks down at the blackened, bloody nail, she whispers to herself that she is mean", "analysis": ""}

Chapter III. A Little Demon Going in to Lise, he found her half reclining in the invalid-chair, in which she had been wheeled when she was unable to walk. She did not move to meet him, but her sharp, keen eyes were simply riveted on his face. There was a feverish look in her eyes, her face was pale and yellow. Alyosha was amazed at the change that had taken place in her in three days. She was positively thinner. She did not hold out her hand to him. He touched the thin, long fingers which lay motionless on her dress, then he sat down facing her, without a word. "I know you are in a hurry to get to the prison," Lise said curtly, "and mamma's kept you there for hours; she's just been telling you about me and Yulia." "How do you know?" asked Alyosha. "I've been listening. Why do you stare at me? I want to listen and I do listen, there's no harm in that. I don't apologize." "You are upset about something?" "On the contrary, I am very happy. I've only just been reflecting for the thirtieth time what a good thing it is I refused you and shall not be your wife. You are not fit to be a husband. If I were to marry you and give you a note to take to the man I loved after you, you'd take it and be sure to give it to him and bring an answer back, too. If you were forty, you would still go on taking my love-letters for me." She suddenly laughed. "There is something spiteful and yet open-hearted about you," Alyosha smiled to her. "The open-heartedness consists in my not being ashamed of myself with you. What's more, I don't want to feel ashamed with you, just with you. Alyosha, why is it I don't respect you? I am very fond of you, but I don't respect you. If I respected you, I shouldn't talk to you without shame, should I?" "No." "But do you believe that I am not ashamed with you?" "No, I don't believe it." Lise laughed nervously again; she spoke rapidly. "I sent your brother, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, some sweets in prison. Alyosha, you know, you are quite pretty! I shall love you awfully for having so quickly allowed me not to love you." "Why did you send for me to-day, Lise?" "I wanted to tell you of a longing I have. I should like some one to torture me, marry me and then torture me, deceive me and go away. I don't want to be happy." "You are in love with disorder?" "Yes, I want disorder. I keep wanting to set fire to the house. I keep imagining how I'll creep up and set fire to the house on the sly; it must be on the sly. They'll try to put it out, but it'll go on burning. And I shall know and say nothing. Ah, what silliness! And how bored I am!" She waved her hand with a look of repulsion. "It's your luxurious life," said Alyosha, softly. "Is it better, then, to be poor?" "Yes, it is better." "That's what your monk taught you. That's not true. Let me be rich and all the rest poor, I'll eat sweets and drink cream and not give any to any one else. Ach, don't speak, don't say anything," she shook her hand at him, though Alyosha had not opened his mouth. "You've told me all that before, I know it all by heart. It bores me. If I am ever poor, I shall murder somebody, and even if I am rich, I may murder some one, perhaps--why do nothing! But do you know, I should like to reap, cut the rye? I'll marry you, and you shall become a peasant, a real peasant; we'll keep a colt, shall we? Do you know Kalganov?" "Yes." "He is always wandering about, dreaming. He says, 'Why live in real life? It's better to dream. One can dream the most delightful things, but real life is a bore.' But he'll be married soon for all that; he's been making love to me already. Can you spin tops?" "Yes." "Well, he's just like a top: he wants to be wound up and set spinning and then to be lashed, lashed, lashed with a whip. If I marry him, I'll keep him spinning all his life. You are not ashamed to be with me?" "No." "You are awfully cross, because I don't talk about holy things. I don't want to be holy. What will they do to one in the next world for the greatest sin? You must know all about that." "God will censure you." Alyosha was watching her steadily. "That's just what I should like. I would go up and they would censure me, and I would burst out laughing in their faces. I should dreadfully like to set fire to the house, Alyosha, to our house; you still don't believe me?" "Why? There are children of twelve years old, who have a longing to set fire to something and they do set things on fire, too. It's a sort of disease." "That's not true, that's not true; there may be children, but that's not what I mean." "You take evil for good; it's a passing crisis, it's the result of your illness, perhaps." "You do despise me, though! It's simply that I don't want to do good, I want to do evil, and it has nothing to do with illness." "Why do evil?" "So that everything might be destroyed. Ah, how nice it would be if everything were destroyed! You know, Alyosha, I sometimes think of doing a fearful lot of harm and everything bad, and I should do it for a long while on the sly and suddenly every one would find it out. Every one will stand round and point their fingers at me and I would look at them all. That would be awfully nice. Why would it be so nice, Alyosha?" "I don't know. It's a craving to destroy something good or, as you say, to set fire to something. It happens sometimes." "I not only say it, I shall do it." "I believe you." "Ah, how I love you for saying you believe me. And you are not lying one little bit. But perhaps you think that I am saying all this on purpose to annoy you?" "No, I don't think that ... though perhaps there is a little desire to do that in it, too." "There is a little. I never can tell lies to you," she declared, with a strange fire in her eyes. What struck Alyosha above everything was her earnestness. There was not a trace of humor or jesting in her face now, though, in old days, fun and gayety never deserted her even at her most "earnest" moments. "There are moments when people love crime," said Alyosha thoughtfully. "Yes, yes! You have uttered my thought; they love crime, every one loves crime, they love it always, not at some 'moments.' You know, it's as though people have made an agreement to lie about it and have lied about it ever since. They all declare that they hate evil, but secretly they all love it." "And are you still reading nasty books?" "Yes, I am. Mamma reads them and hides them under her pillow and I steal them." "Aren't you ashamed to destroy yourself?" "I want to destroy myself. There's a boy here, who lay down between the railway lines when the train was passing. Lucky fellow! Listen, your brother is being tried now for murdering his father and every one loves his having killed his father." "Loves his having killed his father?" "Yes, loves it; every one loves it! Everybody says it's so awful, but secretly they simply love it. I for one love it." "There is some truth in what you say about every one," said Alyosha softly. "Oh, what ideas you have!" Lise shrieked in delight. "And you a monk, too! You wouldn't believe how I respect you, Alyosha, for never telling lies. Oh, I must tell you a funny dream of mine. I sometimes dream of devils. It's night; I am in my room with a candle and suddenly there are devils all over the place, in all the corners, under the table, and they open the doors; there's a crowd of them behind the doors and they want to come and seize me. And they are just coming, just seizing me. But I suddenly cross myself and they all draw back, though they don't go away altogether, they stand at the doors and in the corners, waiting. And suddenly I have a frightful longing to revile God aloud, and so I begin, and then they come crowding back to me, delighted, and seize me again and I cross myself again and they all draw back. It's awful fun. it takes one's breath away." "I've had the same dream, too," said Alyosha suddenly. "Really?" cried Lise, surprised. "I say, Alyosha, don't laugh, that's awfully important. Could two different people have the same dream?" "It seems they can." "Alyosha, I tell you, it's awfully important," Lise went on, with really excessive amazement. "It's not the dream that's important, but your having the same dream as me. You never lie to me, don't lie now: is it true? You are not laughing?" "It's true." Lise seemed extraordinarily impressed and for half a minute she was silent. "Alyosha, come and see me, come and see me more often," she said suddenly, in a supplicating voice. "I'll always come to see you, all my life," answered Alyosha firmly. "You are the only person I can talk to, you know," Lise began again. "I talk to no one but myself and you. Only you in the whole world. And to you more readily than to myself. And I am not a bit ashamed with you, not a bit. Alyosha, why am I not ashamed with you, not a bit? Alyosha, is it true that at Easter the Jews steal a child and kill it?" "I don't know." "There's a book here in which I read about the trial of a Jew, who took a child of four years old and cut off the fingers from both hands, and then crucified him on the wall, hammered nails into him and crucified him, and afterwards, when he was tried, he said that the child died soon, within four hours. That was 'soon'! He said the child moaned, kept on moaning and he stood admiring it. That's nice!" "Nice?" "Nice; I sometimes imagine that it was I who crucified him. He would hang there moaning and I would sit opposite him eating pineapple _compote_. I am awfully fond of pineapple _compote_. Do you like it?" Alyosha looked at her in silence. Her pale, sallow face was suddenly contorted, her eyes burned. "You know, when I read about that Jew I shook with sobs all night. I kept fancying how the little thing cried and moaned (a child of four years old understands, you know), and all the while the thought of pineapple _compote_ haunted me. In the morning I wrote a letter to a certain person, begging him _particularly_ to come and see me. He came and I suddenly told him all about the child and the pineapple _compote_. _All_ about it, _all_, and said that it was nice. He laughed and said it really was nice. Then he got up and went away. He was only here five minutes. Did he despise me? Did he despise me? Tell me, tell me, Alyosha, did he despise me or not?" She sat up on the couch, with flashing eyes. "Tell me," Alyosha asked anxiously, "did you send for that person?" "Yes, I did." "Did you send him a letter?" "Yes." "Simply to ask about that, about that child?" "No, not about that at all. But when he came, I asked him about that at once. He answered, laughed, got up and went away." "That person behaved honorably," Alyosha murmured. "And did he despise me? Did he laugh at me?" "No, for perhaps he believes in the pineapple _compote_ himself. He is very ill now, too, Lise." "Yes, he does believe in it," said Lise, with flashing eyes. "He doesn't despise any one," Alyosha went on. "Only he does not believe any one. If he doesn't believe in people, of course, he does despise them." "Then he despises me, me?" "You, too." "Good," Lise seemed to grind her teeth. "When he went out laughing, I felt that it was nice to be despised. The child with fingers cut off is nice, and to be despised is nice...." And she laughed in Alyosha's face, a feverish malicious laugh. "Do you know, Alyosha, do you know, I should like--Alyosha, save me!" She suddenly jumped from the couch, rushed to him and seized him with both hands. "Save me!" she almost groaned. "Is there any one in the world I could tell what I've told you? I've told you the truth, the truth. I shall kill myself, because I loathe everything! I don't want to live, because I loathe everything! I loathe everything, everything. Alyosha, why don't you love me in the least?" she finished in a frenzy. "But I do love you!" answered Alyosha warmly. "And will you weep over me, will you?" "Yes." "Not because I won't be your wife, but simply weep for me?" "Yes." "Thank you! It's only your tears I want. Every one else may punish me and trample me under foot, every one, every one, not excepting _any one_. For I don't love any one. Do you hear, not any one! On the contrary, I hate him! Go, Alyosha; it's time you went to your brother"; she tore herself away from him suddenly. "How can I leave you like this?" said Alyosha, almost in alarm. "Go to your brother, the prison will be shut; go, here's your hat. Give my love to Mitya, go, go!" And she almost forcibly pushed Alyosha out of the door. He looked at her with pained surprise, when he was suddenly aware of a letter in his right hand, a tiny letter folded up tight and sealed. He glanced at it and instantly read the address, "To Ivan Fyodorovitch Karamazov." He looked quickly at Lise. Her face had become almost menacing. "Give it to him, you must give it to him!" she ordered him, trembling and beside herself. "To-day, at once, or I'll poison myself! That's why I sent for you." And she slammed the door quickly. The bolt clicked. Alyosha put the note in his pocket and went straight downstairs, without going back to Madame Hohlakov; forgetting her, in fact. As soon as Alyosha had gone, Lise unbolted the door, opened it a little, put her finger in the crack and slammed the door with all her might, pinching her finger. Ten seconds after, releasing her finger, she walked softly, slowly to her chair, sat up straight in it and looked intently at her blackened finger and at the blood that oozed from under the nail. Her lips were quivering and she kept whispering rapidly to herself: "I am a wretch, wretch, wretch, wretch!"

book 11, Chapter 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section14/

A Little Demon Lise is nearly hysterical when Alyosha goes in to see her. After they decided to become engaged, she changed her mind and broke off the engagement, and now, she says, she does not even respect Alyosha, because she cannot respect anyone or anything. She says that she wants to die because the world is so loathsome. She describes speaking to a "certain man" about this subject and says that the man laughed at her and left. She asks if the man despised her, and Alyosha says that he did not. As Alyosha rises to leave, Lise gives him a note for Ivan. When Alyosha is gone, she slams her finger in the door, crushing her fingernail. As she looks down at the blackened, bloody nail, she whispers to herself that she is mean

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/13.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Sense and Sensibility/section_12_part_0.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 13

chapter 13

{"name": "Chapter 13", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820034609/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmSenseSensibility27.asp", "summary": "Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters are busy attending parties and balls. Marianne is in her element. She is overjoyed in the company of Willoughby, who showers much affection and attention on her. Elinor even feels left out at times. Deprived of friends of her own age, she is often thrown in the company of Mrs. Jennings and Lady Middleton. At such times she welcomes the presence of Colonel Brandon. Brandon often talks of Marianne and asks Elinor about her sister's preferences.", "analysis": "Notes Jane Austen paints the picture of an eighteenth-century upper middle-class society. The Dashwoods and Middletons are shown to be busy attending parties and balls. Their main occupation is socializing, and they take pleasure in entertaining people. Every young girl waits for a respectable young man to woo her, and her parents hope for a match between them. They lead a leisurely life, perhaps unusual to the modern reader. Marianne is exhilarated by the looks and manners of her lover. She does not care to understand his essential nature. Obsessed with Willoughby, she ignores Colonel Brandon and unconsciously hurts him. Blinded by her infatuation for Willoughby, she is not able to realize the worth of the Colonel or detect the intensity of his feelings. This chapter again emphasizes the difference in attitudes between Willoughby and Colonel Brandon. Both men are attracted to Marianne. Willoughby displays his affection by wooing Marianne, like a dashing hero would, while Colonel Brandon admires his lady love from a distance and silently hopes to win her favor. Willoughby is interested only in flirting with Marianne, but the Colonel, like a sincere person, looks forward to a lasting relationship. CHAPTER 12 Summary Marianne gets carried away by Willoughby's showy gestures. When he offers her a horse, she accepts it readily and talks about it to her sister. Elinor is shocked to learn this and asks Marianne to decline the offer, as it would prove too costly for them. Elinor observes Willoughby's behavior towards her sister and detects a note of intimacy in it. Margaret tells Elinor about her suspicion of an engagement between Marianne and Willoughby. Later, at Mrs. Jennings' insistence, Margaret gives a hint about Elinor's attachment to Edward, much to Elinor's embarrassment. Notes The chapter hints at the extent of the involvement of Marianne with Willoughby. Willoughby tries to impress Marianne by offering her a horse as a gift, and Marianne foolishly accepts the offer without giving a thought to the expenditure involved. Willoughby's superficiality and Marianne's gullibility are exposed in this episode. Chapter 12 also reveals the character of the youngest of the Dashwood girls. Margaret, one of the minor characters in the novel, is otherwise ignored by Austen. Only a few chapters give a glimpse into her personality. Margaret, like a typical teenager, gets excited over little things and jumps to conclusions easily. She derives pleasure from revealing secrets. She informs Elinor about the impending marriage between Marianne and Willoughby because she saw the young man taking a lock of hair from her sister . At the Park, she gives hints about the relationship between Elinor and Edward to Mrs. Jennings, much to the embarrassment of her sister. Like a reckless teenager, she is always in a hurry to impart information not meant to be disclosed publicly. CHAPTER 13 Summary Everyone is eagerly looking forward to their picnic at Whitewell. However, on the morning of the outing, a letter arrives for Colonel Brandon and alters the situation. The letter disturbs Brandon, and he informs the others about his decision to leave immediately for the town. The picnic is canceled, much to the disappointment of all, since it is not possible to proceed to Whitewell without the assistance of the Colonel. Sir John Middleton suggests that they should go for a ride in the carriage around the countryside. Marianne and Willoughby take a separate carriage. They visit Allenham on the sly. When Elinor learns about their visit, she is angry with Marianne for not observing the rules of propriety. Marianne justifies her action. Notes An element of suspense is introduced in this chapter. After the Colonel reads the letter, he turns grave and decides to leave for the town immediately. He evades the questions of Mrs. Jennings and declines to postpone his visit. After he leaves, Mrs. Jennings hints at the possibility of his visiting his illegitimate daughter, Miss Williams. Through this bit of information, Austen arouses the curiosity of the reader regarding the mysterious past of Colonel Brandon. Marianne and Willoughby are insensitive to the feelings of the Colonel and fail to sympathize with his plight. They criticize Brandon for spoiling the afternoon. Colonel Brandon comes across as a man in control of his emotions. Even though he is disturbed by the contents of the letter, he does not reveal his misery to others. Like a gentleman, he excuses himself from the party and bows to Marianne before taking his leave. His silence speaks volumes. The chapter relates one more incident which creates a clash between the good sense of Elinor and the sensibility of Marianne. Marianne makes a secret visit to Allenham with Willoughby but does not feel guilty about what she has done. Elinor's sense of decorum causes her to condemn her sister's actions, as she does not approve of Marianne's visiting a stranger's house with a man to whom she is not even engaged, at least not openly."}

Their intended excursion to Whitwell turned out very different from what Elinor had expected. She was prepared to be wet through, fatigued, and frightened; but the event was still more unfortunate, for they did not go at all. By ten o'clock the whole party was assembled at the park, where they were to breakfast. The morning was rather favourable, though it had rained all night, as the clouds were then dispersing across the sky, and the sun frequently appeared. They were all in high spirits and good humour, eager to be happy, and determined to submit to the greatest inconveniences and hardships rather than be otherwise. While they were at breakfast the letters were brought in. Among the rest there was one for Colonel Brandon;--he took it, looked at the direction, changed colour, and immediately left the room. "What is the matter with Brandon?" said Sir John. Nobody could tell. "I hope he has had no bad news," said Lady Middleton. "It must be something extraordinary that could make Colonel Brandon leave my breakfast table so suddenly." In about five minutes he returned. "No bad news, Colonel, I hope;" said Mrs. Jennings, as soon as he entered the room. "None at all, ma'am, I thank you." "Was it from Avignon? I hope it is not to say that your sister is worse." "No, ma'am. It came from town, and is merely a letter of business." "But how came the hand to discompose you so much, if it was only a letter of business? Come, come, this won't do, Colonel; so let us hear the truth of it." "My dear madam," said Lady Middleton, "recollect what you are saying." "Perhaps it is to tell you that your cousin Fanny is married?" said Mrs. Jennings, without attending to her daughter's reproof. "No, indeed, it is not." "Well, then, I know who it is from, Colonel. And I hope she is well." "Whom do you mean, ma'am?" said he, colouring a little. "Oh! you know who I mean." "I am particularly sorry, ma'am," said he, addressing Lady Middleton, "that I should receive this letter today, for it is on business which requires my immediate attendance in town." "In town!" cried Mrs. Jennings. "What can you have to do in town at this time of year?" "My own loss is great," he continued, "in being obliged to leave so agreeable a party; but I am the more concerned, as I fear my presence is necessary to gain your admittance at Whitwell." What a blow upon them all was this! "But if you write a note to the housekeeper, Mr. Brandon," said Marianne, eagerly, "will it not be sufficient?" He shook his head. "We must go," said Sir John.--"It shall not be put off when we are so near it. You cannot go to town till tomorrow, Brandon, that is all." "I wish it could be so easily settled. But it is not in my power to delay my journey for one day!" "If you would but let us know what your business is," said Mrs. Jennings, "we might see whether it could be put off or not." "You would not be six hours later," said Willoughby, "if you were to defer your journey till our return." "I cannot afford to lose ONE hour."-- Elinor then heard Willoughby say, in a low voice to Marianne, "There are some people who cannot bear a party of pleasure. Brandon is one of them. He was afraid of catching cold I dare say, and invented this trick for getting out of it. I would lay fifty guineas the letter was of his own writing." "I have no doubt of it," replied Marianne. "There is no persuading you to change your mind, Brandon, I know of old," said Sir John, "when once you are determined on anything. But, however, I hope you will think better of it. Consider, here are the two Miss Careys come over from Newton, the three Miss Dashwoods walked up from the cottage, and Mr. Willoughby got up two hours before his usual time, on purpose to go to Whitwell." Colonel Brandon again repeated his sorrow at being the cause of disappointing the party; but at the same time declared it to be unavoidable. "Well, then, when will you come back again?" "I hope we shall see you at Barton," added her ladyship, "as soon as you can conveniently leave town; and we must put off the party to Whitwell till you return." "You are very obliging. But it is so uncertain, when I may have it in my power to return, that I dare not engage for it at all." "Oh! he must and shall come back," cried Sir John. "If he is not here by the end of the week, I shall go after him." "Ay, so do, Sir John," cried Mrs. Jennings, "and then perhaps you may find out what his business is." "I do not want to pry into other men's concerns. I suppose it is something he is ashamed of." Colonel Brandon's horses were announced. "You do not go to town on horseback, do you?" added Sir John. "No. Only to Honiton. I shall then go post." "Well, as you are resolved to go, I wish you a good journey. But you had better change your mind." "I assure you it is not in my power." He then took leave of the whole party. "Is there no chance of my seeing you and your sisters in town this winter, Miss Dashwood?" "I am afraid, none at all." "Then I must bid you farewell for a longer time than I should wish to do." To Marianne, he merely bowed and said nothing. "Come Colonel," said Mrs. Jennings, "before you go, do let us know what you are going about." He wished her a good morning, and, attended by Sir John, left the room. The complaints and lamentations which politeness had hitherto restrained, now burst forth universally; and they all agreed again and again how provoking it was to be so disappointed. "I can guess what his business is, however," said Mrs. Jennings exultingly. "Can you, ma'am?" said almost every body. "Yes; it is about Miss Williams, I am sure." "And who is Miss Williams?" asked Marianne. "What! do not you know who Miss Williams is? I am sure you must have heard of her before. She is a relation of the Colonel's, my dear; a very near relation. We will not say how near, for fear of shocking the young ladies." Then, lowering her voice a little, she said to Elinor, "She is his natural daughter." "Indeed!" "Oh, yes; and as like him as she can stare. I dare say the Colonel will leave her all his fortune." When Sir John returned, he joined most heartily in the general regret on so unfortunate an event; concluding however by observing, that as they were all got together, they must do something by way of being happy; and after some consultation it was agreed, that although happiness could only be enjoyed at Whitwell, they might procure a tolerable composure of mind by driving about the country. The carriages were then ordered; Willoughby's was first, and Marianne never looked happier than when she got into it. He drove through the park very fast, and they were soon out of sight; and nothing more of them was seen till their return, which did not happen till after the return of all the rest. They both seemed delighted with their drive; but said only in general terms that they had kept in the lanes, while the others went on the downs. It was settled that there should be a dance in the evening, and that every body should be extremely merry all day long. Some more of the Careys came to dinner, and they had the pleasure of sitting down nearly twenty to table, which Sir John observed with great contentment. Willoughby took his usual place between the two elder Miss Dashwoods. Mrs. Jennings sat on Elinor's right hand; and they had not been long seated, before she leant behind her and Willoughby, and said to Marianne, loud enough for them both to hear, "I have found you out in spite of all your tricks. I know where you spent the morning." Marianne coloured, and replied very hastily, "Where, pray?"-- "Did not you know," said Willoughby, "that we had been out in my curricle?" "Yes, yes, Mr. Impudence, I know that very well, and I was determined to find out WHERE you had been to.-- I hope you like your house, Miss Marianne. It is a very large one, I know; and when I come to see you, I hope you will have new-furnished it, for it wanted it very much when I was there six years ago." Marianne turned away in great confusion. Mrs. Jennings laughed heartily; and Elinor found that in her resolution to know where they had been, she had actually made her own woman enquire of Mr. Willoughby's groom; and that she had by that method been informed that they had gone to Allenham, and spent a considerable time there in walking about the garden and going all over the house. Elinor could hardly believe this to be true, as it seemed very unlikely that Willoughby should propose, or Marianne consent, to enter the house while Mrs. Smith was in it, with whom Marianne had not the smallest acquaintance. As soon as they left the dining-room, Elinor enquired of her about it; and great was her surprise when she found that every circumstance related by Mrs. Jennings was perfectly true. Marianne was quite angry with her for doubting it. "Why should you imagine, Elinor, that we did not go there, or that we did not see the house? Is not it what you have often wished to do yourself?" "Yes, Marianne, but I would not go while Mrs. Smith was there, and with no other companion than Mr. Willoughby." "Mr. Willoughby however is the only person who can have a right to shew that house; and as he went in an open carriage, it was impossible to have any other companion. I never spent a pleasanter morning in my life." "I am afraid," replied Elinor, "that the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety." "On the contrary, nothing can be a stronger proof of it, Elinor; for if there had been any real impropriety in what I did, I should have been sensible of it at the time, for we always know when we are acting wrong, and with such a conviction I could have had no pleasure." "But, my dear Marianne, as it has already exposed you to some very impertinent remarks, do you not now begin to doubt the discretion of your own conduct?" "If the impertinent remarks of Mrs. Jennings are to be the proof of impropriety in conduct, we are all offending every moment of our lives. I value not her censure any more than I should do her commendation. I am not sensible of having done anything wrong in walking over Mrs. Smith's grounds, or in seeing her house. They will one day be Mr. Willoughby's, and--" "If they were one day to be your own, Marianne, you would not be justified in what you have done." She blushed at this hint; but it was even visibly gratifying to her; and after a ten minutes' interval of earnest thought, she came to her sister again, and said with great good humour, "Perhaps, Elinor, it WAS rather ill-judged in me to go to Allenham; but Mr. Willoughby wanted particularly to shew me the place; and it is a charming house, I assure you.--There is one remarkably pretty sitting room up stairs; of a nice comfortable size for constant use, and with modern furniture it would be delightful. It is a corner room, and has windows on two sides. On one side you look across the bowling-green, behind the house, to a beautiful hanging wood, and on the other you have a view of the church and village, and, beyond them, of those fine bold hills that we have so often admired. I did not see it to advantage, for nothing could be more forlorn than the furniture,--but if it were newly fitted up--a couple of hundred pounds, Willoughby says, would make it one of the pleasantest summer-rooms in England." Could Elinor have listened to her without interruption from the others, she would have described every room in the house with equal delight.

Chapter 13

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820034609/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmSenseSensibility27.asp

Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters are busy attending parties and balls. Marianne is in her element. She is overjoyed in the company of Willoughby, who showers much affection and attention on her. Elinor even feels left out at times. Deprived of friends of her own age, she is often thrown in the company of Mrs. Jennings and Lady Middleton. At such times she welcomes the presence of Colonel Brandon. Brandon often talks of Marianne and asks Elinor about her sister's preferences.

Notes Jane Austen paints the picture of an eighteenth-century upper middle-class society. The Dashwoods and Middletons are shown to be busy attending parties and balls. Their main occupation is socializing, and they take pleasure in entertaining people. Every young girl waits for a respectable young man to woo her, and her parents hope for a match between them. They lead a leisurely life, perhaps unusual to the modern reader. Marianne is exhilarated by the looks and manners of her lover. She does not care to understand his essential nature. Obsessed with Willoughby, she ignores Colonel Brandon and unconsciously hurts him. Blinded by her infatuation for Willoughby, she is not able to realize the worth of the Colonel or detect the intensity of his feelings. This chapter again emphasizes the difference in attitudes between Willoughby and Colonel Brandon. Both men are attracted to Marianne. Willoughby displays his affection by wooing Marianne, like a dashing hero would, while Colonel Brandon admires his lady love from a distance and silently hopes to win her favor. Willoughby is interested only in flirting with Marianne, but the Colonel, like a sincere person, looks forward to a lasting relationship. CHAPTER 12 Summary Marianne gets carried away by Willoughby's showy gestures. When he offers her a horse, she accepts it readily and talks about it to her sister. Elinor is shocked to learn this and asks Marianne to decline the offer, as it would prove too costly for them. Elinor observes Willoughby's behavior towards her sister and detects a note of intimacy in it. Margaret tells Elinor about her suspicion of an engagement between Marianne and Willoughby. Later, at Mrs. Jennings' insistence, Margaret gives a hint about Elinor's attachment to Edward, much to Elinor's embarrassment. Notes The chapter hints at the extent of the involvement of Marianne with Willoughby. Willoughby tries to impress Marianne by offering her a horse as a gift, and Marianne foolishly accepts the offer without giving a thought to the expenditure involved. Willoughby's superficiality and Marianne's gullibility are exposed in this episode. Chapter 12 also reveals the character of the youngest of the Dashwood girls. Margaret, one of the minor characters in the novel, is otherwise ignored by Austen. Only a few chapters give a glimpse into her personality. Margaret, like a typical teenager, gets excited over little things and jumps to conclusions easily. She derives pleasure from revealing secrets. She informs Elinor about the impending marriage between Marianne and Willoughby because she saw the young man taking a lock of hair from her sister . At the Park, she gives hints about the relationship between Elinor and Edward to Mrs. Jennings, much to the embarrassment of her sister. Like a reckless teenager, she is always in a hurry to impart information not meant to be disclosed publicly. CHAPTER 13 Summary Everyone is eagerly looking forward to their picnic at Whitewell. However, on the morning of the outing, a letter arrives for Colonel Brandon and alters the situation. The letter disturbs Brandon, and he informs the others about his decision to leave immediately for the town. The picnic is canceled, much to the disappointment of all, since it is not possible to proceed to Whitewell without the assistance of the Colonel. Sir John Middleton suggests that they should go for a ride in the carriage around the countryside. Marianne and Willoughby take a separate carriage. They visit Allenham on the sly. When Elinor learns about their visit, she is angry with Marianne for not observing the rules of propriety. Marianne justifies her action. Notes An element of suspense is introduced in this chapter. After the Colonel reads the letter, he turns grave and decides to leave for the town immediately. He evades the questions of Mrs. Jennings and declines to postpone his visit. After he leaves, Mrs. Jennings hints at the possibility of his visiting his illegitimate daughter, Miss Williams. Through this bit of information, Austen arouses the curiosity of the reader regarding the mysterious past of Colonel Brandon. Marianne and Willoughby are insensitive to the feelings of the Colonel and fail to sympathize with his plight. They criticize Brandon for spoiling the afternoon. Colonel Brandon comes across as a man in control of his emotions. Even though he is disturbed by the contents of the letter, he does not reveal his misery to others. Like a gentleman, he excuses himself from the party and bows to Marianne before taking his leave. His silence speaks volumes. The chapter relates one more incident which creates a clash between the good sense of Elinor and the sensibility of Marianne. Marianne makes a secret visit to Allenham with Willoughby but does not feel guilty about what she has done. Elinor's sense of decorum causes her to condemn her sister's actions, as she does not approve of Marianne's visiting a stranger's house with a man to whom she is not even engaged, at least not openly.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/27.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_26_part_0.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 4.chapter 3

book 4, chapter 3

{"name": "Book 4, Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-4-chapter-3", "summary": "Alyosha then heads off to Madame Khokhlakov's. On a lane to Mikhailovsky Street he encounters a group of boys, all of whom have stones in their hands. He then notices a sickly boy a few feet from them. All of a sudden the sickly boy throws a stone at one of the boys. Before he knows it, Alyosha is also hit on the shoulder by a rock. The boys start hurling stones at the sickly boy and Alyosha pleads with them to stop. They insist that the sickly boy attacked one of them first, stabbing a boy with a pen-knife earlier that day. Alyosha asks the sickly boy why he's throwing stones. The boy yells at him to leave him alone. As Alyosha turns back, the boy throws another stone at him. Alyosha asks the boy why he did that and the boy promptly bites him on the finger. Alyosha calmly wraps his bleeding finger in a kerchief and persists in trying to get the boy to talk to him. But the boy breaks out into tears and runs away.", "analysis": ""}

Chapter III. A Meeting With The Schoolboys "Thank goodness he did not ask me about Grushenka," thought Alyosha, as he left his father's house and turned towards Madame Hohlakov's, "or I might have to tell him of my meeting with Grushenka yesterday." Alyosha felt painfully that since yesterday both combatants had renewed their energies, and that their hearts had grown hard again. "Father is spiteful and angry, he's made some plan and will stick to it. And what of Dmitri? He too will be harder than yesterday, he too must be spiteful and angry, and he too, no doubt, has made some plan. Oh, I must succeed in finding him to-day, whatever happens." But Alyosha had not long to meditate. An incident occurred on the road, which, though apparently of little consequence, made a great impression on him. Just after he had crossed the square and turned the corner coming out into Mihailovsky Street, which is divided by a small ditch from the High Street (our whole town is intersected by ditches), he saw a group of schoolboys between the ages of nine and twelve, at the bridge. They were going home from school, some with their bags on their shoulders, others with leather satchels slung across them, some in short jackets, others in little overcoats. Some even had those high boots with creases round the ankles, such as little boys spoilt by rich fathers love to wear. The whole group was talking eagerly about something, apparently holding a council. Alyosha had never from his Moscow days been able to pass children without taking notice of them, and although he was particularly fond of children of three or thereabout, he liked schoolboys of ten and eleven too. And so, anxious as he was to-day, he wanted at once to turn aside to talk to them. He looked into their excited rosy faces, and noticed at once that all the boys had stones in their hands. Behind the ditch some thirty paces away, there was another schoolboy standing by a fence. He too had a satchel at his side. He was about ten years old, pale, delicate-looking and with sparkling black eyes. He kept an attentive and anxious watch on the other six, obviously his schoolfellows with whom he had just come out of school, but with whom he had evidently had a feud. Alyosha went up and, addressing a fair, curly-headed, rosy boy in a black jacket, observed: "When I used to wear a satchel like yours, I always used to carry it on my left side, so as to have my right hand free, but you've got yours on your right side. So it will be awkward for you to get at it." Alyosha had no art or premeditation in beginning with this practical remark. But it is the only way for a grown-up person to get at once into confidential relations with a child, or still more with a group of children. One must begin in a serious, businesslike way so as to be on a perfectly equal footing. Alyosha understood it by instinct. "But he is left-handed," another, a fine healthy-looking boy of eleven, answered promptly. All the others stared at Alyosha. "He even throws stones with his left hand," observed a third. At that instant a stone flew into the group, but only just grazed the left-handed boy, though it was well and vigorously thrown by the boy standing the other side of the ditch. "Give it him, hit him back, Smurov," they all shouted. But Smurov, the left-handed boy, needed no telling, and at once revenged himself; he threw a stone, but it missed the boy and hit the ground. The boy the other side of the ditch, the pocket of whose coat was visibly bulging with stones, flung another stone at the group; this time it flew straight at Alyosha and hit him painfully on the shoulder. "He aimed it at you, he meant it for you. You are Karamazov, Karamazov!" the boys shouted, laughing. "Come, all throw at him at once!" and six stones flew at the boy. One struck the boy on the head and he fell down, but at once leapt up and began ferociously returning their fire. Both sides threw stones incessantly. Many of the group had their pockets full too. "What are you about! Aren't you ashamed? Six against one! Why, you'll kill him," cried Alyosha. He ran forward and met the flying stones to screen the solitary boy. Three or four ceased throwing for a minute. "He began first!" cried a boy in a red shirt in an angry childish voice. "He is a beast, he stabbed Krassotkin in class the other day with a penknife. It bled. Krassotkin wouldn't tell tales, but he must be thrashed." "But what for? I suppose you tease him." "There, he sent a stone in your back again, he knows you," cried the children. "It's you he is throwing at now, not us. Come, all of you, at him again, don't miss, Smurov!" and again a fire of stones, and a very vicious one, began. The boy the other side of the ditch was hit in the chest; he screamed, began to cry and ran away uphill towards Mihailovsky Street. They all shouted: "Aha, he is funking, he is running away. Wisp of tow!" "You don't know what a beast he is, Karamazov, killing is too good for him," said the boy in the jacket, with flashing eyes. He seemed to be the eldest. "What's wrong with him?" asked Alyosha, "is he a tell-tale or what?" The boys looked at one another as though derisively. "Are you going that way, to Mihailovsky?" the same boy went on. "Catch him up.... You see he's stopped again, he is waiting and looking at you." "He is looking at you," the other boys chimed in. "You ask him, does he like a disheveled wisp of tow. Do you hear, ask him that!" There was a general burst of laughter. Alyosha looked at them, and they at him. "Don't go near him, he'll hurt you," cried Smurov in a warning voice. "I shan't ask him about the wisp of tow, for I expect you tease him with that question somehow. But I'll find out from him why you hate him so." "Find out then, find out," cried the boys, laughing. Alyosha crossed the bridge and walked uphill by the fence, straight towards the boy. "You'd better look out," the boys called after him; "he won't be afraid of you. He will stab you in a minute, on the sly, as he did Krassotkin." The boy waited for him without budging. Coming up to him, Alyosha saw facing him a child of about nine years old. He was an undersized weakly boy with a thin pale face, with large dark eyes that gazed at him vindictively. He was dressed in a rather shabby old overcoat, which he had monstrously outgrown. His bare arms stuck out beyond his sleeves. There was a large patch on the right knee of his trousers, and in his right boot just at the toe there was a big hole in the leather, carefully blackened with ink. Both the pockets of his great-coat were weighed down with stones. Alyosha stopped two steps in front of him, looking inquiringly at him. The boy, seeing at once from Alyosha's eyes that he wouldn't beat him, became less defiant, and addressed him first. "I am alone, and there are six of them. I'll beat them all, alone!" he said suddenly, with flashing eyes. "I think one of the stones must have hurt you badly," observed Alyosha. "But I hit Smurov on the head!" cried the boy. "They told me that you know me, and that you threw a stone at me on purpose," said Alyosha. The boy looked darkly at him. "I don't know you. Do you know me?" Alyosha continued. "Let me alone!" the boy cried irritably; but he did not move, as though he were expecting something, and again there was a vindictive light in his eyes. "Very well, I am going," said Alyosha; "only I don't know you and I don't tease you. They told me how they tease you, but I don't want to tease you. Good-by!" "Monk in silk trousers!" cried the boy, following Alyosha with the same vindictive and defiant expression, and he threw himself into an attitude of defense, feeling sure that now Alyosha would fall upon him; but Alyosha turned, looked at him, and walked away. He had not gone three steps before the biggest stone the boy had in his pocket hit him a painful blow in the back. "So you'll hit a man from behind! They tell the truth, then, when they say that you attack on the sly," said Alyosha, turning round again. This time the boy threw a stone savagely right into Alyosha's face; but Alyosha just had time to guard himself, and the stone struck him on the elbow. "Aren't you ashamed? What have I done to you?" he cried. The boy waited in silent defiance, certain that now Alyosha would attack him. Seeing that even now he would not, his rage was like a little wild beast's; he flew at Alyosha himself, and before Alyosha had time to move, the spiteful child had seized his left hand with both of his and bit his middle finger. He fixed his teeth in it and it was ten seconds before he let go. Alyosha cried out with pain and pulled his finger away with all his might. The child let go at last and retreated to his former distance. Alyosha's finger had been badly bitten to the bone, close to the nail; it began to bleed. Alyosha took out his handkerchief and bound it tightly round his injured hand. He was a full minute bandaging it. The boy stood waiting all the time. At last Alyosha raised his gentle eyes and looked at him. "Very well," he said, "you see how badly you've bitten me. That's enough, isn't it? Now tell me, what have I done to you?" The boy stared in amazement. "Though I don't know you and it's the first time I've seen you," Alyosha went on with the same serenity, "yet I must have done something to you--you wouldn't have hurt me like this for nothing. So what have I done? How have I wronged you, tell me?" Instead of answering, the boy broke into a loud tearful wail and ran away. Alyosha walked slowly after him towards Mihailovsky Street, and for a long time he saw the child running in the distance as fast as ever, not turning his head, and no doubt still keeping up his tearful wail. He made up his mind to find him out as soon as he had time, and to solve this mystery. Just now he had not the time.

Book 4, Chapter 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-4-chapter-3

Alyosha then heads off to Madame Khokhlakov's. On a lane to Mikhailovsky Street he encounters a group of boys, all of whom have stones in their hands. He then notices a sickly boy a few feet from them. All of a sudden the sickly boy throws a stone at one of the boys. Before he knows it, Alyosha is also hit on the shoulder by a rock. The boys start hurling stones at the sickly boy and Alyosha pleads with them to stop. They insist that the sickly boy attacked one of them first, stabbing a boy with a pen-knife earlier that day. Alyosha asks the sickly boy why he's throwing stones. The boy yells at him to leave him alone. As Alyosha turns back, the boy throws another stone at him. Alyosha asks the boy why he did that and the boy promptly bites him on the finger. Alyosha calmly wraps his bleeding finger in a kerchief and persists in trying to get the boy to talk to him. But the boy breaks out into tears and runs away.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/33.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Far From the Madding Crowd/section_32_part_0.txt

Far From the Madding Crowd.chapter 33

chapter 33

{"name": "Chapter 33", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-33", "summary": "A week has gone by without any sign of Bathsheba coming home. Finally, a note arrives saying that she'll be in Bath for another week. While she's gone, the farm is hit with a bad drought. While everyone is in the field, Gabriel Oak's young helper Cainy Ball comes running up to them. Gabriel explains to the group that Cainy has been spending some time in Bath lately. After some annoying delays due to Cainy's coughing, the kid tells everyone that he saw Bathsheba in Bath walking arm in arm with Sergeant Troy. Seeing that the news has upset Gabriel, Jan Coggan comes over and tells him not to worry about it. After all, what does it matter who Bathsheba ends up with, since Oak can never have her? Gee, thanks Jan.", "analysis": ""}

IN THE SUN--A HARBINGER A week passed, and there were no tidings of Bathsheba; nor was there any explanation of her Gilpin's rig. Then a note came for Maryann, stating that the business which had called her mistress to Bath still detained her there; but that she hoped to return in the course of another week. Another week passed. The oat-harvest began, and all the men were a-field under a monochromatic Lammas sky, amid the trembling air and short shadows of noon. Indoors nothing was to be heard save the droning of blue-bottle flies; out-of-doors the whetting of scythes and the hiss of tressy oat-ears rubbing together as their perpendicular stalks of amber-yellow fell heavily to each swath. Every drop of moisture not in the men's bottles and flagons in the form of cider was raining as perspiration from their foreheads and cheeks. Drought was everywhere else. They were about to withdraw for a while into the charitable shade of a tree in the fence, when Coggan saw a figure in a blue coat and brass buttons running to them across the field. "I wonder who that is?" he said. "I hope nothing is wrong about mistress," said Maryann, who with some other women was tying the bundles (oats being always sheafed on this farm), "but an unlucky token came to me indoors this morning. I went to unlock the door and dropped the key, and it fell upon the stone floor and broke into two pieces. Breaking a key is a dreadful bodement. I wish mis'ess was home." "'Tis Cain Ball," said Gabriel, pausing from whetting his reaphook. Oak was not bound by his agreement to assist in the corn-field; but the harvest month is an anxious time for a farmer, and the corn was Bathsheba's, so he lent a hand. "He's dressed up in his best clothes," said Matthew Moon. "He hev been away from home for a few days, since he's had that felon upon his finger; for 'a said, since I can't work I'll have a hollerday." "A good time for one--a' excellent time," said Joseph Poorgrass, straightening his back; for he, like some of the others, had a way of resting a while from his labour on such hot days for reasons preternaturally small; of which Cain Ball's advent on a week-day in his Sunday-clothes was one of the first magnitude. "Twas a bad leg allowed me to read the _Pilgrim's Progress_, and Mark Clark learnt All-Fours in a whitlow." "Ay, and my father put his arm out of joint to have time to go courting," said Jan Coggan, in an eclipsing tone, wiping his face with his shirt-sleeve and thrusting back his hat upon the nape of his neck. By this time Cainy was nearing the group of harvesters, and was perceived to be carrying a large slice of bread and ham in one hand, from which he took mouthfuls as he ran, the other being wrapped in a bandage. When he came close, his mouth assumed the bell shape, and he began to cough violently. "Now, Cainy!" said Gabriel, sternly. "How many more times must I tell you to keep from running so fast when you be eating? You'll choke yourself some day, that's what you'll do, Cain Ball." "Hok-hok-hok!" replied Cain. "A crumb of my victuals went the wrong way--hok-hok! That's what 'tis, Mister Oak! And I've been visiting to Bath because I had a felon on my thumb; yes, and I've seen--ahok-hok!" Directly Cain mentioned Bath, they all threw down their hooks and forks and drew round him. Unfortunately the erratic crumb did not improve his narrative powers, and a supplementary hindrance was that of a sneeze, jerking from his pocket his rather large watch, which dangled in front of the young man pendulum-wise. "Yes," he continued, directing his thoughts to Bath and letting his eyes follow, "I've seed the world at last--yes--and I've seed our mis'ess--ahok-hok-hok!" "Bother the boy!" said Gabriel. "Something is always going the wrong way down your throat, so that you can't tell what's necessary to be told." "Ahok! there! Please, Mister Oak, a gnat have just fleed into my stomach and brought the cough on again!" "Yes, that's just it. Your mouth is always open, you young rascal!" "'Tis terrible bad to have a gnat fly down yer throat, pore boy!" said Matthew Moon. "Well, at Bath you saw--" prompted Gabriel. "I saw our mistress," continued the junior shepherd, "and a sojer, walking along. And bymeby they got closer and closer, and then they went arm-in-crook, like courting complete--hok-hok! like courting complete--hok!--courting complete--" Losing the thread of his narrative at this point simultaneously with his loss of breath, their informant looked up and down the field apparently for some clue to it. "Well, I see our mis'ess and a soldier--a-ha-a-wk!" "Damn the boy!" said Gabriel. "'Tis only my manner, Mister Oak, if ye'll excuse it," said Cain Ball, looking reproachfully at Oak, with eyes drenched in their own dew. "Here's some cider for him--that'll cure his throat," said Jan Coggan, lifting a flagon of cider, pulling out the cork, and applying the hole to Cainy's mouth; Joseph Poorgrass in the meantime beginning to think apprehensively of the serious consequences that would follow Cainy Ball's strangulation in his cough, and the history of his Bath adventures dying with him. "For my poor self, I always say 'please God' afore I do anything," said Joseph, in an unboastful voice; "and so should you, Cain Ball. 'Tis a great safeguard, and might perhaps save you from being choked to death some day." Mr. Coggan poured the liquor with unstinted liberality at the suffering Cain's circular mouth; half of it running down the side of the flagon, and half of what reached his mouth running down outside his throat, and half of what ran in going the wrong way, and being coughed and sneezed around the persons of the gathered reapers in the form of a cider fog, which for a moment hung in the sunny air like a small exhalation. "There's a great clumsy sneeze! Why can't ye have better manners, you young dog!" said Coggan, withdrawing the flagon. "The cider went up my nose!" cried Cainy, as soon as he could speak; "and now 'tis gone down my neck, and into my poor dumb felon, and over my shiny buttons and all my best cloze!" "The poor lad's cough is terrible unfortunate," said Matthew Moon. "And a great history on hand, too. Bump his back, shepherd." "'Tis my nater," mourned Cain. "Mother says I always was so excitable when my feelings were worked up to a point!" "True, true," said Joseph Poorgrass. "The Balls were always a very excitable family. I knowed the boy's grandfather--a truly nervous and modest man, even to genteel refinery. 'Twas blush, blush with him, almost as much as 'tis with me--not but that 'tis a fault in me!" "Not at all, Master Poorgrass," said Coggan. "'Tis a very noble quality in ye." "Heh-heh! well, I wish to noise nothing abroad--nothing at all," murmured Poorgrass, diffidently. "But we be born to things--that's true. Yet I would rather my trifle were hid; though, perhaps, a high nater is a little high, and at my birth all things were possible to my Maker, and he may have begrudged no gifts.... But under your bushel, Joseph! under your bushel with 'ee! A strange desire, neighbours, this desire to hide, and no praise due. Yet there is a Sermon on the Mount with a calendar of the blessed at the head, and certain meek men may be named therein." "Cainy's grandfather was a very clever man," said Matthew Moon. "Invented a' apple-tree out of his own head, which is called by his name to this day--the Early Ball. You know 'em, Jan? A Quarrenden grafted on a Tom Putt, and a Rathe-ripe upon top o' that again. 'Tis trew 'a used to bide about in a public-house wi' a 'ooman in a way he had no business to by rights, but there--'a were a clever man in the sense of the term." "Now then," said Gabriel, impatiently, "what did you see, Cain?" "I seed our mis'ess go into a sort of a park place, where there's seats, and shrubs and flowers, arm-in-crook with a sojer," continued Cainy, firmly, and with a dim sense that his words were very effective as regarded Gabriel's emotions. "And I think the sojer was Sergeant Troy. And they sat there together for more than half-an-hour, talking moving things, and she once was crying a'most to death. And when they came out her eyes were shining and she was as white as a lily; and they looked into one another's faces, as far-gone friendly as a man and woman can be." Gabriel's features seemed to get thinner. "Well, what did you see besides?" "Oh, all sorts." "White as a lily? You are sure 'twas she?" "Yes." "Well, what besides?" "Great glass windows to the shops, and great clouds in the sky, full of rain, and old wooden trees in the country round." "You stun-poll! What will ye say next?" said Coggan. "Let en alone," interposed Joseph Poorgrass. "The boy's meaning is that the sky and the earth in the kingdom of Bath is not altogether different from ours here. 'Tis for our good to gain knowledge of strange cities, and as such the boy's words should be suffered, so to speak it." "And the people of Bath," continued Cain, "never need to light their fires except as a luxury, for the water springs up out of the earth ready boiled for use." "'Tis true as the light," testified Matthew Moon. "I've heard other navigators say the same thing." "They drink nothing else there," said Cain, "and seem to enjoy it, to see how they swaller it down." "Well, it seems a barbarian practice enough to us, but I daresay the natives think nothing o' it," said Matthew. "And don't victuals spring up as well as drink?" asked Coggan, twirling his eye. "No--I own to a blot there in Bath--a true blot. God didn't provide 'em with victuals as well as drink, and 'twas a drawback I couldn't get over at all." "Well, 'tis a curious place, to say the least," observed Moon; "and it must be a curious people that live therein." "Miss Everdene and the soldier were walking about together, you say?" said Gabriel, returning to the group. "Ay, and she wore a beautiful gold-colour silk gown, trimmed with black lace, that would have stood alone 'ithout legs inside if required. 'Twas a very winsome sight; and her hair was brushed splendid. And when the sun shone upon the bright gown and his red coat--my! how handsome they looked. You could see 'em all the length of the street." "And what then?" murmured Gabriel. "And then I went into Griffin's to hae my boots hobbed, and then I went to Riggs's batty-cake shop, and asked 'em for a penneth of the cheapest and nicest stales, that were all but blue-mouldy, but not quite. And whilst I was chawing 'em down I walked on and seed a clock with a face as big as a baking trendle--" "But that's nothing to do with mistress!" "I'm coming to that, if you'll leave me alone, Mister Oak!" remonstrated Cainy. "If you excites me, perhaps you'll bring on my cough, and then I shan't be able to tell ye nothing." "Yes--let him tell it his own way," said Coggan. Gabriel settled into a despairing attitude of patience, and Cainy went on:-- "And there were great large houses, and more people all the week long than at Weatherbury club-walking on White Tuesdays. And I went to grand churches and chapels. And how the parson would pray! Yes; he would kneel down and put up his hands together, and make the holy gold rings on his fingers gleam and twinkle in yer eyes, that he'd earned by praying so excellent well!--Ah yes, I wish I lived there." "Our poor Parson Thirdly can't get no money to buy such rings," said Matthew Moon, thoughtfully. "And as good a man as ever walked. I don't believe poor Thirdly have a single one, even of humblest tin or copper. Such a great ornament as they'd be to him on a dull afternoon, when he's up in the pulpit lighted by the wax candles! But 'tis impossible, poor man. Ah, to think how unequal things be." "Perhaps he's made of different stuff than to wear 'em," said Gabriel, grimly. "Well, that's enough of this. Go on, Cainy--quick." "Oh--and the new style of parsons wear moustaches and long beards," continued the illustrious traveller, "and look like Moses and Aaron complete, and make we fokes in the congregation feel all over like the children of Israel." "A very right feeling--very," said Joseph Poorgrass. "And there's two religions going on in the nation now--High Church and High Chapel. And, thinks I, I'll play fair; so I went to High Church in the morning, and High Chapel in the afternoon." "A right and proper boy," said Joseph Poorgrass. "Well, at High Church they pray singing, and worship all the colours of the rainbow; and at High Chapel they pray preaching, and worship drab and whitewash only. And then--I didn't see no more of Miss Everdene at all." "Why didn't you say so afore, then?" exclaimed Oak, with much disappointment. "Ah," said Matthew Moon, "she'll wish her cake dough if so be she's over intimate with that man." "She's not over intimate with him," said Gabriel, indignantly. "She would know better," said Coggan. "Our mis'ess has too much sense under they knots of black hair to do such a mad thing." "You see, he's not a coarse, ignorant man, for he was well brought up," said Matthew, dubiously. "'Twas only wildness that made him a soldier, and maids rather like your man of sin." "Now, Cain Ball," said Gabriel restlessly, "can you swear in the most awful form that the woman you saw was Miss Everdene?" "Cain Ball, you be no longer a babe and suckling," said Joseph in the sepulchral tone the circumstances demanded, "and you know what taking an oath is. 'Tis a horrible testament mind ye, which you say and seal with your blood-stone, and the prophet Matthew tells us that on whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder. Now, before all the work-folk here assembled, can you swear to your words as the shepherd asks ye?" "Please no, Mister Oak!" said Cainy, looking from one to the other with great uneasiness at the spiritual magnitude of the position. "I don't mind saying 'tis true, but I don't like to say 'tis damn true, if that's what you mane." "Cain, Cain, how can you!" asked Joseph sternly. "You be asked to swear in a holy manner, and you swear like wicked Shimei, the son of Gera, who cursed as he came. Young man, fie!" "No, I don't! 'Tis you want to squander a pore boy's soul, Joseph Poorgrass--that's what 'tis!" said Cain, beginning to cry. "All I mane is that in common truth 'twas Miss Everdene and Sergeant Troy, but in the horrible so-help-me truth that ye want to make of it perhaps 'twas somebody else!" "There's no getting at the rights of it," said Gabriel, turning to his work. "Cain Ball, you'll come to a bit of bread!" groaned Joseph Poorgrass. Then the reapers' hooks were flourished again, and the old sounds went on. Gabriel, without making any pretence of being lively, did nothing to show that he was particularly dull. However, Coggan knew pretty nearly how the land lay, and when they were in a nook together he said-- "Don't take on about her, Gabriel. What difference does it make whose sweetheart she is, since she can't be yours?" "That's the very thing I say to myself," said Gabriel.

Chapter 33

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-33

A week has gone by without any sign of Bathsheba coming home. Finally, a note arrives saying that she'll be in Bath for another week. While she's gone, the farm is hit with a bad drought. While everyone is in the field, Gabriel Oak's young helper Cainy Ball comes running up to them. Gabriel explains to the group that Cainy has been spending some time in Bath lately. After some annoying delays due to Cainy's coughing, the kid tells everyone that he saw Bathsheba in Bath walking arm in arm with Sergeant Troy. Seeing that the news has upset Gabriel, Jan Coggan comes over and tells him not to worry about it. After all, what does it matter who Bathsheba ends up with, since Oak can never have her? Gee, thanks Jan.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/5.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_0_part_6.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 1.chapter 5

book 1, chapter 5

{"name": "book 1, Chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section1/", "summary": "Elders Alyosha is greatly moved by the arrival of his brothers. He quickly becomes close to Dmitri, but he feels that Ivan's cold intellectualism keeps him distant from others. Alyosha senses that Ivan is struggling toward an inner goal that makes him indifferent to the outside world. Dmitri and Ivan are as unlike as two people can be, but Alyosha notices that Dmitri speaks of Ivan with warmth and admiration. Dmitri has become embroiled with their father in a conflict over the inheritance, and it is finally arranged that the two parties will have a discussion in Zosima's cell, where the presence of the influential monk might help them resolve their differences. The prospect of this meeting makes Alyosha nervous--he knows that his father would only agree to such a thing sarcastically, and that Ivan himself is an atheist. He worries that his family's behavior will offend Zosima, whom he esteems very highly and who acts as his spiritual leader within the monastery.", "analysis": "Author's Note and Book I: A Nice Little Family, Chapters 1-5 Book I provides a history of the major characters and their relationships, so the narrator can jump right into the main story in Book II without stopping to explain things as he goes. The narrator presents all of the incidents described in these chapters as though they take place before the real beginning of his story, describing the events as information that is generally well-known, repeated only for the convenience of a reader who somehow may not have heard it before. The narrator, as a result, is a strong presence in these chapters. The narrator signals that the story he tells is widely known by interjecting phrases such as \"only later did we learn\" and \"well known in his own day. The Brothers Karamazov is a cross between a realistic novel and a philosophical novel. The characters have extremely complicated and intricate psychologies, and yet they also each represent certain ideas and concepts. This combination of realism and philosophical symbolism is evident in these chapters, as each meticulously drawn character comes to embody a more abstract set of concepts and beliefs. Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, the father, with his orgies and his abhorrent treatment of his wives and children, embodies amoral, obnoxious Epicureanism--that is, a commitment to seeking pleasure rather than living responsibly or virtuously. Ivan Karamazov's brilliant mind and burgeoning literary reputation embody the struggle to reconcile intellect with religious belief. Dmitri Karamazov's violent hatred of his father and uncritical love of his brothers stand in opposition to Ivan's critical faculties. Dmitri's character illustrates the effects of action based on emotion rather than on intellect. Finally, Alyosha, whom Dostoevsky describes as the hero of the novel, is nearly the opposite of Fyodor Pavlovich. His love of mankind shows that he is innocent, pious, and virtuous without being mystical or fanatical. Each character in Dostoevsky's quartet of personalities works as a foil, or contrast, for each of the others. Because the novel's philosophical themes are immediately connected to the personalities of its characters, the conflicts and contrasts between the main characters come to symbolize some of the most fundamental problems of human existence. The difference between Ivan and Alyosha, for instance, represents the conflict between faith and doubt. Though none of these philosophical issues are given extensive treatment in this section, each of them, along with many others, is expanded and developed as the novel progresses. In the end, the story of the Karamazov brothers enacts a part of the drama of ideas on which civilization itself is based. There are several religious concepts in these chapters that may be unfamiliar to modern readers who are not members of the Russian Orthodox church, to which the Karamazovs belong. First, the article for which Ivan has gained notoriety before the story begins deals with the question of ecclesiastical courts. These are simply courts of law, which decide cases based not on the political laws that govern nations, but on religious law and the strictures of the church. Ecclesiastical courts in Russia at the time of the novel do not have the power to try or punish criminals. Ivan's article argues that ecclesiastical courts should be given authority over criminal prosecution and punishment because if criminals knew they were defying God when they committed their crimes, many of them would choose to obey the law. Given Ivan's reputation for religious doubt, many of the people who know him suspect that he does not entirely believe his own argument. Ivan's argument is motivated not by a desire to punish, but, paradoxically, by compassion for mankind. He believes that without religious authority, people will descend into lawlessness and chaos. At the same time, because he does not believe in the church, Ivan rejects the notion of a binding morality. His article is sincere in that he believes his recommendations would improve the human condition, but insincere in that he does not believe in the ideas and institutions under which his recommendations would be carried out. The article, and the larger debate about ecclesiastical courts, thus serves to offer a preliminary insight into the nature of Ivan's anguished mind: he is so committed to intellectual logic that he is led to advocate ideas he does not believe in his heart"}

Chapter V. Elders Some of my readers may imagine that my young man was a sickly, ecstatic, poorly developed creature, a pale, consumptive dreamer. On the contrary, Alyosha was at this time a well-grown, red-cheeked, clear-eyed lad of nineteen, radiant with health. He was very handsome, too, graceful, moderately tall, with hair of a dark brown, with a regular, rather long, oval-shaped face, and wide-set dark gray, shining eyes; he was very thoughtful, and apparently very serene. I shall be told, perhaps, that red cheeks are not incompatible with fanaticism and mysticism; but I fancy that Alyosha was more of a realist than any one. Oh! no doubt, in the monastery he fully believed in miracles, but, to my thinking, miracles are never a stumbling-block to the realist. It is not miracles that dispose realists to belief. The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact. Even if he admits it, he admits it as a fact of nature till then unrecognized by him. Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith. If the realist once believes, then he is bound by his very realism to admit the miraculous also. The Apostle Thomas said that he would not believe till he saw, but when he did see he said, "My Lord and my God!" Was it the miracle forced him to believe? Most likely not, but he believed solely because he desired to believe and possibly he fully believed in his secret heart even when he said, "I do not believe till I see." I shall be told, perhaps, that Alyosha was stupid, undeveloped, had not finished his studies, and so on. That he did not finish his studies is true, but to say that he was stupid or dull would be a great injustice. I'll simply repeat what I have said above. He entered upon this path only because, at that time, it alone struck his imagination and presented itself to him as offering an ideal means of escape for his soul from darkness to light. Add to that that he was to some extent a youth of our last epoch--that is, honest in nature, desiring the truth, seeking for it and believing in it, and seeking to serve it at once with all the strength of his soul, seeking for immediate action, and ready to sacrifice everything, life itself, for it. Though these young men unhappily fail to understand that the sacrifice of life is, in many cases, the easiest of all sacrifices, and that to sacrifice, for instance, five or six years of their seething youth to hard and tedious study, if only to multiply tenfold their powers of serving the truth and the cause they have set before them as their goal--such a sacrifice is utterly beyond the strength of many of them. The path Alyosha chose was a path going in the opposite direction, but he chose it with the same thirst for swift achievement. As soon as he reflected seriously he was convinced of the existence of God and immortality, and at once he instinctively said to himself: "I want to live for immortality, and I will accept no compromise." In the same way, if he had decided that God and immortality did not exist, he would at once have become an atheist and a socialist. For socialism is not merely the labor question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism to-day, the question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to mount to heaven from earth but to set up heaven on earth. Alyosha would have found it strange and impossible to go on living as before. It is written: "Give all that thou hast to the poor and follow Me, if thou wouldst be perfect." Alyosha said to himself: "I can't give two roubles instead of 'all,' and only go to mass instead of 'following Him.' " Perhaps his memories of childhood brought back our monastery, to which his mother may have taken him to mass. Perhaps the slanting sunlight and the holy image to which his poor "crazy" mother had held him up still acted upon his imagination. Brooding on these things he may have come to us perhaps only to see whether here he could sacrifice all or only "two roubles," and in the monastery he met this elder. I must digress to explain what an "elder" is in Russian monasteries, and I am sorry that I do not feel very competent to do so. I will try, however, to give a superficial account of it in a few words. Authorities on the subject assert that the institution of "elders" is of recent date, not more than a hundred years old in our monasteries, though in the orthodox East, especially in Sinai and Athos, it has existed over a thousand years. It is maintained that it existed in ancient times in Russia also, but through the calamities which overtook Russia--the Tartars, civil war, the interruption of relations with the East after the destruction of Constantinople--this institution fell into oblivion. It was revived among us towards the end of last century by one of the great "ascetics," as they called him, Paissy Velitchkovsky, and his disciples. But to this day it exists in few monasteries only, and has sometimes been almost persecuted as an innovation in Russia. It flourished especially in the celebrated Kozelski Optin Monastery. When and how it was introduced into our monastery I cannot say. There had already been three such elders and Zossima was the last of them. But he was almost dying of weakness and disease, and they had no one to take his place. The question for our monastery was an important one, for it had not been distinguished by anything in particular till then: they had neither relics of saints, nor wonder-working ikons, nor glorious traditions, nor historical exploits. It had flourished and been glorious all over Russia through its elders, to see and hear whom pilgrims had flocked for thousands of miles from all parts. What was such an elder? An elder was one who took your soul, your will, into his soul and his will. When you choose an elder, you renounce your own will and yield it to him in complete submission, complete self- abnegation. This novitiate, this terrible school of abnegation, is undertaken voluntarily, in the hope of self-conquest, of self-mastery, in order, after a life of obedience, to attain perfect freedom, that is, from self; to escape the lot of those who have lived their whole life without finding their true selves in themselves. This institution of elders is not founded on theory, but was established in the East from the practice of a thousand years. The obligations due to an elder are not the ordinary "obedience" which has always existed in our Russian monasteries. The obligation involves confession to the elder by all who have submitted themselves to him, and to the indissoluble bond between him and them. The story is told, for instance, that in the early days of Christianity one such novice, failing to fulfill some command laid upon him by his elder, left his monastery in Syria and went to Egypt. There, after great exploits, he was found worthy at last to suffer torture and a martyr's death for the faith. When the Church, regarding him as a saint, was burying him, suddenly, at the deacon's exhortation, "Depart all ye unbaptized," the coffin containing the martyr's body left its place and was cast forth from the church, and this took place three times. And only at last they learnt that this holy man had broken his vow of obedience and left his elder, and, therefore, could not be forgiven without the elder's absolution in spite of his great deeds. Only after this could the funeral take place. This, of course, is only an old legend. But here is a recent instance. A monk was suddenly commanded by his elder to quit Athos, which he loved as a sacred place and a haven of refuge, and to go first to Jerusalem to do homage to the Holy Places and then to go to the north to Siberia: "There is the place for thee and not here." The monk, overwhelmed with sorrow, went to the OEcumenical Patriarch at Constantinople and besought him to release him from his obedience. But the Patriarch replied that not only was he unable to release him, but there was not and could not be on earth a power which could release him except the elder who had himself laid that duty upon him. In this way the elders are endowed in certain cases with unbounded and inexplicable authority. That is why in many of our monasteries the institution was at first resisted almost to persecution. Meantime the elders immediately began to be highly esteemed among the people. Masses of the ignorant people as well as men of distinction flocked, for instance, to the elders of our monastery to confess their doubts, their sins, and their sufferings, and ask for counsel and admonition. Seeing this, the opponents of the elders declared that the sacrament of confession was being arbitrarily and frivolously degraded, though the continual opening of the heart to the elder by the monk or the layman had nothing of the character of the sacrament. In the end, however, the institution of elders has been retained and is becoming established in Russian monasteries. It is true, perhaps, that this instrument which had stood the test of a thousand years for the moral regeneration of a man from slavery to freedom and to moral perfectibility may be a two-edged weapon and it may lead some not to humility and complete self-control but to the most Satanic pride, that is, to bondage and not to freedom. The elder Zossima was sixty-five. He came of a family of landowners, had been in the army in early youth, and served in the Caucasus as an officer. He had, no doubt, impressed Alyosha by some peculiar quality of his soul. Alyosha lived in the cell of the elder, who was very fond of him and let him wait upon him. It must be noted that Alyosha was bound by no obligation and could go where he pleased and be absent for whole days. Though he wore the monastic dress it was voluntarily, not to be different from others. No doubt he liked to do so. Possibly his youthful imagination was deeply stirred by the power and fame of his elder. It was said that so many people had for years past come to confess their sins to Father Zossima and to entreat him for words of advice and healing, that he had acquired the keenest intuition and could tell from an unknown face what a new-comer wanted, and what was the suffering on his conscience. He sometimes astounded and almost alarmed his visitors by his knowledge of their secrets before they had spoken a word. Alyosha noticed that many, almost all, went in to the elder for the first time with apprehension and uneasiness, but came out with bright and happy faces. Alyosha was particularly struck by the fact that Father Zossima was not at all stern. On the contrary, he was always almost gay. The monks used to say that he was more drawn to those who were more sinful, and the greater the sinner the more he loved him. There were, no doubt, up to the end of his life, among the monks some who hated and envied him, but they were few in number and they were silent, though among them were some of great dignity in the monastery, one, for instance, of the older monks distinguished for his strict keeping of fasts and vows of silence. But the majority were on Father Zossima's side and very many of them loved him with all their hearts, warmly and sincerely. Some were almost fanatically devoted to him, and declared, though not quite aloud, that he was a saint, that there could be no doubt of it, and, seeing that his end was near, they anticipated miracles and great glory to the monastery in the immediate future from his relics. Alyosha had unquestioning faith in the miraculous power of the elder, just as he had unquestioning faith in the story of the coffin that flew out of the church. He saw many who came with sick children or relatives and besought the elder to lay hands on them and to pray over them, return shortly after--some the next day--and, falling in tears at the elder's feet, thank him for healing their sick. Whether they had really been healed or were simply better in the natural course of the disease was a question which did not exist for Alyosha, for he fully believed in the spiritual power of his teacher and rejoiced in his fame, in his glory, as though it were his own triumph. His heart throbbed, and he beamed, as it were, all over when the elder came out to the gates of the hermitage into the waiting crowd of pilgrims of the humbler class who had flocked from all parts of Russia on purpose to see the elder and obtain his blessing. They fell down before him, wept, kissed his feet, kissed the earth on which he stood, and wailed, while the women held up their children to him and brought him the sick "possessed with devils." The elder spoke to them, read a brief prayer over them, blessed them, and dismissed them. Of late he had become so weak through attacks of illness that he was sometimes unable to leave his cell, and the pilgrims waited for him to come out for several days. Alyosha did not wonder why they loved him so, why they fell down before him and wept with emotion merely at seeing his face. Oh! he understood that for the humble soul of the Russian peasant, worn out by grief and toil, and still more by the everlasting injustice and everlasting sin, his own and the world's, it was the greatest need and comfort to find some one or something holy to fall down before and worship. "Among us there is sin, injustice, and temptation, but yet, somewhere on earth there is some one holy and exalted. He has the truth; he knows the truth; so it is not dead upon the earth; so it will come one day to us, too, and rule over all the earth according to the promise." Alyosha knew that this was just how the people felt and even reasoned. He understood it, but that the elder Zossima was this saint and custodian of God's truth--of that he had no more doubt than the weeping peasants and the sick women who held out their children to the elder. The conviction that after his death the elder would bring extraordinary glory to the monastery was even stronger in Alyosha than in any one there, and, of late, a kind of deep flame of inner ecstasy burnt more and more strongly in his heart. He was not at all troubled at this elder's standing as a solitary example before him. "No matter. He is holy. He carries in his heart the secret of renewal for all: that power which will, at last, establish truth on the earth, and all men will be holy and love one another, and there will be no more rich nor poor, no exalted nor humbled, but all will be as the children of God, and the true Kingdom of Christ will come." That was the dream in Alyosha's heart. The arrival of his two brothers, whom he had not known till then, seemed to make a great impression on Alyosha. He more quickly made friends with his half-brother Dmitri (though he arrived later) than with his own brother Ivan. He was extremely interested in his brother Ivan, but when the latter had been two months in the town, though they had met fairly often, they were still not intimate. Alyosha was naturally silent, and he seemed to be expecting something, ashamed about something, while his brother Ivan, though Alyosha noticed at first that he looked long and curiously at him, seemed soon to have left off thinking of him. Alyosha noticed it with some embarrassment. He ascribed his brother's indifference at first to the disparity of their age and education. But he also wondered whether the absence of curiosity and sympathy in Ivan might be due to some other cause entirely unknown to him. He kept fancying that Ivan was absorbed in something--something inward and important--that he was striving towards some goal, perhaps very hard to attain, and that that was why he had no thought for him. Alyosha wondered, too, whether there was not some contempt on the part of the learned atheist for him--a foolish novice. He knew for certain that his brother was an atheist. He could not take offense at this contempt, if it existed; yet, with an uneasy embarrassment which he did not himself understand, he waited for his brother to come nearer to him. Dmitri used to speak of Ivan with the deepest respect and with a peculiar earnestness. From him Alyosha learnt all the details of the important affair which had of late formed such a close and remarkable bond between the two elder brothers. Dmitri's enthusiastic references to Ivan were the more striking in Alyosha's eyes since Dmitri was, compared with Ivan, almost uneducated, and the two brothers were such a contrast in personality and character that it would be difficult to find two men more unlike. It was at this time that the meeting, or, rather gathering of the members of this inharmonious family took place in the cell of the elder who had such an extraordinary influence on Alyosha. The pretext for this gathering was a false one. It was at this time that the discord between Dmitri and his father seemed at its acutest stage and their relations had become insufferably strained. Fyodor Pavlovitch seems to have been the first to suggest, apparently in joke, that they should all meet in Father Zossima's cell, and that, without appealing to his direct intervention, they might more decently come to an understanding under the conciliating influence of the elder's presence. Dmitri, who had never seen the elder, naturally supposed that his father was trying to intimidate him, but, as he secretly blamed himself for his outbursts of temper with his father on several recent occasions, he accepted the challenge. It must be noted that he was not, like Ivan, staying with his father, but living apart at the other end of the town. It happened that Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miuesov, who was staying in the district at the time, caught eagerly at the idea. A Liberal of the forties and fifties, a freethinker and atheist, he may have been led on by boredom or the hope of frivolous diversion. He was suddenly seized with the desire to see the monastery and the holy man. As his lawsuit with the monastery still dragged on, he made it the pretext for seeing the Superior, in order to attempt to settle it amicably. A visitor coming with such laudable intentions might be received with more attention and consideration than if he came from simple curiosity. Influences from within the monastery were brought to bear on the elder, who of late had scarcely left his cell, and had been forced by illness to deny even his ordinary visitors. In the end he consented to see them, and the day was fixed. "Who has made me a judge over them?" was all he said, smilingly, to Alyosha. Alyosha was much perturbed when he heard of the proposed visit. Of all the wrangling, quarrelsome party, Dmitri was the only one who could regard the interview seriously. All the others would come from frivolous motives, perhaps insulting to the elder. Alyosha was well aware of that. Ivan and Miuesov would come from curiosity, perhaps of the coarsest kind, while his father might be contemplating some piece of buffoonery. Though he said nothing, Alyosha thoroughly understood his father. The boy, I repeat, was far from being so simple as every one thought him. He awaited the day with a heavy heart. No doubt he was always pondering in his mind how the family discord could be ended. But his chief anxiety concerned the elder. He trembled for him, for his glory, and dreaded any affront to him, especially the refined, courteous irony of Miuesov and the supercilious half-utterances of the highly educated Ivan. He even wanted to venture on warning the elder, telling him something about them, but, on second thoughts, said nothing. He only sent word the day before, through a friend, to his brother Dmitri, that he loved him and expected him to keep his promise. Dmitri wondered, for he could not remember what he had promised, but he answered by letter that he would do his utmost not to let himself be provoked "by vileness," but that, although he had a deep respect for the elder and for his brother Ivan, he was convinced that the meeting was either a trap for him or an unworthy farce. "Nevertheless I would rather bite out my tongue than be lacking in respect to the sainted man whom you reverence so highly," he wrote in conclusion. Alyosha was not greatly cheered by the letter.

book 1, Chapter 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section1/

Elders Alyosha is greatly moved by the arrival of his brothers. He quickly becomes close to Dmitri, but he feels that Ivan's cold intellectualism keeps him distant from others. Alyosha senses that Ivan is struggling toward an inner goal that makes him indifferent to the outside world. Dmitri and Ivan are as unlike as two people can be, but Alyosha notices that Dmitri speaks of Ivan with warmth and admiration. Dmitri has become embroiled with their father in a conflict over the inheritance, and it is finally arranged that the two parties will have a discussion in Zosima's cell, where the presence of the influential monk might help them resolve their differences. The prospect of this meeting makes Alyosha nervous--he knows that his father would only agree to such a thing sarcastically, and that Ivan himself is an atheist. He worries that his family's behavior will offend Zosima, whom he esteems very highly and who acts as his spiritual leader within the monastery.

Author's Note and Book I: A Nice Little Family, Chapters 1-5 Book I provides a history of the major characters and their relationships, so the narrator can jump right into the main story in Book II without stopping to explain things as he goes. The narrator presents all of the incidents described in these chapters as though they take place before the real beginning of his story, describing the events as information that is generally well-known, repeated only for the convenience of a reader who somehow may not have heard it before. The narrator, as a result, is a strong presence in these chapters. The narrator signals that the story he tells is widely known by interjecting phrases such as "only later did we learn" and "well known in his own day. The Brothers Karamazov is a cross between a realistic novel and a philosophical novel. The characters have extremely complicated and intricate psychologies, and yet they also each represent certain ideas and concepts. This combination of realism and philosophical symbolism is evident in these chapters, as each meticulously drawn character comes to embody a more abstract set of concepts and beliefs. Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, the father, with his orgies and his abhorrent treatment of his wives and children, embodies amoral, obnoxious Epicureanism--that is, a commitment to seeking pleasure rather than living responsibly or virtuously. Ivan Karamazov's brilliant mind and burgeoning literary reputation embody the struggle to reconcile intellect with religious belief. Dmitri Karamazov's violent hatred of his father and uncritical love of his brothers stand in opposition to Ivan's critical faculties. Dmitri's character illustrates the effects of action based on emotion rather than on intellect. Finally, Alyosha, whom Dostoevsky describes as the hero of the novel, is nearly the opposite of Fyodor Pavlovich. His love of mankind shows that he is innocent, pious, and virtuous without being mystical or fanatical. Each character in Dostoevsky's quartet of personalities works as a foil, or contrast, for each of the others. Because the novel's philosophical themes are immediately connected to the personalities of its characters, the conflicts and contrasts between the main characters come to symbolize some of the most fundamental problems of human existence. The difference between Ivan and Alyosha, for instance, represents the conflict between faith and doubt. Though none of these philosophical issues are given extensive treatment in this section, each of them, along with many others, is expanded and developed as the novel progresses. In the end, the story of the Karamazov brothers enacts a part of the drama of ideas on which civilization itself is based. There are several religious concepts in these chapters that may be unfamiliar to modern readers who are not members of the Russian Orthodox church, to which the Karamazovs belong. First, the article for which Ivan has gained notoriety before the story begins deals with the question of ecclesiastical courts. These are simply courts of law, which decide cases based not on the political laws that govern nations, but on religious law and the strictures of the church. Ecclesiastical courts in Russia at the time of the novel do not have the power to try or punish criminals. Ivan's article argues that ecclesiastical courts should be given authority over criminal prosecution and punishment because if criminals knew they were defying God when they committed their crimes, many of them would choose to obey the law. Given Ivan's reputation for religious doubt, many of the people who know him suspect that he does not entirely believe his own argument. Ivan's argument is motivated not by a desire to punish, but, paradoxically, by compassion for mankind. He believes that without religious authority, people will descend into lawlessness and chaos. At the same time, because he does not believe in the church, Ivan rejects the notion of a binding morality. His article is sincere in that he believes his recommendations would improve the human condition, but insincere in that he does not believe in the ideas and institutions under which his recommendations would be carried out. The article, and the larger debate about ecclesiastical courts, thus serves to offer a preliminary insight into the nature of Ivan's anguished mind: he is so committed to intellectual logic that he is led to advocate ideas he does not believe in his heart

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/chapters_32_to_37.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Far from the Madding Crowd/section_5_part_0.txt

Far from the Madding Crowd.chapters 32-37

chapters 32-37

{"name": "Chapters 32-37", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210108004047/https://www.gradesaver.com/far-from-the-madding-crowd/study-guide/summary-chapters-32-37", "summary": "Several weeks pass, with Bathsheba sending word that she has been delayed. Then Cainy Ball comes back to the farm in great excitement, explaining that he saw Bathsheba and Troy together in Bath. Gabriel is alarmed by this news, but feels relieved when later that same night he sees Liddy and Bathsheba driving back to the farm together. Boldwood also sees that Bathsheba has returned and tries to call upon her, but is dismayed to find that she will not receive him. As he makes his way home, Boldwood sees Troy first arriving at his lodging and then departing a short time later with a bag of possessions. Boldwood confronts Troy on the road, and accuses him of having wronged Fanny by not marrying her after her reputation was compromised. Troy replies that he is willing to marry Fanny, but doesn't have the income to do so. Boldwood explains that he believes Bathsheba would have married him if Troy had not distracted her: he now proposes that if Troy leaves Weatherbury and marries Fanny, Boldwood will give him a significant sum of money. Troy agrees to the plan and takes the initial deposit of money from Boldwood. The two men hear the sound of Bathsheba approaching, and Troy explains that the two had a plan to meet. He thinks it would be best to speak with her and break off the relationship so that she is not left wondering what happened. Boldwood reluctantly agrees to let Troy speak to her so long as he can remain hidden and listen to the conversation. Bathsheba greets Troy warmly, telling him that since the house is empty it will be easy for him to come to her. Troy tells her that he just needs to fetch his things and then he will follow her to the farmhouse, and Bathsheba sets off to await her lover. Boldwood is now under the impression that Bathsheba has become involved in a sexual relationship with Troy and, although he is furious, he believes Troy must marry her after all. Troy torments Boldwood by seeming committed to the plan of marrying Fanny, forcing Boldwood to beg him to marry Bathsheba and even offer to pay him to do so. Troy agrees to accept the money and Boldwood asks for a written agreement, so the two men go to Bathsheba' s house to finalize the arrangement and tell her what has happened. Once there, Troy shows Boldwood proof that he is already married to Bathsheba and contemptuously returns the money. Very early the next morning as Coggan and Gabriel are walking by the farmhouse, they glimpse Troy in one of the bedroom windows, and realize this means that he and Bathsheba are married. Troy greets them in a friendly way, discussing his plans to renovate and redecorate the old fashioned farmhouse. He mentions that he will eventually begin contributing to working the farm, but has other matters to settle for the time being. Gabriel is grief-stricken, disappointed, and suspicious of what the marriage may mean for the future of the farm. A few weeks later, at the end of August, the harvest-supper is being held to celebrate at the farm. As he approaches the festivities, Gabriel notes that the weather suggests a severe storm is coming, and that much of the harvest has been left out and unprotected. Gabriel goes in to the supper, where everyone is celebrating by drinking and dancing, and tries to tell Troy that the harvested crops should be protected before the rain starts. Troy ignores him, and begins serving large amounts of alcohol to all the men gathered at the party. Since he is not interested in drinking, Gabriel leaves the party. As he passes through the farm, the behavior of various animals convinces him that there is going to be a violent thunderstorm, and then severe rain. Gabriel knows that if the crops are ruined by the storm, there will be a huge economic loss and he returns to the party to get help covering them up. However, everyone there has drunk themselves into a stupor, so Gabriel gathers the necessary supplies alone. He is still at work when the thunder and lightning begin, putting him in a hazardous position. Bathsheba joins him, eager to help and try and protect as many of her crops as she can. The two of them go to the barn to see if anyone can help them, but after confirming that the other men are all too drunk to help, they continue to work alone. As they work, Bathsheba explains that she did not leave for Bath intending to marry Troy. Instead, she went planning to end their relationship. When she got there, she became worried by the idea that her reputation might be damaged and Troy made her jealous by telling her he had seen a woman who was more beautiful than she was. She married him impulsively as a result. When the rain starts, Bathsheba leaves and Gabriel works all night to finish the task. In the morning, he runs into Boldwood as he is making his way home. Boldwood explains that he had been too distracted to cover his crops, and that now much of it has been ruined. Gabriel realizes how devastated Boldwood is by Bathsheba's marriage.", "analysis": "The lack of news from Bathsheba leaves everyone in suspense, particularly Boldwood and Gabriel. Boldwood is still determined to end the relationship between Bathsheba and Troy, and he is willing to use Fanny as a bargaining tool. Interestingly, if Boldwood truly believes Troy to be an unsuitable husband, he should not be so willing to urge him to marry Fanny. Possibly because Fanny's working-class background makes him less protective of her, but more likely because it will serve his own interest, Boldwood offers Troy money in exchange for a promise to marry Fanny. By offering this exchange, Boldwood demonstrates that he sees profit as being central to most people's motives, and also that he assumes money is a key factor in choosing a marriage partner. His assumption that someone would naturally want to marry their wealthiest option is part of why he finds it so hard to understand that Bathsheba might prefer another man rather than him. Despite his cynicism, Boldwood is still quite naive, which leads him to be cruelly tricked and tormented by Troy. Troy puts Boldwood in the torturous position of having to beg his enemy and rival to marry the woman he loves. On one hand, his willingness to do so seems to suggest that Boldwood is capable of putting Bathsheba first, and prioritizing the need to protect her reputation. On the other hand, his insistence that she and Troy marry once he comes to believe that they are sleeping together perhaps also suggests that he is somewhat disgusted by the idea of the woman he has placed on a pedestal now being tainted. Troy is actually quite astute when he criticizes how readily Boldwood fell for the trap, and how quick he was to believe that Bathsheba was sleeping with Troy. Although Boldwood idolizes Bathsheba, he does not seem to have much respect for her. The whole exchange ends up being irrelevant once it is clear that Bathsheba and Troy are already married. Although no one seems happy about this outcome, the marriage is binding and irrevocable. Troy quickly demonstrates that he is out of step with the way of life on the farm; his comments on modernizing the farmhouse show that he does not respect tradition, and that he wants to impose his own values onto a long-held way of life. Events at the harvest supper make this pattern even more clear: Troy quite literally intoxicates and poisons the modest farm workers with substances that are too strong for them to handle. Troy is unable to prioritize the long-term future over short-term gratification; he is used to getting what he wants, and sees no reason to put his responsibilities ahead of his pleasure. By working to protect the crops from the storm, even in a dangerous and unpleasant situation, Gabriel takes his loyalty to Bathsheba and her farm to the most extreme point so far. At this time, as the wife of another man, Gabriel certainly does not have any moral responsibility to help her. Even as her employee, Gabriel would be justified in feeling he had done all he could after he warned Troy and Troy ignored him. Still, he is compelled to do the right thing, even though there can be no possibility of this fidelity being rewarded. Gabriel's totally unselfish loyalty to doing whatever Bathsheba needs contrasts starkly with how the man who actually vowed to protect her behaves."}

NIGHT--HORSES TRAMPING The village of Weatherbury was quiet as the graveyard in its midst, and the living were lying well-nigh as still as the dead. The church clock struck eleven. The air was so empty of other sounds that the whirr of the clock-work immediately before the strokes was distinct, and so was also the click of the same at their close. The notes flew forth with the usual blind obtuseness of inanimate things--flapping and rebounding among walls, undulating against the scattered clouds, spreading through their interstices into unexplored miles of space. Bathsheba's crannied and mouldy halls were to-night occupied only by Maryann, Liddy being, as was stated, with her sister, whom Bathsheba had set out to visit. A few minutes after eleven had struck, Maryann turned in her bed with a sense of being disturbed. She was totally unconscious of the nature of the interruption to her sleep. It led to a dream, and the dream to an awakening, with an uneasy sensation that something had happened. She left her bed and looked out of the window. The paddock abutted on this end of the building, and in the paddock she could just discern by the uncertain gray a moving figure approaching the horse that was feeding there. The figure seized the horse by the forelock, and led it to the corner of the field. Here she could see some object which circumstances proved to be a vehicle, for after a few minutes spent apparently in harnessing, she heard the trot of the horse down the road, mingled with the sound of light wheels. Two varieties only of humanity could have entered the paddock with the ghostlike glide of that mysterious figure. They were a woman and a gipsy man. A woman was out of the question in such an occupation at this hour, and the comer could be no less than a thief, who might probably have known the weakness of the household on this particular night, and have chosen it on that account for his daring attempt. Moreover, to raise suspicion to conviction itself, there were gipsies in Weatherbury Bottom. Maryann, who had been afraid to shout in the robber's presence, having seen him depart had no fear. She hastily slipped on her clothes, stumped down the disjointed staircase with its hundred creaks, ran to Coggan's, the nearest house, and raised an alarm. Coggan called Gabriel, who now again lodged in his house as at first, and together they went to the paddock. Beyond all doubt the horse was gone. "Hark!" said Gabriel. They listened. Distinct upon the stagnant air came the sounds of a trotting horse passing up Longpuddle Lane--just beyond the gipsies' encampment in Weatherbury Bottom. "That's our Dainty--I'll swear to her step," said Jan. "Mighty me! Won't mis'ess storm and call us stupids when she comes back!" moaned Maryann. "How I wish it had happened when she was at home, and none of us had been answerable!" "We must ride after," said Gabriel, decisively. "I'll be responsible to Miss Everdene for what we do. Yes, we'll follow." "Faith, I don't see how," said Coggan. "All our horses are too heavy for that trick except little Poppet, and what's she between two of us?--If we only had that pair over the hedge we might do something." "Which pair?" "Mr. Boldwood's Tidy and Moll." "Then wait here till I come hither again," said Gabriel. He ran down the hill towards Farmer Boldwood's. "Farmer Boldwood is not at home," said Maryann. "All the better," said Coggan. "I know what he's gone for." Less than five minutes brought up Oak again, running at the same pace, with two halters dangling from his hand. "Where did you find 'em?" said Coggan, turning round and leaping upon the hedge without waiting for an answer. "Under the eaves. I knew where they were kept," said Gabriel, following him. "Coggan, you can ride bare-backed? there's no time to look for saddles." "Like a hero!" said Jan. "Maryann, you go to bed," Gabriel shouted to her from the top of the hedge. Springing down into Boldwood's pastures, each pocketed his halter to hide it from the horses, who, seeing the men empty-handed, docilely allowed themselves to be seized by the mane, when the halters were dexterously slipped on. Having neither bit nor bridle, Oak and Coggan extemporized the former by passing the rope in each case through the animal's mouth and looping it on the other side. Oak vaulted astride, and Coggan clambered up by aid of the bank, when they ascended to the gate and galloped off in the direction taken by Bathsheba's horse and the robber. Whose vehicle the horse had been harnessed to was a matter of some uncertainty. Weatherbury Bottom was reached in three or four minutes. They scanned the shady green patch by the roadside. The gipsies were gone. "The villains!" said Gabriel. "Which way have they gone, I wonder?" "Straight on, as sure as God made little apples," said Jan. "Very well; we are better mounted, and must overtake em", said Oak. "Now on at full speed!" No sound of the rider in their van could now be discovered. The road-metal grew softer and more clayey as Weatherbury was left behind, and the late rain had wetted its surface to a somewhat plastic, but not muddy state. They came to cross-roads. Coggan suddenly pulled up Moll and slipped off. "What's the matter?" said Gabriel. "We must try to track 'em, since we can't hear 'em," said Jan, fumbling in his pockets. He struck a light, and held the match to the ground. The rain had been heavier here, and all foot and horse tracks made previous to the storm had been abraded and blurred by the drops, and they were now so many little scoops of water, which reflected the flame of the match like eyes. One set of tracks was fresh and had no water in them; one pair of ruts was also empty, and not small canals, like the others. The footprints forming this recent impression were full of information as to pace; they were in equidistant pairs, three or four feet apart, the right and left foot of each pair being exactly opposite one another. "Straight on!" Jan exclaimed. "Tracks like that mean a stiff gallop. No wonder we don't hear him. And the horse is harnessed--look at the ruts. Ay, that's our mare sure enough!" "How do you know?" "Old Jimmy Harris only shoed her last week, and I'd swear to his make among ten thousand." "The rest of the gipsies must ha' gone on earlier, or some other way," said Oak. "You saw there were no other tracks?" "True." They rode along silently for a long weary time. Coggan carried an old pinchbeck repeater which he had inherited from some genius in his family; and it now struck one. He lighted another match, and examined the ground again. "'Tis a canter now," he said, throwing away the light. "A twisty, rickety pace for a gig. The fact is, they over-drove her at starting; we shall catch 'em yet." Again they hastened on, and entered Blackmore Vale. Coggan's watch struck one. When they looked again the hoof-marks were so spaced as to form a sort of zigzag if united, like the lamps along a street. "That's a trot, I know," said Gabriel. "Only a trot now," said Coggan, cheerfully. "We shall overtake him in time." They pushed rapidly on for yet two or three miles. "Ah! a moment," said Jan. "Let's see how she was driven up this hill. 'Twill help us." A light was promptly struck upon his gaiters as before, and the examination made. "Hurrah!" said Coggan. "She walked up here--and well she might. We shall get them in two miles, for a crown." They rode three, and listened. No sound was to be heard save a millpond trickling hoarsely through a hatch, and suggesting gloomy possibilities of drowning by jumping in. Gabriel dismounted when they came to a turning. The tracks were absolutely the only guide as to the direction that they now had, and great caution was necessary to avoid confusing them with some others which had made their appearance lately. "What does this mean?--though I guess," said Gabriel, looking up at Coggan as he moved the match over the ground about the turning. Coggan, who, no less than the panting horses, had latterly shown signs of weariness, again scrutinized the mystic characters. This time only three were of the regular horseshoe shape. Every fourth was a dot. He screwed up his face and emitted a long "Whew-w-w!" "Lame," said Oak. "Yes. Dainty is lamed; the near-foot-afore," said Coggan slowly, staring still at the footprints. "We'll push on," said Gabriel, remounting his humid steed. Although the road along its greater part had been as good as any turnpike-road in the country, it was nominally only a byway. The last turning had brought them into the high road leading to Bath. Coggan recollected himself. "We shall have him now!" he exclaimed. "Where?" "Sherton Turnpike. The keeper of that gate is the sleepiest man between here and London--Dan Randall, that's his name--knowed en for years, when he was at Casterbridge gate. Between the lameness and the gate 'tis a done job." They now advanced with extreme caution. Nothing was said until, against a shady background of foliage, five white bars were visible, crossing their route a little way ahead. "Hush--we are almost close!" said Gabriel. "Amble on upon the grass," said Coggan. The white bars were blotted out in the midst by a dark shape in front of them. The silence of this lonely time was pierced by an exclamation from that quarter. "Hoy-a-hoy! Gate!" It appeared that there had been a previous call which they had not noticed, for on their close approach the door of the turnpike-house opened, and the keeper came out half-dressed, with a candle in his hand. The rays illumined the whole group. "Keep the gate close!" shouted Gabriel. "He has stolen the horse!" "Who?" said the turnpike-man. Gabriel looked at the driver of the gig, and saw a woman--Bathsheba, his mistress. On hearing his voice she had turned her face away from the light. Coggan had, however, caught sight of her in the meanwhile. "Why, 'tis mistress--I'll take my oath!" he said, amazed. Bathsheba it certainly was, and she had by this time done the trick she could do so well in crises not of love, namely, mask a surprise by coolness of manner. "Well, Gabriel," she inquired quietly, "where are you going?" "We thought--" began Gabriel. "I am driving to Bath," she said, taking for her own use the assurance that Gabriel lacked. "An important matter made it necessary for me to give up my visit to Liddy, and go off at once. What, then, were you following me?" "We thought the horse was stole." "Well--what a thing! How very foolish of you not to know that I had taken the trap and horse. I could neither wake Maryann nor get into the house, though I hammered for ten minutes against her window-sill. Fortunately, I could get the key of the coach-house, so I troubled no one further. Didn't you think it might be me?" "Why should we, miss?" "Perhaps not. Why, those are never Farmer Boldwood's horses! Goodness mercy! what have you been doing--bringing trouble upon me in this way? What! mustn't a lady move an inch from her door without being dogged like a thief?" "But how was we to know, if you left no account of your doings?" expostulated Coggan, "and ladies don't drive at these hours, miss, as a jineral rule of society." "I did leave an account--and you would have seen it in the morning. I wrote in chalk on the coach-house doors that I had come back for the horse and gig, and driven off; that I could arouse nobody, and should return soon." "But you'll consider, ma'am, that we couldn't see that till it got daylight." "True," she said, and though vexed at first she had too much sense to blame them long or seriously for a devotion to her that was as valuable as it was rare. She added with a very pretty grace, "Well, I really thank you heartily for taking all this trouble; but I wish you had borrowed anybody's horses but Mr. Boldwood's." "Dainty is lame, miss," said Coggan. "Can ye go on?" "It was only a stone in her shoe. I got down and pulled it out a hundred yards back. I can manage very well, thank you. I shall be in Bath by daylight. Will you now return, please?" She turned her head--the gateman's candle shimmering upon her quick, clear eyes as she did so--passed through the gate, and was soon wrapped in the embowering shades of mysterious summer boughs. Coggan and Gabriel put about their horses, and, fanned by the velvety air of this July night, retraced the road by which they had come. "A strange vagary, this of hers, isn't it, Oak?" said Coggan, curiously. "Yes," said Gabriel, shortly. "She won't be in Bath by no daylight!" "Coggan, suppose we keep this night's work as quiet as we can?" "I am of one and the same mind." "Very well. We shall be home by three o'clock or so, and can creep into the parish like lambs." Bathsheba's perturbed meditations by the roadside had ultimately evolved a conclusion that there were only two remedies for the present desperate state of affairs. The first was merely to keep Troy away from Weatherbury till Boldwood's indignation had cooled; the second to listen to Oak's entreaties, and Boldwood's denunciations, and give up Troy altogether. Alas! Could she give up this new love--induce him to renounce her by saying she did not like him--could no more speak to him, and beg him, for her good, to end his furlough in Bath, and see her and Weatherbury no more? It was a picture full of misery, but for a while she contemplated it firmly, allowing herself, nevertheless, as girls will, to dwell upon the happy life she would have enjoyed had Troy been Boldwood, and the path of love the path of duty--inflicting upon herself gratuitous tortures by imagining him the lover of another woman after forgetting her; for she had penetrated Troy's nature so far as to estimate his tendencies pretty accurately, but unfortunately loved him no less in thinking that he might soon cease to love her--indeed, considerably more. She jumped to her feet. She would see him at once. Yes, she would implore him by word of mouth to assist her in this dilemma. A letter to keep him away could not reach him in time, even if he should be disposed to listen to it. Was Bathsheba altogether blind to the obvious fact that the support of a lover's arms is not of a kind best calculated to assist a resolve to renounce him? Or was she sophistically sensible, with a thrill of pleasure, that by adopting this course for getting rid of him she was ensuring a meeting with him, at any rate, once more? It was now dark, and the hour must have been nearly ten. The only way to accomplish her purpose was to give up her idea of visiting Liddy at Yalbury, return to Weatherbury Farm, put the horse into the gig, and drive at once to Bath. The scheme seemed at first impossible: the journey was a fearfully heavy one, even for a strong horse, at her own estimate; and she much underrated the distance. It was most venturesome for a woman, at night, and alone. But could she go on to Liddy's and leave things to take their course? No, no; anything but that. Bathsheba was full of a stimulating turbulence, beside which caution vainly prayed for a hearing. She turned back towards the village. Her walk was slow, for she wished not to enter Weatherbury till the cottagers were in bed, and, particularly, till Boldwood was secure. Her plan was now to drive to Bath during the night, see Sergeant Troy in the morning before he set out to come to her, bid him farewell, and dismiss him: then to rest the horse thoroughly (herself to weep the while, she thought), starting early the next morning on her return journey. By this arrangement she could trot Dainty gently all the day, reach Liddy at Yalbury in the evening, and come home to Weatherbury with her whenever they chose--so nobody would know she had been to Bath at all. Such was Bathsheba's scheme. But in her topographical ignorance as a late comer to the place, she misreckoned the distance of her journey as not much more than half what it really was. This idea she proceeded to carry out, with what initial success we have already seen. IN THE SUN--A HARBINGER A week passed, and there were no tidings of Bathsheba; nor was there any explanation of her Gilpin's rig. Then a note came for Maryann, stating that the business which had called her mistress to Bath still detained her there; but that she hoped to return in the course of another week. Another week passed. The oat-harvest began, and all the men were a-field under a monochromatic Lammas sky, amid the trembling air and short shadows of noon. Indoors nothing was to be heard save the droning of blue-bottle flies; out-of-doors the whetting of scythes and the hiss of tressy oat-ears rubbing together as their perpendicular stalks of amber-yellow fell heavily to each swath. Every drop of moisture not in the men's bottles and flagons in the form of cider was raining as perspiration from their foreheads and cheeks. Drought was everywhere else. They were about to withdraw for a while into the charitable shade of a tree in the fence, when Coggan saw a figure in a blue coat and brass buttons running to them across the field. "I wonder who that is?" he said. "I hope nothing is wrong about mistress," said Maryann, who with some other women was tying the bundles (oats being always sheafed on this farm), "but an unlucky token came to me indoors this morning. I went to unlock the door and dropped the key, and it fell upon the stone floor and broke into two pieces. Breaking a key is a dreadful bodement. I wish mis'ess was home." "'Tis Cain Ball," said Gabriel, pausing from whetting his reaphook. Oak was not bound by his agreement to assist in the corn-field; but the harvest month is an anxious time for a farmer, and the corn was Bathsheba's, so he lent a hand. "He's dressed up in his best clothes," said Matthew Moon. "He hev been away from home for a few days, since he's had that felon upon his finger; for 'a said, since I can't work I'll have a hollerday." "A good time for one--a' excellent time," said Joseph Poorgrass, straightening his back; for he, like some of the others, had a way of resting a while from his labour on such hot days for reasons preternaturally small; of which Cain Ball's advent on a week-day in his Sunday-clothes was one of the first magnitude. "Twas a bad leg allowed me to read the _Pilgrim's Progress_, and Mark Clark learnt All-Fours in a whitlow." "Ay, and my father put his arm out of joint to have time to go courting," said Jan Coggan, in an eclipsing tone, wiping his face with his shirt-sleeve and thrusting back his hat upon the nape of his neck. By this time Cainy was nearing the group of harvesters, and was perceived to be carrying a large slice of bread and ham in one hand, from which he took mouthfuls as he ran, the other being wrapped in a bandage. When he came close, his mouth assumed the bell shape, and he began to cough violently. "Now, Cainy!" said Gabriel, sternly. "How many more times must I tell you to keep from running so fast when you be eating? You'll choke yourself some day, that's what you'll do, Cain Ball." "Hok-hok-hok!" replied Cain. "A crumb of my victuals went the wrong way--hok-hok! That's what 'tis, Mister Oak! And I've been visiting to Bath because I had a felon on my thumb; yes, and I've seen--ahok-hok!" Directly Cain mentioned Bath, they all threw down their hooks and forks and drew round him. Unfortunately the erratic crumb did not improve his narrative powers, and a supplementary hindrance was that of a sneeze, jerking from his pocket his rather large watch, which dangled in front of the young man pendulum-wise. "Yes," he continued, directing his thoughts to Bath and letting his eyes follow, "I've seed the world at last--yes--and I've seed our mis'ess--ahok-hok-hok!" "Bother the boy!" said Gabriel. "Something is always going the wrong way down your throat, so that you can't tell what's necessary to be told." "Ahok! there! Please, Mister Oak, a gnat have just fleed into my stomach and brought the cough on again!" "Yes, that's just it. Your mouth is always open, you young rascal!" "'Tis terrible bad to have a gnat fly down yer throat, pore boy!" said Matthew Moon. "Well, at Bath you saw--" prompted Gabriel. "I saw our mistress," continued the junior shepherd, "and a sojer, walking along. And bymeby they got closer and closer, and then they went arm-in-crook, like courting complete--hok-hok! like courting complete--hok!--courting complete--" Losing the thread of his narrative at this point simultaneously with his loss of breath, their informant looked up and down the field apparently for some clue to it. "Well, I see our mis'ess and a soldier--a-ha-a-wk!" "Damn the boy!" said Gabriel. "'Tis only my manner, Mister Oak, if ye'll excuse it," said Cain Ball, looking reproachfully at Oak, with eyes drenched in their own dew. "Here's some cider for him--that'll cure his throat," said Jan Coggan, lifting a flagon of cider, pulling out the cork, and applying the hole to Cainy's mouth; Joseph Poorgrass in the meantime beginning to think apprehensively of the serious consequences that would follow Cainy Ball's strangulation in his cough, and the history of his Bath adventures dying with him. "For my poor self, I always say 'please God' afore I do anything," said Joseph, in an unboastful voice; "and so should you, Cain Ball. 'Tis a great safeguard, and might perhaps save you from being choked to death some day." Mr. Coggan poured the liquor with unstinted liberality at the suffering Cain's circular mouth; half of it running down the side of the flagon, and half of what reached his mouth running down outside his throat, and half of what ran in going the wrong way, and being coughed and sneezed around the persons of the gathered reapers in the form of a cider fog, which for a moment hung in the sunny air like a small exhalation. "There's a great clumsy sneeze! Why can't ye have better manners, you young dog!" said Coggan, withdrawing the flagon. "The cider went up my nose!" cried Cainy, as soon as he could speak; "and now 'tis gone down my neck, and into my poor dumb felon, and over my shiny buttons and all my best cloze!" "The poor lad's cough is terrible unfortunate," said Matthew Moon. "And a great history on hand, too. Bump his back, shepherd." "'Tis my nater," mourned Cain. "Mother says I always was so excitable when my feelings were worked up to a point!" "True, true," said Joseph Poorgrass. "The Balls were always a very excitable family. I knowed the boy's grandfather--a truly nervous and modest man, even to genteel refinery. 'Twas blush, blush with him, almost as much as 'tis with me--not but that 'tis a fault in me!" "Not at all, Master Poorgrass," said Coggan. "'Tis a very noble quality in ye." "Heh-heh! well, I wish to noise nothing abroad--nothing at all," murmured Poorgrass, diffidently. "But we be born to things--that's true. Yet I would rather my trifle were hid; though, perhaps, a high nater is a little high, and at my birth all things were possible to my Maker, and he may have begrudged no gifts.... But under your bushel, Joseph! under your bushel with 'ee! A strange desire, neighbours, this desire to hide, and no praise due. Yet there is a Sermon on the Mount with a calendar of the blessed at the head, and certain meek men may be named therein." "Cainy's grandfather was a very clever man," said Matthew Moon. "Invented a' apple-tree out of his own head, which is called by his name to this day--the Early Ball. You know 'em, Jan? A Quarrenden grafted on a Tom Putt, and a Rathe-ripe upon top o' that again. 'Tis trew 'a used to bide about in a public-house wi' a 'ooman in a way he had no business to by rights, but there--'a were a clever man in the sense of the term." "Now then," said Gabriel, impatiently, "what did you see, Cain?" "I seed our mis'ess go into a sort of a park place, where there's seats, and shrubs and flowers, arm-in-crook with a sojer," continued Cainy, firmly, and with a dim sense that his words were very effective as regarded Gabriel's emotions. "And I think the sojer was Sergeant Troy. And they sat there together for more than half-an-hour, talking moving things, and she once was crying a'most to death. And when they came out her eyes were shining and she was as white as a lily; and they looked into one another's faces, as far-gone friendly as a man and woman can be." Gabriel's features seemed to get thinner. "Well, what did you see besides?" "Oh, all sorts." "White as a lily? You are sure 'twas she?" "Yes." "Well, what besides?" "Great glass windows to the shops, and great clouds in the sky, full of rain, and old wooden trees in the country round." "You stun-poll! What will ye say next?" said Coggan. "Let en alone," interposed Joseph Poorgrass. "The boy's meaning is that the sky and the earth in the kingdom of Bath is not altogether different from ours here. 'Tis for our good to gain knowledge of strange cities, and as such the boy's words should be suffered, so to speak it." "And the people of Bath," continued Cain, "never need to light their fires except as a luxury, for the water springs up out of the earth ready boiled for use." "'Tis true as the light," testified Matthew Moon. "I've heard other navigators say the same thing." "They drink nothing else there," said Cain, "and seem to enjoy it, to see how they swaller it down." "Well, it seems a barbarian practice enough to us, but I daresay the natives think nothing o' it," said Matthew. "And don't victuals spring up as well as drink?" asked Coggan, twirling his eye. "No--I own to a blot there in Bath--a true blot. God didn't provide 'em with victuals as well as drink, and 'twas a drawback I couldn't get over at all." "Well, 'tis a curious place, to say the least," observed Moon; "and it must be a curious people that live therein." "Miss Everdene and the soldier were walking about together, you say?" said Gabriel, returning to the group. "Ay, and she wore a beautiful gold-colour silk gown, trimmed with black lace, that would have stood alone 'ithout legs inside if required. 'Twas a very winsome sight; and her hair was brushed splendid. And when the sun shone upon the bright gown and his red coat--my! how handsome they looked. You could see 'em all the length of the street." "And what then?" murmured Gabriel. "And then I went into Griffin's to hae my boots hobbed, and then I went to Riggs's batty-cake shop, and asked 'em for a penneth of the cheapest and nicest stales, that were all but blue-mouldy, but not quite. And whilst I was chawing 'em down I walked on and seed a clock with a face as big as a baking trendle--" "But that's nothing to do with mistress!" "I'm coming to that, if you'll leave me alone, Mister Oak!" remonstrated Cainy. "If you excites me, perhaps you'll bring on my cough, and then I shan't be able to tell ye nothing." "Yes--let him tell it his own way," said Coggan. Gabriel settled into a despairing attitude of patience, and Cainy went on:-- "And there were great large houses, and more people all the week long than at Weatherbury club-walking on White Tuesdays. And I went to grand churches and chapels. And how the parson would pray! Yes; he would kneel down and put up his hands together, and make the holy gold rings on his fingers gleam and twinkle in yer eyes, that he'd earned by praying so excellent well!--Ah yes, I wish I lived there." "Our poor Parson Thirdly can't get no money to buy such rings," said Matthew Moon, thoughtfully. "And as good a man as ever walked. I don't believe poor Thirdly have a single one, even of humblest tin or copper. Such a great ornament as they'd be to him on a dull afternoon, when he's up in the pulpit lighted by the wax candles! But 'tis impossible, poor man. Ah, to think how unequal things be." "Perhaps he's made of different stuff than to wear 'em," said Gabriel, grimly. "Well, that's enough of this. Go on, Cainy--quick." "Oh--and the new style of parsons wear moustaches and long beards," continued the illustrious traveller, "and look like Moses and Aaron complete, and make we fokes in the congregation feel all over like the children of Israel." "A very right feeling--very," said Joseph Poorgrass. "And there's two religions going on in the nation now--High Church and High Chapel. And, thinks I, I'll play fair; so I went to High Church in the morning, and High Chapel in the afternoon." "A right and proper boy," said Joseph Poorgrass. "Well, at High Church they pray singing, and worship all the colours of the rainbow; and at High Chapel they pray preaching, and worship drab and whitewash only. And then--I didn't see no more of Miss Everdene at all." "Why didn't you say so afore, then?" exclaimed Oak, with much disappointment. "Ah," said Matthew Moon, "she'll wish her cake dough if so be she's over intimate with that man." "She's not over intimate with him," said Gabriel, indignantly. "She would know better," said Coggan. "Our mis'ess has too much sense under they knots of black hair to do such a mad thing." "You see, he's not a coarse, ignorant man, for he was well brought up," said Matthew, dubiously. "'Twas only wildness that made him a soldier, and maids rather like your man of sin." "Now, Cain Ball," said Gabriel restlessly, "can you swear in the most awful form that the woman you saw was Miss Everdene?" "Cain Ball, you be no longer a babe and suckling," said Joseph in the sepulchral tone the circumstances demanded, "and you know what taking an oath is. 'Tis a horrible testament mind ye, which you say and seal with your blood-stone, and the prophet Matthew tells us that on whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder. Now, before all the work-folk here assembled, can you swear to your words as the shepherd asks ye?" "Please no, Mister Oak!" said Cainy, looking from one to the other with great uneasiness at the spiritual magnitude of the position. "I don't mind saying 'tis true, but I don't like to say 'tis damn true, if that's what you mane." "Cain, Cain, how can you!" asked Joseph sternly. "You be asked to swear in a holy manner, and you swear like wicked Shimei, the son of Gera, who cursed as he came. Young man, fie!" "No, I don't! 'Tis you want to squander a pore boy's soul, Joseph Poorgrass--that's what 'tis!" said Cain, beginning to cry. "All I mane is that in common truth 'twas Miss Everdene and Sergeant Troy, but in the horrible so-help-me truth that ye want to make of it perhaps 'twas somebody else!" "There's no getting at the rights of it," said Gabriel, turning to his work. "Cain Ball, you'll come to a bit of bread!" groaned Joseph Poorgrass. Then the reapers' hooks were flourished again, and the old sounds went on. Gabriel, without making any pretence of being lively, did nothing to show that he was particularly dull. However, Coggan knew pretty nearly how the land lay, and when they were in a nook together he said-- "Don't take on about her, Gabriel. What difference does it make whose sweetheart she is, since she can't be yours?" "That's the very thing I say to myself," said Gabriel. HOME AGAIN--A TRICKSTER That same evening at dusk Gabriel was leaning over Coggan's garden-gate, taking an up-and-down survey before retiring to rest. A vehicle of some kind was softly creeping along the grassy margin of the lane. From it spread the tones of two women talking. The tones were natural and not at all suppressed. Oak instantly knew the voices to be those of Bathsheba and Liddy. The carriage came opposite and passed by. It was Miss Everdene's gig, and Liddy and her mistress were the only occupants of the seat. Liddy was asking questions about the city of Bath, and her companion was answering them listlessly and unconcernedly. Both Bathsheba and the horse seemed weary. The exquisite relief of finding that she was here again, safe and sound, overpowered all reflection, and Oak could only luxuriate in the sense of it. All grave reports were forgotten. He lingered and lingered on, till there was no difference between the eastern and western expanses of sky, and the timid hares began to limp courageously round the dim hillocks. Gabriel might have been there an additional half-hour when a dark form walked slowly by. "Good-night, Gabriel," the passer said. It was Boldwood. "Good-night, sir," said Gabriel. Boldwood likewise vanished up the road, and Oak shortly afterwards turned indoors to bed. Farmer Boldwood went on towards Miss Everdene's house. He reached the front, and approaching the entrance, saw a light in the parlour. The blind was not drawn down, and inside the room was Bathsheba, looking over some papers or letters. Her back was towards Boldwood. He went to the door, knocked, and waited with tense muscles and an aching brow. Boldwood had not been outside his garden since his meeting with Bathsheba in the road to Yalbury. Silent and alone, he had remained in moody meditation on woman's ways, deeming as essentials of the whole sex the accidents of the single one of their number he had ever closely beheld. By degrees a more charitable temper had pervaded him, and this was the reason of his sally to-night. He had come to apologize and beg forgiveness of Bathsheba with something like a sense of shame at his violence, having but just now learnt that she had returned--only from a visit to Liddy, as he supposed, the Bath escapade being quite unknown to him. He inquired for Miss Everdene. Liddy's manner was odd, but he did not notice it. She went in, leaving him standing there, and in her absence the blind of the room containing Bathsheba was pulled down. Boldwood augured ill from that sign. Liddy came out. "My mistress cannot see you, sir," she said. The farmer instantly went out by the gate. He was unforgiven--that was the issue of it all. He had seen her who was to him simultaneously a delight and a torture, sitting in the room he had shared with her as a peculiarly privileged guest only a little earlier in the summer, and she had denied him an entrance there now. Boldwood did not hurry homeward. It was ten o'clock at least, when, walking deliberately through the lower part of Weatherbury, he heard the carrier's spring van entering the village. The van ran to and from a town in a northern direction, and it was owned and driven by a Weatherbury man, at the door of whose house it now pulled up. The lamp fixed to the head of the hood illuminated a scarlet and gilded form, who was the first to alight. "Ah!" said Boldwood to himself, "come to see her again." Troy entered the carrier's house, which had been the place of his lodging on his last visit to his native place. Boldwood was moved by a sudden determination. He hastened home. In ten minutes he was back again, and made as if he were going to call upon Troy at the carrier's. But as he approached, some one opened the door and came out. He heard this person say "Good-night" to the inmates, and the voice was Troy's. This was strange, coming so immediately after his arrival. Boldwood, however, hastened up to him. Troy had what appeared to be a carpet-bag in his hand--the same that he had brought with him. It seemed as if he were going to leave again this very night. Troy turned up the hill and quickened his pace. Boldwood stepped forward. "Sergeant Troy?" "Yes--I'm Sergeant Troy." "Just arrived from up the country, I think?" "Just arrived from Bath." "I am William Boldwood." "Indeed." The tone in which this word was uttered was all that had been wanted to bring Boldwood to the point. "I wish to speak a word with you," he said. "What about?" "About her who lives just ahead there--and about a woman you have wronged." "I wonder at your impertinence," said Troy, moving on. "Now look here," said Boldwood, standing in front of him, "wonder or not, you are going to hold a conversation with me." Troy heard the dull determination in Boldwood's voice, looked at his stalwart frame, then at the thick cudgel he carried in his hand. He remembered it was past ten o'clock. It seemed worth while to be civil to Boldwood. "Very well, I'll listen with pleasure," said Troy, placing his bag on the ground, "only speak low, for somebody or other may overhear us in the farmhouse there." "Well then--I know a good deal concerning your Fanny Robin's attachment to you. I may say, too, that I believe I am the only person in the village, excepting Gabriel Oak, who does know it. You ought to marry her." "I suppose I ought. Indeed, I wish to, but I cannot." "Why?" Troy was about to utter something hastily; he then checked himself and said, "I am too poor." His voice was changed. Previously it had had a devil-may-care tone. It was the voice of a trickster now. Boldwood's present mood was not critical enough to notice tones. He continued, "I may as well speak plainly; and understand, I don't wish to enter into the questions of right or wrong, woman's honour and shame, or to express any opinion on your conduct. I intend a business transaction with you." "I see," said Troy. "Suppose we sit down here." An old tree trunk lay under the hedge immediately opposite, and they sat down. "I was engaged to be married to Miss Everdene," said Boldwood, "but you came and--" "Not engaged," said Troy. "As good as engaged." "If I had not turned up she might have become engaged to you." "Hang might!" "Would, then." "If you had not come I should certainly--yes, CERTAINLY--have been accepted by this time. If you had not seen her you might have been married to Fanny. Well, there's too much difference between Miss Everdene's station and your own for this flirtation with her ever to benefit you by ending in marriage. So all I ask is, don't molest her any more. Marry Fanny. I'll make it worth your while." "How will you?" "I'll pay you well now, I'll settle a sum of money upon her, and I'll see that you don't suffer from poverty in the future. I'll put it clearly. Bathsheba is only playing with you: you are too poor for her as I said; so give up wasting your time about a great match you'll never make for a moderate and rightful match you may make to-morrow; take up your carpet-bag, turn about, leave Weatherbury now, this night, and you shall take fifty pounds with you. Fanny shall have fifty to enable her to prepare for the wedding, when you have told me where she is living, and she shall have five hundred paid down on her wedding-day." In making this statement Boldwood's voice revealed only too clearly a consciousness of the weakness of his position, his aims, and his method. His manner had lapsed quite from that of the firm and dignified Boldwood of former times; and such a scheme as he had now engaged in he would have condemned as childishly imbecile only a few months ago. We discern a grand force in the lover which he lacks whilst a free man; but there is a breadth of vision in the free man which in the lover we vainly seek. Where there is much bias there must be some narrowness, and love, though added emotion, is subtracted capacity. Boldwood exemplified this to an abnormal degree: he knew nothing of Fanny Robin's circumstances or whereabouts, he knew nothing of Troy's possibilities, yet that was what he said. "I like Fanny best," said Troy; "and if, as you say, Miss Everdene is out of my reach, why I have all to gain by accepting your money, and marrying Fan. But she's only a servant." "Never mind--do you agree to my arrangement?" "I do." "Ah!" said Boldwood, in a more elastic voice. "Oh, Troy, if you like her best, why then did you step in here and injure my happiness?" "I love Fanny best now," said Troy. "But Bathsh--Miss Everdene inflamed me, and displaced Fanny for a time. It is over now." "Why should it be over so soon? And why then did you come here again?" "There are weighty reasons. Fifty pounds at once, you said!" "I did," said Boldwood, "and here they are--fifty sovereigns." He handed Troy a small packet. "You have everything ready--it seems that you calculated on my accepting them," said the sergeant, taking the packet. "I thought you might accept them," said Boldwood. "You've only my word that the programme shall be adhered to, whilst I at any rate have fifty pounds." "I had thought of that, and I have considered that if I can't appeal to your honour I can trust to your--well, shrewdness we'll call it--not to lose five hundred pounds in prospect, and also make a bitter enemy of a man who is willing to be an extremely useful friend." "Stop, listen!" said Troy in a whisper. A light pit-pat was audible upon the road just above them. "By George--'tis she," he continued. "I must go on and meet her." "She--who?" "Bathsheba." "Bathsheba--out alone at this time o' night!" said Boldwood in amazement, and starting up. "Why must you meet her?" "She was expecting me to-night--and I must now speak to her, and wish her good-bye, according to your wish." "I don't see the necessity of speaking." "It can do no harm--and she'll be wandering about looking for me if I don't. You shall hear all I say to her. It will help you in your love-making when I am gone." "Your tone is mocking." "Oh no. And remember this, if she does not know what has become of me, she will think more about me than if I tell her flatly I have come to give her up." "Will you confine your words to that one point?--Shall I hear every word you say?" "Every word. Now sit still there, and hold my carpet bag for me, and mark what you hear." The light footstep came closer, halting occasionally, as if the walker listened for a sound. Troy whistled a double note in a soft, fluty tone. "Come to that, is it!" murmured Boldwood, uneasily. "You promised silence," said Troy. "I promise again." Troy stepped forward. "Frank, dearest, is that you?" The tones were Bathsheba's. "O God!" said Boldwood. "Yes," said Troy to her. "How late you are," she continued, tenderly. "Did you come by the carrier? I listened and heard his wheels entering the village, but it was some time ago, and I had almost given you up, Frank." "I was sure to come," said Frank. "You knew I should, did you not?" "Well, I thought you would," she said, playfully; "and, Frank, it is so lucky! There's not a soul in my house but me to-night. I've packed them all off so nobody on earth will know of your visit to your lady's bower. Liddy wanted to go to her grandfather's to tell him about her holiday, and I said she might stay with them till to-morrow--when you'll be gone again." "Capital," said Troy. "But, dear me, I had better go back for my bag, because my slippers and brush and comb are in it; you run home whilst I fetch it, and I'll promise to be in your parlour in ten minutes." "Yes." She turned and tripped up the hill again. During the progress of this dialogue there was a nervous twitching of Boldwood's tightly closed lips, and his face became bathed in a clammy dew. He now started forward towards Troy. Troy turned to him and took up the bag. "Shall I tell her I have come to give her up and cannot marry her?" said the soldier, mockingly. "No, no; wait a minute. I want to say more to you--more to you!" said Boldwood, in a hoarse whisper. "Now," said Troy, "you see my dilemma. Perhaps I am a bad man--the victim of my impulses--led away to do what I ought to leave undone. I can't, however, marry them both. And I have two reasons for choosing Fanny. First, I like her best upon the whole, and second, you make it worth my while." At the same instant Boldwood sprang upon him, and held him by the neck. Troy felt Boldwood's grasp slowly tightening. The move was absolutely unexpected. "A moment," he gasped. "You are injuring her you love!" "Well, what do you mean?" said the farmer. "Give me breath," said Troy. Boldwood loosened his hand, saying, "By Heaven, I've a mind to kill you!" "And ruin her." "Save her." "Oh, how can she be saved now, unless I marry her?" Boldwood groaned. He reluctantly released the soldier, and flung him back against the hedge. "Devil, you torture me!" said he. Troy rebounded like a ball, and was about to make a dash at the farmer; but he checked himself, saying lightly-- "It is not worth while to measure my strength with you. Indeed it is a barbarous way of settling a quarrel. I shall shortly leave the army because of the same conviction. Now after that revelation of how the land lies with Bathsheba, 'twould be a mistake to kill me, would it not?" "'Twould be a mistake to kill you," repeated Boldwood, mechanically, with a bowed head. "Better kill yourself." "Far better." "I'm glad you see it." "Troy, make her your wife, and don't act upon what I arranged just now. The alternative is dreadful, but take Bathsheba; I give her up! She must love you indeed to sell soul and body to you so utterly as she has done. Wretched woman--deluded woman--you are, Bathsheba!" "But about Fanny?" "Bathsheba is a woman well to do," continued Boldwood, in nervous anxiety, "and, Troy, she will make a good wife; and, indeed, she is worth your hastening on your marriage with her!" "But she has a will--not to say a temper, and I shall be a mere slave to her. I could do anything with poor Fanny Robin." "Troy," said Boldwood, imploringly, "I'll do anything for you, only don't desert her; pray don't desert her, Troy." "Which, poor Fanny?" "No; Bathsheba Everdene. Love her best! Love her tenderly! How shall I get you to see how advantageous it will be to you to secure her at once?" "I don't wish to secure her in any new way." Boldwood's arm moved spasmodically towards Troy's person again. He repressed the instinct, and his form drooped as with pain. Troy went on-- "I shall soon purchase my discharge, and then--" "But I wish you to hasten on this marriage! It will be better for you both. You love each other, and you must let me help you to do it." "How?" "Why, by settling the five hundred on Bathsheba instead of Fanny, to enable you to marry at once. No; she wouldn't have it of me. I'll pay it down to you on the wedding-day." Troy paused in secret amazement at Boldwood's wild infatuation. He carelessly said, "And am I to have anything now?" "Yes, if you wish to. But I have not much additional money with me. I did not expect this; but all I have is yours." Boldwood, more like a somnambulist than a wakeful man, pulled out the large canvas bag he carried by way of a purse, and searched it. "I have twenty-one pounds more with me," he said. "Two notes and a sovereign. But before I leave you I must have a paper signed--" "Pay me the money, and we'll go straight to her parlour, and make any arrangement you please to secure my compliance with your wishes. But she must know nothing of this cash business." "Nothing, nothing," said Boldwood, hastily. "Here is the sum, and if you'll come to my house we'll write out the agreement for the remainder, and the terms also." "First we'll call upon her." "But why? Come with me to-night, and go with me to-morrow to the surrogate's." "But she must be consulted; at any rate informed." "Very well; go on." They went up the hill to Bathsheba's house. When they stood at the entrance, Troy said, "Wait here a moment." Opening the door, he glided inside, leaving the door ajar. Boldwood waited. In two minutes a light appeared in the passage. Boldwood then saw that the chain had been fastened across the door. Troy appeared inside, carrying a bedroom candlestick. "What, did you think I should break in?" said Boldwood, contemptuously. "Oh, no, it is merely my humour to secure things. Will you read this a moment? I'll hold the light." Troy handed a folded newspaper through the slit between door and doorpost, and put the candle close. "That's the paragraph," he said, placing his finger on a line. Boldwood looked and read-- MARRIAGES. On the 17th inst., at St. Ambrose's Church, Bath, by the Rev. G. Mincing, B.A., Francis Troy, only son of the late Edward Troy, Esq., M.D., of Weatherbury, and sergeant with Dragoon Guards, to Bathsheba, only surviving daughter of the late Mr. John Everdene, of Casterbridge. "This may be called Fort meeting Feeble, hey, Boldwood?" said Troy. A low gurgle of derisive laughter followed the words. The paper fell from Boldwood's hands. Troy continued-- "Fifty pounds to marry Fanny. Good. Twenty-one pounds not to marry Fanny, but Bathsheba. Good. Finale: already Bathsheba's husband. Now, Boldwood, yours is the ridiculous fate which always attends interference between a man and his wife. And another word. Bad as I am, I am not such a villain as to make the marriage or misery of any woman a matter of huckster and sale. Fanny has long ago left me. I don't know where she is. I have searched everywhere. Another word yet. You say you love Bathsheba; yet on the merest apparent evidence you instantly believe in her dishonour. A fig for such love! Now that I've taught you a lesson, take your money back again." "I will not; I will not!" said Boldwood, in a hiss. "Anyhow I won't have it," said Troy, contemptuously. He wrapped the packet of gold in the notes, and threw the whole into the road. Boldwood shook his clenched fist at him. "You juggler of Satan! You black hound! But I'll punish you yet; mark me, I'll punish you yet!" Another peal of laughter. Troy then closed the door, and locked himself in. Throughout the whole of that night Boldwood's dark form might have been seen walking about the hills and downs of Weatherbury like an unhappy Shade in the Mournful Fields by Acheron. AT AN UPPER WINDOW It was very early the next morning--a time of sun and dew. The confused beginnings of many birds' songs spread into the healthy air, and the wan blue of the heaven was here and there coated with thin webs of incorporeal cloud which were of no effect in obscuring day. All the lights in the scene were yellow as to colour, and all the shadows were attenuated as to form. The creeping plants about the old manor-house were bowed with rows of heavy water drops, which had upon objects behind them the effect of minute lenses of high magnifying power. Just before the clock struck five Gabriel Oak and Coggan passed the village cross, and went on together to the fields. They were yet barely in view of their mistress's house, when Oak fancied he saw the opening of a casement in one of the upper windows. The two men were at this moment partially screened by an elder bush, now beginning to be enriched with black bunches of fruit, and they paused before emerging from its shade. A handsome man leaned idly from the lattice. He looked east and then west, in the manner of one who makes a first morning survey. The man was Sergeant Troy. His red jacket was loosely thrown on, but not buttoned, and he had altogether the relaxed bearing of a soldier taking his ease. Coggan spoke first, looking quietly at the window. "She has married him!" he said. Gabriel had previously beheld the sight, and he now stood with his back turned, making no reply. "I fancied we should know something to-day," continued Coggan. "I heard wheels pass my door just after dark--you were out somewhere." He glanced round upon Gabriel. "Good heavens above us, Oak, how white your face is; you look like a corpse!" "Do I?" said Oak, with a faint smile. "Lean on the gate: I'll wait a bit." "All right, all right." They stood by the gate awhile, Gabriel listlessly staring at the ground. His mind sped into the future, and saw there enacted in years of leisure the scenes of repentance that would ensue from this work of haste. That they were married he had instantly decided. Why had it been so mysteriously managed? It had become known that she had had a fearful journey to Bath, owing to her miscalculating the distance: that the horse had broken down, and that she had been more than two days getting there. It was not Bathsheba's way to do things furtively. With all her faults, she was candour itself. Could she have been entrapped? The union was not only an unutterable grief to him: it amazed him, notwithstanding that he had passed the preceding week in a suspicion that such might be the issue of Troy's meeting her away from home. Her quiet return with Liddy had to some extent dispersed the dread. Just as that imperceptible motion which appears like stillness is infinitely divided in its properties from stillness itself, so had his hope undistinguishable from despair differed from despair indeed. In a few minutes they moved on again towards the house. The sergeant still looked from the window. "Morning, comrades!" he shouted, in a cheery voice, when they came up. Coggan replied to the greeting. "Bain't ye going to answer the man?" he then said to Gabriel. "I'd say good morning--you needn't spend a hapenny of meaning upon it, and yet keep the man civil." Gabriel soon decided too that, since the deed was done, to put the best face upon the matter would be the greatest kindness to her he loved. "Good morning, Sergeant Troy," he returned, in a ghastly voice. "A rambling, gloomy house this," said Troy, smiling. "Why--they MAY not be married!" suggested Coggan. "Perhaps she's not there." Gabriel shook his head. The soldier turned a little towards the east, and the sun kindled his scarlet coat to an orange glow. "But it is a nice old house," responded Gabriel. "Yes--I suppose so; but I feel like new wine in an old bottle here. My notion is that sash-windows should be put throughout, and these old wainscoted walls brightened up a bit; or the oak cleared quite away, and the walls papered." "It would be a pity, I think." "Well, no. A philosopher once said in my hearing that the old builders, who worked when art was a living thing, had no respect for the work of builders who went before them, but pulled down and altered as they thought fit; and why shouldn't we? 'Creation and preservation don't do well together,' says he, 'and a million of antiquarians can't invent a style.' My mind exactly. I am for making this place more modern, that we may be cheerful whilst we can." The military man turned and surveyed the interior of the room, to assist his ideas of improvement in this direction. Gabriel and Coggan began to move on. "Oh, Coggan," said Troy, as if inspired by a recollection "do you know if insanity has ever appeared in Mr. Boldwood's family?" Jan reflected for a moment. "I once heard that an uncle of his was queer in his head, but I don't know the rights o't," he said. "It is of no importance," said Troy, lightly. "Well, I shall be down in the fields with you some time this week; but I have a few matters to attend to first. So good-day to you. We shall, of course, keep on just as friendly terms as usual. I'm not a proud man: nobody is ever able to say that of Sergeant Troy. However, what is must be, and here's half-a-crown to drink my health, men." Troy threw the coin dexterously across the front plot and over the fence towards Gabriel, who shunned it in its fall, his face turning to an angry red. Coggan twirled his eye, edged forward, and caught the money in its ricochet upon the road. "Very well--you keep it, Coggan," said Gabriel with disdain and almost fiercely. "As for me, I'll do without gifts from him!" "Don't show it too much," said Coggan, musingly. "For if he's married to her, mark my words, he'll buy his discharge and be our master here. Therefore 'tis well to say 'Friend' outwardly, though you say 'Troublehouse' within." "Well--perhaps it is best to be silent; but I can't go further than that. I can't flatter, and if my place here is only to be kept by smoothing him down, my place must be lost." A horseman, whom they had for some time seen in the distance, now appeared close beside them. "There's Mr. Boldwood," said Oak. "I wonder what Troy meant by his question." Coggan and Oak nodded respectfully to the farmer, just checked their paces to discover if they were wanted, and finding they were not stood back to let him pass on. The only signs of the terrible sorrow Boldwood had been combating through the night, and was combating now, were the want of colour in his well-defined face, the enlarged appearance of the veins in his forehead and temples, and the sharper lines about his mouth. The horse bore him away, and the very step of the animal seemed significant of dogged despair. Gabriel, for a minute, rose above his own grief in noticing Boldwood's. He saw the square figure sitting erect upon the horse, the head turned to neither side, the elbows steady by the hips, the brim of the hat level and undisturbed in its onward glide, until the keen edges of Boldwood's shape sank by degrees over the hill. To one who knew the man and his story there was something more striking in this immobility than in a collapse. The clash of discord between mood and matter here was forced painfully home to the heart; and, as in laughter there are more dreadful phases than in tears, so was there in the steadiness of this agonized man an expression deeper than a cry. 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. THE STORM--THE TWO TOGETHER A light flapped over the scene, as if reflected from phosphorescent wings crossing the sky, and a rumble filled the air. It was the first move of the approaching storm. The second peal was noisy, with comparatively little visible lightning. Gabriel saw a candle shining in Bathsheba's bedroom, and soon a shadow swept to and fro upon the blind. Then there came a third flash. Manoeuvres of a most extraordinary kind were going on in the vast firmamental hollows overhead. The lightning now was the colour of silver, and gleamed in the heavens like a mailed army. Rumbles became rattles. Gabriel from his elevated position could see over the landscape at least half-a-dozen miles in front. Every hedge, bush, and tree was distinct as in a line engraving. In a paddock in the same direction was a herd of heifers, and the forms of these were visible at this moment in the act of galloping about in the wildest and maddest confusion, flinging their heels and tails high into the air, their heads to earth. A poplar in the immediate foreground was like an ink stroke on burnished tin. Then the picture vanished, leaving the darkness so intense that Gabriel worked entirely by feeling with his hands. He had stuck his ricking-rod, or poniard, as it was indifferently called--a long iron lance, polished by handling--into the stack, used to support the sheaves instead of the support called a groom used on houses. A blue light appeared in the zenith, and in some indescribable manner flickered down near the top of the rod. It was the fourth of the larger flashes. A moment later and there was a smack--smart, clear, and short. Gabriel felt his position to be anything but a safe one, and he resolved to descend. Not a drop of rain had fallen as yet. He wiped his weary brow, and looked again at the black forms of the unprotected stacks. Was his life so valuable to him after all? What were his prospects that he should be so chary of running risk, when important and urgent labour could not be carried on without such risk? He resolved to stick to the stack. However, he took a precaution. Under the staddles was a long tethering chain, used to prevent the escape of errant horses. This he carried up the ladder, and sticking his rod through the clog at one end, allowed the other end of the chain to trail upon the ground. The spike attached to it he drove in. Under the shadow of this extemporized lightning-conductor he felt himself comparatively safe. Before Oak had laid his hands upon his tools again out leapt the fifth flash, with the spring of a serpent and the shout of a fiend. It was green as an emerald, and the reverberation was stunning. What was this the light revealed to him? In the open ground before him, as he looked over the ridge of the rick, was a dark and apparently female form. Could it be that of the only venturesome woman in the parish--Bathsheba? The form moved on a step: then he could see no more. "Is that you, ma'am?" said Gabriel to the darkness. "Who is there?" said the voice of Bathsheba. "Gabriel. I am on the rick, thatching." "Oh, Gabriel!--and are you? I have come about them. The weather awoke me, and I thought of the corn. I am so distressed about it--can we save it anyhow? I cannot find my husband. Is he with you?" "He is not here." "Do you know where he is?" "Asleep in the barn." "He promised that the stacks should be seen to, and now they are all neglected! Can I do anything to help? Liddy is afraid to come out. Fancy finding you here at such an hour! Surely I can do something?" "You can bring up some reed-sheaves to me, one by one, ma'am; if you are not afraid to come up the ladder in the dark," said Gabriel. "Every moment is precious now, and that would save a good deal of time. It is not very dark when the lightning has been gone a bit." "I'll do anything!" she said, resolutely. She instantly took a sheaf upon her shoulder, clambered up close to his heels, placed it behind the rod, and descended for another. At her third ascent the rick suddenly brightened with the brazen glare of shining majolica--every knot in every straw was visible. On the slope in front of him appeared two human shapes, black as jet. The rick lost its sheen--the shapes vanished. Gabriel turned his head. It had been the sixth flash which had come from the east behind him, and the two dark forms on the slope had been the shadows of himself and Bathsheba. Then came the peal. It hardly was credible that such a heavenly light could be the parent of such a diabolical sound. "How terrible!" she exclaimed, and clutched him by the sleeve. Gabriel turned, and steadied her on her aerial perch by holding her arm. At the same moment, while he was still reversed in his attitude, there was more light, and he saw, as it were, a copy of the tall poplar tree on the hill drawn in black on the wall of the barn. It was the shadow of that tree, thrown across by a secondary flash in the west. The next flare came. Bathsheba was on the ground now, shouldering another sheaf, and she bore its dazzle without flinching--thunder and all--and again ascended with the load. There was then a silence everywhere for four or five minutes, and the crunch of the spars, as Gabriel hastily drove them in, could again be distinctly heard. He thought the crisis of the storm had passed. But there came a burst of light. "Hold on!" said Gabriel, taking the sheaf from her shoulder, and grasping her arm again. Heaven opened then, indeed. The flash was almost too novel for its inexpressibly dangerous nature to be at once realized, and they could only comprehend the magnificence of its beauty. It sprang from east, west, north, south, and was a perfect dance of death. The forms of skeletons appeared in the air, shaped with blue fire for bones--dancing, leaping, striding, racing around, and mingling altogether in unparalleled confusion. With these were intertwined undulating snakes of green, and behind these was a broad mass of lesser light. Simultaneously came from every part of the tumbling sky what may be called a shout; since, though no shout ever came near it, it was more of the nature of a shout than of anything else earthly. In the meantime one of the grisly forms had alighted upon the point of Gabriel's rod, to run invisibly down it, down the chain, and into the earth. Gabriel was almost blinded, and he could feel Bathsheba's warm arm tremble in his hand--a sensation novel and thrilling enough; but love, life, everything human, seemed small and trifling in such close juxtaposition with an infuriated universe. Oak had hardly time to gather up these impressions into a thought, and to see how strangely the red feather of her hat shone in this light, when the tall tree on the hill before mentioned seemed on fire to a white heat, and a new one among these terrible voices mingled with the last crash of those preceding. It was a stupefying blast, harsh and pitiless, and it fell upon their ears in a dead, flat blow, without that reverberation which lends the tones of a drum to more distant thunder. By the lustre reflected from every part of the earth and from the wide domical scoop above it, he saw that the tree was sliced down the whole length of its tall, straight stem, a huge riband of bark being apparently flung off. The other portion remained erect, and revealed the bared surface as a strip of white down the front. The lightning had struck the tree. A sulphurous smell filled the air; then all was silent, and black as a cave in Hinnom. "We had a narrow escape!" said Gabriel, hurriedly. "You had better go down." Bathsheba said nothing; but he could distinctly hear her rhythmical pants, and the recurrent rustle of the sheaf beside her in response to her frightened pulsations. She descended the ladder, and, on second thoughts, he followed her. The darkness was now impenetrable by the sharpest vision. They both stood still at the bottom, side by side. Bathsheba appeared to think only of the weather--Oak thought only of her just then. At last he said-- "The storm seems to have passed now, at any rate." "I think so too," said Bathsheba. "Though there are multitudes of gleams, look!" The sky was now filled with an incessant light, frequent repetition melting into complete continuity, as an unbroken sound results from the successive strokes on a gong. "Nothing serious," said he. "I cannot understand no rain falling. But Heaven be praised, it is all the better for us. I am now going up again." "Gabriel, you are kinder than I deserve! I will stay and help you yet. Oh, why are not some of the others here!" "They would have been here if they could," said Oak, in a hesitating way. "O, I know it all--all," she said, adding slowly: "They are all asleep in the barn, in a drunken sleep, and my husband among them. That's it, is it not? Don't think I am a timid woman and can't endure things." "I am not certain," said Gabriel. "I will go and see." He crossed to the barn, leaving her there alone. He looked through the chinks of the door. All was in total darkness, as he had left it, and there still arose, as at the former time, the steady buzz of many snores. He felt a zephyr curling about his cheek, and turned. It was Bathsheba's breath--she had followed him, and was looking into the same chink. He endeavoured to put off the immediate and painful subject of their thoughts by remarking gently, "If you'll come back again, miss--ma'am, and hand up a few more; it would save much time." Then Oak went back again, ascended to the top, stepped off the ladder for greater expedition, and went on thatching. She followed, but without a sheaf. "Gabriel," she said, in a strange and impressive voice. Oak looked up at her. She had not spoken since he left the barn. The soft and continual shimmer of the dying lightning showed a marble face high against the black sky of the opposite quarter. Bathsheba was sitting almost on the apex of the stack, her feet gathered up beneath her, and resting on the top round of the ladder. "Yes, mistress," he said. "I suppose you thought that when I galloped away to Bath that night it was on purpose to be married?" "I did at last--not at first," he answered, somewhat surprised at the abruptness with which this new subject was broached. "And others thought so, too?" "Yes." "And you blamed me for it?" "Well--a little." "I thought so. Now, I care a little for your good opinion, and I want to explain something--I have longed to do it ever since I returned, and you looked so gravely at me. For if I were to die--and I may die soon--it would be dreadful that you should always think mistakenly of me. Now, listen." Gabriel ceased his rustling. "I went to Bath that night in the full intention of breaking off my engagement to Mr. Troy. It was owing to circumstances which occurred after I got there that--that we were married. Now, do you see the matter in a new light?" "I do--somewhat." "I must, I suppose, say more, now that I have begun. And perhaps it's no harm, for you are certainly under no delusion that I ever loved you, or that I can have any object in speaking, more than that object I have mentioned. Well, I was alone in a strange city, and the horse was lame. And at last I didn't know what to do. I saw, when it was too late, that scandal might seize hold of me for meeting him alone in that way. But I was coming away, when he suddenly said he had that day seen a woman more beautiful than I, and that his constancy could not be counted on unless I at once became his.... And I was grieved and troubled--" She cleared her voice, and waited a moment, as if to gather breath. "And then, between jealousy and distraction, I married him!" she whispered with desperate impetuosity. Gabriel made no reply. "He was not to blame, for it was perfectly true about--about his seeing somebody else," she quickly added. "And now I don't wish for a single remark from you upon the subject--indeed, I forbid it. I only wanted you to know that misunderstood bit of my history before a time comes when you could never know it.--You want some more sheaves?" She went down the ladder, and the work proceeded. Gabriel soon perceived a languor in the movements of his mistress up and down, and he said to her, gently as a mother-- "I think you had better go indoors now, you are tired. I can finish the rest alone. If the wind does not change the rain is likely to keep off." "If I am useless I will go," said Bathsheba, in a flagging cadence. "But O, if your life should be lost!" "You are not useless; but I would rather not tire you longer. You have done well." "And you better!" she said, gratefully. "Thank you for your devotion, a thousand times, Gabriel! Goodnight--I know you are doing your very best for me." She diminished in the gloom, and vanished, and he heard the latch of the gate fall as she passed through. He worked in a reverie now, musing upon her story, and upon the contradictoriness of that feminine heart which had caused her to speak more warmly to him to-night than she ever had done whilst unmarried and free to speak as warmly as she chose. He was disturbed in his meditation by a grating noise from the coach-house. It was the vane on the roof turning round, and this change in the wind was the signal for a disastrous rain.

Chapters 32-37

https://web.archive.org/web/20210108004047/https://www.gradesaver.com/far-from-the-madding-crowd/study-guide/summary-chapters-32-37

Several weeks pass, with Bathsheba sending word that she has been delayed. Then Cainy Ball comes back to the farm in great excitement, explaining that he saw Bathsheba and Troy together in Bath. Gabriel is alarmed by this news, but feels relieved when later that same night he sees Liddy and Bathsheba driving back to the farm together. Boldwood also sees that Bathsheba has returned and tries to call upon her, but is dismayed to find that she will not receive him. As he makes his way home, Boldwood sees Troy first arriving at his lodging and then departing a short time later with a bag of possessions. Boldwood confronts Troy on the road, and accuses him of having wronged Fanny by not marrying her after her reputation was compromised. Troy replies that he is willing to marry Fanny, but doesn't have the income to do so. Boldwood explains that he believes Bathsheba would have married him if Troy had not distracted her: he now proposes that if Troy leaves Weatherbury and marries Fanny, Boldwood will give him a significant sum of money. Troy agrees to the plan and takes the initial deposit of money from Boldwood. The two men hear the sound of Bathsheba approaching, and Troy explains that the two had a plan to meet. He thinks it would be best to speak with her and break off the relationship so that she is not left wondering what happened. Boldwood reluctantly agrees to let Troy speak to her so long as he can remain hidden and listen to the conversation. Bathsheba greets Troy warmly, telling him that since the house is empty it will be easy for him to come to her. Troy tells her that he just needs to fetch his things and then he will follow her to the farmhouse, and Bathsheba sets off to await her lover. Boldwood is now under the impression that Bathsheba has become involved in a sexual relationship with Troy and, although he is furious, he believes Troy must marry her after all. Troy torments Boldwood by seeming committed to the plan of marrying Fanny, forcing Boldwood to beg him to marry Bathsheba and even offer to pay him to do so. Troy agrees to accept the money and Boldwood asks for a written agreement, so the two men go to Bathsheba' s house to finalize the arrangement and tell her what has happened. Once there, Troy shows Boldwood proof that he is already married to Bathsheba and contemptuously returns the money. Very early the next morning as Coggan and Gabriel are walking by the farmhouse, they glimpse Troy in one of the bedroom windows, and realize this means that he and Bathsheba are married. Troy greets them in a friendly way, discussing his plans to renovate and redecorate the old fashioned farmhouse. He mentions that he will eventually begin contributing to working the farm, but has other matters to settle for the time being. Gabriel is grief-stricken, disappointed, and suspicious of what the marriage may mean for the future of the farm. A few weeks later, at the end of August, the harvest-supper is being held to celebrate at the farm. As he approaches the festivities, Gabriel notes that the weather suggests a severe storm is coming, and that much of the harvest has been left out and unprotected. Gabriel goes in to the supper, where everyone is celebrating by drinking and dancing, and tries to tell Troy that the harvested crops should be protected before the rain starts. Troy ignores him, and begins serving large amounts of alcohol to all the men gathered at the party. Since he is not interested in drinking, Gabriel leaves the party. As he passes through the farm, the behavior of various animals convinces him that there is going to be a violent thunderstorm, and then severe rain. Gabriel knows that if the crops are ruined by the storm, there will be a huge economic loss and he returns to the party to get help covering them up. However, everyone there has drunk themselves into a stupor, so Gabriel gathers the necessary supplies alone. He is still at work when the thunder and lightning begin, putting him in a hazardous position. Bathsheba joins him, eager to help and try and protect as many of her crops as she can. The two of them go to the barn to see if anyone can help them, but after confirming that the other men are all too drunk to help, they continue to work alone. As they work, Bathsheba explains that she did not leave for Bath intending to marry Troy. Instead, she went planning to end their relationship. When she got there, she became worried by the idea that her reputation might be damaged and Troy made her jealous by telling her he had seen a woman who was more beautiful than she was. She married him impulsively as a result. When the rain starts, Bathsheba leaves and Gabriel works all night to finish the task. In the morning, he runs into Boldwood as he is making his way home. Boldwood explains that he had been too distracted to cover his crops, and that now much of it has been ruined. Gabriel realizes how devastated Boldwood is by Bathsheba's marriage.

The lack of news from Bathsheba leaves everyone in suspense, particularly Boldwood and Gabriel. Boldwood is still determined to end the relationship between Bathsheba and Troy, and he is willing to use Fanny as a bargaining tool. Interestingly, if Boldwood truly believes Troy to be an unsuitable husband, he should not be so willing to urge him to marry Fanny. Possibly because Fanny's working-class background makes him less protective of her, but more likely because it will serve his own interest, Boldwood offers Troy money in exchange for a promise to marry Fanny. By offering this exchange, Boldwood demonstrates that he sees profit as being central to most people's motives, and also that he assumes money is a key factor in choosing a marriage partner. His assumption that someone would naturally want to marry their wealthiest option is part of why he finds it so hard to understand that Bathsheba might prefer another man rather than him. Despite his cynicism, Boldwood is still quite naive, which leads him to be cruelly tricked and tormented by Troy. Troy puts Boldwood in the torturous position of having to beg his enemy and rival to marry the woman he loves. On one hand, his willingness to do so seems to suggest that Boldwood is capable of putting Bathsheba first, and prioritizing the need to protect her reputation. On the other hand, his insistence that she and Troy marry once he comes to believe that they are sleeping together perhaps also suggests that he is somewhat disgusted by the idea of the woman he has placed on a pedestal now being tainted. Troy is actually quite astute when he criticizes how readily Boldwood fell for the trap, and how quick he was to believe that Bathsheba was sleeping with Troy. Although Boldwood idolizes Bathsheba, he does not seem to have much respect for her. The whole exchange ends up being irrelevant once it is clear that Bathsheba and Troy are already married. Although no one seems happy about this outcome, the marriage is binding and irrevocable. Troy quickly demonstrates that he is out of step with the way of life on the farm; his comments on modernizing the farmhouse show that he does not respect tradition, and that he wants to impose his own values onto a long-held way of life. Events at the harvest supper make this pattern even more clear: Troy quite literally intoxicates and poisons the modest farm workers with substances that are too strong for them to handle. Troy is unable to prioritize the long-term future over short-term gratification; he is used to getting what he wants, and sees no reason to put his responsibilities ahead of his pleasure. By working to protect the crops from the storm, even in a dangerous and unpleasant situation, Gabriel takes his loyalty to Bathsheba and her farm to the most extreme point so far. At this time, as the wife of another man, Gabriel certainly does not have any moral responsibility to help her. Even as her employee, Gabriel would be justified in feeling he had done all he could after he warned Troy and Troy ignored him. Still, he is compelled to do the right thing, even though there can be no possibility of this fidelity being rewarded. Gabriel's totally unselfish loyalty to doing whatever Bathsheba needs contrasts starkly with how the man who actually vowed to protect her behaves.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1130-chapters/2.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra/section_1_part_0.txt

The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra.act i.scene ii

act i, scene ii

{"name": "Act I, Scene ii", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210116191009/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/antony-cleopatra/summary/act-i-scene-ii", "summary": "Charmian and Iras, Cleopatra's maids, chat with a soothsayer . He tells them their fortunes are alike in that their pasts are better than their futures and that they'll both outlive the woman they serve. They tease the soothsayer and dismiss his prophecies. The giggle-fest is broken up when Cleopatra comes in looking for Antony, who was all revelry until he suddenly went into a bad mood thinking about Rome. Cleopatra is a feisty one: she exits when Antony enters so as not to see him, even though she had just sent his man Enobarbus to go find him. Oh, the games! A messenger is telling Antony some bad news: his wife Fulvia went to war with his brother Lucius, but then joined forces with Lucius against Octavius Caesar, who promptly beat them both. Further, Labienus, an old enemy of the Roman triumvirate, has begun to conquer the territories of Asia and the east that Antony is supposed to be ruling. The servant hesitates to hint that maybe this wouldn't have happened if somebody had been paying attention, and Antony admits he needs to hear about his faults. Antony resolves to leave Egypt when he gets the news that his wife is dead. He's often wished for her to be dead, but now that she is, he wishes that it hadn't happened. When Antony tells Enobarbus that he has to leave Egypt, Enobarbus says that will kill Cleopatra. He also suggests to Antony that the death of his wife, Fulvia, is actually a blessing. It makes things far less complicated. Still, Antony is resolved to finish the business Fulvia started in Rome. To make matters worse, Sextus Pompeius, son of Pompey , has begun to gain power at sea and is now challenging Octavius Caesar. Someone's got to help. Antony sends Enobarbus to let Cleopatra know he's got work to attend to in Rome. He's got to go.", "analysis": ""}

SCENE II. Alexandria. CLEOPATRA'S palace Enter CHARMIAN, IRAS, ALEXAS, and a SOOTHSAYER CHARMIAN. Lord Alexas, sweet Alexas, most anything Alexas, almost most absolute Alexas, where's the soothsayer that you prais'd so to th' Queen? O that I knew this husband, which you say must charge his horns with garlands! ALEXAS. Soothsayer! SOOTHSAYER. Your will? CHARMIAN. Is this the man? Is't you, sir, that know things? SOOTHSAYER. In nature's infinite book of secrecy A little I can read. ALEXAS. Show him your hand. Enter ENOBARBUS ENOBARBUS. Bring in the banquet quickly; wine enough Cleopatra's health to drink. CHARMIAN. Good, sir, give me good fortune. SOOTHSAYER. I make not, but foresee. CHARMIAN. Pray, then, foresee me one. SOOTHSAYER. You shall be yet far fairer than you are. CHARMIAN. He means in flesh. IRAS. No, you shall paint when you are old. CHARMIAN. Wrinkles forbid! ALEXAS. Vex not his prescience; be attentive. CHARMIAN. Hush! SOOTHSAYER. You shall be more beloving than beloved. CHARMIAN. I had rather heat my liver with drinking. ALEXAS. Nay, hear him. CHARMIAN. Good now, some excellent fortune! Let me be married to three kings in a forenoon, and widow them all. Let me have a child at fifty, to whom Herod of Jewry may do homage. Find me to marry me with Octavius Caesar, and companion me with my mistress. SOOTHSAYER. You shall outlive the lady whom you serve. CHARMIAN. O, excellent! I love long life better than figs. SOOTHSAYER. You have seen and prov'd a fairer former fortune Than that which is to approach. CHARMIAN. Then belike my children shall have no names. Prithee, how many boys and wenches must I have? SOOTHSAYER. If every of your wishes had a womb, And fertile every wish, a million. CHARMIAN. Out, fool! I forgive thee for a witch. ALEXAS. You think none but your sheets are privy to your wishes. CHARMIAN. Nay, come, tell Iras hers. ALEXAS. We'll know all our fortunes. ENOBARBUS. Mine, and most of our fortunes, to-night, shall be- drunk to bed. IRAS. There's a palm presages chastity, if nothing else. CHARMIAN. E'en as the o'erflowing Nilus presageth famine. IRAS. Go, you wild bedfellow, you cannot soothsay. CHARMIAN. Nay, if an oily palm be not a fruitful prognostication, I cannot scratch mine ear. Prithee, tell her but worky-day fortune. SOOTHSAYER. Your fortunes are alike. IRAS. But how, but how? Give me particulars. SOOTHSAYER. I have said. IRAS. Am I not an inch of fortune better than she? CHARMIAN. Well, if you were but an inch of fortune better than I, where would you choose it? IRAS. Not in my husband's nose. CHARMIAN. Our worser thoughts heavens mend! Alexas- come, his fortune, his fortune! O, let him marry a woman that cannot go, sweet Isis, I beseech thee! And let her die too, and give him a worse! And let worse follow worse, till the worst of all follow him laughing to his grave, fiftyfold a cuckold! Good Isis, hear me this prayer, though thou deny me a matter of more weight; good Isis, I beseech thee! IRAS. Amen. Dear goddess, hear that prayer of the people! For, as it is a heartbreaking to see a handsome man loose-wiv'd, so it is a deadly sorrow to behold a foul knave uncuckolded. Therefore, dear Isis, keep decorum, and fortune him accordingly! CHARMIAN. Amen. ALEXAS. Lo now, if it lay in their hands to make me a cuckold, they would make themselves whores but they'ld do't! Enter CLEOPATRA ENOBARBUS. Hush! Here comes Antony. CHARMIAN. Not he; the Queen. CLEOPATRA. Saw you my lord? ENOBARBUS. No, lady. CLEOPATRA. Was he not here? CHARMIAN. No, madam. CLEOPATRA. He was dispos'd to mirth; but on the sudden A Roman thought hath struck him. Enobarbus! ENOBARBUS. Madam? CLEOPATRA. Seek him, and bring him hither. Where's Alexas? ALEXAS. Here, at your service. My lord approaches. Enter ANTONY, with a MESSENGER and attendants CLEOPATRA. We will not look upon him. Go with us. Exeunt CLEOPATRA, ENOBARBUS, and the rest MESSENGER. Fulvia thy wife first came into the field. ANTONY. Against my brother Lucius? MESSENGER. Ay. But soon that war had end, and the time's state Made friends of them, jointing their force 'gainst Caesar, Whose better issue in the war from Italy Upon the first encounter drave them. ANTONY. Well, what worst? MESSENGER. The nature of bad news infects the teller. ANTONY. When it concerns the fool or coward. On! Things that are past are done with me. 'Tis thus: Who tells me true, though in his tale lie death, I hear him as he flatter'd. MESSENGER. Labienus- This is stiff news- hath with his Parthian force Extended Asia from Euphrates, His conquering banner shook from Syria To Lydia and to Ionia, Whilst- ANTONY. Antony, thou wouldst say. MESSENGER. O, my lord! ANTONY. Speak to me home; mince not the general tongue; Name Cleopatra as she is call'd in Rome. Rail thou in Fulvia's phrase, and taunt my faults With such full licence as both truth and malice Have power to utter. O, then we bring forth weeds When our quick minds lie still, and our ills told us Is as our earing. Fare thee well awhile. MESSENGER. At your noble pleasure. Exit ANTONY. From Sicyon, ho, the news! Speak there! FIRST ATTENDANT. The man from Sicyon- is there such an one? SECOND ATTENDANT. He stays upon your will. ANTONY. Let him appear. These strong Egyptian fetters I must break, Or lose myself in dotage. Enter another MESSENGER with a letter What are you? SECOND MESSENGER. Fulvia thy wife is dead. ANTONY. Where died she? SECOND MESSENGER. In Sicyon. Her length of sickness, with what else more serious Importeth thee to know, this bears. [Gives the letter] ANTONY. Forbear me. Exit MESSENGER There's a great spirit gone! Thus did I desire it. What our contempts doth often hurl from us We wish it ours again; the present pleasure, By revolution low'ring, does become The opposite of itself. She's good, being gone; The hand could pluck her back that shov'd her on. I must from this enchanting queen break off. Ten thousand harms, more than the ills I know, My idleness doth hatch. How now, Enobarbus! Re-enter ENOBARBUS ENOBARBUS. What's your pleasure, sir? ANTONY. I must with haste from hence. ENOBARBUS. Why, then we kill all our women. We see how mortal an unkindness is to them; if they suffer our departure, death's the word. ANTONY. I must be gone. ENOBARBUS. Under a compelling occasion, let women die. It were pity to cast them away for nothing, though between them and a great cause they should be esteemed nothing. Cleopatra, catching but the least noise of this, dies instantly; I have seen her die twenty times upon far poorer moment. I do think there is mettle in death, which commits some loving act upon her, she hath such a celerity in dying. ANTONY. She is cunning past man's thought. ENOBARBUS. Alack, sir, no! Her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love. We cannot call her winds and waters sighs and tears; they are greater storms and tempests than almanacs can report. This cannot be cunning in her; if it be, she makes a show'r of rain as well as Jove. ANTONY. Would I had never seen her! ENOBARBUS. O Sir, you had then left unseen a wonderful piece of work, which not to have been blest withal would have discredited your travel. ANTONY. Fulvia is dead. ENOBARBUS. Sir? ANTONY. Fulvia is dead. ENOBARBUS. Fulvia? ANTONY. Dead. ENOBARBUS. Why, sir, give the gods a thankful sacrifice. When it pleaseth their deities to take the wife of a man from him, it shows to man the tailors of the earth; comforting therein that when old robes are worn out there are members to make new. If there were no more women but Fulvia, then had you indeed a cut, and the case to be lamented. This grief is crown'd with consolation: your old smock brings forth a new petticoat; and indeed the tears live in an onion that should water this sorrow. ANTONY. The business she hath broached in the state Cannot endure my absence. ENOBARBUS. And the business you have broach'd here cannot be without you; especially that of Cleopatra's, which wholly depends on your abode. ANTONY. No more light answers. Let our officers Have notice what we purpose. I shall break The cause of our expedience to the Queen, And get her leave to part. For not alone The death of Fulvia, with more urgent touches, Do strongly speak to us; but the letters to Of many our contriving friends in Rome Petition us at home. Sextus Pompeius Hath given the dare to Caesar, and commands The empire of the sea; our slippery people, Whose love is never link'd to the deserver Till his deserts are past, begin to throw Pompey the Great and all his dignities Upon his son; who, high in name and power, Higher than both in blood and life, stands up For the main soldier; whose quality, going on, The sides o' th' world may danger. Much is breeding Which, like the courser's hair, hath yet but life And not a serpent's poison. Say our pleasure, To such whose place is under us, requires Our quick remove from hence. ENOBARBUS. I shall do't. Exeunt

Act I, Scene ii

https://web.archive.org/web/20210116191009/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/antony-cleopatra/summary/act-i-scene-ii

Charmian and Iras, Cleopatra's maids, chat with a soothsayer . He tells them their fortunes are alike in that their pasts are better than their futures and that they'll both outlive the woman they serve. They tease the soothsayer and dismiss his prophecies. The giggle-fest is broken up when Cleopatra comes in looking for Antony, who was all revelry until he suddenly went into a bad mood thinking about Rome. Cleopatra is a feisty one: she exits when Antony enters so as not to see him, even though she had just sent his man Enobarbus to go find him. Oh, the games! A messenger is telling Antony some bad news: his wife Fulvia went to war with his brother Lucius, but then joined forces with Lucius against Octavius Caesar, who promptly beat them both. Further, Labienus, an old enemy of the Roman triumvirate, has begun to conquer the territories of Asia and the east that Antony is supposed to be ruling. The servant hesitates to hint that maybe this wouldn't have happened if somebody had been paying attention, and Antony admits he needs to hear about his faults. Antony resolves to leave Egypt when he gets the news that his wife is dead. He's often wished for her to be dead, but now that she is, he wishes that it hadn't happened. When Antony tells Enobarbus that he has to leave Egypt, Enobarbus says that will kill Cleopatra. He also suggests to Antony that the death of his wife, Fulvia, is actually a blessing. It makes things far less complicated. Still, Antony is resolved to finish the business Fulvia started in Rome. To make matters worse, Sextus Pompeius, son of Pompey , has begun to gain power at sea and is now challenging Octavius Caesar. Someone's got to help. Antony sends Enobarbus to let Cleopatra know he's got work to attend to in Rome. He's got to go.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/11.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Far from the Madding Crowd/section_10_part_0.txt

Far from the Madding Crowd.chapter 11

chapter 11

{"name": "Chapter 11", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-11", "summary": "Hours later, in snow and darkness, a figure appeared on the public path that was bordered by a river. In the background could be heard the constant gurgling of water. The figure was counting out the windows of a barracks. Stopping at the fifth, it threw a small snowball which \"smacked against the wall at a point several yards from its mark. The throw was the idea of a man conjoined with the execution of a woman. No man . . . could possibly have thrown with such utter imbecility as was shown here.\" After many efforts, the girl finally struck the proper window. The window opened and a man's voice asked who was there. The girl identified herself as Fanny Robin. She regarded herself as Sergeant Troy's wife because of his frequent promises, and she wished to publish their marriage banns. They agreed to meet the next day. Then she went away, amid the guffaws of Troy's companions.", "analysis": "Hardy lets the weather serve to show the interrelation between atmospheric conditions and mood. The approach of winter is well portrayed, and the bleakness of the barracks territory reflects Fanny's dismal situation. The tall \"verticality\" of the barracks wall is dramatically contrasted with the smallness of the little waif; her credulity is contrasted with Troy's blustering. Using nature to mirror mood or situation is a common device in Hardy. Note the seasons in which major events occur throughout the book. Spring is often a time of happiness and renewal; winter, a time of death and despair."}

OUTSIDE THE BARRACKS--SNOW--A MEETING For dreariness nothing could surpass a prospect in the outskirts of a certain town and military station, many miles north of Weatherbury, at a later hour on this same snowy evening--if that may be called a prospect of which the chief constituent was darkness. It was a night when sorrow may come to the brightest without causing any great sense of incongruity: when, with impressible persons, love becomes solicitousness, hope sinks to misgiving, and faith to hope: when the exercise of memory does not stir feelings of regret at opportunities for ambition that have been passed by, and anticipation does not prompt to enterprise. The scene was a public path, bordered on the left hand by a river, behind which rose a high wall. On the right was a tract of land, partly meadow and partly moor, reaching, at its remote verge, to a wide undulating upland. The changes of the seasons are less obtrusive on spots of this kind than amid woodland scenery. Still, to a close observer, they are just as perceptible; the difference is that their media of manifestation are less trite and familiar than such well-known ones as the bursting of the buds or the fall of the leaf. Many are not so stealthy and gradual as we may be apt to imagine in considering the general torpidity of a moor or waste. Winter, in coming to the country hereabout, advanced in well-marked stages, wherein might have been successively observed the retreat of the snakes, the transformation of the ferns, the filling of the pools, a rising of fogs, the embrowning by frost, the collapse of the fungi, and an obliteration by snow. This climax of the series had been reached to-night on the aforesaid moor, and for the first time in the season its irregularities were forms without features; suggestive of anything, proclaiming nothing, and without more character than that of being the limit of something else--the lowest layer of a firmament of snow. From this chaotic skyful of crowding flakes the mead and moor momentarily received additional clothing, only to appear momentarily more naked thereby. The vast arch of cloud above was strangely low, and formed as it were the roof of a large dark cavern, gradually sinking in upon its floor; for the instinctive thought was that the snow lining the heavens and that encrusting the earth would soon unite into one mass without any intervening stratum of air at all. We turn our attention to the left-hand characteristics; which were flatness in respect of the river, verticality in respect of the wall behind it, and darkness as to both. These features made up the mass. If anything could be darker than the sky, it was the wall, and if any thing could be gloomier than the wall it was the river beneath. The indistinct summit of the facade was notched and pronged by chimneys here and there, and upon its face were faintly signified the oblong shapes of windows, though only in the upper part. Below, down to the water's edge, the flat was unbroken by hole or projection. An indescribable succession of dull blows, perplexing in their regularity, sent their sound with difficulty through the fluffy atmosphere. It was a neighbouring clock striking ten. The bell was in the open air, and being overlaid with several inches of muffling snow, had lost its voice for the time. About this hour the snow abated: ten flakes fell where twenty had fallen, then one had the room of ten. Not long after a form moved by the brink of the river. By its outline upon the colourless background, a close observer might have seen that it was small. This was all that was positively discoverable, though it seemed human. The shape went slowly along, but without much exertion, for the snow, though sudden, was not as yet more than two inches deep. At this time some words were spoken aloud:-- "One. Two. Three. Four. Five." Between each utterance the little shape advanced about half a dozen yards. It was evident now that the windows high in the wall were being counted. The word "Five" represented the fifth window from the end of the wall. Here the spot stopped, and dwindled smaller. The figure was stooping. Then a morsel of snow flew across the river towards the fifth window. It smacked against the wall at a point several yards from its mark. The throw was the idea of a man conjoined with the execution of a woman. No man who had ever seen bird, rabbit, or squirrel in his childhood, could possibly have thrown with such utter imbecility as was shown here. Another attempt, and another; till by degrees the wall must have become pimpled with the adhering lumps of snow. At last one fragment struck the fifth window. The river would have been seen by day to be of that deep smooth sort which races middle and sides with the same gliding precision, any irregularities of speed being immediately corrected by a small whirlpool. Nothing was heard in reply to the signal but the gurgle and cluck of one of these invisible wheels--together with a few small sounds which a sad man would have called moans, and a happy man laughter--caused by the flapping of the waters against trifling objects in other parts of the stream. The window was struck again in the same manner. Then a noise was heard, apparently produced by the opening of the window. This was followed by a voice from the same quarter. "Who's there?" The tones were masculine, and not those of surprise. The high wall being that of a barrack, and marriage being looked upon with disfavour in the army, assignations and communications had probably been made across the river before to-night. "Is it Sergeant Troy?" said the blurred spot in the snow, tremulously. This person was so much like a mere shade upon the earth, and the other speaker so much a part of the building, that one would have said the wall was holding a conversation with the snow. "Yes," came suspiciously from the shadow. "What girl are you?" "Oh, Frank--don't you know me?" said the spot. "Your wife, Fanny Robin." "Fanny!" said the wall, in utter astonishment. "Yes," said the girl, with a half-suppressed gasp of emotion. There was something in the woman's tone which is not that of the wife, and there was a manner in the man which is rarely a husband's. The dialogue went on: "How did you come here?" "I asked which was your window. Forgive me!" "I did not expect you to-night. Indeed, I did not think you would come at all. It was a wonder you found me here. I am orderly to-morrow." "You said I was to come." "Well--I said that you might." "Yes, I mean that I might. You are glad to see me, Frank?" "Oh yes--of course." "Can you--come to me!" "My dear Fan, no! The bugle has sounded, the barrack gates are closed, and I have no leave. We are all of us as good as in the county gaol till to-morrow morning." "Then I shan't see you till then!" The words were in a faltering tone of disappointment. "How did you get here from Weatherbury?" "I walked--some part of the way--the rest by the carriers." "I am surprised." "Yes--so am I. And Frank, when will it be?" "What?" "That you promised." "I don't quite recollect." "O you do! Don't speak like that. It weighs me to the earth. It makes me say what ought to be said first by you." "Never mind--say it." "O, must I?--it is, when shall we be married, Frank?" "Oh, I see. Well--you have to get proper clothes." "I have money. Will it be by banns or license?" "Banns, I should think." "And we live in two parishes." "Do we? What then?" "My lodgings are in St. Mary's, and this is not. So they will have to be published in both." "Is that the law?" "Yes. O Frank--you think me forward, I am afraid! Don't, dear Frank--will you--for I love you so. And you said lots of times you would marry me, and--and--I--I--I--" "Don't cry, now! It is foolish. If I said so, of course I will." "And shall I put up the banns in my parish, and will you in yours?" "Yes" "To-morrow?" "Not to-morrow. We'll settle in a few days." "You have the permission of the officers?" "No, not yet." "O--how is it? You said you almost had before you left Casterbridge." "The fact is, I forgot to ask. Your coming like this is so sudden and unexpected." "Yes--yes--it is. It was wrong of me to worry you. I'll go away now. Will you come and see me to-morrow, at Mrs. Twills's, in North Street? I don't like to come to the Barracks. There are bad women about, and they think me one." "Quite, so. I'll come to you, my dear. Good-night." "Good-night, Frank--good-night!" And the noise was again heard of a window closing. The little spot moved away. When she passed the corner a subdued exclamation was heard inside the wall. "Ho--ho--Sergeant--ho--ho!" An expostulation followed, but it was indistinct; and it became lost amid a low peal of laughter, which was hardly distinguishable from the gurgle of the tiny whirlpools outside.

Chapter 11

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-11

Hours later, in snow and darkness, a figure appeared on the public path that was bordered by a river. In the background could be heard the constant gurgling of water. The figure was counting out the windows of a barracks. Stopping at the fifth, it threw a small snowball which "smacked against the wall at a point several yards from its mark. The throw was the idea of a man conjoined with the execution of a woman. No man . . . could possibly have thrown with such utter imbecility as was shown here." After many efforts, the girl finally struck the proper window. The window opened and a man's voice asked who was there. The girl identified herself as Fanny Robin. She regarded herself as Sergeant Troy's wife because of his frequent promises, and she wished to publish their marriage banns. They agreed to meet the next day. Then she went away, amid the guffaws of Troy's companions.

Hardy lets the weather serve to show the interrelation between atmospheric conditions and mood. The approach of winter is well portrayed, and the bleakness of the barracks territory reflects Fanny's dismal situation. The tall "verticality" of the barracks wall is dramatically contrasted with the smallness of the little waif; her credulity is contrasted with Troy's blustering. Using nature to mirror mood or situation is a common device in Hardy. Note the seasons in which major events occur throughout the book. Spring is often a time of happiness and renewal; winter, a time of death and despair.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/40.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Sense and Sensibility/section_39_part_0.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 40

chapter 40

{"name": "Chapter 40", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210421140324/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/sense-and-sensibility/summary/chapter-40", "summary": "As soon as the Colonel leaves, Mrs. Jennings pounces upon Elinor, demanding to know what happened between them. Elinor praises the Colonel, saying that he's an exceptional man. There's a misunderstanding: Mrs. Jennings still thinks that Elinor and the Colonel are engaged, while Elinor is thinking of Edward's new lease on life. Mrs. Jennings leaves, after Elinor tells her not to say a word of the news to anyone, not even Lucy. Elinor says she has to write first to Edward , which Mrs. Jennings finds rather odd, considering what she thinks has happened. Mrs. Jennings figures that Elinor wants Edward to be ordained so that he can perform the marriage ceremony. After all this confusion, Mrs. Jennings leaves, then returns, saying that she knows a woman who could be a good lady's maid - she means for Elinor, but Elinor thinks she means for Lucy. Whew! We're a little confused, too. As Elinor sits down to write her letter of good news to Edward, he himself shows up at her door. She's totally shocked. Edward has come by to say goodbye - he's on his way out of London , and wanted to see Elinor and Marianne one last time. Elinor delivers her good news about Colonel Brandon's offer. Edward is astonished and doesn't know what to say. Elinor assures him of Colonel Brandon's good character, and says that he'll be a great neighbor to have. Edward looks oddly serious for a man who just got offered a job - clearly, he also believes that Elinor is engaged to the Colonel. Edward asks for Colonel Brandon's address, and goes off to thank him. Elinor resigns herself to the fact that the next time she sees Edward, he'll be married to Lucy. Mrs. Jennings comes home, practically bursting with her untold secret . They keep talking in their confused way about the matters at hand. Elinor says that the situation has to wait two or three months while Edward gets ordained; Mrs. Jennings is surprised that Colonel Brandon is willing to wait so long - can't they find someone else who's already ordained? Elinor is taken aback by this suggestion; after all, the point of all of this is to help Edward. Mrs. Jennings is shocked: is Colonel Brandon marrying Elinor simply to help Edward out? This question makes the misunderstanding clear - Elinor explains the facts of the situation to Mrs. Jennings, who's pleased by the news that the Colonel is helping Edward and Lucy. However, she still has hopes that Elinor and the Colonel will make a match.", "analysis": ""}

"Well, Miss Dashwood," said Mrs. Jennings, sagaciously smiling, as soon as the gentleman had withdrawn, "I do not ask you what the Colonel has been saying to you; for though, upon my honour, I TRIED to keep out of hearing, I could not help catching enough to understand his business. And I assure you I never was better pleased in my life, and I wish you joy of it with all my heart." "Thank you, ma'am," said Elinor. "It is a matter of great joy to me; and I feel the goodness of Colonel Brandon most sensibly. There are not many men who would act as he has done. Few people who have so compassionate a heart! I never was more astonished in my life." "Lord! my dear, you are very modest. I an't the least astonished at it in the world, for I have often thought of late, there was nothing more likely to happen." "You judged from your knowledge of the Colonel's general benevolence; but at least you could not foresee that the opportunity would so very soon occur." "Opportunity!" repeated Mrs. Jennings--"Oh! as to that, when a man has once made up his mind to such a thing, somehow or other he will soon find an opportunity. Well, my dear, I wish you joy of it again and again; and if ever there was a happy couple in the world, I think I shall soon know where to look for them." "You mean to go to Delaford after them I suppose," said Elinor, with a faint smile. "Aye, my dear, that I do, indeed. And as to the house being a bad one, I do not know what the Colonel would be at, for it is as good a one as ever I saw." "He spoke of its being out of repair." "Well, and whose fault is that? why don't he repair it?--who should do it but himself?" They were interrupted by the servant's coming in to announce the carriage being at the door; and Mrs. Jennings immediately preparing to go, said,-- "Well, my dear, I must be gone before I have had half my talk out. But, however, we may have it all over in the evening; for we shall be quite alone. I do not ask you to go with me, for I dare say your mind is too full of the matter to care for company; and besides, you must long to tell your sister all about it." Marianne had left the room before the conversation began. "Certainly, ma'am, I shall tell Marianne of it; but I shall not mention it at present to any body else." "Oh! very well," said Mrs. Jennings rather disappointed. "Then you would not have me tell it to Lucy, for I think of going as far as Holborn to-day." "No, ma'am, not even Lucy if you please. One day's delay will not be very material; and till I have written to Mr. Ferrars, I think it ought not to be mentioned to any body else. I shall do THAT directly. It is of importance that no time should be lost with him, for he will of course have much to do relative to his ordination." This speech at first puzzled Mrs. Jennings exceedingly. Why Mr. Ferrars was to have been written to about it in such a hurry, she could not immediately comprehend. A few moments' reflection, however, produced a very happy idea, and she exclaimed;-- "Oh, ho!--I understand you. Mr. Ferrars is to be the man. Well, so much the better for him. Ay, to be sure, he must be ordained in readiness; and I am very glad to find things are so forward between you. But, my dear, is not this rather out of character? Should not the Colonel write himself?--sure, he is the proper person." Elinor did not quite understand the beginning of Mrs. Jennings's speech, neither did she think it worth inquiring into; and therefore only replied to its conclusion. "Colonel Brandon is so delicate a man, that he rather wished any one to announce his intentions to Mr. Ferrars than himself." "And so YOU are forced to do it. Well THAT is an odd kind of delicacy! However, I will not disturb you (seeing her preparing to write.) You know your own concerns best. So goodby, my dear. I have not heard of any thing to please me so well since Charlotte was brought to bed." And away she went; but returning again in a moment, "I have just been thinking of Betty's sister, my dear. I should be very glad to get her so good a mistress. But whether she would do for a lady's maid, I am sure I can't tell. She is an excellent housemaid, and works very well at her needle. However, you will think of all that at your leisure." "Certainly, ma'am," replied Elinor, not hearing much of what she said, and more anxious to be alone, than to be mistress of the subject. How she should begin--how she should express herself in her note to Edward, was now all her concern. The particular circumstances between them made a difficulty of that which to any other person would have been the easiest thing in the world; but she equally feared to say too much or too little, and sat deliberating over her paper, with the pen in her hand, till broken in on by the entrance of Edward himself. He had met Mrs. Jennings at the door in her way to the carriage, as he came to leave his farewell card; and she, after apologising for not returning herself, had obliged him to enter, by saying that Miss Dashwood was above, and wanted to speak with him on very particular business. Elinor had just been congratulating herself, in the midst of her perplexity, that however difficult it might be to express herself properly by letter, it was at least preferable to giving the information by word of mouth, when her visitor entered, to force her upon this greatest exertion of all. Her astonishment and confusion were very great on his so sudden appearance. She had not seen him before since his engagement became public, and therefore not since his knowing her to be acquainted with it; which, with the consciousness of what she had been thinking of, and what she had to tell him, made her feel particularly uncomfortable for some minutes. He too was much distressed; and they sat down together in a most promising state of embarrassment.--Whether he had asked her pardon for his intrusion on first coming into the room, he could not recollect; but determining to be on the safe side, he made his apology in form as soon as he could say any thing, after taking a chair. "Mrs. Jennings told me," said he, "that you wished to speak with me, at least I understood her so--or I certainly should not have intruded on you in such a manner; though at the same time, I should have been extremely sorry to leave London without seeing you and your sister; especially as it will most likely be some time--it is not probable that I should soon have the pleasure of meeting you again. I go to Oxford tomorrow." "You would not have gone, however," said Elinor, recovering herself, and determined to get over what she so much dreaded as soon as possible, "without receiving our good wishes, even if we had not been able to give them in person. Mrs. Jennings was quite right in what she said. I have something of consequence to inform you of, which I was on the point of communicating by paper. I am charged with a most agreeable office (breathing rather faster than usual as she spoke.) Colonel Brandon, who was here only ten minutes ago, has desired me to say, that understanding you mean to take orders, he has great pleasure in offering you the living of Delaford now just vacant, and only wishes it were more valuable. Allow me to congratulate you on having so respectable and well-judging a friend, and to join in his wish that the living--it is about two hundred a-year--were much more considerable, and such as might better enable you to--as might be more than a temporary accommodation to yourself--such, in short, as might establish all your views of happiness." What Edward felt, as he could not say it himself, it cannot be expected that any one else should say for him. He LOOKED all the astonishment which such unexpected, such unthought-of information could not fail of exciting; but he said only these two words, "Colonel Brandon!" "Yes," continued Elinor, gathering more resolution, as some of the worst was over, "Colonel Brandon means it as a testimony of his concern for what has lately passed--for the cruel situation in which the unjustifiable conduct of your family has placed you--a concern which I am sure Marianne, myself, and all your friends, must share; and likewise as a proof of his high esteem for your general character, and his particular approbation of your behaviour on the present occasion." "Colonel Brandon give ME a living!--Can it be possible?" "The unkindness of your own relations has made you astonished to find friendship any where." "No," replied he, with sudden consciousness, "not to find it in YOU; for I cannot be ignorant that to you, to your goodness, I owe it all.--I feel it--I would express it if I could--but, as you well know, I am no orator." "You are very much mistaken. I do assure you that you owe it entirely, at least almost entirely, to your own merit, and Colonel Brandon's discernment of it. I have had no hand in it. I did not even know, till I understood his design, that the living was vacant; nor had it ever occurred to me that he might have had such a living in his gift. As a friend of mine, of my family, he may, perhaps--indeed I know he HAS, still greater pleasure in bestowing it; but, upon my word, you owe nothing to my solicitation." Truth obliged her to acknowledge some small share in the action, but she was at the same time so unwilling to appear as the benefactress of Edward, that she acknowledged it with hesitation; which probably contributed to fix that suspicion in his mind which had recently entered it. For a short time he sat deep in thought, after Elinor had ceased to speak;--at last, and as if it were rather an effort, he said, "Colonel Brandon seems a man of great worth and respectability. I have always heard him spoken of as such, and your brother I know esteems him highly. He is undoubtedly a sensible man, and in his manners perfectly the gentleman." "Indeed," replied Elinor, "I believe that you will find him, on farther acquaintance, all that you have heard him to be, and as you will be such very near neighbours (for I understand the parsonage is almost close to the mansion-house,) it is particularly important that he SHOULD be all this." Edward made no answer; but when she had turned away her head, gave her a look so serious, so earnest, so uncheerful, as seemed to say, that he might hereafter wish the distance between the parsonage and the mansion-house much greater. "Colonel Brandon, I think, lodges in St. James Street," said he, soon afterwards, rising from his chair. Elinor told him the number of the house. "I must hurry away then, to give him those thanks which you will not allow me to give YOU; to assure him that he has made me a very--an exceedingly happy man." Elinor did not offer to detain him; and they parted, with a very earnest assurance on HER side of her unceasing good wishes for his happiness in every change of situation that might befall him; on HIS, with rather an attempt to return the same good will, than the power of expressing it. "When I see him again," said Elinor to herself, as the door shut him out, "I shall see him the husband of Lucy." And with this pleasing anticipation, she sat down to reconsider the past, recall the words and endeavour to comprehend all the feelings of Edward; and, of course, to reflect on her own with discontent. When Mrs. Jennings came home, though she returned from seeing people whom she had never seen before, and of whom therefore she must have a great deal to say, her mind was so much more occupied by the important secret in her possession, than by anything else, that she reverted to it again as soon as Elinor appeared. "Well, my dear," she cried, "I sent you up the young man. Did not I do right?--And I suppose you had no great difficulty--You did not find him very unwilling to accept your proposal?" "No, ma'am; THAT was not very likely." "Well, and how soon will he be ready?--For it seems all to depend upon that." "Really," said Elinor, "I know so little of these kind of forms, that I can hardly even conjecture as to the time, or the preparation necessary; but I suppose two or three months will complete his ordination." "Two or three months!" cried Mrs. Jennings; "Lord! my dear, how calmly you talk of it; and can the Colonel wait two or three months! Lord bless me!--I am sure it would put ME quite out of patience!--And though one would be very glad to do a kindness by poor Mr. Ferrars, I do think it is not worth while to wait two or three months for him. Sure somebody else might be found that would do as well; somebody that is in orders already." "My dear ma'am," said Elinor, "what can you be thinking of?-- Why, Colonel Brandon's only object is to be of use to Mr. Ferrars." "Lord bless you, my dear!--Sure you do not mean to persuade me that the Colonel only marries you for the sake of giving ten guineas to Mr. Ferrars!" The deception could not continue after this; and an explanation immediately took place, by which both gained considerable amusement for the moment, without any material loss of happiness to either, for Mrs. Jennings only exchanged one form of delight for another, and still without forfeiting her expectation of the first. "Aye, aye, the parsonage is but a small one," said she, after the first ebullition of surprise and satisfaction was over, "and very likely MAY be out of repair; but to hear a man apologising, as I thought, for a house that to my knowledge has five sitting rooms on the ground-floor, and I think the housekeeper told me could make up fifteen beds!--and to you too, that had been used to live in Barton cottage!-- It seems quite ridiculous. But, my dear, we must touch up the Colonel to do some thing to the parsonage, and make it comfortable for them, before Lucy goes to it." "But Colonel Brandon does not seem to have any idea of the living's being enough to allow them to marry." "The Colonel is a ninny, my dear; because he has two thousand a-year himself, he thinks that nobody else can marry on less. Take my word for it, that, if I am alive, I shall be paying a visit at Delaford Parsonage before Michaelmas; and I am sure I shan't go if Lucy an't there." Elinor was quite of her opinion, as to the probability of their not waiting for any thing more.

Chapter 40

https://web.archive.org/web/20210421140324/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/sense-and-sensibility/summary/chapter-40

As soon as the Colonel leaves, Mrs. Jennings pounces upon Elinor, demanding to know what happened between them. Elinor praises the Colonel, saying that he's an exceptional man. There's a misunderstanding: Mrs. Jennings still thinks that Elinor and the Colonel are engaged, while Elinor is thinking of Edward's new lease on life. Mrs. Jennings leaves, after Elinor tells her not to say a word of the news to anyone, not even Lucy. Elinor says she has to write first to Edward , which Mrs. Jennings finds rather odd, considering what she thinks has happened. Mrs. Jennings figures that Elinor wants Edward to be ordained so that he can perform the marriage ceremony. After all this confusion, Mrs. Jennings leaves, then returns, saying that she knows a woman who could be a good lady's maid - she means for Elinor, but Elinor thinks she means for Lucy. Whew! We're a little confused, too. As Elinor sits down to write her letter of good news to Edward, he himself shows up at her door. She's totally shocked. Edward has come by to say goodbye - he's on his way out of London , and wanted to see Elinor and Marianne one last time. Elinor delivers her good news about Colonel Brandon's offer. Edward is astonished and doesn't know what to say. Elinor assures him of Colonel Brandon's good character, and says that he'll be a great neighbor to have. Edward looks oddly serious for a man who just got offered a job - clearly, he also believes that Elinor is engaged to the Colonel. Edward asks for Colonel Brandon's address, and goes off to thank him. Elinor resigns herself to the fact that the next time she sees Edward, he'll be married to Lucy. Mrs. Jennings comes home, practically bursting with her untold secret . They keep talking in their confused way about the matters at hand. Elinor says that the situation has to wait two or three months while Edward gets ordained; Mrs. Jennings is surprised that Colonel Brandon is willing to wait so long - can't they find someone else who's already ordained? Elinor is taken aback by this suggestion; after all, the point of all of this is to help Edward. Mrs. Jennings is shocked: is Colonel Brandon marrying Elinor simply to help Edward out? This question makes the misunderstanding clear - Elinor explains the facts of the situation to Mrs. Jennings, who's pleased by the news that the Colonel is helping Edward and Lucy. However, she still has hopes that Elinor and the Colonel will make a match.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/61.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_11_part_8.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 9.chapter 8

book 9, chapter 8

{"name": "book 9, Chapter 8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section12/", "summary": "The Evidence of the Witnesses. The Wee One The problem is that Dmitri has always told people that he spent the entire 3,000 rubles on Grushenka, and the prosecution is now able to produce several witnesses who say that he told them he needed the full 3,000 rubles to repay Katerina", "analysis": ""}

Chapter VIII. The Evidence Of The Witnesses. The Babe The examination of the witnesses began. But we will not continue our story in such detail as before. And so we will not dwell on how Nikolay Parfenovitch impressed on every witness called that he must give his evidence in accordance with truth and conscience, and that he would afterwards have to repeat his evidence on oath, how every witness was called upon to sign the protocol of his evidence, and so on. We will only note that the point principally insisted upon in the examination was the question of the three thousand roubles, that is, was the sum spent here, at Mokroe, by Mitya on the first occasion, a month before, three thousand or fifteen hundred? And again had he spent three thousand or fifteen hundred yesterday? Alas, all the evidence given by every one turned out to be against Mitya. There was not one in his favor, and some witnesses introduced new, almost crushing facts, in contradiction of his, Mitya's, story. The first witness examined was Trifon Borissovitch. He was not in the least abashed as he stood before the lawyers. He had, on the contrary, an air of stern and severe indignation with the accused, which gave him an appearance of truthfulness and personal dignity. He spoke little, and with reserve, waited to be questioned, answered precisely and deliberately. Firmly and unhesitatingly he bore witness that the sum spent a month before could not have been less than three thousand, that all the peasants about here would testify that they had heard the sum of three thousand mentioned by Dmitri Fyodorovitch himself. "What a lot of money he flung away on the gypsy girls alone! He wasted a thousand, I daresay, on them alone." "I don't believe I gave them five hundred," was Mitya's gloomy comment on this. "It's a pity I didn't count the money at the time, but I was drunk...." Mitya was sitting sideways with his back to the curtains. He listened gloomily, with a melancholy and exhausted air, as though he would say: "Oh, say what you like. It makes no difference now." "More than a thousand went on them, Dmitri Fyodorovitch," retorted Trifon Borissovitch firmly. "You flung it about at random and they picked it up. They were a rascally, thievish lot, horse-stealers, they've been driven away from here, or maybe they'd bear witness themselves how much they got from you. I saw the sum in your hands, myself--count it I didn't, you didn't let me, that's true enough--but by the look of it I should say it was far more than fifteen hundred ... fifteen hundred, indeed! We've seen money too. We can judge of amounts...." As for the sum spent yesterday he asserted that Dmitri Fyodorovitch had told him, as soon as he arrived, that he had brought three thousand with him. "Come now, is that so, Trifon Borissovitch?" replied Mitya. "Surely I didn't declare so positively that I'd brought three thousand?" "You did say so, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. You said it before Andrey. Andrey himself is still here. Send for him. And in the hall, when you were treating the chorus, you shouted straight out that you would leave your sixth thousand here--that is with what you spent before, we must understand. Stepan and Semyon heard it, and Pyotr Fomitch Kalganov, too, was standing beside you at the time. Maybe he'd remember it...." The evidence as to the "sixth" thousand made an extraordinary impression on the two lawyers. They were delighted with this new mode of reckoning; three and three made six, three thousand then and three now made six, that was clear. They questioned all the peasants suggested by Trifon Borissovitch, Stepan and Semyon, the driver Andrey, and Kalganov. The peasants and the driver unhesitatingly confirmed Trifon Borissovitch's evidence. They noted down, with particular care, Andrey's account of the conversation he had had with Mitya on the road: " 'Where,' says he, 'am I, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, going, to heaven or to hell, and shall I be forgiven in the next world or not?' " The psychological Ippolit Kirillovitch heard this with a subtle smile, and ended by recommending that these remarks as to where Dmitri Fyodorovitch would go should be "included in the case." Kalganov, when called, came in reluctantly, frowning and ill-humored, and he spoke to the lawyers as though he had never met them before in his life, though they were acquaintances whom he had been meeting every day for a long time past. He began by saying that "he knew nothing about it and didn't want to." But it appeared that he had heard of the "sixth" thousand, and he admitted that he had been standing close by at the moment. As far as he could see he "didn't know" how much money Mitya had in his hands. He affirmed that the Poles had cheated at cards. In reply to reiterated questions he stated that, after the Poles had been turned out, Mitya's position with Agrafena Alexandrovna had certainly improved, and that she had said that she loved him. He spoke of Agrafena Alexandrovna with reserve and respect, as though she had been a lady of the best society, and did not once allow himself to call her Grushenka. In spite of the young man's obvious repugnance at giving evidence, Ippolit Kirillovitch examined him at great length, and only from him learnt all the details of what made up Mitya's "romance," so to say, on that night. Mitya did not once pull Kalganov up. At last they let the young man go, and he left the room with unconcealed indignation. The Poles, too, were examined. Though they had gone to bed in their room, they had not slept all night, and on the arrival of the police officers they hastily dressed and got ready, realizing that they would certainly be sent for. They gave their evidence with dignity, though not without some uneasiness. The little Pole turned out to be a retired official of the twelfth class, who had served in Siberia as a veterinary surgeon. His name was Mussyalovitch. Pan Vrublevsky turned out to be an uncertificated dentist. Although Nikolay Parfenovitch asked them questions on entering the room they both addressed their answers to Mihail Makarovitch, who was standing on one side, taking him in their ignorance for the most important person and in command, and addressed him at every word as "Pan Colonel." Only after several reproofs from Mihail Makarovitch himself, they grasped that they had to address their answers to Nikolay Parfenovitch only. It turned out that they could speak Russian quite correctly except for their accent in some words. Of his relations with Grushenka, past and present, Pan Mussyalovitch spoke proudly and warmly, so that Mitya was roused at once and declared that he would not allow the "scoundrel" to speak like that in his presence! Pan Mussyalovitch at once called attention to the word "scoundrel" and begged that it should be put down in the protocol. Mitya fumed with rage. "He's a scoundrel! A scoundrel! You can put that down. And put down, too, that, in spite of the protocol I still declare that he's a scoundrel!" he cried. Though Nikolay Parfenovitch did insert this in the protocol, he showed the most praiseworthy tact and management. After sternly reprimanding Mitya, he cut short all further inquiry into the romantic aspect of the case, and hastened to pass to what was essential. One piece of evidence given by the Poles roused special interest in the lawyers: that was how, in that very room, Mitya had tried to buy off Pan Mussyalovitch, and had offered him three thousand roubles to resign his claims, seven hundred roubles down, and the remaining two thousand three hundred "to be paid next day in the town." He had sworn at the time that he had not the whole sum with him at Mokroe, but that his money was in the town. Mitya observed hotly that he had not said that he would be sure to pay him the remainder next day in the town. But Pan Vrublevsky confirmed the statement, and Mitya, after thinking for a moment admitted, frowning, that it must have been as the Poles stated, that he had been excited at the time, and might indeed have said so. The prosecutor positively pounced on this piece of evidence. It seemed to establish for the prosecution (and they did, in fact, base this deduction on it) that half, or a part of, the three thousand that had come into Mitya's hands might really have been left somewhere hidden in the town, or even, perhaps, somewhere here, in Mokroe. This would explain the circumstance, so baffling for the prosecution, that only eight hundred roubles were to be found in Mitya's hands. This circumstance had been the one piece of evidence which, insignificant as it was, had hitherto told, to some extent, in Mitya's favor. Now this one piece of evidence in his favor had broken down. In answer to the prosecutor's inquiry, where he would have got the remaining two thousand three hundred roubles, since he himself had denied having more than fifteen hundred, Mitya confidently replied that he had meant to offer the "little chap," not money, but a formal deed of conveyance of his rights to the village of Tchermashnya, those rights which he had already offered to Samsonov and Madame Hohlakov. The prosecutor positively smiled at the "innocence of this subterfuge." "And you imagine he would have accepted such a deed as a substitute for two thousand three hundred roubles in cash?" "He certainly would have accepted it," Mitya declared warmly. "Why, look here, he might have grabbed not two thousand, but four or six, for it. He would have put his lawyers, Poles and Jews, on to the job, and might have got, not three thousand, but the whole property out of the old man." The evidence of Pan Mussyalovitch was, of course, entered in the protocol in the fullest detail. Then they let the Poles go. The incident of the cheating at cards was hardly touched upon. Nikolay Parfenovitch was too well pleased with them, as it was, and did not want to worry them with trifles, moreover, it was nothing but a foolish, drunken quarrel over cards. There had been drinking and disorder enough, that night.... So the two hundred roubles remained in the pockets of the Poles. Then old Maximov was summoned. He came in timidly, approached with little steps, looking very disheveled and depressed. He had, all this time, taken refuge below with Grushenka, sitting dumbly beside her, and "now and then he'd begin blubbering over her and wiping his eyes with a blue check handkerchief," as Mihail Makarovitch described afterwards. So that she herself began trying to pacify and comfort him. The old man at once confessed that he had done wrong, that he had borrowed "ten roubles in my poverty," from Dmitri Fyodorovitch, and that he was ready to pay it back. To Nikolay Parfenovitch's direct question, had he noticed how much money Dmitri Fyodorovitch held in his hand, as he must have been able to see the sum better than any one when he took the note from him, Maximov, in the most positive manner, declared that there was twenty thousand. "Have you ever seen so much as twenty thousand before, then?" inquired Nikolay Parfenovitch, with a smile. "To be sure I have, not twenty, but seven, when my wife mortgaged my little property. She'd only let me look at it from a distance, boasting of it to me. It was a very thick bundle, all rainbow-colored notes. And Dmitri Fyodorovitch's were all rainbow-colored...." He was not kept long. At last it was Grushenka's turn. Nikolay Parfenovitch was obviously apprehensive of the effect her appearance might have on Mitya, and he muttered a few words of admonition to him, but Mitya bowed his head in silence, giving him to understand "that he would not make a scene." Mihail Makarovitch himself led Grushenka in. She entered with a stern and gloomy face, that looked almost composed and sat down quietly on the chair offered her by Nikolay Parfenovitch. She was very pale, she seemed to be cold, and wrapped herself closely in her magnificent black shawl. She was suffering from a slight feverish chill--the first symptom of the long illness which followed that night. Her grave air, her direct earnest look and quiet manner made a very favorable impression on every one. Nikolay Parfenovitch was even a little bit "fascinated." He admitted himself, when talking about it afterwards, that only then had he seen "how handsome the woman was," for, though he had seen her several times before, he had always looked upon her as something of a "provincial hetaira." "She has the manners of the best society," he said enthusiastically, gossiping about her in a circle of ladies. But this was received with positive indignation by the ladies, who immediately called him a "naughty man," to his great satisfaction. As she entered the room, Grushenka only glanced for an instant at Mitya, who looked at her uneasily. But her face reassured him at once. After the first inevitable inquiries and warnings, Nikolay Parfenovitch asked her, hesitating a little, but preserving the most courteous manner, on what terms she was with the retired lieutenant, Dmitri Fyodorovitch Karamazov. To this Grushenka firmly and quietly replied: "He was an acquaintance. He came to see me as an acquaintance during the last month." To further inquisitive questions she answered plainly and with complete frankness, that, though "at times" she had thought him attractive, she had not loved him, but had won his heart as well as his old father's "in my nasty spite," that she had seen that Mitya was very jealous of Fyodor Pavlovitch and every one else; but that had only amused her. She had never meant to go to Fyodor Pavlovitch, she had simply been laughing at him. "I had no thoughts for either of them all this last month. I was expecting another man who had wronged me. But I think," she said in conclusion, "that there's no need for you to inquire about that, nor for me to answer you, for that's my own affair." Nikolay Parfenovitch immediately acted upon this hint. He again dismissed the "romantic" aspect of the case and passed to the serious one, that is, to the question of most importance, concerning the three thousand roubles. Grushenka confirmed the statement that three thousand roubles had certainly been spent on the first carousal at Mokroe, and, though she had not counted the money herself, she had heard that it was three thousand from Dmitri Fyodorovitch's own lips. "Did he tell you that alone, or before some one else, or did you only hear him speak of it to others in your presence?" the prosecutor inquired immediately. To which Grushenka replied that she had heard him say so before other people, and had heard him say so when they were alone. "Did he say it to you alone once, or several times?" inquired the prosecutor, and learned that he had told Grushenka so several times. Ippolit Kirillovitch was very well satisfied with this piece of evidence. Further examination elicited that Grushenka knew, too, where that money had come from, and that Dmitri Fyodorovitch had got it from Katerina Ivanovna. "And did you never, once, hear that the money spent a month ago was not three thousand, but less, and that Dmitri Fyodorovitch had saved half that sum for his own use?" "No, I never heard that," answered Grushenka. It was explained further that Mitya had, on the contrary, often told her that he hadn't a farthing. "He was always expecting to get some from his father," said Grushenka in conclusion. "Did he never say before you ... casually, or in a moment of irritation," Nikolay Parfenovitch put in suddenly, "that he intended to make an attempt on his father's life?" "Ach, he did say so," sighed Grushenka. "Once or several times?" "He mentioned it several times, always in anger." "And did you believe he would do it?" "No, I never believed it," she answered firmly. "I had faith in his noble heart." "Gentlemen, allow me," cried Mitya suddenly, "allow me to say one word to Agrafena Alexandrovna, in your presence." "You can speak," Nikolay Parfenovitch assented. "Agrafena Alexandrovna!" Mitya got up from his chair, "have faith in God and in me. I am not guilty of my father's murder!" Having uttered these words Mitya sat down again on his chair. Grushenka stood up and crossed herself devoutly before the ikon. "Thanks be to Thee, O Lord," she said, in a voice thrilled with emotion, and still standing, she turned to Nikolay Parfenovitch and added: "As he has spoken now, believe it! I know him. He'll say anything as a joke or from obstinacy, but he'll never deceive you against his conscience. He's telling the whole truth, you may believe it." "Thanks, Agrafena Alexandrovna, you've given me fresh courage," Mitya responded in a quivering voice. As to the money spent the previous day, she declared that she did not know what sum it was, but had heard him tell several people that he had three thousand with him. And to the question where he got the money, she said that he had told her that he had "stolen" it from Katerina Ivanovna, and that she had replied to that that he hadn't stolen it, and that he must pay the money back next day. On the prosecutor's asking her emphatically whether the money he said he had stolen from Katerina Ivanovna was what he had spent yesterday, or what he had squandered here a month ago, she declared that he meant the money spent a month ago, and that that was how she understood him. Grushenka was at last released, and Nikolay Parfenovitch informed her impulsively that she might at once return to the town and that if he could be of any assistance to her, with horses for example, or if she would care for an escort, he ... would be-- "I thank you sincerely," said Grushenka, bowing to him, "I'm going with this old gentleman, I am driving him back to town with me, and meanwhile, if you'll allow me, I'll wait below to hear what you decide about Dmitri Fyodorovitch." She went out. Mitya was calm, and even looked more cheerful, but only for a moment. He felt more and more oppressed by a strange physical weakness. His eyes were closing with fatigue. The examination of the witnesses was, at last, over. They proceeded to a final revision of the protocol. Mitya got up, moved from his chair to the corner by the curtain, lay down on a large chest covered with a rug, and instantly fell asleep. He had a strange dream, utterly out of keeping with the place and the time. He was driving somewhere in the steppes, where he had been stationed long ago, and a peasant was driving him in a cart with a pair of horses, through snow and sleet. He was cold, it was early in November, and the snow was falling in big wet flakes, melting as soon as it touched the earth. And the peasant drove him smartly, he had a fair, long beard. He was not an old man, somewhere about fifty, and he had on a gray peasant's smock. Not far off was a village, he could see the black huts, and half the huts were burnt down, there were only the charred beams sticking up. And as they drove in, there were peasant women drawn up along the road, a lot of women, a whole row, all thin and wan, with their faces a sort of brownish color, especially one at the edge, a tall, bony woman, who looked forty, but might have been only twenty, with a long thin face. And in her arms was a little baby crying. And her breasts seemed so dried up that there was not a drop of milk in them. And the child cried and cried, and held out its little bare arms, with its little fists blue from cold. "Why are they crying? Why are they crying?" Mitya asked, as they dashed gayly by. "It's the babe," answered the driver, "the babe weeping." And Mitya was struck by his saying, in his peasant way, "the babe," and he liked the peasant's calling it a "babe." There seemed more pity in it. "But why is it weeping?" Mitya persisted stupidly, "why are its little arms bare? Why don't they wrap it up?" "The babe's cold, its little clothes are frozen and don't warm it." "But why is it? Why?" foolish Mitya still persisted. "Why, they're poor people, burnt out. They've no bread. They're begging because they've been burnt out." "No, no," Mitya, as it were, still did not understand. "Tell me why it is those poor mothers stand there? Why are people poor? Why is the babe poor? Why is the steppe barren? Why don't they hug each other and kiss? Why don't they sing songs of joy? Why are they so dark from black misery? Why don't they feed the babe?" And he felt that, though his questions were unreasonable and senseless, yet he wanted to ask just that, and he had to ask it just in that way. And he felt that a passion of pity, such as he had never known before, was rising in his heart, that he wanted to cry, that he wanted to do something for them all, so that the babe should weep no more, so that the dark- faced, dried-up mother should not weep, that no one should shed tears again from that moment, and he wanted to do it at once, at once, regardless of all obstacles, with all the recklessness of the Karamazovs. "And I'm coming with you. I won't leave you now for the rest of my life, I'm coming with you," he heard close beside him Grushenka's tender voice, thrilling with emotion. And his heart glowed, and he struggled forward towards the light, and he longed to live, to live, to go on and on, towards the new, beckoning light, and to hasten, hasten, now, at once! "What! Where?" he exclaimed opening his eyes, and sitting up on the chest, as though he had revived from a swoon, smiling brightly. Nikolay Parfenovitch was standing over him, suggesting that he should hear the protocol read aloud and sign it. Mitya guessed that he had been asleep an hour or more, but he did not hear Nikolay Parfenovitch. He was suddenly struck by the fact that there was a pillow under his head, which hadn't been there when he had leant back, exhausted, on the chest. "Who put that pillow under my head? Who was so kind?" he cried, with a sort of ecstatic gratitude, and tears in his voice, as though some great kindness had been shown him. He never found out who this kind man was; perhaps one of the peasant witnesses, or Nikolay Parfenovitch's little secretary, had compassionately thought to put a pillow under his head; but his whole soul was quivering with tears. He went to the table and said that he would sign whatever they liked. "I've had a good dream, gentlemen," he said in a strange voice, with a new light, as of joy, in his face.

book 9, Chapter 8

https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section12/

The Evidence of the Witnesses. The Wee One The problem is that Dmitri has always told people that he spent the entire 3,000 rubles on Grushenka, and the prosecution is now able to produce several witnesses who say that he told them he needed the full 3,000 rubles to repay Katerina

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/41.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_5_part_6.txt

Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter xl

chapter xl

{"name": "Chapter XL", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase5-chapter35-44", "summary": "After depositing the diamonds in the bank, Angel sends Tess more money. He meets the former Talbothays milkmaid Izz Huett who tells him of her love for him. He asks her to go to Brazil will him, and she agrees. When he asks if she loves him more than Tess does, she answers \"nobody could love'ee more than Tess did. Angel apologizes and goes to Brazil, and yet again, Izz is devastated", "analysis": ""}

At breakfast Brazil was the topic, and all endeavoured to take a hopeful view of Clare's proposed experiment with that country's soil, notwithstanding the discouraging reports of some farm-labourers who had emigrated thither and returned home within the twelve months. After breakfast Clare went into the little town to wind up such trifling matters as he was concerned with there, and to get from the local bank all the money he possessed. On his way back he encountered Miss Mercy Chant by the church, from whose walls she seemed to be a sort of emanation. She was carrying an armful of Bibles for her class, and such was her view of life that events which produced heartache in others wrought beatific smiles upon her--an enviable result, although, in the opinion of Angel, it was obtained by a curiously unnatural sacrifice of humanity to mysticism. She had learnt that he was about to leave England, and observed what an excellent and promising scheme it seemed to be. "Yes; it is a likely scheme enough in a commercial sense, no doubt," he replied. "But, my dear Mercy, it snaps the continuity of existence. Perhaps a cloister would be preferable." "A cloister! O, Angel Clare!" "Well?" "Why, you wicked man, a cloister implies a monk, and a monk Roman Catholicism." "And Roman Catholicism sin, and sin damnation. Thou art in a parlous state, Angel Clare." "_I_ glory in my Protestantism!" she said severely. Then Clare, thrown by sheer misery into one of the demoniacal moods in which a man does despite to his true principles, called her close to him, and fiendishly whispered in her ear the most heterodox ideas he could think of. His momentary laughter at the horror which appeared on her fair face ceased when it merged in pain and anxiety for his welfare. "Dear Mercy," he said, "you must forgive me. I think I am going crazy!" She thought that he was; and thus the interview ended, and Clare re-entered the Vicarage. With the local banker he deposited the jewels till happier days should arise. He also paid into the bank thirty pounds--to be sent to Tess in a few months, as she might require; and wrote to her at her parents' home in Blackmoor Vale to inform her of what he had done. This amount, with the sum he had already placed in her hands--about fifty pounds--he hoped would be amply sufficient for her wants just at present, particularly as in an emergency she had been directed to apply to his father. He deemed it best not to put his parents into communication with her by informing them of her address; and, being unaware of what had really happened to estrange the two, neither his father nor his mother suggested that he should do so. During the day he left the parsonage, for what he had to complete he wished to get done quickly. As the last duty before leaving this part of England it was necessary for him to call at the Wellbridge farmhouse, in which he had spent with Tess the first three days of their marriage, the trifle of rent having to be paid, the key given up of the rooms they had occupied, and two or three small articles fetched away that they had left behind. It was under this roof that the deepest shadow ever thrown upon his life had stretched its gloom over him. Yet when he had unlocked the door of the sitting-room and looked into it, the memory which returned first upon him was that of their happy arrival on a similar afternoon, the first fresh sense of sharing a habitation conjointly, the first meal together, the chatting by the fire with joined hands. The farmer and his wife were in the field at the moment of his visit, and Clare was in the rooms alone for some time. Inwardly swollen with a renewal of sentiment that he had not quite reckoned with, he went upstairs to her chamber, which had never been his. The bed was smooth as she had made it with her own hands on the morning of leaving. The mistletoe hung under the tester just as he had placed it. Having been there three or four weeks it was turning colour, and the leaves and berries were wrinkled. Angel took it down and crushed it into the grate. Standing there, he for the first time doubted whether his course in this conjecture had been a wise, much less a generous, one. But had he not been cruelly blinded? In the incoherent multitude of his emotions he knelt down at the bedside wet-eyed. "O Tess! If you had only told me sooner, I would have forgiven you!" he mourned. Hearing a footstep below, he rose and went to the top of the stairs. At the bottom of the flight he saw a woman standing, and on her turning up her face recognized the pale, dark-eyed Izz Huett. "Mr Clare," she said, "I've called to see you and Mrs Clare, and to inquire if ye be well. I thought you might be back here again." This was a girl whose secret he had guessed, but who had not yet guessed his; an honest girl who loved him--one who would have made as good, or nearly as good, a practical farmer's wife as Tess. "I am here alone," he said; "we are not living here now." Explaining why he had come, he asked, "Which way are you going home, Izz?" "I have no home at Talbothays Dairy now, sir," she said. "Why is that?" Izz looked down. "It was so dismal there that I left! I am staying out this way." She pointed in a contrary direction, the direction in which he was journeying. "Well--are you going there now? I can take you if you wish for a lift." Her olive complexion grew richer in hue. "Thank 'ee, Mr Clare," she said. He soon found the farmer, and settled the account for his rent and the few other items which had to be considered by reason of the sudden abandonment of the lodgings. On Clare's return to his horse and gig, Izz jumped up beside him. "I am going to leave England, Izz," he said, as they drove on. "Going to Brazil." "And do Mrs Clare like the notion of such a journey?" she asked. "She is not going at present--say for a year or so. I am going out to reconnoitre--to see what life there is like." They sped along eastward for some considerable distance, Izz making no observation. "How are the others?" he inquired. "How is Retty?" "She was in a sort of nervous state when I zid her last; and so thin and hollow-cheeked that 'a do seem in a decline. Nobody will ever fall in love wi' her any more," said Izz absently. "And Marian?" Izz lowered her voice. "Marian drinks." "Indeed!" "Yes. The dairyman has got rid of her." "And you!" "I don't drink, and I bain't in a decline. But--I am no great things at singing afore breakfast now!" "How is that? Do you remember how neatly you used to turn ''Twas down in Cupid's Gardens' and 'The Tailor's Breeches' at morning milking?" "Ah, yes! When you first came, sir, that was. Not when you had been there a bit." "Why was that falling-off?" Her black eyes flashed up to his face for one moment by way of answer. "Izz!--how weak of you--for such as I!" he said, and fell into reverie. "Then--suppose I had asked YOU to marry me?" "If you had I should have said 'Yes', and you would have married a woman who loved 'ee!" "Really!" "Down to the ground!" she whispered vehemently. "O my God! did you never guess it till now!" By-and-by they reached a branch road to a village. "I must get down. I live out there," said Izz abruptly, never having spoken since her avowal. Clare slowed the horse. He was incensed against his fate, bitterly disposed towards social ordinances; for they had cooped him up in a corner, out of which there was no legitimate pathway. Why not be revenged on society by shaping his future domesticities loosely, instead of kissing the pedagogic rod of convention in this ensnaring manner? "I am going to Brazil alone, Izz," said he. "I have separated from my wife for personal, not voyaging, reasons. I may never live with her again. I may not be able to love you; but--will you go with me instead of her?" "You truly wish me to go?" "I do. I have been badly used enough to wish for relief. And you at least love me disinterestedly." "Yes--I will go," said Izz, after a pause. "You will? You know what it means, Izz?" "It means that I shall live with you for the time you are over there--that's good enough for me." "Remember, you are not to trust me in morals now. But I ought to remind you that it will be wrong-doing in the eyes of civilization--Western civilization, that is to say." "I don't mind that; no woman do when it comes to agony-point, and there's no other way!" "Then don't get down, but sit where you are." He drove past the cross-roads, one mile, two miles, without showing any signs of affection. "You love me very, very much, Izz?" he suddenly asked. "I do--I have said I do! I loved you all the time we was at the dairy together!" "More than Tess?" She shook her head. "No," she murmured, "not more than she." "How's that?" "Because nobody could love 'ee more than Tess did! ... She would have laid down her life for 'ee. I could do no more." Like the prophet on the top of Peor, Izz Huett would fain have spoken perversely at such a moment, but the fascination exercised over her rougher nature by Tess's character compelled her to grace. Clare was silent; his heart had risen at these straightforward words from such an unexpected unimpeachable quarter. In his throat was something as if a sob had solidified there. His ears repeated, "SHE WOULD HAVE LAID DOWN HER LIFE FOR 'EE. I COULD DO NO MORE!" "Forget our idle talk, Izz," he said, turning the horse's head suddenly. "I don't know what I've been saying! I will now drive you back to where your lane branches off." "So much for honesty towards 'ee! O--how can I bear it--how can I--how can I!" Izz Huett burst into wild tears, and beat her forehead as she saw what she had done. "Do you regret that poor little act of justice to an absent one? O, Izz, don't spoil it by regret!" She stilled herself by degrees. "Very well, sir. Perhaps I didn't know what I was saying, either, wh--when I agreed to go! I wish--what cannot be!" "Because I have a loving wife already." "Yes, yes! You have!" They reached the corner of the lane which they had passed half an hour earlier, and she hopped down. "Izz--please, please forget my momentary levity!" he cried. "It was so ill-considered, so ill-advised!" "Forget it? Never, never! O, it was no levity to me!" He felt how richly he deserved the reproach that the wounded cry conveyed, and, in a sorrow that was inexpressible, leapt down and took her hand. "Well, but, Izz, we'll part friends, anyhow? You don't know what I've had to bear!" She was a really generous girl, and allowed no further bitterness to mar their adieux. "I forgive 'ee, sir!" she said. "Now, Izz," he said, while she stood beside him there, forcing himself to the mentor's part he was far from feeling; "I want you to tell Marian when you see her that she is to be a good woman, and not to give way to folly. Promise that, and tell Retty that there are more worthy men than I in the world, that for my sake she is to act wisely and well--remember the words--wisely and well--for my sake. I send this message to them as a dying man to the dying; for I shall never see them again. And you, Izzy, you have saved me by your honest words about my wife from an incredible impulse towards folly and treachery. Women may be bad, but they are not so bad as men in these things! On that one account I can never forget you. Be always the good and sincere girl you have hitherto been; and think of me as a worthless lover, but a faithful friend. Promise." She gave the promise. "Heaven bless and keep you, sir. Goodbye!" He drove on; but no sooner had Izz turned into the lane, and Clare was out of sight, than she flung herself down on the bank in a fit of racking anguish; and it was with a strained unnatural face that she entered her mother's cottage late that night. Nobody ever was told how Izz spent the dark hours that intervened between Angel Clare's parting from her and her arrival home. Clare, too, after bidding the girl farewell, was wrought to aching thoughts and quivering lips. But his sorrow was not for Izz. That evening he was within a feather-weight's turn of abandoning his road to the nearest station, and driving across that elevated dorsal line of South Wessex which divided him from his Tess's home. It was neither a contempt for her nature, nor the probable state of her heart, which deterred him. No; it was a sense that, despite her love, as corroborated by Izz's admission, the facts had not changed. If he was right at first, he was right now. And the momentum of the course on which he had embarked tended to keep him going in it, unless diverted by a stronger, more sustained force than had played upon him this afternoon. He could soon come back to her. He took the train that night for London, and five days after shook hands in farewell of his brothers at the port of embarkation.

Chapter XL

https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase5-chapter35-44

After depositing the diamonds in the bank, Angel sends Tess more money. He meets the former Talbothays milkmaid Izz Huett who tells him of her love for him. He asks her to go to Brazil will him, and she agrees. When he asks if she loves him more than Tess does, she answers "nobody could love'ee more than Tess did. Angel apologizes and goes to Brazil, and yet again, Izz is devastated

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/54.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_7_part_1.txt

Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter liii

chapter liii

{"name": "Chapter LIII", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase7-chapter53-59", "summary": "Finally, Angel returns from Brazil. His parents are shocked at his physical appearance: \"so reduced was that figure from his former\". Gaunt and thin from illness, he has aged twenty years. After reading Tess's second letter castigating him for abandoning her, he fears losing her. His mother asks why he cares so much for a \"mere child of the soil,\" at which point Angel retaliates, informing her of Tess's noble lineage. After writing to Tess at Marlott, he hears back from Joan Durbeyfield that Tess has left. He realizes how Tess must have suffered, is overcome by guilt and tells his parents the truth about why the couple split. They surprise him with kind understanding. Then he reads the warning letter from 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."

Chapter LIII

https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase7-chapter53-59

Finally, Angel returns from Brazil. His parents are shocked at his physical appearance: "so reduced was that figure from his former". Gaunt and thin from illness, he has aged twenty years. After reading Tess's second letter castigating him for abandoning her, he fears losing her. His mother asks why he cares so much for a "mere child of the soil," at which point Angel retaliates, informing her of Tess's noble lineage. After writing to Tess at Marlott, he hears back from Joan Durbeyfield that Tess has left. He realizes how Tess must have suffered, is overcome by guilt and tells his parents the truth about why the couple split. They surprise him with kind understanding. Then he reads the warning letter from Marian and Izz

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/10.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_9_part_0.txt

The Red and the Black.part 1.chapter 10

part 1, chapter 10

{"name": "Part 1, Chapter 10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-10", "summary": "Julien walks up to Monsieur de Renal and scolds him for speaking so cruelly to him earlier that day. It's true that Julien slept in, but Monsieur was way overboard in his insults. Julien threatens to take his talents elsewhere. But Monsieur de Renal makes things all better by offering him fifty francs a month. Julien gets permission to go into town. Monsieur de Renal assumes he's going to tell Monsieur's rival, Valenod, that he will keep working for the de Renals. Julien retreats to a nearby mountain and looks over the countryside, wishing that he could conquer it all like Napoleon did.", "analysis": ""}

CHAPTER X A GREAT HEART AND A SMALL FORTUNE But passion most disembles, yet betrays, Even by its darkness, as the blackest sky Foretells the heaviest tempest. _Don Juan_, c. 4, st. 75. M. De Renal was going through all the rooms in the chateau, and he came back into the children's room with the servants who were bringing back the stuffings of the mattresses. The sudden entry of this man had the effect on Julien of the drop of water which makes the pot overflow. Looking paler and more sinister than usual, he rushed towards him. M. de Renal stopped and looked at his servants. "Monsieur," said Julien to him, "Do you think your children would have made the progress they have made with me with any other tutor? If you answer 'No,'" continued Julien so quickly that M. de Renal did not have time to speak, "how dare you reproach me with neglecting them?" M. de Renal, who had scarcely recovered from his fright, concluded from the strange tone he saw this little peasant assume, that he had some advantageous offer in his pocket, and that he was going to leave him. The more he spoke the more Julien's anger increased, "I can live without you, Monsieur," he added. "I am really sorry to see you so upset," answered M. de Renal shuddering a little. The servants were ten yards off engaged in making the beds. "That is not what I mean, Monsieur," replied Julien quite beside himself. "Think of the infamous words that you have addressed to me, and before women too." M. de Renal understood only too well what Julien was asking, and a painful conflict tore his soul. It happened that Julien, who was really mad with rage, cried out, "I know where to go, Monsieur, when I leave your house." At these words M. de Renal saw Julien installed with M. Valenod. "Well, sir," he said at last with a sigh, just as though he had called in a surgeon to perform the most painful operation, "I accede to your request. I will give you fifty francs a month. Starting from the day after to-morrow which is the first of the month." Julien wanted to laugh, and stood there dumbfounded. All his anger had vanished. "I do not despise the brute enough," he said to himself. "I have no doubt that that is the greatest apology that so base a soul can make." The children who had listened to this scene with gaping mouths, ran into the garden to tell their mother that M. Julien was very angry, but that he was going to have fifty francs a month. Julien followed them as a matter of habit without even looking at M. de Renal whom he left in a considerable state of irritation. "That makes one hundred and sixty-eight francs," said the mayor to himself, "that M. Valenod has cost me. I must absolutely speak a few strong words to him about his contract to provide for the foundlings." A minute afterwards Julien found himself opposite M. de Renal. "I want to speak to M. Chelan on a matter of conscience. I have the honour to inform you that I shall be absent some hours." "Why, my dear Julien," said M. de Renal smiling with the falsest expression possible, "take the whole day, and to-morrow too if you like, my good friend. Take the gardener's horse to go to Verrieres." "He is on the very point," said M. de Renal to himself, "of giving an answer to Valenod. He has promised me nothing, but I must let this hot-headed young man have time to cool down." Julien quickly went away, and went up into the great forest, through which one can manage to get from Vergy to Verrieres. He did not wish to arrive at M. Chelan's at once. Far from wishing to cramp himself in a new pose of hypocrisy he needed to see clear in his own soul, and to give audience to the crowd of sentiments which were agitating him. "I have won a battle," he said to himself, as soon as he saw that he was well in the forest, and far from all human gaze. "So I have won a battle." This expression shed a rosy light on his situation, and restored him to some serenity. "Here I am with a salary of fifty francs a month, M. de Renal must be precious afraid, but what of?" This meditation about what could have put fear into the heart of that happy, powerful man against whom he had been boiling with rage only an hour back, completed the restoration to serenity of Julien's soul. He was almost able to enjoy for a moment the delightful beauty of the woods amidst which he was walking. Enormous blocks of bare rocks had fallen down long ago in the middle of the forest by the mountain side. Great cedars towered almost as high as these rocks whose shade caused a delicious freshness within three yards of places where the heat of the sun's rays would have made it impossible to rest. Julien took breath for a moment in the shade of these great rocks, and then he began again to climb. Traversing a narrow path that was scarcely marked, and was only used by the goat herds, he soon found himself standing upon an immense rock with the complete certainty of being far away from all mankind. This physical position made him smile. It symbolised to him the position he was burning to attain in the moral sphere. The pure air of these lovely mountains filled his soul with serenity and even with joy. The mayor of Verrieres still continued to typify in his eyes all the wealth and all the arrogance of the earth; but Julien felt that the hatred that had just thrilled him had nothing personal about it in spite of all the violence which he had manifested. If he had left off seeing M. de Renal he would in eight days have forgotten him, his castle, his dogs, his children and all his family. "I forced him, I don't know how, to make the greatest sacrifice. What? more than fifty crowns a year, and only a minute before I managed to extricate myself from the greatest danger; so there are two victories in one day. The second one is devoid of merit, I must find out the why and the wherefore. But these laborious researches are for to-morrow." Standing up on his great rock, Julien looked at the sky which was all afire with an August sun. The grasshoppers sang in the field about the rock; when they held their peace there was universal silence around him. He saw twenty leagues of country at his feet. He noticed from time to time some hawk, which launching off from the great rocks over his head was describing in silence its immense circles. Julien's eye followed the bird of prey mechanically. Its tranquil powerful movements struck him. He envied that strength, that isolation. "Would Napoleon's destiny be one day his?"

Part 1, Chapter 10

https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-10

Julien walks up to Monsieur de Renal and scolds him for speaking so cruelly to him earlier that day. It's true that Julien slept in, but Monsieur was way overboard in his insults. Julien threatens to take his talents elsewhere. But Monsieur de Renal makes things all better by offering him fifty francs a month. Julien gets permission to go into town. Monsieur de Renal assumes he's going to tell Monsieur's rival, Valenod, that he will keep working for the de Renals. Julien retreats to a nearby mountain and looks over the countryside, wishing that he could conquer it all like Napoleon did.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/45.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Far From the Madding Crowd/section_44_part_0.txt

Far From the Madding Crowd.chapter 45

chapter 45

{"name": "Chapter 45", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-45", "summary": "Now we get to find out what Troy did after parting ways with Bathsheba the night before. The first thing he did was cover up Fanny and their dead child. Next, he went up to his bed and lay awake until the next morning came. Rewind: after getting twenty pounds from Bathsheba, Troy travelled to Casterbridge with the intention of giving it to Fanny. But she never showed up for their meeting. Because he's a guy who doesn't like to be stood up, Troy left and went back to his home in Weatherbury. Little did he know what shock was waiting. Back to the present: Troy leaves his house, not caring where Bathsheba is, and goes to the open grave that's been dug for Fanny in the nearby cemetery. He takes all the money he'd been meaning to give to Fanny and spends it all on a fancy tombstone, which he gets shipped to Weatherbury from Casterbridge. After all that, he heads back to Fanny's grave with a basket full of seeds and bulbs, and starts planting all kinds of flowers around Fanny's grave. At this point, Troy feels a splash of rain on the back of one of his hands, so he stop working and goes to fall asleep in a cemetery building.", "analysis": ""}

TROY'S ROMANTICISM When Troy's wife had left the house at the previous midnight his first act was to cover the dead from sight. This done he ascended the stairs, and throwing himself down upon the bed dressed as he was, he waited miserably for the morning. Fate had dealt grimly with him through the last four-and-twenty hours. His day had been spent in a way which varied very materially from his intentions regarding it. There is always an inertia to be overcome in striking out a new line of conduct--not more in ourselves, it seems, than in circumscribing events, which appear as if leagued together to allow no novelties in the way of amelioration. Twenty pounds having been secured from Bathsheba, he had managed to add to the sum every farthing he could muster on his own account, which had been seven pounds ten. With this money, twenty-seven pounds ten in all, he had hastily driven from the gate that morning to keep his appointment with Fanny Robin. On reaching Casterbridge he left the horse and trap at an inn, and at five minutes before ten came back to the bridge at the lower end of the town, and sat himself upon the parapet. The clocks struck the hour, and no Fanny appeared. In fact, at that moment she was being robed in her grave-clothes by two attendants at the Union poorhouse--the first and last tiring-women the gentle creature had ever been honoured with. The quarter went, the half hour. A rush of recollection came upon Troy as he waited: this was the second time she had broken a serious engagement with him. In anger he vowed it should be the last, and at eleven o'clock, when he had lingered and watched the stone of the bridge till he knew every lichen upon their face and heard the chink of the ripples underneath till they oppressed him, he jumped from his seat, went to the inn for his gig, and in a bitter mood of indifference concerning the past, and recklessness about the future, drove on to Budmouth races. He reached the race-course at two o'clock, and remained either there or in the town till nine. But Fanny's image, as it had appeared to him in the sombre shadows of that Saturday evening, returned to his mind, backed up by Bathsheba's reproaches. He vowed he would not bet, and he kept his vow, for on leaving the town at nine o'clock in the evening he had diminished his cash only to the extent of a few shillings. He trotted slowly homeward, and it was now that he was struck for the first time with a thought that Fanny had been really prevented by illness from keeping her promise. This time she could have made no mistake. He regretted that he had not remained in Casterbridge and made inquiries. Reaching home he quietly unharnessed the horse and came indoors, as we have seen, to the fearful shock that awaited him. As soon as it grew light enough to distinguish objects, Troy arose from the coverlet of the bed, and in a mood of absolute indifference to Bathsheba's whereabouts, and almost oblivious of her existence, he stalked downstairs and left the house by the back door. His walk was towards the churchyard, entering which he searched around till he found a newly dug unoccupied grave--the grave dug the day before for Fanny. The position of this having been marked, he hastened on to Casterbridge, only pausing and musing for a while at the hill whereon he had last seen Fanny alive. Reaching the town, Troy descended into a side street and entered a pair of gates surmounted by a board bearing the words, "Lester, stone and marble mason." Within were lying about stones of all sizes and designs, inscribed as being sacred to the memory of unnamed persons who had not yet died. Troy was so unlike himself now in look, word, and deed, that the want of likeness was perceptible even to his own consciousness. His method of engaging himself in this business of purchasing a tomb was that of an absolutely unpractised man. He could not bring himself to consider, calculate, or economize. He waywardly wished for something, and he set about obtaining it like a child in a nursery. "I want a good tomb," he said to the man who stood in a little office within the yard. "I want as good a one as you can give me for twenty-seven pounds." It was all the money he possessed. "That sum to include everything?" "Everything. Cutting the name, carriage to Weatherbury, and erection. And I want it now, at once." "We could not get anything special worked this week." "I must have it now." "If you would like one of these in stock it could be got ready immediately." "Very well," said Troy, impatiently. "Let's see what you have." "The best I have in stock is this one," said the stone-cutter, going into a shed. "Here's a marble headstone beautifully crocketed, with medallions beneath of typical subjects; here's the footstone after the same pattern, and here's the coping to enclose the grave. The polishing alone of the set cost me eleven pounds--the slabs are the best of their kind, and I can warrant them to resist rain and frost for a hundred years without flying." "And how much?" "Well, I could add the name, and put it up at Weatherbury for the sum you mention." "Get it done to-day, and I'll pay the money now." The man agreed, and wondered at such a mood in a visitor who wore not a shred of mourning. Troy then wrote the words which were to form the inscription, settled the account and went away. In the afternoon he came back again, and found that the lettering was almost done. He waited in the yard till the tomb was packed, and saw it placed in the cart and starting on its way to Weatherbury, giving directions to the two men who were to accompany it to inquire of the sexton for the grave of the person named in the inscription. It was quite dark when Troy came out of Casterbridge. He carried rather a heavy basket upon his arm, with which he strode moodily along the road, resting occasionally at bridges and gates, whereon he deposited his burden for a time. Midway on his journey he met, returning in the darkness, the men and the waggon which had conveyed the tomb. He merely inquired if the work was done, and, on being assured that it was, passed on again. Troy entered Weatherbury churchyard about ten o'clock and went immediately to the corner where he had marked the vacant grave early in the morning. It was on the obscure side of the tower, screened to a great extent from the view of passers along the road--a spot which until lately had been abandoned to heaps of stones and bushes of alder, but now it was cleared and made orderly for interments, by reason of the rapid filling of the ground elsewhere. Here now stood the tomb as the men had stated, snow-white and shapely in the gloom, consisting of head and foot-stone, and enclosing border of marble-work uniting them. In the midst was mould, suitable for plants. Troy deposited his basket beside the tomb, and vanished for a few minutes. When he returned he carried a spade and a lantern, the light of which he directed for a few moments upon the marble, whilst he read the inscription. He hung his lantern on the lowest bough of the yew-tree, and took from his basket flower-roots of several varieties. There were bundles of snow-drop, hyacinth and crocus bulbs, violets and double daisies, which were to bloom in early spring, and of carnations, pinks, picotees, lilies of the valley, forget-me-not, summer's farewell, meadow-saffron and others, for the later seasons of the year. Troy laid these out upon the grass, and with an impassive face set to work to plant them. The snowdrops were arranged in a line on the outside of the coping, the remainder within the enclosure of the grave. The crocuses and hyacinths were to grow in rows; some of the summer flowers he placed over her head and feet, the lilies and forget-me-nots over her heart. The remainder were dispersed in the spaces between these. Troy, in his prostration at this time, had no perception that in the futility of these romantic doings, dictated by a remorseful reaction from previous indifference, there was any element of absurdity. Deriving his idiosyncrasies from both sides of the Channel, he showed at such junctures as the present the inelasticity of the Englishman, together with that blindness to the line where sentiment verges on mawkishness, characteristic of the French. It was a cloudy, muggy, and very dark night, and the rays from Troy's lantern spread into the two old yews with a strange illuminating power, flickering, as it seemed, up to the black ceiling of cloud above. He felt a large drop of rain upon the back of his hand, and presently one came and entered one of the holes of the lantern, whereupon the candle sputtered and went out. Troy was weary and it being now not far from midnight, and the rain threatening to increase, he resolved to leave the finishing touches of his labour until the day should break. He groped along the wall and over the graves in the dark till he found himself round at the north side. Here he entered the porch, and, reclining upon the bench within, fell asleep.

Chapter 45

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-45

Now we get to find out what Troy did after parting ways with Bathsheba the night before. The first thing he did was cover up Fanny and their dead child. Next, he went up to his bed and lay awake until the next morning came. Rewind: after getting twenty pounds from Bathsheba, Troy travelled to Casterbridge with the intention of giving it to Fanny. But she never showed up for their meeting. Because he's a guy who doesn't like to be stood up, Troy left and went back to his home in Weatherbury. Little did he know what shock was waiting. Back to the present: Troy leaves his house, not caring where Bathsheba is, and goes to the open grave that's been dug for Fanny in the nearby cemetery. He takes all the money he'd been meaning to give to Fanny and spends it all on a fancy tombstone, which he gets shipped to Weatherbury from Casterbridge. After all that, he heads back to Fanny's grave with a basket full of seeds and bulbs, and starts planting all kinds of flowers around Fanny's grave. At this point, Troy feels a splash of rain on the back of one of his hands, so he stop working and goes to fall asleep in a cemetery building.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1526-chapters/11.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Twelfth Night, or What You Will/section_10_part_0.txt

Twelfth Night, or What You Will.act 3.scene 1

act 3, scene 1

{"name": "Act 3, Scene 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210415161814/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/twelfth-night/summary/act-3-scene-1", "summary": "In Olivia's garden, \"Cesario\" and Feste shoot the breeze. They talk about how easy it is to play with words and make them have double meanings. Feste says for that reason, he wishes his sister didn't have a name. Why? Because someone could mess around with her name and make it into something that means \"whore.\" He also says words are so unreliable that he prefers not to use them when discussing serious matters. When \"Cesario\" asks if Feste is Olivia's fool, he says he's not a fool at all, just someone who turns words into whores. \"Cesario\" gives him some spare change for his cleverness, and asks if Olivia is in. When Feste implies \"Cesario\" should give him some more money to fetch Olivia, \"Cesario\" obliges. \"Cesario\" tells us how brilliant Feste is and notes that being a Fool takes a lot of talent and an ability to read people. Feste is a \"wise\" guy. Sir Toby and Sir Andrew enter the garden and say \"hey\" to \"Cesario\" before Olivia enters. Alone in the garden, Olivia holds \"Cesario's\" hand and flirts it up. \"Cesario\" tries to speak for Orsino, but Olivia says she doesn't want to hear his name again. In fact, she wishes that \"Cesario\" would start pursuing her for himself instead of continuing to act on Orsino's behalf. \"Cesario\" tries to give Olivia the brush off, but Olivia confesses her lust for \"Cesario\" and demands to hear what \"he\" thinks of her. \"Cesario\" says that he feels sorry for Olivia. Then Olivia says fine, I won't force you, but some day, when you're older and have gone through puberty, some girl is going to be very lucky to have you. Olivia asks \"Cesario\" to tell her what \"he\" thinks of her. \"Cesario\" gets all cryptic and says stuff like \"I am not what I am.\" Olivia throws herself at \"Cesario\" and begs \"him\" to love her. \"Cesario\" says \"his\" heart belongs to \"no woman\" and never will. The audience gets it but Olivia doesn't. When it's time for \"Cesario\" to go, Olivia says feel free to come back and see me any time.", "analysis": ""}

ACT III. SCENE I. OLIVIA'S garden. [Enter VIOLA, and CLOWN with a tabor.] VIOLA. Save thee, friend, and thy music. Dost thou live by thy tabor? CLOWN. No, sir, I live by the church. VIOLA. Art thou a churchman? CLOWN. No such matter, sir: I do live by the church; for I do live at my house, and my house doth stand by the church. VIOLA. So thou mayst say the king lies by a beggar, if a beggar dwell near him; or the church stands by thy tabor, if thy tabor stand by the church. CLOWN. You have said, sir.--To see this age!--A sentence is but a cheveril glove to a good wit. How quickly the wrong side may be turned outward! VIOLA. Nay, that's certain; they that dally nicely with words may quickly make them wanton. CLOWN. I would, therefore, my sister had had no name, sir. VIOLA. Why, man? CLOWN. Why, sir, her name's a word; and to dally with that word might make my sister wanton. But indeed words are very rascals, since bonds disgraced them. VIOLA. Thy reason, man? CLOWN. Troth, sir, I can yield you none without words; and words are grown so false I am loath to prove reason with them. VIOLA. I warrant, thou art a merry fellow, and carest for nothing. CLOWN. Not so, sir, I do care for something: but in my conscience, sir, I do not care for you; if that be to care for nothing, sir, I would it would make you invisible. VIOLA. Art not thou the Lady Olivia's fool? CLOWN. No, indeed, sir; the Lady Olivia has no folly: she will keep no fool, sir, till she be married; and fools are as like husbands as pilchards are to herrings, the husband's the bigger; I am, indeed, not her fool, but her corrupter of words. VIOLA. I saw thee late at the Count Orsino's. CLOWN. Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun; it shines everywhere. I would be sorry, sir, but the fool should be as oft with your master as with my mistress: I think I saw your wisdom there. VIOLA. Nay, an thou pass upon me, I'll no more with thee. Hold, there's expenses for thee. CLOWN. Now Jove, in his next commodity of hair, send thee a beard! VIOLA. By my troth, I'll tell thee, I am almost sick for one; though I would not have it grow on my chin. Is thy lady within? CLOWN. Would not a pair of these have bred, sir? VIOLA. Yes, being kept together and put to use. CLOWN. I would play Lord Pandarus of Phrygia, sir, to bring a Cressida to this Troilus. VIOLA. I understand you, sir; 'tis well begged. CLOWN. The matter, I hope, is not great, sir, begging but a beggar: Cressida was a beggar. My lady is within, sir. I will construe to them whence you come; who you are and what you would are out of my welkin: I might say element; but the word is overworn. [Exit.] VIOLA. This fellow's wise enough to play the fool; And, to do that well, craves a kind of wit: He must observe their mood on whom he jests, The quality of persons, and the time; And, like the haggard, check at every feather That comes before his eye. This is a practice As full of labour as a wise man's art: For folly, that he wisely shows, is fit; But wise men, folly-fallen, quite taint their wit. [Enter SIR TOBY BELCH and SIR ANDREW AGUE-CHEEK.] SIR TOBY. Save you, gentleman. VIOLA. And you, sir. SIR ANDREW. Dieu vous garde, monsieur. VIOLA. Et vous aussi; votre serviteur. SIR ANDREW. I hope, sir, you are; and I am yours. SIR TOBY. Will you encounter the house? my niece is desirous you should enter, if your trade be to her. VIOLA. I am bound to your niece, sir: I mean, she is the list of my voyage. SIR TOBY. Taste your legs, sir; put them to motion. VIOLA. My legs do better understand me, sir, than I understand what you mean by bidding me taste my legs. SIR TOBY. I mean, to go, sir, to enter. VIOLA. I will answer you with gait and entrance: but we are prevented. [Enter OLIVIA and MARIA.] Most excellent accomplished lady, the heavens rain odours on you! SIR ANDREW. That youth's a rare courtier- 'Rain odours'! well. VIOLA. My matter hath no voice, lady, but to your own most pregnant and vouchsafed car. SIR ANDREW. 'Odours,' 'pregnant,' and 'vouchsafed':--I'll get 'em all three ready. OLIVIA. Let the garden door be shut, and leave me to my hearing. [Exeunt SIR TOBY, SIR ANDREW, and MARIA.] Give me your hand, sir. VIOLA. My duty, madam, and most humble service. OLIVIA. What is your name? VIOLA. Cesario is your servant's name, fair princess. OLIVIA. My servant, sir! 'Twas never merry world, Since lowly feigning was call'd compliment: You are servant to the Count Orsino, youth. VIOLA. And he is yours, and his must needs be yours; Your servant's servant is your servant, madam. OLIVIA. For him, I think not on him: for his thoughts, Would they were blanks rather than fill'd with me! VIOLA. Madam, I come to whet your gentle thoughts On his behalf:-- OLIVIA. O, by your leave, I pray you: I bade you never speak again of him: But, would you undertake another suit, I had rather hear you to solicit that Than music from the spheres. VIOLA. Dear lady,-- OLIVIA. Give me leave, beseech you: I did send, After the last enchantment you did here, A ring in chase of you; so did I abuse Myself, my servant, and, I fear me, you: Under your hard construction must I sit; To force that on you, in a shameful cunning, Which you knew none of yours. What might you think? Have you not set mine honour at the stake, And baited it with all the unmuzzl'd thoughts That tyrannous heart can think? To one of your receiving Enough is shown: a cypress, not a bosom, Hides my heart: so let me hear you speak. VIOLA. I Pity you. OLIVIA. That's a degree to love. VIOLA. No, not a grise; for 'tis a vulgar proof That very oft we pity enemies. OLIVIA. Why, then, methinks 'tis time to smile again: O world, how apt the poor are to be proud! If one should be a prey, how much the better To fall before the lion than the wolf! [Clock strikes.] The clock upbraids me with the waste of time.-- Be not afraid, good youth, I will not have you: And yet, when wit and youth is come to harvest, Your wife is like to reap a proper man. There lies your way, due-west. VIOLA. Then westward-ho: Grace and good disposition 'tend your ladyship! You'll nothing, madam, to my lord by me? OLIVIA. Stay: I pr'ythee tell me what thou think'st of me. VIOLA. That you do think you are not what you are. OLIVIA. If I think so, I think the same of you. VIOLA. Then think you right; I am not what I am. OLIVIA. I would you were as I would have you be! VIOLA. Would it be better, madam, than I am, I wish it might; for now I am your fool. OLIVIA. O what a deal of scorn looks beautiful In the contempt and anger of his lip! A murd'rous guilt shows not itself more soon Than love that would seem hid: love's night is noon. Cesario, by the roses of the spring, By maidhood, honour, truth, and everything, I love thee so that, maugre all thy pride, Nor wit, nor reason, can my passion hide. Do not extort thy reasons from this clause, For, that I woo, thou therefore hast no cause: But rather reason thus with reason fetter: Love sought is good, but given unsought is better. VIOLA. By innocence I swear, and by my youth, I have one heart, one bosom, and one truth, And that no woman has; nor never none Shall mistress be of it, save I alone. And so adieu, good madam; never more Will I my master's tears to you deplore. OLIVIA. Yet come again: for thou, perhaps, mayst move That heart, which now abhors, to like his love. [Exeunt.]

Act 3, Scene 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20210415161814/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/twelfth-night/summary/act-3-scene-1

In Olivia's garden, "Cesario" and Feste shoot the breeze. They talk about how easy it is to play with words and make them have double meanings. Feste says for that reason, he wishes his sister didn't have a name. Why? Because someone could mess around with her name and make it into something that means "whore." He also says words are so unreliable that he prefers not to use them when discussing serious matters. When "Cesario" asks if Feste is Olivia's fool, he says he's not a fool at all, just someone who turns words into whores. "Cesario" gives him some spare change for his cleverness, and asks if Olivia is in. When Feste implies "Cesario" should give him some more money to fetch Olivia, "Cesario" obliges. "Cesario" tells us how brilliant Feste is and notes that being a Fool takes a lot of talent and an ability to read people. Feste is a "wise" guy. Sir Toby and Sir Andrew enter the garden and say "hey" to "Cesario" before Olivia enters. Alone in the garden, Olivia holds "Cesario's" hand and flirts it up. "Cesario" tries to speak for Orsino, but Olivia says she doesn't want to hear his name again. In fact, she wishes that "Cesario" would start pursuing her for himself instead of continuing to act on Orsino's behalf. "Cesario" tries to give Olivia the brush off, but Olivia confesses her lust for "Cesario" and demands to hear what "he" thinks of her. "Cesario" says that he feels sorry for Olivia. Then Olivia says fine, I won't force you, but some day, when you're older and have gone through puberty, some girl is going to be very lucky to have you. Olivia asks "Cesario" to tell her what "he" thinks of her. "Cesario" gets all cryptic and says stuff like "I am not what I am." Olivia throws herself at "Cesario" and begs "him" to love her. "Cesario" says "his" heart belongs to "no woman" and never will. The audience gets it but Olivia doesn't. When it's time for "Cesario" to go, Olivia says feel free to come back and see me any time.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/09.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_8_part_0.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 9

chapter 9

{"name": "Phase I: \"The Maiden,\" Chapter Nine", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-9", "summary": "The chapter opens with a description of the poultry farm at The Slopes where Tess is going to work. The poultry house is an old cottage where tenant farmers used to live. But now it's all overrun with chickens. Tess begins to tidy the place up, when a maid comes in and tells her that Mrs. D'Urberville \"wants the fowls as usual\" . Apparently, Mrs. D'Urberville is a blind old lady, and likes to inspect the chickens individually each day by feeling them with her hands. So Tess and the maid bring the chickens and roosters to her, one at a time, and allow her to inspect them. Mrs. D'Urberville then \"inspects\" Tess herself--and unexpectedly asks if she can whistle. Whistling wasn't considered all that \"ladylike\" at this point in time, but Tess admits that she knows how. Mrs. D'Urberville wants Tess to whistle tunes to her pet finches. Because she can't see them, she likes to hear them tweet, and they learn tunes if someone's there to whistle to them. Tess goes back to the poultry farm and practices whistling alone. She hasn't tried in so long, she's having a hard time remembering. Suddenly she realizes she's not alone--Alec is watching her pucker up her lips through the fence. She's embarrassed. Alec offers to show her how it's done, and after a few tries she gets it again. So Tess starts whistling to the birds every day, and Alec continues to hang out near her and flirt with her, until she gradually gets used to his company. Although she still doesn't love him, she doesn't mind him as much. One day, as she's whistling to the finches in Mrs. D'Urberville's room, she notices Alec's feet sticking out at the bottom of Mrs. D'Urberville's canopied four-poster bed. Tess starts checking the bed every morning before starting her whistling routine, but apparently Alec has given up the idea of \"ambush\" her in that way.", "analysis": ""}

The community of fowls to which Tess had been appointed as supervisor, purveyor, nurse, surgeon, and friend made its headquarters in an old thatched cottage standing in an enclosure that had once been a garden, but was now a trampled and sanded square. The house was overrun with ivy, its chimney being enlarged by the boughs of the parasite to the aspect of a ruined tower. The lower rooms were entirely given over to the birds, who walked about them with a proprietary air, as though the place had been built by themselves, and not by certain dusty copyholders who now lay east and west in the churchyard. The descendants of these bygone owners felt it almost as a slight to their family when the house which had so much of their affection, had cost so much of their forefathers' money, and had been in their possession for several generations before the d'Urbervilles came and built here, was indifferently turned into a fowl-house by Mrs Stoke-d'Urberville as soon as the property fell into hand according to law. "'Twas good enough for Christians in grandfather's time," they said. The rooms wherein dozens of infants had wailed at their nursing now resounded with the tapping of nascent chicks. Distracted hens in coops occupied spots where formerly stood chairs supporting sedate agriculturists. The chimney-corner and once-blazing hearth was now filled with inverted beehives, in which the hens laid their eggs; while out of doors the plots that each succeeding householder had carefully shaped with his spade were torn by the cocks in wildest fashion. The garden in which the cottage stood was surrounded by a wall, and could only be entered through a door. When Tess had occupied herself about an hour the next morning in altering and improving the arrangements, according to her skilled ideas as the daughter of a professed poulterer, the door in the wall opened and a servant in white cap and apron entered. She had come from the manor-house. "Mrs d'Urberville wants the fowls as usual," she said; but perceiving that Tess did not quite understand, she explained, "Mis'ess is a old lady, and blind." "Blind!" said Tess. Almost before her misgiving at the news could find time to shape itself she took, under her companion's direction, two of the most beautiful of the Hamburghs in her arms, and followed the maid-servant, who had likewise taken two, to the adjacent mansion, which, though ornate and imposing, showed traces everywhere on this side that some occupant of its chambers could bend to the love of dumb creatures--feathers floating within view of the front, and hen-coops standing on the grass. In a sitting-room on the ground-floor, ensconced in an armchair with her back to the light, was the owner and mistress of the estate, a white-haired woman of not more than sixty, or even less, wearing a large cap. She had the mobile face frequent in those whose sight has decayed by stages, has been laboriously striven after, and reluctantly let go, rather than the stagnant mien apparent in persons long sightless or born blind. Tess walked up to this lady with her feathered charges--one sitting on each arm. "Ah, you are the young woman come to look after my birds?" said Mrs d'Urberville, recognizing a new footstep. "I hope you will be kind to them. My bailiff tells me you are quite the proper person. Well, where are they? Ah, this is Strut! But he is hardly so lively to-day, is he? He is alarmed at being handled by a stranger, I suppose. And Phena too--yes, they are a little frightened--aren't you, dears? But they will soon get used to you." While the old lady had been speaking Tess and the other maid, in obedience to her gestures, had placed the fowls severally in her lap, and she had felt them over from head to tail, examining their beaks, their combs, the manes of the cocks, their wings, and their claws. Her touch enabled her to recognize them in a moment, and to discover if a single feather were crippled or draggled. She handled their crops, and knew what they had eaten, and if too little or too much; her face enacting a vivid pantomime of the criticisms passing in her mind. The birds that the two girls had brought in were duly returned to the yard, and the process was repeated till all the pet cocks and hens had been submitted to the old woman--Hamburghs, Bantams, Cochins, Brahmas, Dorkings, and such other sorts as were in fashion just then--her perception of each visitor being seldom at fault as she received the bird upon her knees. It reminded Tess of a Confirmation, in which Mrs d'Urberville was the bishop, the fowls the young people presented, and herself and the maid-servant the parson and curate of the parish bringing them up. At the end of the ceremony Mrs d'Urberville abruptly asked Tess, wrinkling and twitching her face into undulations, "Can you whistle?" "Whistle, Ma'am?" "Yes, whistle tunes." Tess could whistle like most other country-girls, though the accomplishment was one which she did not care to profess in genteel company. However, she blandly admitted that such was the fact. "Then you will have to practise it every day. I had a lad who did it very well, but he has left. I want you to whistle to my bullfinches; as I cannot see them, I like to hear them, and we teach 'em airs that way. Tell her where the cages are, Elizabeth. You must begin to-morrow, or they will go back in their piping. They have been neglected these several days." "Mr d'Urberville whistled to 'em this morning, ma'am," said Elizabeth. "He! Pooh!" The old lady's face creased into furrows of repugnance, and she made no further reply. Thus the reception of Tess by her fancied kinswoman terminated, and the birds were taken back to their quarters. The girl's surprise at Mrs d'Urberville's manner was not great; for since seeing the size of the house she had expected no more. But she was far from being aware that the old lady had never heard a word of the so-called kinship. She gathered that no great affection flowed between the blind woman and her son. But in that, too, she was mistaken. Mrs d'Urberville was not the first mother compelled to love her offspring resentfully, and to be bitterly fond. In spite of the unpleasant initiation of the day before, Tess inclined to the freedom and novelty of her new position in the morning when the sun shone, now that she was once installed there; and she was curious to test her powers in the unexpected direction asked of her, so as to ascertain her chance of retaining her post. As soon as she was alone within the walled garden she sat herself down on a coop, and seriously screwed up her mouth for the long-neglected practice. She found her former ability to have degenerated to the production of a hollow rush of wind through the lips, and no clear note at all. She remained fruitlessly blowing and blowing, wondering how she could have so grown out of the art which had come by nature, till she became aware of a movement among the ivy-boughs which cloaked the garden-wall no less then the cottage. Looking that way she beheld a form springing from the coping to the plot. It was Alec d'Urberville, whom she had not set eyes on since he had conducted her the day before to the door of the gardener's cottage where she had lodgings. "Upon my honour!" cried he, "there was never before such a beautiful thing in Nature or Art as you look, 'Cousin' Tess ('Cousin' had a faint ring of mockery). I have been watching you from over the wall--sitting like IM-patience on a monument, and pouting up that pretty red mouth to whistling shape, and whooing and whooing, and privately swearing, and never being able to produce a note. Why, you are quite cross because you can't do it." "I may be cross, but I didn't swear." "Ah! I understand why you are trying--those bullies! My mother wants you to carry on their musical education. How selfish of her! As if attending to these curst cocks and hens here were not enough work for any girl. I would flatly refuse, if I were you." "But she wants me particularly to do it, and to be ready by to-morrow morning." "Does she? Well then--I'll give you a lesson or two." "Oh no, you won't!" said Tess, withdrawing towards the door. "Nonsense; I don't want to touch you. See--I'll stand on this side of the wire-netting, and you can keep on the other; so you may feel quite safe. Now, look here; you screw up your lips too harshly. There 'tis--so." He suited the action to the word, and whistled a line of "Take, O take those lips away." But the allusion was lost upon Tess. "Now try," said d'Urberville. She attempted to look reserved; her face put on a sculptural severity. But he persisted in his demand, and at last, to get rid of him, she did put up her lips as directed for producing a clear note; laughing distressfully, however, and then blushing with vexation that she had laughed. He encouraged her with "Try again!" Tess was quite serious, painfully serious by this time; and she tried--ultimately and unexpectedly emitting a real round sound. The momentary pleasure of success got the better of her; her eyes enlarged, and she involuntarily smiled in his face. "That's it! Now I have started you--you'll go on beautifully. There--I said I would not come near you; and, in spite of such temptation as never before fell to mortal man, I'll keep my word... Tess, do you think my mother a queer old soul?" "I don't know much of her yet, sir." "You'll find her so; she must be, to make you learn to whistle to her bullfinches. I am rather out of her books just now, but you will be quite in favour if you treat her live-stock well. Good morning. If you meet with any difficulties and want help here, don't go to the bailiff, come to me." It was in the economy of this _regime_ that Tess Durbeyfield had undertaken to fill a place. Her first day's experiences were fairly typical of those which followed through many succeeding days. A familiarity with Alec d'Urberville's presence--which that young man carefully cultivated in her by playful dialogue, and by jestingly calling her his cousin when they were alone--removed much of her original shyness of him, without, however, implanting any feeling which could engender shyness of a new and tenderer kind. But she was more pliable under his hands than a mere companionship would have made her, owing to her unavoidable dependence upon his mother, and, through that lady's comparative helplessness, upon him. She soon found that whistling to the bullfinches in Mrs d'Urberville's room was no such onerous business when she had regained the art, for she had caught from her musical mother numerous airs that suited those songsters admirably. A far more satisfactory time than when she practised in the garden was this whistling by the cages each morning. Unrestrained by the young man's presence she threw up her mouth, put her lips near the bars, and piped away in easeful grace to the attentive listeners. Mrs d'Urberville slept in a large four-post bedstead hung with heavy damask curtains, and the bullfinches occupied the same apartment, where they flitted about freely at certain hours, and made little white spots on the furniture and upholstery. Once while Tess was at the window where the cages were ranged, giving her lesson as usual, she thought she heard a rustling behind the bed. The old lady was not present, and turning round the girl had an impression that the toes of a pair of boots were visible below the fringe of the curtains. Thereupon her whistling became so disjointed that the listener, if such there were, must have discovered her suspicion of his presence. She searched the curtains every morning after that, but never found anybody within them. Alec d'Urberville had evidently thought better of his freak to terrify her by an ambush of that kind.

Phase I: "The Maiden," Chapter Nine

https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-9

The chapter opens with a description of the poultry farm at The Slopes where Tess is going to work. The poultry house is an old cottage where tenant farmers used to live. But now it's all overrun with chickens. Tess begins to tidy the place up, when a maid comes in and tells her that Mrs. D'Urberville "wants the fowls as usual" . Apparently, Mrs. D'Urberville is a blind old lady, and likes to inspect the chickens individually each day by feeling them with her hands. So Tess and the maid bring the chickens and roosters to her, one at a time, and allow her to inspect them. Mrs. D'Urberville then "inspects" Tess herself--and unexpectedly asks if she can whistle. Whistling wasn't considered all that "ladylike" at this point in time, but Tess admits that she knows how. Mrs. D'Urberville wants Tess to whistle tunes to her pet finches. Because she can't see them, she likes to hear them tweet, and they learn tunes if someone's there to whistle to them. Tess goes back to the poultry farm and practices whistling alone. She hasn't tried in so long, she's having a hard time remembering. Suddenly she realizes she's not alone--Alec is watching her pucker up her lips through the fence. She's embarrassed. Alec offers to show her how it's done, and after a few tries she gets it again. So Tess starts whistling to the birds every day, and Alec continues to hang out near her and flirt with her, until she gradually gets used to his company. Although she still doesn't love him, she doesn't mind him as much. One day, as she's whistling to the finches in Mrs. D'Urberville's room, she notices Alec's feet sticking out at the bottom of Mrs. D'Urberville's canopied four-poster bed. Tess starts checking the bed every morning before starting her whistling routine, but apparently Alec has given up the idea of "ambush" her in that way.

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/41.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Lord Jim/section_39_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapter 41

chapter 41

{"name": "Chapter 41", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim50.asp", "summary": "Cornelius's prediction soon comes true, for Jim arrives to see Brown early the next morning. He comes dressed in white and unarmed. He is the picture of confidence. Brown immediately does not like Jim. He resents Jim's youth, self-assurance, and goodness; he also is jealous of the fact that Jim is loved and trusted by the natives. Jim asks Brown why he has come to Patusan. Brown answers that hunger has brought him there. Brown counter -questions Jim. When Jim flounders in coming up with an answer, Brown senses Jim's weakness and knows he can easily overcome him. Brown tells Jim that there must be no military encounter because lives and property would be lost. He knows that Jim will agree to this because Jim loves the natives. Throughout their talk, Brown, having seen Jim's weakness, makes insinuations about something shady in Jim's past. Brown comments that he is traveling to escape imprisonment. He asks Jim if he is afraid of imprisonment or anything else. The question forces Jim to think about the Patna incident.", "analysis": "Notes This chapter reveals the meeting between Brown and Jim. Brown immediately dislikes Jim, for he sees a complete opposite from himself in this young, self-assured man who is surrounded with love, security, and power. Jim's goodness is a sharp contrast to Brown's evil depravity. The chapter also shows that the past still haunts Jim. Brown does not know about the Patna incident, but senses Jim's weakness and hints about them both having a shady past. In Jim's mind, there is a common bond between him and Brown, because they both feel guilty. As a result, Jim fails to understand the villainy and depravity of this enemy, who quickly assesses Jim's vulnerability and immediately understands that he can do away with Jim. The setting of the chapter is significant, for it is the same place where Jim first landed in Patusan, which was his second big \"jump\" in the novel. As he and Brown talk face to face, Brown says that he himself is \"not the sort to jump out of trouble.\" Conrad is foreshadowing that Jim is about to take his third jump; this time he will not jump out of trouble, but leap into death."}

'To the very last moment, till the full day came upon them with a spring, the fires on the west bank blazed bright and clear; and then Brown saw in a knot of coloured figures motionless between the advanced houses a man in European clothes, in a helmet, all white. "That's him; look! look!" Cornelius said excitedly. All Brown's men had sprung up and crowded at his back with lustreless eyes. The group of vivid colours and dark faces with the white figure in their midst were observing the knoll. Brown could see naked arms being raised to shade the eyes and other brown arms pointing. What should he do? He looked around, and the forests that faced him on all sides walled the cock-pit of an unequal contest. He looked once more at his men. A contempt, a weariness, the desire of life, the wish to try for one more chance--for some other grave--struggled in his breast. From the outline the figure presented it seemed to him that the white man there, backed up by all the power of the land, was examining his position through binoculars. Brown jumped up on the log, throwing his arms up, the palms outwards. The coloured group closed round the white man, and fell back twice before he got clear of them, walking slowly alone. Brown remained standing on the log till Jim, appearing and disappearing between the patches of thorny scrub, had nearly reached the creek; then Brown jumped off and went down to meet him on his side. 'They met, I should think, not very far from the place, perhaps on the very spot, where Jim took the second desperate leap of his life--the leap that landed him into the life of Patusan, into the trust, the love, the confidence of the people. They faced each other across the creek, and with steady eyes tried to understand each other before they opened their lips. Their antagonism must have been expressed in their glances; I know that Brown hated Jim at first sight. Whatever hopes he might have had vanished at once. This was not the man he had expected to see. He hated him for this--and in a checked flannel shirt with sleeves cut off at the elbows, grey bearded, with a sunken, sun-blackened face--he cursed in his heart the other's youth and assurance, his clear eyes and his untroubled bearing. That fellow had got in a long way before him! He did not look like a man who would be willing to give anything for assistance. He had all the advantages on his side--possession, security, power; he was on the side of an overwhelming force! He was not hungry and desperate, and he did not seem in the least afraid. And there was something in the very neatness of Jim's clothes, from the white helmet to the canvas leggings and the pipeclayed shoes, which in Brown's sombre irritated eyes seemed to belong to things he had in the very shaping of his life condemned and flouted. '"Who are you?" asked Jim at last, speaking in his usual voice. "My name's Brown," answered the other loudly; "Captain Brown. What's yours?" and Jim after a little pause went on quietly, as If he had not heard: "What made you come here?" "You want to know," said Brown bitterly. "It's easy to tell. Hunger. And what made you?" '"The fellow started at this," said Brown, relating to me the opening of this strange conversation between those two men, separated only by the muddy bed of a creek, but standing on the opposite poles of that conception of life which includes all mankind--"The fellow started at this and got very red in the face. Too big to be questioned, I suppose. I told him that if he looked upon me as a dead man with whom you may take liberties, he himself was not a whit better off really. I had a fellow up there who had a bead drawn on him all the time, and only waited for a sign from me. There was nothing to be shocked at in this. He had come down of his own free will. 'Let us agree,' said I, 'that we are both dead men, and let us talk on that basis, as equals. We are all equal before death,' I said. I admitted I was there like a rat in a trap, but we had been driven to it, and even a trapped rat can give a bite. He caught me up in a moment. 'Not if you don't go near the trap till the rat is dead.' I told him that sort of game was good enough for these native friends of his, but I would have thought him too white to serve even a rat so. Yes, I had wanted to talk with him. Not to beg for my life, though. My fellows were--well--what they were--men like himself, anyhow. All we wanted from him was to come on in the devil's name and have it out. 'God d--n it,' said I, while he stood there as still as a wooden post, 'you don't want to come out here every day with your glasses to count how many of us are left on our feet. Come. Either bring your infernal crowd along or let us go out and starve in the open sea, by God! You have been white once, for all your tall talk of this being your own people and you being one with them. Are you? And what the devil do you get for it; what is it you've found here that is so d--d precious? Hey? You don't want us to come down here perhaps--do you? You are two hundred to one. You don't want us to come down into the open. Ah! I promise you we shall give you some sport before you've done. You talk about me making a cowardly set upon unoffending people. What's that to me that they are unoffending, when I am starving for next to no offence? But I am not a coward. Don't you be one. Bring them along or, by all the fiends, we shall yet manage to send half your unoffending town to heaven with us in smoke!'" 'He was terrible--relating this to me--this tortured skeleton of a man drawn up together with his face over his knees, upon a miserable bed in that wretched hovel, and lifting his head to look at me with malignant triumph. '"That's what I told him--I knew what to say," he began again, feebly at first, but working himself up with incredible speed into a fiery utterance of his scorn. "We aren't going into the forest to wander like a string of living skeletons dropping one after another for ants to go to work upon us before we are fairly dead. Oh no! . . . 'You don't deserve a better fate,' he said. 'And what do you deserve,' I shouted at him, 'you that I find skulking here with your mouth full of your responsibility, of innocent lives, of your infernal duty? What do you know more of me than I know of you? I came here for food. D'ye hear?--food to fill our bellies. And what did _you_ come for? What did you ask for when you came here? We don't ask you for anything but to give us a fight or a clear road to go back whence we came. . . .' 'I would fight with you now,' says he, pulling at his little moustache. 'And I would let you shoot me, and welcome,' I said. 'This is as good a jumping-off place for me as another. I am sick of my infernal luck. But it would be too easy. There are my men in the same boat--and, by God, I am not the sort to jump out of trouble and leave them in a d--d lurch,' I said. He stood thinking for a while and then wanted to know what I had done ('out there' he says, tossing his head down-stream) to be hazed about so. 'Have we met to tell each other the story of our lives?' I asked him. 'Suppose you begin. No? Well, I am sure I don't want to hear. Keep it to yourself. I know it is no better than mine. I've lived--and so did you, though you talk as if you were one of those people that should have wings so as to go about without touching the dirty earth. Well--it is dirty. I haven't got any wings. I am here because I was afraid once in my life. Want to know what of? Of a prison. That scares me, and you may know it--if it's any good to you. I won't ask you what scared you into this infernal hole, where you seem to have found pretty pickings. That's your luck and this is mine--the privilege to beg for the favour of being shot quickly, or else kicked out to go free and starve in my own way.' . . ." 'His debilitated body shook with an exultation so vehement, so assured, and so malicious that it seemed to have driven off the death waiting for him in that hut. The corpse of his mad self-love uprose from rags and destitution as from the dark horrors of a tomb. It is impossible to say how much he lied to Jim then, how much he lied to me now--and to himself always. Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live. Standing at the gate of the other world in the guise of a beggar, he had slapped this world's face, he had spat on it, he had thrown upon it an immensity of scorn and revolt at the bottom of his misdeeds. He had overcome them all--men, women, savages, traders, ruffians, missionaries--and Jim--"that beefy-faced beggar." I did not begrudge him this triumph in articulo mortis, this almost posthumous illusion of having trampled all the earth under his feet. While he was boasting to me, in his sordid and repulsive agony, I couldn't help thinking of the chuckling talk relating to the time of his greatest splendour when, during a year or more, Gentleman Brown's ship was to be seen, for many days on end, hovering off an islet befringed with green upon azure, with the dark dot of the mission-house on a white beach; while Gentleman Brown, ashore, was casting his spells over a romantic girl for whom Melanesia had been too much, and giving hopes of a remarkable conversion to her husband. The poor man, some time or other, had been heard to express the intention of winning "Captain Brown to a better way of life." . . . "Bag Gentleman Brown for Glory"--as a leery-eyed loafer expressed it once--"just to let them see up above what a Western Pacific trading skipper looks like." And this was the man, too, who had run off with a dying woman, and had shed tears over her body. "Carried on like a big baby," his then mate was never tired of telling, "and where the fun came in may I be kicked to death by diseased Kanakas if _I_ know. Why, gents! she was too far gone when he brought her aboard to know him; she just lay there on her back in his bunk staring at the beam with awful shining eyes--and then she died. Dam' bad sort of fever, I guess. . . ." I remembered all these stories while, wiping his matted lump of a beard with a livid hand, he was telling me from his noisome couch how he got round, got in, got home, on that confounded, immaculate, don't-you-touch-me sort of fellow. He admitted that he couldn't be scared, but there was a way, "as broad as a turnpike, to get in and shake his twopenny soul around and inside out and upside down--by God!"'

Chapter 41

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim50.asp

Cornelius's prediction soon comes true, for Jim arrives to see Brown early the next morning. He comes dressed in white and unarmed. He is the picture of confidence. Brown immediately does not like Jim. He resents Jim's youth, self-assurance, and goodness; he also is jealous of the fact that Jim is loved and trusted by the natives. Jim asks Brown why he has come to Patusan. Brown answers that hunger has brought him there. Brown counter -questions Jim. When Jim flounders in coming up with an answer, Brown senses Jim's weakness and knows he can easily overcome him. Brown tells Jim that there must be no military encounter because lives and property would be lost. He knows that Jim will agree to this because Jim loves the natives. Throughout their talk, Brown, having seen Jim's weakness, makes insinuations about something shady in Jim's past. Brown comments that he is traveling to escape imprisonment. He asks Jim if he is afraid of imprisonment or anything else. The question forces Jim to think about the Patna incident.

Notes This chapter reveals the meeting between Brown and Jim. Brown immediately dislikes Jim, for he sees a complete opposite from himself in this young, self-assured man who is surrounded with love, security, and power. Jim's goodness is a sharp contrast to Brown's evil depravity. The chapter also shows that the past still haunts Jim. Brown does not know about the Patna incident, but senses Jim's weakness and hints about them both having a shady past. In Jim's mind, there is a common bond between him and Brown, because they both feel guilty. As a result, Jim fails to understand the villainy and depravity of this enemy, who quickly assesses Jim's vulnerability and immediately understands that he can do away with Jim. The setting of the chapter is significant, for it is the same place where Jim first landed in Patusan, which was his second big "jump" in the novel. As he and Brown talk face to face, Brown says that he himself is "not the sort to jump out of trouble." Conrad is foreshadowing that Jim is about to take his third jump; this time he will not jump out of trouble, but leap into death.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/33.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_4_part_9.txt

Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter xxxiii

chapter xxxiii

{"name": "Chapter XXXIII", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase4-chapter25-34", "summary": "Angel and Tess leave the farm to do some Christmas shopping. They encounter a man from Trantridge who makes disparaging remark about Tess. Angel immediately punches him, and the man apologizes, saying he made a mistake about Tess's identity. Angel pays his medical expenses. Back at the farm, Tess writes a confessional letter to Angel, telling him of her past and slips it under his door. The following morning, he treats her no differently, and she believes he has forgiven her. However, on the morning of their wedding Tess discovers that she inadvertently slipped the letter under both the door and the carpet and that Angel still knows nothing of her past. She attempts to tell him: \"for she you love is not my real self, but one in my image; the one I might have been\". But he quiets her and tells her to tell him after they are married. Surrounded by well-wishers from the farm, Tess Durbeyfield marries Angel Clare and asks her new husband to kiss the love-struck milkmaids goodbye. A rooster crows three times before they leave the farm", "analysis": ""}

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!"

Chapter XXXIII

https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase4-chapter25-34

Angel and Tess leave the farm to do some Christmas shopping. They encounter a man from Trantridge who makes disparaging remark about Tess. Angel immediately punches him, and the man apologizes, saying he made a mistake about Tess's identity. Angel pays his medical expenses. Back at the farm, Tess writes a confessional letter to Angel, telling him of her past and slips it under his door. The following morning, he treats her no differently, and she believes he has forgiven her. However, on the morning of their wedding Tess discovers that she inadvertently slipped the letter under both the door and the carpet and that Angel still knows nothing of her past. She attempts to tell him: "for she you love is not my real self, but one in my image; the one I might have been". But he quiets her and tells her to tell him after they are married. Surrounded by well-wishers from the farm, Tess Durbeyfield marries Angel Clare and asks her new husband to kiss the love-struck milkmaids goodbye. A rooster crows three times before they leave the farm

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/85.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_84_part_0.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 12.chapter 6

book 12, chapter 6

{"name": "Book 12, Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-12-chapter-6", "summary": "There isn't a whole lot of action over the next four chapters, which are devoted entirely to the prosecutor's speech. The narrator informs us that he seems to be nervous and feverish, and actually dies nine months later of consumption . But we'll give you the broad strokes of his argument here. First, the prosecutor doesn't address the crime itself, but instead goes on about how Russian morality has declined to the point that society is used to something like the Karamazov affair. He cites a quote from famous Russian writer Nikolai Gogol's novel Dead Souls, a book everyone there is sure to recognize: \"Ah, troika, bird-troika, who invented you!\" The troika, or carriage, serves as a metaphor for Russia as a whole, and he suggests that this Russia-troika is being pulled into insanity by people like the Karamazovs. Next the prosecutor paints his own psychological profile of all of the Karamazovs, starting with the father, then on to Ivan, Alyosha, and finally Dmitri. Yup, even goody-two-shoes Alyosha is depicted as clutching onto the monastic life as an escape from his deep Karamazovian corruption. A line about Alyosha perhaps sinking either into \"mysticism\" or \"chauvinism\" draws some applause. Then the prosecutor goes back to the theme of Russia and states that, actually, \"we are all Karamazovs,\" capable of both high idealism and total degradation . Interestingly, he cites a quote from Rakitin on this point. Then Kirillovich suddenly seems to remember that there is a crime to prosecute and says, \"incidentally,\" that he thinks it goes against Dmitri's unstable nature to save and sew up 1,500 roubles in an amulet. After dismissing the dispute over Dmitri's inheritance as irrelevant, the prosecutor goes on to the medical opinions about Dmitri's state of mind.", "analysis": ""}

Chapter VI. The Prosecutor's Speech. Sketches Of Character Ippolit Kirillovitch began his speech, trembling with nervousness, with cold sweat on his forehead, feeling hot and cold all over by turns. He described this himself afterwards. He regarded this speech as his _chef- d'oeuvre_, the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of his whole life, as his swan-song. He died, it is true, nine months later of rapid consumption, so that he had the right, as it turned out, to compare himself to a swan singing his last song. He had put his whole heart and all the brain he had into that speech. And poor Ippolit Kirillovitch unexpectedly revealed that at least some feeling for the public welfare and "the eternal question" lay concealed in him. Where his speech really excelled was in its sincerity. He genuinely believed in the prisoner's guilt; he was accusing him not as an official duty only, and in calling for vengeance he quivered with a genuine passion "for the security of society." Even the ladies in the audience, though they remained hostile to Ippolit Kirillovitch, admitted that he made an extraordinary impression on them. He began in a breaking voice, but it soon gained strength and filled the court to the end of his speech. But as soon as he had finished, he almost fainted. "Gentlemen of the jury," began the prosecutor, "this case has made a stir throughout Russia. But what is there to wonder at, what is there so peculiarly horrifying in it for us? We are so accustomed to such crimes! That's what's so horrible, that such dark deeds have ceased to horrify us. What ought to horrify us is that we are so accustomed to it, and not this or that isolated crime. What are the causes of our indifference, our lukewarm attitude to such deeds, to such signs of the times, ominous of an unenviable future? Is it our cynicism, is it the premature exhaustion of intellect and imagination in a society that is sinking into decay, in spite of its youth? Is it that our moral principles are shattered to their foundations, or is it, perhaps, a complete lack of such principles among us? I cannot answer such questions; nevertheless they are disturbing, and every citizen not only must, but ought to be harassed by them. Our newborn and still timid press has done good service to the public already, for without it we should never have heard of the horrors of unbridled violence and moral degradation which are continually made known by the press, not merely to those who attend the new jury courts established in the present reign, but to every one. And what do we read almost daily? Of things beside which the present case grows pale, and seems almost commonplace. But what is most important is that the majority of our national crimes of violence bear witness to a widespread evil, now so general among us that it is difficult to contend against it. "One day we see a brilliant young officer of high society, at the very outset of his career, in a cowardly underhand way, without a pang of conscience, murdering an official who had once been his benefactor, and the servant girl, to steal his own I.O.U. and what ready money he could find on him; 'it will come in handy for my pleasures in the fashionable world and for my career in the future.' After murdering them, he puts pillows under the head of each of his victims; he goes away. Next, a young hero 'decorated for bravery' kills the mother of his chief and benefactor, like a highwayman, and to urge his companions to join him he asserts that 'she loves him like a son, and so will follow all his directions and take no precautions.' Granted that he is a monster, yet I dare not say in these days that he is unique. Another man will not commit the murder, but will feel and think like him, and is as dishonorable in soul. In silence, alone with his conscience, he asks himself perhaps, 'What is honor, and isn't the condemnation of bloodshed a prejudice?' "Perhaps people will cry out against me that I am morbid, hysterical, that it is a monstrous slander, that I am exaggerating. Let them say so--and heavens! I should be the first to rejoice if it were so! Oh, don't believe me, think of me as morbid, but remember my words; if only a tenth, if only a twentieth part of what I say is true--even so it's awful! Look how our young people commit suicide, without asking themselves Hamlet's question what there is beyond, without a sign of such a question, as though all that relates to the soul and to what awaits us beyond the grave had long been erased in their minds and buried under the sands. Look at our vice, at our profligates. Fyodor Pavlovitch, the luckless victim in the present case, was almost an innocent babe compared with many of them. And yet we all knew him, 'he lived among us!'... "Yes, one day perhaps the leading intellects of Russia and of Europe will study the psychology of Russian crime, for the subject is worth it. But this study will come later, at leisure, when all the tragic topsy-turvydom of to-day is farther behind us, so that it's possible to examine it with more insight and more impartiality than I can do. Now we are either horrified or pretend to be horrified, though we really gloat over the spectacle, and love strong and eccentric sensations which tickle our cynical, pampered idleness. Or, like little children, we brush the dreadful ghosts away and hide our heads in the pillow so as to return to our sports and merriment as soon as they have vanished. But we must one day begin life in sober earnest, we must look at ourselves as a society; it's time we tried to grasp something of our social position, or at least to make a beginning in that direction. "A great writer(9) of the last epoch, comparing Russia to a swift troika galloping to an unknown goal, exclaims, 'Oh, troika, birdlike troika, who invented thee!' and adds, in proud ecstasy, that all the peoples of the world stand aside respectfully to make way for the recklessly galloping troika to pass. That may be, they may stand aside, respectfully or no, but in my poor opinion the great writer ended his book in this way either in an access of childish and naive optimism, or simply in fear of the censorship of the day. For if the troika were drawn by his heroes, Sobakevitch, Nozdryov, Tchitchikov, it could reach no rational goal, whoever might be driving it. And those were the heroes of an older generation, ours are worse specimens still...." At this point Ippolit Kirillovitch's speech was interrupted by applause. The liberal significance of this simile was appreciated. The applause was, it's true, of brief duration, so that the President did not think it necessary to caution the public, and only looked severely in the direction of the offenders. But Ippolit Kirillovitch was encouraged; he had never been applauded before! He had been all his life unable to get a hearing, and now he suddenly had an opportunity of securing the ear of all Russia. "What, after all, is this Karamazov family, which has gained such an unenviable notoriety throughout Russia?" he continued. "Perhaps I am exaggerating, but it seems to me that certain fundamental features of the educated class of to-day are reflected in this family picture--only, of course, in miniature, 'like the sun in a drop of water.' Think of that unhappy, vicious, unbridled old man, who has met with such a melancholy end, the head of a family! Beginning life of noble birth, but in a poor dependent position, through an unexpected marriage he came into a small fortune. A petty knave, a toady and buffoon, of fairly good, though undeveloped, intelligence, he was, above all, a moneylender, who grew bolder with growing prosperity. His abject and servile characteristics disappeared, his malicious and sarcastic cynicism was all that remained. On the spiritual side he was undeveloped, while his vitality was excessive. He saw nothing in life but sensual pleasure, and he brought his children up to be the same. He had no feelings for his duties as a father. He ridiculed those duties. He left his little children to the servants, and was glad to be rid of them, forgot about them completely. The old man's maxim was _Apres moi le deluge_. He was an example of everything that is opposed to civic duty, of the most complete and malignant individualism. 'The world may burn for aught I care, so long as I am all right,' and he was all right; he was content, he was eager to go on living in the same way for another twenty or thirty years. He swindled his own son and spent his money, his maternal inheritance, on trying to get his mistress from him. No, I don't intend to leave the prisoner's defense altogether to my talented colleague from Petersburg. I will speak the truth myself, I can well understand what resentment he had heaped up in his son's heart against him. "But enough, enough of that unhappy old man; he has paid the penalty. Let us remember, however, that he was a father, and one of the typical fathers of to-day. Am I unjust, indeed, in saying that he is typical of many modern fathers? Alas! many of them only differ in not openly professing such cynicism, for they are better educated, more cultured, but their philosophy is essentially the same as his. Perhaps I am a pessimist, but you have agreed to forgive me. Let us agree beforehand, you need not believe me, but let me speak. Let me say what I have to say, and remember something of my words. "Now for the children of this father, this head of a family. One of them is the prisoner before us, all the rest of my speech will deal with him. Of the other two I will speak only cursorily. "The elder is one of those modern young men of brilliant education and vigorous intellect, who has lost all faith in everything. He has denied and rejected much already, like his father. We have all heard him, he was a welcome guest in local society. He never concealed his opinions, quite the contrary in fact, which justifies me in speaking rather openly of him now, of course, not as an individual, but as a member of the Karamazov family. Another personage closely connected with the case died here by his own hand last night. I mean an afflicted idiot, formerly the servant, and possibly the illegitimate son, of Fyodor Pavlovitch, Smerdyakov. At the preliminary inquiry, he told me with hysterical tears how the young Ivan Karamazov had horrified him by his spiritual audacity. 'Everything in the world is lawful according to him, and nothing must be forbidden in the future--that is what he always taught me.' I believe that idiot was driven out of his mind by this theory, though, of course, the epileptic attacks from which he suffered, and this terrible catastrophe, have helped to unhinge his faculties. But he dropped one very interesting observation, which would have done credit to a more intelligent observer, and that is, indeed, why I've mentioned it: 'If there is one of the sons that is like Fyodor Pavlovitch in character, it is Ivan Fyodorovitch.' "With that remark I conclude my sketch of his character, feeling it indelicate to continue further. Oh, I don't want to draw any further conclusions and croak like a raven over the young man's future. We've seen to-day in this court that there are still good impulses in his young heart, that family feeling has not been destroyed in him by lack of faith and cynicism, which have come to him rather by inheritance than by the exercise of independent thought. "Then the third son. Oh, he is a devout and modest youth, who does not share his elder brother's gloomy and destructive theory of life. He has sought to cling to the 'ideas of the people,' or to what goes by that name in some circles of our intellectual classes. He clung to the monastery, and was within an ace of becoming a monk. He seems to me to have betrayed unconsciously, and so early, that timid despair which leads so many in our unhappy society, who dread cynicism and its corrupting influences, and mistakenly attribute all the mischief to European enlightenment, to return to their 'native soil,' as they say, to the bosom, so to speak, of their mother earth, like frightened children, yearning to fall asleep on the withered bosom of their decrepit mother, and to sleep there for ever, only to escape the horrors that terrify them. "For my part I wish the excellent and gifted young man every success; I trust that his youthful idealism and impulse towards the ideas of the people may never degenerate, as often happens, on the moral side into gloomy mysticism, and on the political into blind chauvinism--two elements which are even a greater menace to Russia than the premature decay, due to misunderstanding and gratuitous adoption of European ideas, from which his elder brother is suffering." Two or three people clapped their hands at the mention of chauvinism and mysticism. Ippolit Kirillovitch had been, indeed, carried away by his own eloquence. All this had little to do with the case in hand, to say nothing of the fact of its being somewhat vague, but the sickly and consumptive man was overcome by the desire to express himself once in his life. People said afterwards that he was actuated by unworthy motives in his criticism of Ivan, because the latter had on one or two occasions got the better of him in argument, and Ippolit Kirillovitch, remembering it, tried now to take his revenge. But I don't know whether it was true. All this was only introductory, however, and the speech passed to more direct consideration of the case. "But to return to the eldest son," Ippolit Kirillovitch went on. "He is the prisoner before us. We have his life and his actions, too, before us; the fatal day has come and all has been brought to the surface. While his brothers seem to stand for 'Europeanism' and 'the principles of the people,' he seems to represent Russia as she is. Oh, not all Russia, not all! God preserve us, if it were! Yet, here we have her, our mother Russia, the very scent and sound of her. Oh, he is spontaneous, he is a marvelous mingling of good and evil, he is a lover of culture and Schiller, yet he brawls in taverns and plucks out the beards of his boon companions. Oh, he, too, can be good and noble, but only when all goes well with him. What is more, he can be carried off his feet, positively carried off his feet by noble ideals, but only if they come of themselves, if they fall from heaven for him, if they need not be paid for. He dislikes paying for anything, but is very fond of receiving, and that's so with him in everything. Oh, give him every possible good in life (he couldn't be content with less), and put no obstacle in his way, and he will show that he, too, can be noble. He is not greedy, no, but he must have money, a great deal of money, and you will see how generously, with what scorn of filthy lucre, he will fling it all away in the reckless dissipation of one night. But if he has not money, he will show what he is ready to do to get it when he is in great need of it. But all this later, let us take events in their chronological order. "First, we have before us a poor abandoned child, running about the back- yard 'without boots on his feet,' as our worthy and esteemed fellow citizen, of foreign origin, alas! expressed it just now. I repeat it again, I yield to no one the defense of the criminal. I am here to accuse him, but to defend him also. Yes, I, too, am human; I, too, can weigh the influence of home and childhood on the character. But the boy grows up and becomes an officer; for a duel and other reckless conduct he is exiled to one of the remote frontier towns of Russia. There he led a wild life as an officer. And, of course, he needed money, money before all things, and so after prolonged disputes he came to a settlement with his father, and the last six thousand was sent him. A letter is in existence in which he practically gives up his claim to the rest and settles his conflict with his father over the inheritance on the payment of this six thousand. "Then came his meeting with a young girl of lofty character and brilliant education. Oh, I do not venture to repeat the details; you have only just heard them. Honor, self-sacrifice were shown there, and I will be silent. The figure of the young officer, frivolous and profligate, doing homage to true nobility and a lofty ideal, was shown in a very sympathetic light before us. But the other side of the medal was unexpectedly turned to us immediately after in this very court. Again I will not venture to conjecture why it happened so, but there were causes. The same lady, bathed in tears of long-concealed indignation, alleged that he, he of all men, had despised her for her action, which, though incautious, reckless perhaps, was still dictated by lofty and generous motives. He, he, the girl's betrothed, looked at her with that smile of mockery, which was more insufferable from him than from any one. And knowing that he had already deceived her (he had deceived her, believing that she was bound to endure everything from him, even treachery), she intentionally offered him three thousand roubles, and clearly, too clearly, let him understand that she was offering him money to deceive her. 'Well, will you take it or not, are you so lost to shame?' was the dumb question in her scrutinizing eyes. He looked at her, saw clearly what was in her mind (he's admitted here before you that he understood it all), appropriated that three thousand unconditionally, and squandered it in two days with the new object of his affections. "What are we to believe then? The first legend of the young officer sacrificing his last farthing in a noble impulse of generosity and doing reverence to virtue, or this other revolting picture? As a rule, between two extremes one has to find the mean, but in the present case this is not true. The probability is that in the first case he was genuinely noble, and in the second as genuinely base. And why? Because he was of the broad Karamazov character--that's just what I am leading up to--capable of combining the most incongruous contradictions, and capable of the greatest heights and of the greatest depths. Remember the brilliant remark made by a young observer who has seen the Karamazov family at close quarters--Mr. Rakitin: 'The sense of their own degradation is as essential to those reckless, unbridled natures as the sense of their lofty generosity.' And that's true, they need continually this unnatural mixture. Two extremes at the same moment, or they are miserable and dissatisfied and their existence is incomplete. They are wide, wide as mother Russia; they include everything and put up with everything. "By the way, gentlemen of the jury, we've just touched upon that three thousand roubles, and I will venture to anticipate things a little. Can you conceive that a man like that, on receiving that sum and in such a way, at the price of such shame, such disgrace, such utter degradation, could have been capable that very day of setting apart half that sum, that very day, and sewing it up in a little bag, and would have had the firmness of character to carry it about with him for a whole month afterwards, in spite of every temptation and his extreme need of it! Neither in drunken debauchery in taverns, nor when he was flying into the country, trying to get from God knows whom, the money so essential to him to remove the object of his affections from being tempted by his father, did he bring himself to touch that little bag! Why, if only to avoid abandoning his mistress to the rival of whom he was so jealous, he would have been certain to have opened that bag and to have stayed at home to keep watch over her, and to await the moment when she would say to him at last 'I am yours,' and to fly with her far from their fatal surroundings. "But no, he did not touch his talisman, and what is the reason he gives for it? The chief reason, as I have just said, was that when she would say, 'I am yours, take me where you will,' he might have the wherewithal to take her. But that first reason, in the prisoner's own words, was of little weight beside the second. While I have that money on me, he said, I am a scoundrel, not a thief, for I can always go to my insulted betrothed, and, laying down half the sum I have fraudulently appropriated, I can always say to her, 'You see, I've squandered half your money, and shown I am a weak and immoral man, and, if you like, a scoundrel' (I use the prisoner's own expressions), 'but though I am a scoundrel, I am not a thief, for if I had been a thief, I shouldn't have brought you back this half of the money, but should have taken it as I did the other half!' A marvelous explanation! This frantic, but weak man, who could not resist the temptation of accepting the three thousand roubles at the price of such disgrace, this very man suddenly develops the most stoical firmness, and carries about a thousand roubles without daring to touch it. Does that fit in at all with the character we have analyzed? No, and I venture to tell you how the real Dmitri Karamazov would have behaved in such circumstances, if he really had brought himself to put away the money. "At the first temptation--for instance, to entertain the woman with whom he had already squandered half the money--he would have unpicked his little bag and have taken out some hundred roubles, for why should he have taken back precisely half the money, that is, fifteen hundred roubles? why not fourteen hundred? He could just as well have said then that he was not a thief, because he brought back fourteen hundred roubles. Then another time he would have unpicked it again and taken out another hundred, and then a third, and then a fourth, and before the end of the month he would have taken the last note but one, feeling that if he took back only a hundred it would answer the purpose, for a thief would have stolen it all. And then he would have looked at this last note, and have said to himself, 'It's really not worth while to give back one hundred; let's spend that, too!' That's how the real Dmitri Karamazov, as we know him, would have behaved. One cannot imagine anything more incongruous with the actual fact than this legend of the little bag. Nothing could be more inconceivable. But we shall return to that later." After touching upon what had come out in the proceedings concerning the financial relations of father and son, and arguing again and again that it was utterly impossible, from the facts known, to determine which was in the wrong, Ippolit Kirillovitch passed to the evidence of the medical experts in reference to Mitya's fixed idea about the three thousand owing him.

Book 12, Chapter 6

https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-12-chapter-6

There isn't a whole lot of action over the next four chapters, which are devoted entirely to the prosecutor's speech. The narrator informs us that he seems to be nervous and feverish, and actually dies nine months later of consumption . But we'll give you the broad strokes of his argument here. First, the prosecutor doesn't address the crime itself, but instead goes on about how Russian morality has declined to the point that society is used to something like the Karamazov affair. He cites a quote from famous Russian writer Nikolai Gogol's novel Dead Souls, a book everyone there is sure to recognize: "Ah, troika, bird-troika, who invented you!" The troika, or carriage, serves as a metaphor for Russia as a whole, and he suggests that this Russia-troika is being pulled into insanity by people like the Karamazovs. Next the prosecutor paints his own psychological profile of all of the Karamazovs, starting with the father, then on to Ivan, Alyosha, and finally Dmitri. Yup, even goody-two-shoes Alyosha is depicted as clutching onto the monastic life as an escape from his deep Karamazovian corruption. A line about Alyosha perhaps sinking either into "mysticism" or "chauvinism" draws some applause. Then the prosecutor goes back to the theme of Russia and states that, actually, "we are all Karamazovs," capable of both high idealism and total degradation . Interestingly, he cites a quote from Rakitin on this point. Then Kirillovich suddenly seems to remember that there is a crime to prosecute and says, "incidentally," that he thinks it goes against Dmitri's unstable nature to save and sew up 1,500 roubles in an amulet. After dismissing the dispute over Dmitri's inheritance as irrelevant, the prosecutor goes on to the medical opinions about Dmitri's state of mind.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1130-chapters/3.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra/section_2_part_0.txt

The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra.act i.scene iii

act i, scene iii

{"name": "Act I, Scene iii", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210116191009/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/antony-cleopatra/summary/act-i-scene-iii", "summary": "Meanwhile Cleopatra sends Alexas, her servant, to see what Antony is doing and tells her if she finds him upset, she should tell him Cleopatra is super happy; if he's happy, she should tell him Cleopatra is sad. But most importantly, she can't let Antony know that Cleopatra sent her. Cleo believes the best way to keep a man's interest is to seem as disinterested in him as possible. Charmian tries to advise Cleopatra against playing these games with Antony, but Cleopatra tells her she doesn't know what she's talking about. Cleo knows how to keep a man around--Charmian only knows how to lose one. Just then, Antony shows up with the news that he's leaving for Rome. Cleopatra swoons this way and that, wishing she'd never met him. He finally explains that he needs to take care of the war brewing with Sextus Pompeius. Further, Cleopatra should feel okay about him going because Fulvia is dead. Cleopatra has a moment of seriousness. She is shocked by Fulvia's death, but also at Antony's calmness over the death. Cleopatra worries that Antony would be equally unaffected by her death. They argue a bit over how much Antony loves Cleopatra, and whether Antony will forget Cleopatra as quickly as he forgot Fulvia. Finally Cleopatra concedes he should go to Rome and take care of his affairs. She wishes him well, and they both promise they'll be with each other in spirit while they're apart physically. Antony leaves.", "analysis": ""}

SCENE III. Alexandria. CLEOPATRA'S palace Enter CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS, and ALEXAS CLEOPATRA. Where is he? CHARMIAN. I did not see him since. CLEOPATRA. See where he is, who's with him, what he does. I did not send you. If you find him sad, Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report That I am sudden sick. Quick, and return. Exit ALEXAS CHARMIAN. Madam, methinks, if you did love him dearly, You do not hold the method to enforce The like from him. CLEOPATRA. What should I do I do not? CHARMIAN. In each thing give him way; cross him in nothing. CLEOPATRA. Thou teachest like a fool- the way to lose him. CHARMIAN. Tempt him not so too far; I wish, forbear; In time we hate that which we often fear. Enter ANTONY But here comes Antony. CLEOPATRA. I am sick and sullen. ANTONY. I am sorry to give breathing to my purpose- CLEOPATRA. Help me away, dear Charmian; I shall fall. It cannot be thus long; the sides of nature Will not sustain it. ANTONY. Now, my dearest queen- CLEOPATRA. Pray you, stand farther from me. ANTONY. What's the matter? CLEOPATRA. I know by that same eye there's some good news. What says the married woman? You may go. Would she had never given you leave to come! Let her not say 'tis I that keep you here- I have no power upon you; hers you are. ANTONY. The gods best know- CLEOPATRA. O, never was there queen So mightily betray'd! Yet at the first I saw the treasons planted. ANTONY. Cleopatra- CLEOPATRA. Why should I think you can be mine and true, Though you in swearing shake the throned gods, Who have been false to Fulvia? Riotous madness, To be entangled with those mouth-made vows, Which break themselves in swearing! ANTONY. Most sweet queen- CLEOPATRA. Nay, pray you seek no colour for your going, But bid farewell, and go. When you sued staying, Then was the time for words. No going then! Eternity was in our lips and eyes, Bliss in our brows' bent, none our parts so poor But was a race of heaven. They are so still, Or thou, the greatest soldier of the world, Art turn'd the greatest liar. ANTONY. How now, lady! CLEOPATRA. I would I had thy inches. Thou shouldst know There were a heart in Egypt. ANTONY. Hear me, queen: The strong necessity of time commands Our services awhile; but my full heart Remains in use with you. Our Italy Shines o'er with civil swords: Sextus Pompeius Makes his approaches to the port of Rome; Equality of two domestic powers Breed scrupulous faction; the hated, grown to strength, Are newly grown to love. The condemn'd Pompey, Rich in his father's honour, creeps apace Into the hearts of such as have not thrived Upon the present state, whose numbers threaten; And quietness, grown sick of rest, would purge By any desperate change. My more particular, And that which most with you should safe my going, Is Fulvia's death. CLEOPATRA. Though age from folly could not give me freedom, It does from childishness. Can Fulvia die? ANTONY. She's dead, my Queen. Look here, and at thy sovereign leisure read The garboils she awak'd. At the last, best. See when and where she died. CLEOPATRA. O most false love! Where be the sacred vials thou shouldst fill With sorrowful water? Now I see, I see, In Fulvia's death how mine receiv'd shall be. ANTONY. Quarrel no more, but be prepar'd to know The purposes I bear; which are, or cease, As you shall give th' advice. By the fire That quickens Nilus' slime, I go from hence Thy soldier, servant, making peace or war As thou affects. CLEOPATRA. Cut my lace, Charmian, come! But let it be; I am quickly ill and well- So Antony loves. ANTONY. My precious queen, forbear, And give true evidence to his love, which stands An honourable trial. CLEOPATRA. So Fulvia told me. I prithee turn aside and weep for her; Then bid adieu to me, and say the tears Belong to Egypt. Good now, play one scene Of excellent dissembling, and let it look Like perfect honour. ANTONY. You'll heat my blood; no more. CLEOPATRA. You can do better yet; but this is meetly. ANTONY. Now, by my sword- CLEOPATRA. And target. Still he mends; But this is not the best. Look, prithee, Charmian, How this Herculean Roman does become The carriage of his chafe. ANTONY. I'll leave you, lady. CLEOPATRA. Courteous lord, one word. Sir, you and I must part- but that's not it. Sir, you and I have lov'd- but there's not it. That you know well. Something it is I would- O, my oblivion is a very Antony, And I am all forgotten! ANTONY. But that your royalty Holds idleness your subject, I should take you For idleness itself. CLEOPATRA. 'Tis sweating labour To bear such idleness so near the heart As Cleopatra this. But, sir, forgive me; Since my becomings kill me when they do not Eye well to you. Your honour calls you hence; Therefore be deaf to my unpitied folly, And all the gods go with you! Upon your sword Sit laurel victory, and smooth success Be strew'd before your feet! ANTONY. Let us go. Come. Our separation so abides and flies That thou, residing here, goes yet with me, And I, hence fleeting, here remain with thee. Away! Exeunt

Act I, Scene iii

https://web.archive.org/web/20210116191009/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/antony-cleopatra/summary/act-i-scene-iii

Meanwhile Cleopatra sends Alexas, her servant, to see what Antony is doing and tells her if she finds him upset, she should tell him Cleopatra is super happy; if he's happy, she should tell him Cleopatra is sad. But most importantly, she can't let Antony know that Cleopatra sent her. Cleo believes the best way to keep a man's interest is to seem as disinterested in him as possible. Charmian tries to advise Cleopatra against playing these games with Antony, but Cleopatra tells her she doesn't know what she's talking about. Cleo knows how to keep a man around--Charmian only knows how to lose one. Just then, Antony shows up with the news that he's leaving for Rome. Cleopatra swoons this way and that, wishing she'd never met him. He finally explains that he needs to take care of the war brewing with Sextus Pompeius. Further, Cleopatra should feel okay about him going because Fulvia is dead. Cleopatra has a moment of seriousness. She is shocked by Fulvia's death, but also at Antony's calmness over the death. Cleopatra worries that Antony would be equally unaffected by her death. They argue a bit over how much Antony loves Cleopatra, and whether Antony will forget Cleopatra as quickly as he forgot Fulvia. Finally Cleopatra concedes he should go to Rome and take care of his affairs. She wishes him well, and they both promise they'll be with each other in spirit while they're apart physically. Antony leaves.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/174-chapters/17.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Picture of Dorian Gray/section_8_part_1.txt

The Picture of Dorian Gray.chapter 17

chapter 17

{"name": "Chapter 17", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210228142327/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/doriangray/section9/", "summary": "A week later, Dorian entertains guests at his estate at Selby. He talks with Lord Henry, the Duchess of Monmouth, and her husband; they discuss the nature and importance of beauty. The duchess criticizes Lord Henry for placing too great a value on beauty. The conversation turns to love; Lord Henry maintains that love, like life, depends upon repeating a great experience over and over again. Dorian agrees and excuses himself from his company. Lord Henry chastises the duchess for her flirtations. Soon, they hear a groan from the other end of the conservatory. They rush to find that Dorian has fallen in a swoon. At dinner, Dorian feels occasional chills of terror as he recalls that, before fainting, he saw the face of James Vane pressed against the conservatory window", "analysis": "Lord Henry's belief, uttered after the fatal hunting accident, that \"estiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that,\" contrasts with Dorian's experience. In many ways, Basil's portrait of Dorian illustrates how destiny shapes Dorian's life, for while Dorian himself remains immune to the effects of time, his ever-deteriorating likeness in the portrait is indeed an undeniable herald of his ultimate downfall. The picture interrupts the pleasant reality of Dorian's life to remind him of his soul's dissipation. Although the aestheticists believed that art existed for its own sake, Dorian's experience demonstrates the limitations of that view. The painting becomes almost immediately a physical manifestation of conscience; it shows Dorian what is right and what is wrong in a very literal sense, and he frequently inspects the painting after committing an immoral or unethical act to see exactly how his conscience interprets that act. Ultimately, then, and in contrast to Lord Henry's philosophies, The Picture of Dorian Gray emphasizes the relationship between art and morality. In addition to complicating the reader's understanding of art, which, as the novel draws to its close, becomes complex and somewhat paradoxical, Wilde demonstrates his characteristic flair for comedy and biting social satire. In Chapter Seventeen, Dorian's conversation with the Duchess of Monmouth and Lord Henry testifies to one of the skills that made Wilde the most celebrated playwright of his day. His brilliantly witty dialogue is responsible for his status as one of the most effective practitioners of the comedy of manners. A comedy of manners revolves around the complex and sophisticated behavior of the social elite, among whom one's character is determined more by appearance than by moral behavior. Certainly, by this definition, Lord Henry becomes something of a hero in the novel, as, even by his own admission, he cares much more for the beautiful than for the good. Given the increasing seriousness of Dorian's plight and the ever-darkening state of his mind, the bulk of Chapter Seventeen serves as comic relief, as the dialogue between the duchess and Lord Henry is light and full of witticisms. Their exchange points to the relatively shallow nature of their society, in which love and morality amount to an appreciation of surfaces: as another lady of society reminds Dorian in Chapter Fifteen, \"you are made to be good--you look so good.\" Here, morality is a function not of action or belief but of mere appearances. Lord Henry's dismissive conception of England as a land founded on beer, the Bible, and repressive, unimaginative virtues serves as biting commentary of traditional, middle-class English morality. According to Lord Henry, a population whose tastes run to malt liquor and whose morality is determined by Christian dogma is doomed to produce little of artistic value. His sentiments align with the aesthetics' desire to free themselves from the bonds of conventional morality and sensibilities. Sympathetic as Wilde himself was to Lord Henry's opinions, he provides here a vital counterpoint to these opinions: the duchess's criticism that Lord Henry values beauty too highly begs us to ask the same question of Dorian and the aesthetic philosophy that dominates his life."}

A week later Dorian Gray was sitting in the conservatory at Selby Royal, talking to the pretty Duchess of Monmouth, who with her husband, a jaded-looking man of sixty, was amongst his guests. It was tea-time, and the mellow light of the huge, lace-covered lamp that stood on the table lit up the delicate china and hammered silver of the service at which the duchess was presiding. Her white hands were moving daintily among the cups, and her full red lips were smiling at something that Dorian had whispered to her. Lord Henry was lying back in a silk-draped wicker chair, looking at them. On a peach-coloured divan sat Lady Narborough, pretending to listen to the duke's description of the last Brazilian beetle that he had added to his collection. Three young men in elaborate smoking-suits were handing tea-cakes to some of the women. The house-party consisted of twelve people, and there were more expected to arrive on the next day. "What are you two talking about?" said Lord Henry, strolling over to the table and putting his cup down. "I hope Dorian has told you about my plan for rechristening everything, Gladys. It is a delightful idea." "But I don't want to be rechristened, Harry," rejoined the duchess, looking up at him with her wonderful eyes. "I am quite satisfied with my own name, and I am sure Mr. Gray should be satisfied with his." "My dear Gladys, I would not alter either name for the world. They are both perfect. I was thinking chiefly of flowers. Yesterday I cut an orchid, for my button-hole. It was a marvellous spotted thing, as effective as the seven deadly sins. In a thoughtless moment I asked one of the gardeners what it was called. He told me it was a fine specimen of _Robinsoniana_, or something dreadful of that kind. It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words. That is the reason I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for." "Then what should we call you, Harry?" she asked. "His name is Prince Paradox," said Dorian. "I recognize him in a flash," exclaimed the duchess. "I won't hear of it," laughed Lord Henry, sinking into a chair. "From a label there is no escape! I refuse the title." "Royalties may not abdicate," fell as a warning from pretty lips. "You wish me to defend my throne, then?" "Yes." "I give the truths of to-morrow." "I prefer the mistakes of to-day," she answered. "You disarm me, Gladys," he cried, catching the wilfulness of her mood. "Of your shield, Harry, not of your spear." "I never tilt against beauty," he said, with a wave of his hand. "That is your error, Harry, believe me. You value beauty far too much." "How can you say that? I admit that I think that it is better to be beautiful than to be good. But on the other hand, no one is more ready than I am to acknowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly." "Ugliness is one of the seven deadly sins, then?" cried the duchess. "What becomes of your simile about the orchid?" "Ugliness is one of the seven deadly virtues, Gladys. You, as a good Tory, must not underrate them. Beer, the Bible, and the seven deadly virtues have made our England what she is." "You don't like your country, then?" she asked. "I live in it." "That you may censure it the better." "Would you have me take the verdict of Europe on it?" he inquired. "What do they say of us?" "That Tartuffe has emigrated to England and opened a shop." "Is that yours, Harry?" "I give it to you." "I could not use it. It is too true." "You need not be afraid. Our countrymen never recognize a description." "They are practical." "They are more cunning than practical. When they make up their ledger, they balance stupidity by wealth, and vice by hypocrisy." "Still, we have done great things." "Great things have been thrust on us, Gladys." "We have carried their burden." "Only as far as the Stock Exchange." She shook her head. "I believe in the race," she cried. "It represents the survival of the pushing." "It has development." "Decay fascinates me more." "What of art?" she asked. "It is a malady." "Love?" "An illusion." "Religion?" "The fashionable substitute for belief." "You are a sceptic." "Never! Scepticism is the beginning of faith." "What are you?" "To define is to limit." "Give me a clue." "Threads snap. You would lose your way in the labyrinth." "You bewilder me. Let us talk of some one else." "Our host is a delightful topic. Years ago he was christened Prince Charming." "Ah! don't remind me of that," cried Dorian Gray. "Our host is rather horrid this evening," answered the duchess, colouring. "I believe he thinks that Monmouth married me on purely scientific principles as the best specimen he could find of a modern butterfly." "Well, I hope he won't stick pins into you, Duchess," laughed Dorian. "Oh! my maid does that already, Mr. Gray, when she is annoyed with me." "And what does she get annoyed with you about, Duchess?" "For the most trivial things, Mr. Gray, I assure you. Usually because I come in at ten minutes to nine and tell her that I must be dressed by half-past eight." "How unreasonable of her! You should give her warning." "I daren't, Mr. Gray. Why, she invents hats for me. You remember the one I wore at Lady Hilstone's garden-party? You don't, but it is nice of you to pretend that you do. Well, she made it out of nothing. All good hats are made out of nothing." "Like all good reputations, Gladys," interrupted Lord Henry. "Every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one must be a mediocrity." "Not with women," said the duchess, shaking her head; "and women rule the world. I assure you we can't bear mediocrities. We women, as some one says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if you ever love at all." "It seems to me that we never do anything else," murmured Dorian. "Ah! then, you never really love, Mr. Gray," answered the duchess with mock sadness. "My dear Gladys!" cried Lord Henry. "How can you say that? Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art. Besides, each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it. We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible." "Even when one has been wounded by it, Harry?" asked the duchess after a pause. "Especially when one has been wounded by it," answered Lord Henry. The duchess turned and looked at Dorian Gray with a curious expression in her eyes. "What do you say to that, Mr. Gray?" she inquired. Dorian hesitated for a moment. Then he threw his head back and laughed. "I always agree with Harry, Duchess." "Even when he is wrong?" "Harry is never wrong, Duchess." "And does his philosophy make you happy?" "I have never searched for happiness. Who wants happiness? I have searched for pleasure." "And found it, Mr. Gray?" "Often. Too often." The duchess sighed. "I am searching for peace," she said, "and if I don't go and dress, I shall have none this evening." "Let me get you some orchids, Duchess," cried Dorian, starting to his feet and walking down the conservatory. "You are flirting disgracefully with him," said Lord Henry to his cousin. "You had better take care. He is very fascinating." "If he were not, there would be no battle." "Greek meets Greek, then?" "I am on the side of the Trojans. They fought for a woman." "They were defeated." "There are worse things than capture," she answered. "You gallop with a loose rein." "Pace gives life," was the _riposte_. "I shall write it in my diary to-night." "What?" "That a burnt child loves the fire." "I am not even singed. My wings are untouched." "You use them for everything, except flight." "Courage has passed from men to women. It is a new experience for us." "You have a rival." "Who?" He laughed. "Lady Narborough," he whispered. "She perfectly adores him." "You fill me with apprehension. The appeal to antiquity is fatal to us who are romanticists." "Romanticists! You have all the methods of science." "Men have educated us." "But not explained you." "Describe us as a sex," was her challenge. "Sphinxes without secrets." She looked at him, smiling. "How long Mr. Gray is!" she said. "Let us go and help him. I have not yet told him the colour of my frock." "Ah! you must suit your frock to his flowers, Gladys." "That would be a premature surrender." "Romantic art begins with its climax." "I must keep an opportunity for retreat." "In the Parthian manner?" "They found safety in the desert. I could not do that." "Women are not always allowed a choice," he answered, but hardly had he finished the sentence before from the far end of the conservatory came a stifled groan, followed by the dull sound of a heavy fall. Everybody started up. The duchess stood motionless in horror. And with fear in his eyes, Lord Henry rushed through the flapping palms to find Dorian Gray lying face downwards on the tiled floor in a deathlike swoon. He was carried at once into the blue drawing-room and laid upon one of the sofas. After a short time, he came to himself and looked round with a dazed expression. "What has happened?" he asked. "Oh! I remember. Am I safe here, Harry?" He began to tremble. "My dear Dorian," answered Lord Henry, "you merely fainted. That was all. You must have overtired yourself. You had better not come down to dinner. I will take your place." "No, I will come down," he said, struggling to his feet. "I would rather come down. I must not be alone." He went to his room and dressed. There was a wild recklessness of gaiety in his manner as he sat at table, but now and then a thrill of terror ran through him when he remembered that, pressed against the window of the conservatory, like a white handkerchief, he had seen the face of James Vane watching him.

Chapter 17

https://web.archive.org/web/20210228142327/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/doriangray/section9/

A week later, Dorian entertains guests at his estate at Selby. He talks with Lord Henry, the Duchess of Monmouth, and her husband; they discuss the nature and importance of beauty. The duchess criticizes Lord Henry for placing too great a value on beauty. The conversation turns to love; Lord Henry maintains that love, like life, depends upon repeating a great experience over and over again. Dorian agrees and excuses himself from his company. Lord Henry chastises the duchess for her flirtations. Soon, they hear a groan from the other end of the conservatory. They rush to find that Dorian has fallen in a swoon. At dinner, Dorian feels occasional chills of terror as he recalls that, before fainting, he saw the face of James Vane pressed against the conservatory window

Lord Henry's belief, uttered after the fatal hunting accident, that "estiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that," contrasts with Dorian's experience. In many ways, Basil's portrait of Dorian illustrates how destiny shapes Dorian's life, for while Dorian himself remains immune to the effects of time, his ever-deteriorating likeness in the portrait is indeed an undeniable herald of his ultimate downfall. The picture interrupts the pleasant reality of Dorian's life to remind him of his soul's dissipation. Although the aestheticists believed that art existed for its own sake, Dorian's experience demonstrates the limitations of that view. The painting becomes almost immediately a physical manifestation of conscience; it shows Dorian what is right and what is wrong in a very literal sense, and he frequently inspects the painting after committing an immoral or unethical act to see exactly how his conscience interprets that act. Ultimately, then, and in contrast to Lord Henry's philosophies, The Picture of Dorian Gray emphasizes the relationship between art and morality. In addition to complicating the reader's understanding of art, which, as the novel draws to its close, becomes complex and somewhat paradoxical, Wilde demonstrates his characteristic flair for comedy and biting social satire. In Chapter Seventeen, Dorian's conversation with the Duchess of Monmouth and Lord Henry testifies to one of the skills that made Wilde the most celebrated playwright of his day. His brilliantly witty dialogue is responsible for his status as one of the most effective practitioners of the comedy of manners. A comedy of manners revolves around the complex and sophisticated behavior of the social elite, among whom one's character is determined more by appearance than by moral behavior. Certainly, by this definition, Lord Henry becomes something of a hero in the novel, as, even by his own admission, he cares much more for the beautiful than for the good. Given the increasing seriousness of Dorian's plight and the ever-darkening state of his mind, the bulk of Chapter Seventeen serves as comic relief, as the dialogue between the duchess and Lord Henry is light and full of witticisms. Their exchange points to the relatively shallow nature of their society, in which love and morality amount to an appreciation of surfaces: as another lady of society reminds Dorian in Chapter Fifteen, "you are made to be good--you look so good." Here, morality is a function not of action or belief but of mere appearances. Lord Henry's dismissive conception of England as a land founded on beer, the Bible, and repressive, unimaginative virtues serves as biting commentary of traditional, middle-class English morality. According to Lord Henry, a population whose tastes run to malt liquor and whose morality is determined by Christian dogma is doomed to produce little of artistic value. His sentiments align with the aesthetics' desire to free themselves from the bonds of conventional morality and sensibilities. Sympathetic as Wilde himself was to Lord Henry's opinions, he provides here a vital counterpoint to these opinions: the duchess's criticism that Lord Henry values beauty too highly begs us to ask the same question of Dorian and the aesthetic philosophy that dominates his life.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/48.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_47_part_0.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 8.chapter 3

book 8, chapter 3

{"name": "Book 8, Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-8-chapter-3", "summary": "As we learned in Book 7, Chapter 3, Grushenka told Dmitri that she was off to help Samsonov with his accounts. The narrative picks up with Dmitri, who leaves Grushenka and tries desperately to find some money. He pawns off his shooting pistols with a casual friend, a young official in town. Dmitri then goes off to visit his father's neighbor, Maria Kondatrievna, where he is distressed to learn that Smerdyakov has fallen ill. Dmitri heads home, worried. He washes up, gets dressed, and decides to borrow the 3,000 roubles he needs from Madame Khokhlakov. Dmitri arrives at Madame Khokhlakov's, who is, strangely, thrilled to see him. He keeps trying to ask her for the 3,000 roubles, and eventually succeeds - or so he thinks. But Madame Khokhlakov really is just trying to get him to work with the gold mines, where he would, eventually, earn 3,000 roubles. She drapes a small silver icon around his neck as a kind of good-luck charm. Dmitri, furious and impatient with Madame Khokhlakov's incoherent plans, bangs his fists on the table, spits, and walks out the door. Outside Dmitri dissolves into hopeless tears as he beats himself on a certain spot on his chest, the same spot he had beaten when he talked previously with Alyosha in Book 3, Chapter 11. Grief-stricken, he wanders into the square, where he encounters an old woman whom he recognizes as a servant of Samsonov. When he asks her about Grushenka, he discovers that Grushenka had left Samsonov's shortly after he dropped her off. Furious, he heads to Grushenka, where he discovers from her servant Fenya that she has just recently left for Mokroye. On the way out, he takes a brass pestle from the table and stuffs it in his pocket.", "analysis": ""}

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.

Book 8, Chapter 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-8-chapter-3

As we learned in Book 7, Chapter 3, Grushenka told Dmitri that she was off to help Samsonov with his accounts. The narrative picks up with Dmitri, who leaves Grushenka and tries desperately to find some money. He pawns off his shooting pistols with a casual friend, a young official in town. Dmitri then goes off to visit his father's neighbor, Maria Kondatrievna, where he is distressed to learn that Smerdyakov has fallen ill. Dmitri heads home, worried. He washes up, gets dressed, and decides to borrow the 3,000 roubles he needs from Madame Khokhlakov. Dmitri arrives at Madame Khokhlakov's, who is, strangely, thrilled to see him. He keeps trying to ask her for the 3,000 roubles, and eventually succeeds - or so he thinks. But Madame Khokhlakov really is just trying to get him to work with the gold mines, where he would, eventually, earn 3,000 roubles. She drapes a small silver icon around his neck as a kind of good-luck charm. Dmitri, furious and impatient with Madame Khokhlakov's incoherent plans, bangs his fists on the table, spits, and walks out the door. Outside Dmitri dissolves into hopeless tears as he beats himself on a certain spot on his chest, the same spot he had beaten when he talked previously with Alyosha in Book 3, Chapter 11. Grief-stricken, he wanders into the square, where he encounters an old woman whom he recognizes as a servant of Samsonov. When he asks her about Grushenka, he discovers that Grushenka had left Samsonov's shortly after he dropped her off. Furious, he heads to Grushenka, where he discovers from her servant Fenya that she has just recently left for Mokroye. On the way out, he takes a brass pestle from the table and stuffs it in his pocket.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/19.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_18_part_0.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 19

chapter 19

{"name": "Phase III: \"The Rally,\" Chapter Nineteen", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-19", "summary": "Dairyman Crick has a rule that the cows should be milked randomly--if the cow develops a preference for a particular milkmaid or milkman, he ends up having problems after they leave his farm. Knowing this, Tess tries to take whatever cows happen to be next in line, but notices that she keeps ending up with the eight or so cows that she particularly likes. She realizes that it's because Angel has been sneakily arranging the cows in that order as they come in from the field. She accuses him of sending her favorites her way, and he shrugs, and says \"So what? You'll always be here to milk them.\" She hopes she will be... but she doesn't know that. She later regrets that she called him on it. One evening in June, the air is so still that you can hear a pin drop from across the yard. Tess hears the notes of a harp out in the garden, and wanders out towards it. Tess, as we know, loves music. The harp music she hears now gives her the same kind of out-of-body experience that she described before at the breakfast table. The description of her reaction to the music makes it sound sexy. The music stops, and Tess waits for him to begin again. He doesn't, so she tries to slip away unseen, but he spots her light-colored dress against the darkness in the garden. He calls her back, and asks why she's afraid. She says she's not--at least, not of outdoor things. He asks if she's afraid of life in general, and she says yes. He says he agrees with her, but asks her why she finds life to be a burden. She innocently describes her sense of how oppressive the future is, like an inescapable progression of tomorrows. Angel is startled to find such sad thoughts in a young milkmaid, and he finds her even more interesting because of it. On her side, Tess is startled to find that the wealthy son of a parson should find life to be a burden. Neither of them understands the other, but both are interested in learning more as the opportunity presents itself. Every day they learn more about each other. She feels daunted by his superior intelligence, so he offers to teach her anything she'd like to know that he's able to teach--history, for example. She doesn't see the use in learning history. She doesn't want to know that her own life isn't unique, and that countless others have gone through similar experiences before her. All she wants to know is why the world is so unjust. Again, he's startled to find so much bitterness in such a young woman, and he walks away. Tess is ashamed of her childishness, and wonders what she can do to restore his good opinion of her. She thinks about telling him about her D'Urberville heritage, but decides to test the waters a bit first. She asks Dairyman Crick if Mr. Clare respects old families. Not at all, he tells her. Mr. Clare thinks that old families are all dried up and useless. Hearing this, Tess is glad that she hadn't told Angel about her family.", "analysis": ""}

In general the cows were milked as they presented themselves, without fancy or choice. But certain cows will show a fondness for a particular pair of hands, sometimes carrying this predilection so far as to refuse to stand at all except to their favourite, the pail of a stranger being unceremoniously kicked over. It was Dairyman Crick's rule to insist on breaking down these partialities and aversions by constant interchange, since otherwise, in the event of a milkman or maid going away from the dairy, he was placed in a difficulty. The maids' private aims, however, were the reverse of the dairyman's rule, the daily selection by each damsel of the eight or ten cows to which she had grown accustomed rendering the operation on their willing udders surprisingly easy and effortless. Tess, like her compeers, soon discovered which of the cows had a preference for her style of manipulation, and her fingers having become delicate from the long domiciliary imprisonments to which she had subjected herself at intervals during the last two or three years, she would have been glad to meet the milchers' views in this respect. Out of the whole ninety-five there were eight in particular--Dumpling, Fancy, Lofty, Mist, Old Pretty, Young Pretty, Tidy, and Loud--who, though the teats of one or two were as hard as carrots, gave down to her with a readiness that made her work on them a mere touch of the fingers. Knowing, however, the dairyman's wish, she endeavoured conscientiously to take the animals just as they came, excepting the very hard yielders which she could not yet manage. But she soon found a curious correspondence between the ostensibly chance position of the cows and her wishes in this matter, till she felt that their order could not be the result of accident. The dairyman's pupil had lent a hand in getting the cows together of late, and at the fifth or sixth time she turned her eyes, as she rested against the cow, full of sly inquiry upon him. "Mr Clare, you have ranged the cows!" she said, blushing; and in making the accusation, symptoms of a smile gently lifted her upper lip in spite of her, so as to show the tips of her teeth, the lower lip remaining severely still. "Well, it makes no difference," said he. "You will always be here to milk them." "Do you think so? I HOPE I shall! But I don't KNOW." She was angry with herself afterwards, thinking that he, unaware of her grave reasons for liking this seclusion, might have mistaken her meaning. She had spoken so earnestly to him, as if his presence were somehow a factor in her wish. Her misgiving was such that at dusk, when the milking was over, she walked in the garden alone, to continue her regrets that she had disclosed to him her discovery of his considerateness. It was a typical summer evening in June, the atmosphere being in such delicate equilibrium and so transmissive that inanimate objects seemed endowed with two or three senses, if not five. There was no distinction between the near and the far, and an auditor felt close to everything within the horizon. The soundlessness impressed her as a positive entity rather than as the mere negation of noise. It was broken by the strumming of strings. Tess had heard those notes in the attic above her head. Dim, flattened, constrained by their confinement, they had never appealed to her as now, when they wandered in the still air with a stark quality like that of nudity. To speak absolutely, both instrument and execution were poor; but the relative is all, and as she listened Tess, like a fascinated bird, could not leave the spot. Far from leaving she drew up towards the performer, keeping behind the hedge that he might not guess her presence. The outskirt of the garden in which Tess found herself had been left uncultivated for some years, and was now damp and rank with juicy grass which sent up mists of pollen at a touch; and with tall blooming weeds emitting offensive smells--weeds whose red and yellow and purple hues formed a polychrome as dazzling as that of cultivated flowers. She went stealthily as a cat through this profusion of growth, gathering cuckoo-spittle on her skirts, cracking snails that were underfoot, staining her hands with thistle-milk and slug-slime, and rubbing off upon her naked arms sticky blights which, though snow-white on the apple-tree trunks, made madder stains on her skin; thus she drew quite near to Clare, still unobserved of him. Tess was conscious of neither time nor space. The exaltation which she had described as being producible at will by gazing at a star came now without any determination of hers; she undulated upon the thin notes of the second-hand harp, and their harmonies passed like breezes through her, bringing tears into her eyes. The floating pollen seemed to be his notes made visible, and the dampness of the garden the weeping of the garden's sensibility. Though near nightfall, the rank-smelling weed-flowers glowed as if they would not close for intentness, and the waves of colour mixed with the waves of sound. The light which still shone was derived mainly from a large hole in the western bank of cloud; it was like a piece of day left behind by accident, dusk having closed in elsewhere. He concluded his plaintive melody, a very simple performance, demanding no great skill; and she waited, thinking another might be begun. But, tired of playing, he had desultorily come round the fence, and was rambling up behind her. Tess, her cheeks on fire, moved away furtively, as if hardly moving at all. Angel, however, saw her light summer gown, and he spoke; his low tones reaching her, though he was some distance off. "What makes you draw off in that way, Tess?" said he. "Are you afraid?" "Oh no, sir--not of outdoor things; especially just now when the apple-blooth is falling, and everything is so green." "But you have your indoor fears--eh?" "Well--yes, sir." "What of?" "I couldn't quite say." "The milk turning sour?" "No." "Life in general?" "Yes, sir." "Ah--so have I, very often. This hobble of being alive is rather serious, don't you think so?" "It is--now you put it that way." "All the same, I shouldn't have expected a young girl like you to see it so just yet. How is it you do?" She maintained a hesitating silence. "Come, Tess, tell me in confidence." She thought that he meant what were the aspects of things to her, and replied shyly-- "The trees have inquisitive eyes, haven't they?--that is, seem as if they had. And the river says,--'Why do ye trouble me with your looks?' And you seem to see numbers of to-morrows just all in a line, the first of them the biggest and clearest, the others getting smaller and smaller as they stand farther away; but they all seem very fierce and cruel and as if they said, 'I'm coming! Beware of me! Beware of me!' ... But YOU, sir, can raise up dreams with your music, and drive all such horrid fancies away!" He was surprised to find this young woman--who though but a milkmaid had just that touch of rarity about her which might make her the envied of her housemates--shaping such sad imaginings. She was expressing in her own native phrases--assisted a little by her Sixth Standard training--feelings which might almost have been called those of the age--the ache of modernism. The perception arrested him less when he reflected that what are called advanced ideas are really in great part but the latest fashion in definition--a more accurate expression, by words in _logy_ and _ism_, of sensations which men and women have vaguely grasped for centuries. Still, it was strange that they should have come to her while yet so young; more than strange; it was impressive, interesting, pathetic. Not guessing the cause, there was nothing to remind him that experience is as to intensity, and not as to duration. Tess's passing corporeal blight had been her mental harvest. Tess, on her part, could not understand why a man of clerical family and good education, and above physical want, should look upon it as a mishap to be alive. For the unhappy pilgrim herself there was very good reason. But how could this admirable and poetic man ever have descended into the Valley of Humiliation, have felt with the man of Uz--as she herself had felt two or three years ago--"My soul chooseth strangling and death rather than my life. I loathe it; I would not live alway." It was true that he was at present out of his class. But she knew that was only because, like Peter the Great in a shipwright's yard, he was studying what he wanted to know. He did not milk cows because he was obliged to milk cows, but because he was learning to be a rich and prosperous dairyman, landowner, agriculturist, and breeder of cattle. He would become an American or Australian Abraham, commanding like a monarch his flocks and his herds, his spotted and his ring-straked, his men-servants and his maids. At times, nevertheless, it did seem unaccountable to her that a decidedly bookish, musical, thinking young man should have chosen deliberately to be a farmer, and not a clergyman, like his father and brothers. Thus, neither having the clue to the other's secret, they were respectively puzzled at what each revealed, and awaited new knowledge of each other's character and mood without attempting to pry into each other's history. Every day, every hour, brought to him one more little stroke of her nature, and to her one more of his. Tess was trying to lead a repressed life, but she little divined the strength of her own vitality. At first Tess seemed to regard Angel Clare as an intelligence rather than as a man. As such she compared him with herself; and at every discovery of the abundance of his illuminations, of the distance between her own modest mental standpoint and the unmeasurable, Andean altitude of his, she became quite dejected, disheartened from all further effort on her own part whatever. He observed her dejection one day, when he had casually mentioned something to her about pastoral life in ancient Greece. She was gathering the buds called "lords and ladies" from the bank while he spoke. "Why do you look so woebegone all of a sudden?" he asked. "Oh, 'tis only--about my own self," she said, with a frail laugh of sadness, fitfully beginning to peel "a lady" meanwhile. "Just a sense of what might have been with me! My life looks as if it had been wasted for want of chances! When I see what you know, what you have read, and seen, and thought, I feel what a nothing I am! I'm like the poor Queen of Sheba who lived in the Bible. There is no more spirit in me." "Bless my soul, don't go troubling about that! Why," he said with some enthusiasm, "I should be only too glad, my dear Tess, to help you to anything in the way of history, or any line of reading you would like to take up--" "It is a lady again," interrupted she, holding out the bud she had peeled. "What?" "I meant that there are always more ladies than lords when you come to peel them." "Never mind about the lords and ladies. Would you like to take up any course of study--history, for example?" "Sometimes I feel I don't want to know anything more about it than I know already." "Why not?" "Because what's the use of learning that I am one of a long row only--finding out that there is set down in some old book somebody just like me, and to know that I shall only act her part; making me sad, that's all. The best is not to remember that your nature and your past doings have been just like thousands' and thousands', and that your coming life and doings 'll be like thousands's and thousands'." "What, really, then, you don't want to learn anything?" "I shouldn't mind learning why--why the sun do shine on the just and the unjust alike," she answered, with a slight quaver in her voice. "But that's what books will not tell me." "Tess, fie for such bitterness!" Of course he spoke with a conventional sense of duty only, for that sort of wondering had not been unknown to himself in bygone days. And as he looked at the unpracticed mouth and lips, he thought that such a daughter of the soil could only have caught up the sentiment by rote. She went on peeling the lords and ladies till Clare, regarding for a moment the wave-like curl of her lashes as they dropped with her bent gaze on her soft cheek, lingeringly went away. When he was gone she stood awhile, thoughtfully peeling the last bud; and then, awakening from her reverie, flung it and all the crowd of floral nobility impatiently on the ground, in an ebullition of displeasure with herself for her _niaiserie_, and with a quickening warmth in her heart of hearts. How stupid he must think her! In an access of hunger for his good opinion she bethought herself of what she had latterly endeavoured to forget, so unpleasant had been its issues--the identity of her family with that of the knightly d'Urbervilles. Barren attribute as it was, disastrous as its discovery had been in many ways to her, perhaps Mr Clare, as a gentleman and a student of history, would respect her sufficiently to forget her childish conduct with the lords and ladies if he knew that those Purbeck-marble and alabaster people in Kingsbere Church really represented her own lineal forefathers; that she was no spurious d'Urberville, compounded of money and ambition like those at Trantridge, but true d'Urberville to the bone. But, before venturing to make the revelation, dubious Tess indirectly sounded the dairyman as to its possible effect upon Mr Clare, by asking the former if Mr Clare had any great respect for old county families when they had lost all their money and land. "Mr Clare," said the dairyman emphatically, "is one of the most rebellest rozums you ever knowed--not a bit like the rest of his family; and if there's one thing that he do hate more than another 'tis the notion of what's called a' old family. He says that it stands to reason that old families have done their spurt of work in past days, and can't have anything left in 'em now. There's the Billets and the Drenkhards and the Greys and the St Quintins and the Hardys and the Goulds, who used to own the lands for miles down this valley; you could buy 'em all up now for an old song a'most. Why, our little Retty Priddle here, you know, is one of the Paridelles--the old family that used to own lots o' the lands out by King's Hintock, now owned by the Earl o' Wessex, afore even he or his was heard of. Well, Mr Clare found this out, and spoke quite scornful to the poor girl for days. 'Ah!' he says to her, 'you'll never make a good dairymaid! All your skill was used up ages ago in Palestine, and you must lie fallow for a thousand years to git strength for more deeds!' A boy came here t'other day asking for a job, and said his name was Matt, and when we asked him his surname he said he'd never heard that 'a had any surname, and when we asked why, he said he supposed his folks hadn't been 'stablished long enough. 'Ah! you're the very boy I want!' says Mr Clare, jumping up and shaking hands wi'en; 'I've great hopes of you;' and gave him half-a-crown. O no! he can't stomach old families!" After hearing this caricature of Clare's opinion poor Tess was glad that she had not said a word in a weak moment about her family--even though it was so unusually old almost to have gone round the circle and become a new one. Besides, another diary-girl was as good as she, it seemed, in that respect. She held her tongue about the d'Urberville vault and the Knight of the Conqueror whose name she bore. The insight afforded into Clare's character suggested to her that it was largely owing to her supposed untraditional newness that she had won interest in his eyes.

Phase III: "The Rally," Chapter Nineteen

https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-19

Dairyman Crick has a rule that the cows should be milked randomly--if the cow develops a preference for a particular milkmaid or milkman, he ends up having problems after they leave his farm. Knowing this, Tess tries to take whatever cows happen to be next in line, but notices that she keeps ending up with the eight or so cows that she particularly likes. She realizes that it's because Angel has been sneakily arranging the cows in that order as they come in from the field. She accuses him of sending her favorites her way, and he shrugs, and says "So what? You'll always be here to milk them." She hopes she will be... but she doesn't know that. She later regrets that she called him on it. One evening in June, the air is so still that you can hear a pin drop from across the yard. Tess hears the notes of a harp out in the garden, and wanders out towards it. Tess, as we know, loves music. The harp music she hears now gives her the same kind of out-of-body experience that she described before at the breakfast table. The description of her reaction to the music makes it sound sexy. The music stops, and Tess waits for him to begin again. He doesn't, so she tries to slip away unseen, but he spots her light-colored dress against the darkness in the garden. He calls her back, and asks why she's afraid. She says she's not--at least, not of outdoor things. He asks if she's afraid of life in general, and she says yes. He says he agrees with her, but asks her why she finds life to be a burden. She innocently describes her sense of how oppressive the future is, like an inescapable progression of tomorrows. Angel is startled to find such sad thoughts in a young milkmaid, and he finds her even more interesting because of it. On her side, Tess is startled to find that the wealthy son of a parson should find life to be a burden. Neither of them understands the other, but both are interested in learning more as the opportunity presents itself. Every day they learn more about each other. She feels daunted by his superior intelligence, so he offers to teach her anything she'd like to know that he's able to teach--history, for example. She doesn't see the use in learning history. She doesn't want to know that her own life isn't unique, and that countless others have gone through similar experiences before her. All she wants to know is why the world is so unjust. Again, he's startled to find so much bitterness in such a young woman, and he walks away. Tess is ashamed of her childishness, and wonders what she can do to restore his good opinion of her. She thinks about telling him about her D'Urberville heritage, but decides to test the waters a bit first. She asks Dairyman Crick if Mr. Clare respects old families. Not at all, he tells her. Mr. Clare thinks that old families are all dried up and useless. Hearing this, Tess is glad that she hadn't told Angel about her family.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/64.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Far from the Madding Crowd/section_56_part_0.txt

Far from the Madding Crowd.chapter 57

chapter 57

{"name": "Chapter 57", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-57", "summary": "\"'The most private, secret, plainest wedding that it is possible to have.' Those had been Bathsheba's words to Oak one evening, some time after the events of the preceding chapter, and he meditated a full hour by the clock upon bow to carry out her wishes to the letter.\" There was the matter of the license. Oak met Coggan in town and admitted his plans but swore his friend to secrecy. Coggan delivered a message to the parish clerk, Laban Tall, telling him to meet the mistress next morning and to be wearing his best clothes. He told the clerk's curious wife, \"Mind, het or wet, blow or snow, he must come. . . . 'Tis very particular indeed. The fact is, 'tis to witness her sign some law-work about taking shares wi' another fanner for a long span o' years. There, that's what 'tis, and now I've told 'ee, Mother Tall, in a way I shouldn't ha' done if I hadn't loved 'ee so hopelessly well.\" The next call at the vicar's excited no curiosity. Bathsheba awakened before Liddy's call. As Liddy was brushing her mistress' hair, Bathsheba told the inquisitive girl that Oak was coming to dinner. Liddy guessed the purport and was excited. Oak arrived with an umbrella, and, a short time later, swathed head to foot in greatcoats, he and Bathsheba, each under an umbrella, walked into town, like sensible people who were on a brief errand. In the church were Tall, Liddy, and the parson. After the wedding, there was tea at Bathsheba's. Oak had decided to move in, since he did not as yet have appropriate furnishings in his house. \"Just as Bathsheba was pouring out a cup of tea, their ears were greeted by the firing of a cannon, followed by what seemed like a tremendous blowing of trumpets in the front of the house. . . . Oak took up the light and went into the porch, followed by Bathsheba with a shawl over her head.\" A group of male figures set up a loud hurrah; there was another cannon shot, followed by a \"hideous clang of music\" from assorted ancient and venerable instruments. Oak said a warm, \"Come in, souls, and have something to eat and drink wi' me and my wife.\" \"Not to-night,\" was the unselfish reply. The men suggested that drinks be sent to Warren's, instead. Oak gladly accepted the suggestion. Commenting on the ease with which Oak said \"my wife,\" the friends withdrew, Oak laughing and Bathsheba smiling. As they moved away, Poorgrass had the last word: \"And I wish him joy o' her. . . . since I 'tis as 'tis, why, it might have been worse, and I feel my thanks accordingly.\"", "analysis": "The simple close is both appropriate and artistic. We feel that this time things will be all right. Oak's manner contrasts with Troy's after his marriage, when he was so condescending toward the hired help. Though Oak and Bathsheba are the focal point, the scene is mellowed and subdued. There is a voluntary outgoing of affection toward the couple and a friendly understanding of the roles they all will play."}

A FOGGY NIGHT AND MORNING--CONCLUSION "The most private, secret, plainest wedding that it is possible to have." Those had been Bathsheba's words to Oak one evening, some time after the event of the preceding f, and he meditated a full hour by the clock upon how to carry out her wishes to the letter. "A license--O yes, it must be a license," he said to himself at last. "Very well, then; first, a license." On a dark night, a few days later, Oak came with mysterious steps from the surrogate's door, in Casterbridge. On the way home he heard a heavy tread in front of him, and, overtaking the man, found him to be Coggan. They walked together into the village until they came to a little lane behind the church, leading down to the cottage of Laban Tall, who had lately been installed as clerk of the parish, and was yet in mortal terror at church on Sundays when he heard his lone voice among certain hard words of the Psalms, whither no man ventured to follow him. "Well, good-night, Coggan," said Oak, "I'm going down this way." "Oh!" said Coggan, surprised; "what's going on to-night then, make so bold Mr. Oak?" It seemed rather ungenerous not to tell Coggan, under the circumstances, for Coggan had been true as steel all through the time of Gabriel's unhappiness about Bathsheba, and Gabriel said, "You can keep a secret, Coggan?" "You've proved me, and you know." "Yes, I have, and I do know. Well, then, mistress and I mean to get married to-morrow morning." "Heaven's high tower! And yet I've thought of such a thing from time to time; true, I have. But keeping it so close! Well, there, 'tis no consarn of of mine, and I wish 'ee joy o' her." "Thank you, Coggan. But I assure 'ee that this great hush is not what I wished for at all, or what either of us would have wished if it hadn't been for certain things that would make a gay wedding seem hardly the thing. Bathsheba has a great wish that all the parish shall not be in church, looking at her--she's shy-like and nervous about it, in fact--so I be doing this to humour her." "Ay, I see: quite right, too, I suppose I must say. And you be now going down to the clerk." "Yes; you may as well come with me." "I am afeard your labour in keeping it close will be throwed away," said Coggan, as they walked along. "Labe Tall's old woman will horn it all over parish in half-an-hour." "So she will, upon my life; I never thought of that," said Oak, pausing. "Yet I must tell him to-night, I suppose, for he's working so far off, and leaves early." "I'll tell 'ee how we could tackle her," said Coggan. "I'll knock and ask to speak to Laban outside the door, you standing in the background. Then he'll come out, and you can tell yer tale. She'll never guess what I want en for; and I'll make up a few words about the farm-work, as a blind." This scheme was considered feasible; and Coggan advanced boldly, and rapped at Mrs. Tall's door. Mrs. Tall herself opened it. "I wanted to have a word with Laban." "He's not at home, and won't be this side of eleven o'clock. He've been forced to go over to Yalbury since shutting out work. I shall do quite as well." "I hardly think you will. Stop a moment;" and Coggan stepped round the corner of the porch to consult Oak. "Who's t'other man, then?" said Mrs. Tall. "Only a friend," said Coggan. "Say he's wanted to meet mistress near church-hatch to-morrow morning at ten," said Oak, in a whisper. "That he must come without fail, and wear his best clothes." "The clothes will floor us as safe as houses!" said Coggan. "It can't be helped," said Oak. "Tell her." So Coggan delivered the message. "Mind, het or wet, blow or snow, he must come," added Jan. "'Tis very particular, indeed. The fact is, 'tis to witness her sign some law-work about taking shares wi' another farmer for a long span o' years. There, that's what 'tis, and now I've told 'ee, Mother Tall, in a way I shouldn't ha' done if I hadn't loved 'ee so hopeless well." Coggan retired before she could ask any further; and next they called at the vicar's in a manner which excited no curiosity at all. Then Gabriel went home, and prepared for the morrow. "Liddy," said Bathsheba, on going to bed that night, "I want you to call me at seven o'clock to-morrow, In case I shouldn't wake." "But you always do wake afore then, ma'am." "Yes, but I have something important to do, which I'll tell you of when the time comes, and it's best to make sure." Bathsheba, however, awoke voluntarily at four, nor could she by any contrivance get to sleep again. About six, being quite positive that her watch had stopped during the night, she could wait no longer. She went and tapped at Liddy's door, and after some labour awoke her. "But I thought it was I who had to call you?" said the bewildered Liddy. "And it isn't six yet." "Indeed it is; how can you tell such a story, Liddy? I know it must be ever so much past seven. Come to my room as soon as you can; I want you to give my hair a good brushing." When Liddy came to Bathsheba's room her mistress was already waiting. Liddy could not understand this extraordinary promptness. "Whatever IS going on, ma'am?" she said. "Well, I'll tell you," said Bathsheba, with a mischievous smile in her bright eyes. "Farmer Oak is coming here to dine with me to-day!" "Farmer Oak--and nobody else?--you two alone?" "Yes." "But is it safe, ma'am, after what's been said?" asked her companion, dubiously. "A woman's good name is such a perishable article that--" Bathsheba laughed with a flushed cheek, and whispered in Liddy's ear, although there was nobody present. Then Liddy stared and exclaimed, "Souls alive, what news! It makes my heart go quite bumpity-bump!" "It makes mine rather furious, too," said Bathsheba. "However, there's no getting out of it now!" It was a damp disagreeable morning. Nevertheless, at twenty minutes to ten o'clock, Oak came out of his house, and Went up the hill side With that sort of stride A man puts out when walking in search of a bride, and knocked Bathsheba's door. Ten minutes later a large and a smaller umbrella might have been seen moving from the same door, and through the mist along the road to the church. The distance was not more than a quarter of a mile, and these two sensible persons deemed it unnecessary to drive. An observer must have been very close indeed to discover that the forms under the umbrellas were those of Oak and Bathsheba, arm-in-arm for the first time in their lives, Oak in a greatcoat extending to his knees, and Bathsheba in a cloak that reached her clogs. Yet, though so plainly dressed, there was a certain rejuvenated appearance about her:-- As though a rose should shut and be a bud again. Repose had again incarnadined her cheeks; and having, at Gabriel's request, arranged her hair this morning as she had worn it years ago on Norcombe Hill, she seemed in his eyes remarkably like a girl of that fascinating dream, which, considering that she was now only three or four-and-twenty, was perhaps not very wonderful. In the church were Tall, Liddy, and the parson, and in a remarkably short space of time the deed was done. The two sat down very quietly to tea in Bathsheba's parlour in the evening of the same day, for it had been arranged that Farmer Oak should go there to live, since he had as yet neither money, house, nor furniture worthy of the name, though he was on a sure way towards them, whilst Bathsheba was, comparatively, in a plethora of all three. Just as Bathsheba was pouring out a cup of tea, their ears were greeted by the firing of a cannon, followed by what seemed like a tremendous blowing of trumpets, in the front of the house. "There!" said Oak, laughing, "I knew those fellows were up to something, by the look on their faces" Oak took up the light and went into the porch, followed by Bathsheba with a shawl over her head. The rays fell upon a group of male figures gathered upon the gravel in front, who, when they saw the newly-married couple in the porch, set up a loud "Hurrah!" and at the same moment bang again went the cannon in the background, followed by a hideous clang of music from a drum, tambourine, clarionet, serpent, hautboy, tenor-viol, and double-bass--the only remaining relics of the true and original Weatherbury band--venerable worm-eaten instruments, which had celebrated in their own persons the victories of Marlborough, under the fingers of the forefathers of those who played them now. The performers came forward, and marched up to the front. "Those bright boys, Mark Clark and Jan, are at the bottom of all this," said Oak. "Come in, souls, and have something to eat and drink wi' me and my wife." "Not to-night," said Mr. Clark, with evident self-denial. "Thank ye all the same; but we'll call at a more seemly time. However, we couldn't think of letting the day pass without a note of admiration of some sort. If ye could send a drop of som'at down to Warren's, why so it is. Here's long life and happiness to neighbour Oak and his comely bride!" "Thank ye; thank ye all," said Gabriel. "A bit and a drop shall be sent to Warren's for ye at once. I had a thought that we might very likely get a salute of some sort from our old friends, and I was saying so to my wife but now." "Faith," said Coggan, in a critical tone, turning to his companions, "the man hev learnt to say 'my wife' in a wonderful naterel way, considering how very youthful he is in wedlock as yet--hey, neighbours all?" "I never heerd a skilful old married feller of twenty years' standing pipe 'my wife' in a more used note than 'a did," said Jacob Smallbury. "It might have been a little more true to nater if't had been spoke a little chillier, but that wasn't to be expected just now." "That improvement will come wi' time," said Jan, twirling his eye. Then Oak laughed, and Bathsheba smiled (for she never laughed readily now), and their friends turned to go. "Yes; I suppose that's the size o't," said Joseph Poorgrass with a cheerful sigh as they moved away; "and I wish him joy o' her; though I were once or twice upon saying to-day with holy Hosea, in my scripture manner, which is my second nature, 'Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone.' But since 'tis as 'tis, why, it might have been worse, and I feel my thanks accordingly."

Chapter 57

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-57

"'The most private, secret, plainest wedding that it is possible to have.' Those had been Bathsheba's words to Oak one evening, some time after the events of the preceding chapter, and he meditated a full hour by the clock upon bow to carry out her wishes to the letter." There was the matter of the license. Oak met Coggan in town and admitted his plans but swore his friend to secrecy. Coggan delivered a message to the parish clerk, Laban Tall, telling him to meet the mistress next morning and to be wearing his best clothes. He told the clerk's curious wife, "Mind, het or wet, blow or snow, he must come. . . . 'Tis very particular indeed. The fact is, 'tis to witness her sign some law-work about taking shares wi' another fanner for a long span o' years. There, that's what 'tis, and now I've told 'ee, Mother Tall, in a way I shouldn't ha' done if I hadn't loved 'ee so hopelessly well." The next call at the vicar's excited no curiosity. Bathsheba awakened before Liddy's call. As Liddy was brushing her mistress' hair, Bathsheba told the inquisitive girl that Oak was coming to dinner. Liddy guessed the purport and was excited. Oak arrived with an umbrella, and, a short time later, swathed head to foot in greatcoats, he and Bathsheba, each under an umbrella, walked into town, like sensible people who were on a brief errand. In the church were Tall, Liddy, and the parson. After the wedding, there was tea at Bathsheba's. Oak had decided to move in, since he did not as yet have appropriate furnishings in his house. "Just as Bathsheba was pouring out a cup of tea, their ears were greeted by the firing of a cannon, followed by what seemed like a tremendous blowing of trumpets in the front of the house. . . . Oak took up the light and went into the porch, followed by Bathsheba with a shawl over her head." A group of male figures set up a loud hurrah; there was another cannon shot, followed by a "hideous clang of music" from assorted ancient and venerable instruments. Oak said a warm, "Come in, souls, and have something to eat and drink wi' me and my wife." "Not to-night," was the unselfish reply. The men suggested that drinks be sent to Warren's, instead. Oak gladly accepted the suggestion. Commenting on the ease with which Oak said "my wife," the friends withdrew, Oak laughing and Bathsheba smiling. As they moved away, Poorgrass had the last word: "And I wish him joy o' her. . . . since I 'tis as 'tis, why, it might have been worse, and I feel my thanks accordingly."

The simple close is both appropriate and artistic. We feel that this time things will be all right. Oak's manner contrasts with Troy's after his marriage, when he was so condescending toward the hired help. Though Oak and Bathsheba are the focal point, the scene is mellowed and subdued. There is a voluntary outgoing of affection toward the couple and a friendly understanding of the roles they all will play.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/31.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Sense and Sensibility/section_3_part_1.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 31

chapter 31

{"name": "Chapter 31", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210419170735/https://www.gradesaver.com/sense-and-sensibility/study-guide/summary-chapters-31-40", "summary": "Marianne still cannot see Willoughby for the blackguard that he is; she wants to believe him innocent, though wavers in her convictions. A letter from their mother arrives, and Marianne expresses her desire to be home immediately, though Elinor decides that they will wait for further advice from their mother. Colonel Brandon calls, and Marianne avoids his presence; he has come to speak to Elinor, and tells her of Willoughby's true character. Colonel Brandon was once in love with a ward to his family, Eliza, who was forced to marry his brother while he was sent into the army; the marriage was not happy, and after their divorce, she became a fallen woman and had an illegitimate daughter. Colonel Brandon finally found her when he came back from India, but she was dying in a poorhouse, with her young daughter. Colonel Brandon placed the daughter, Miss Williams, in care after her mother's death, but she had disappeared some months ago after becoming pregnant by Willoughby and then being abandoned by him. Colonel Brandon received news of Miss Williams's state on the day of the Delaford picnic, and this was the reason he left Barton so suddenly and could not return. The Colonel hopes that knowledge of Willoughby's blackness will help console Marianne about her loss, as she is lucky not to have been married to such a thoughtless, cruel man.", "analysis": "Here, Colonel Brandon's much hinted-about past is finally discussed, and explains much about his character and his present affections for Marianne. Marianne's great resemblance to his long-lost love is surely the reason why the Colonel has such affection for Marianne, and a wish to protect her as he failed to do with Eliza. A theme of recurring history is evident in the Colonel's story, as he is again in love with a passionate, imperiled woman at risk of losing herself and her reputation. But the Colonel's present knowledge and awareness that Eliza's and Marianne's \"fortunes cannot be the same\" foreshadows that the outcome of his concern for Marianne will be much less tragic. The story of Colonel Brandon's adopted daughter shows that although Marianne was flighty and indiscreet, she is lucky that she was not taken in as the other girl had been. Again, Willoughby's character is shown to be far more reprehensible than it ever appeared; the divide between Willoughby and Colonel Brandon becomes even greater, as the Colonel shows himself to be the kind of honorable, caring man that Willoughby only appeared to be"}

From a night of more sleep than she had expected, Marianne awoke the next morning to the same consciousness of misery in which she had closed her eyes. Elinor encouraged her as much as possible to talk of what she felt; and before breakfast was ready, they had gone through the subject again and again; and with the same steady conviction and affectionate counsel on Elinor's side, the same impetuous feelings and varying opinions on Marianne's, as before. Sometimes she could believe Willoughby to be as unfortunate and as innocent as herself, and at others, lost every consolation in the impossibility of acquitting him. At one moment she was absolutely indifferent to the observation of all the world, at another she would seclude herself from it for ever, and at a third could resist it with energy. In one thing, however, she was uniform, when it came to the point, in avoiding, where it was possible, the presence of Mrs. Jennings, and in a determined silence when obliged to endure it. Her heart was hardened against the belief of Mrs. Jennings's entering into her sorrows with any compassion. "No, no, no, it cannot be," she cried; "she cannot feel. Her kindness is not sympathy; her good-nature is not tenderness. All that she wants is gossip, and she only likes me now because I supply it." Elinor had not needed this to be assured of the injustice to which her sister was often led in her opinion of others, by the irritable refinement of her own mind, and the too great importance placed by her on the delicacies of a strong sensibility, and the graces of a polished manner. Like half the rest of the world, if more than half there be that are clever and good, Marianne, with excellent abilities and an excellent disposition, was neither reasonable nor candid. She expected from other people the same opinions and feelings as her own, and she judged of their motives by the immediate effect of their actions on herself. Thus a circumstance occurred, while the sisters were together in their own room after breakfast, which sunk the heart of Mrs. Jennings still lower in her estimation; because, through her own weakness, it chanced to prove a source of fresh pain to herself, though Mrs. Jennings was governed in it by an impulse of the utmost goodwill. With a letter in her outstretched hand, and countenance gaily smiling, from the persuasion of bringing comfort, she entered their room, saying, "Now, my dear, I bring you something that I am sure will do you good." Marianne heard enough. In one moment her imagination placed before her a letter from Willoughby, full of tenderness and contrition, explanatory of all that had passed, satisfactory, convincing; and instantly followed by Willoughby himself, rushing eagerly into the room to inforce, at her feet, by the eloquence of his eyes, the assurances of his letter. The work of one moment was destroyed by the next. The hand writing of her mother, never till then unwelcome, was before her; and, in the acuteness of the disappointment which followed such an ecstasy of more than hope, she felt as if, till that instant, she had never suffered. The cruelty of Mrs. Jennings no language, within her reach in her moments of happiest eloquence, could have expressed; and now she could reproach her only by the tears which streamed from her eyes with passionate violence--a reproach, however, so entirely lost on its object, that after many expressions of pity, she withdrew, still referring her to the letter of comfort. But the letter, when she was calm enough to read it, brought little comfort. Willoughby filled every page. Her mother, still confident of their engagement, and relying as warmly as ever on his constancy, had only been roused by Elinor's application, to intreat from Marianne greater openness towards them both; and this, with such tenderness towards her, such affection for Willoughby, and such a conviction of their future happiness in each other, that she wept with agony through the whole of it. All her impatience to be at home again now returned; her mother was dearer to her than ever; dearer through the very excess of her mistaken confidence in Willoughby, and she was wildly urgent to be gone. Elinor, unable herself to determine whether it were better for Marianne to be in London or at Barton, offered no counsel of her own except of patience till their mother's wishes could be known; and at length she obtained her sister's consent to wait for that knowledge. Mrs. Jennings left them earlier than usual; for she could not be easy till the Middletons and Palmers were able to grieve as much as herself; and positively refusing Elinor's offered attendance, went out alone for the rest of the morning. Elinor, with a very heavy heart, aware of the pain she was going to communicate, and perceiving, by Marianne's letter, how ill she had succeeded in laying any foundation for it, then sat down to write her mother an account of what had passed, and entreat her directions for the future; while Marianne, who came into the drawing-room on Mrs. Jennings's going away, remained fixed at the table where Elinor wrote, watching the advancement of her pen, grieving over her for the hardship of such a task, and grieving still more fondly over its effect on her mother. In this manner they had continued about a quarter of an hour, when Marianne, whose nerves could not then bear any sudden noise, was startled by a rap at the door. "Who can this be?" cried Elinor. "So early too! I thought we HAD been safe." Marianne moved to the window-- "It is Colonel Brandon!" said she, with vexation. "We are never safe from HIM." "He will not come in, as Mrs. Jennings is from home." "I will not trust to THAT," retreating to her own room. "A man who has nothing to do with his own time has no conscience in his intrusion on that of others." The event proved her conjecture right, though it was founded on injustice and error; for Colonel Brandon DID come in; and Elinor, who was convinced that solicitude for Marianne brought him thither, and who saw THAT solicitude in his disturbed and melancholy look, and in his anxious though brief inquiry after her, could not forgive her sister for esteeming him so lightly. "I met Mrs. Jennings in Bond Street," said he, after the first salutation, "and she encouraged me to come on; and I was the more easily encouraged, because I thought it probable that I might find you alone, which I was very desirous of doing. My object--my wish--my sole wish in desiring it--I hope, I believe it is--is to be a means of giving comfort;--no, I must not say comfort--not present comfort--but conviction, lasting conviction to your sister's mind. My regard for her, for yourself, for your mother--will you allow me to prove it, by relating some circumstances which nothing but a VERY sincere regard--nothing but an earnest desire of being useful--I think I am justified--though where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?" He stopped. "I understand you," said Elinor. "You have something to tell me of Mr. Willoughby, that will open his character farther. Your telling it will be the greatest act of friendship that can be shewn Marianne. MY gratitude will be insured immediately by any information tending to that end, and HERS must be gained by it in time. Pray, pray let me hear it." "You shall; and, to be brief, when I quitted Barton last October,--but this will give you no idea--I must go farther back. You will find me a very awkward narrator, Miss Dashwood; I hardly know where to begin. A short account of myself, I believe, will be necessary, and it SHALL be a short one. On such a subject," sighing heavily, "can I have little temptation to be diffuse." He stopt a moment for recollection, and then, with another sigh, went on. "You have probably entirely forgotten a conversation--(it is not to be supposed that it could make any impression on you)--a conversation between us one evening at Barton Park--it was the evening of a dance--in which I alluded to a lady I had once known, as resembling, in some measure, your sister Marianne." "Indeed," answered Elinor, "I have NOT forgotten it." He looked pleased by this remembrance, and added, "If I am not deceived by the uncertainty, the partiality of tender recollection, there is a very strong resemblance between them, as well in mind as person. The same warmth of heart, the same eagerness of fancy and spirits. This lady was one of my nearest relations, an orphan from her infancy, and under the guardianship of my father. Our ages were nearly the same, and from our earliest years we were playfellows and friends. I cannot remember the time when I did not love Eliza; and my affection for her, as we grew up, was such, as perhaps, judging from my present forlorn and cheerless gravity, you might think me incapable of having ever felt. Hers, for me, was, I believe, fervent as the attachment of your sister to Mr. Willoughby and it was, though from a different cause, no less unfortunate. At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married--married against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian. My brother did not deserve her; he did not even love her. I had hoped that her regard for me would support her under any difficulty, and for some time it did; but at last the misery of her situation, for she experienced great unkindness, overcame all her resolution, and though she had promised me that nothing--but how blindly I relate! I have never told you how this was brought on. We were within a few hours of eloping together for Scotland. The treachery, or the folly, of my cousin's maid betrayed us. I was banished to the house of a relation far distant, and she was allowed no liberty, no society, no amusement, till my father's point was gained. I had depended on her fortitude too far, and the blow was a severe one--but had her marriage been happy, so young as I then was, a few months must have reconciled me to it, or at least I should not have now to lament it. This however was not the case. My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my regiment in the East Indies) she should fall? Had I remained in England, perhaps--but I meant to promote the happiness of both by removing from her for years, and for that purpose had procured my exchange. The shock which her marriage had given me," he continued, in a voice of great agitation, "was of trifling weight--was nothing to what I felt when I heard, about two years afterwards, of her divorce. It was THAT which threw this gloom,--even now the recollection of what I suffered--" He could say no more, and rising hastily walked for a few minutes about the room. Elinor, affected by his relation, and still more by his distress, could not speak. He saw her concern, and coming to her, took her hand, pressed it, and kissed it with grateful respect. A few minutes more of silent exertion enabled him to proceed with composure. "It was nearly three years after this unhappy period before I returned to England. My first care, when I DID arrive, was of course to seek for her; but the search was as fruitless as it was melancholy. I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor sufficient for her comfortable maintenance, and I learnt from my brother that the power of receiving it had been made over some months before to another person. He imagined, and calmly could he imagine it, that her extravagance, and consequent distress, had obliged her to dispose of it for some immediate relief. At last, however, and after I had been six months in England, I DID find her. Regard for a former servant of my own, who had since fallen into misfortune, carried me to visit him in a spunging-house, where he was confined for debt; and there, in the same house, under a similar confinement, was my unfortunate sister. So altered--so faded--worn down by acute suffering of every kind! hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had once doted. What I endured in so beholding her--but I have no right to wound your feelings by attempting to describe it--I have pained you too much already. That she was, to all appearance, in the last stage of a consumption, was--yes, in such a situation it was my greatest comfort. Life could do nothing for her, beyond giving time for a better preparation for death; and that was given. I saw her placed in comfortable lodgings, and under proper attendants; I visited her every day during the rest of her short life: I was with her in her last moments." Again he stopped to recover himself; and Elinor spoke her feelings in an exclamation of tender concern, at the fate of his unfortunate friend. "Your sister, I hope, cannot be offended," said he, "by the resemblance I have fancied between her and my poor disgraced relation. Their fates, their fortunes, cannot be the same; and had the natural sweet disposition of the one been guarded by a firmer mind, or a happier marriage, she might have been all that you will live to see the other be. But to what does all this lead? I seem to have been distressing you for nothing. Ah! Miss Dashwood--a subject such as this--untouched for fourteen years--it is dangerous to handle it at all! I WILL be more collected--more concise. She left to my care her only child, a little girl, the offspring of her first guilty connection, who was then about three years old. She loved the child, and had always kept it with her. It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family, no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of the family property,) she visited me at Delaford. I called her a distant relation; but I am well aware that I have in general been suspected of a much nearer connection with her. It is now three years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February, almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man, and I thought well of his daughter--better than she deserved, for, with a most obstinate and ill-judged secrecy, she would tell nothing, would give no clue, though she certainly knew all. He, her father, a well-meaning, but not a quick-sighted man, could really, I believe, give no information; for he had been generally confined to the house, while the girls were ranging over the town and making what acquaintance they chose; and he tried to convince me, as thoroughly as he was convinced himself, of his daughter's being entirely unconcerned in the business. In short, I could learn nothing but that she was gone; all the rest, for eight long months, was left to conjecture. What I thought, what I feared, may be imagined; and what I suffered too." "Good heavens!" cried Elinor, "could it be--could Willoughby!"-- "The first news that reached me of her," he continued, "came in a letter from herself, last October. It was forwarded to me from Delaford, and I received it on the very morning of our intended party to Whitwell; and this was the reason of my leaving Barton so suddenly, which I am sure must at the time have appeared strange to every body, and which I believe gave offence to some. Little did Mr. Willoughby imagine, I suppose, when his looks censured me for incivility in breaking up the party, that I was called away to the relief of one whom he had made poor and miserable; but HAD he known it, what would it have availed? Would he have been less gay or less happy in the smiles of your sister? No, he had already done that, which no man who CAN feel for another would do. He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return; he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her." "This is beyond every thing!" exclaimed Elinor. "His character is now before you; expensive, dissipated, and worse than both. Knowing all this, as I have now known it many weeks, guess what I must have felt on seeing your sister as fond of him as ever, and on being assured that she was to marry him: guess what I must have felt for all your sakes. When I came to you last week and found you alone, I came determined to know the truth; though irresolute what to do when it WAS known. My behaviour must have seemed strange to you then; but now you will comprehend it. To suffer you all to be so deceived; to see your sister--but what could I do? I had no hope of interfering with success; and sometimes I thought your sister's influence might yet reclaim him. But now, after such dishonorable usage, who can tell what were his designs on her. Whatever they may have been, however, she may now, and hereafter doubtless WILL turn with gratitude towards her own condition, when she compares it with that of my poor Eliza, when she considers the wretched and hopeless situation of this poor girl, and pictures her to herself, with an affection for him so strong, still as strong as her own, and with a mind tormented by self-reproach, which must attend her through life. Surely this comparison must have its use with her. She will feel her own sufferings to be nothing. They proceed from no misconduct, and can bring no disgrace. On the contrary, every friend must be made still more her friend by them. Concern for her unhappiness, and respect for her fortitude under it, must strengthen every attachment. Use your own discretion, however, in communicating to her what I have told you. You must know best what will be its effect; but had I not seriously, and from my heart believed it might be of service, might lessen her regrets, I would not have suffered myself to trouble you with this account of my family afflictions, with a recital which may seem to have been intended to raise myself at the expense of others." Elinor's thanks followed this speech with grateful earnestness; attended too with the assurance of her expecting material advantage to Marianne, from the communication of what had passed. "I have been more pained," said she, "by her endeavors to acquit him than by all the rest; for it irritates her mind more than the most perfect conviction of his unworthiness can do. Now, though at first she will suffer much, I am sure she will soon become easier. Have you," she continued, after a short silence, "ever seen Mr. Willoughby since you left him at Barton?" "Yes," he replied gravely, "once I have. One meeting was unavoidable." Elinor, startled by his manner, looked at him anxiously, saying, "What? have you met him to--" "I could meet him no other way. Eliza had confessed to me, though most reluctantly, the name of her lover; and when he returned to town, which was within a fortnight after myself, we met by appointment, he to defend, I to punish his conduct. We returned unwounded, and the meeting, therefore, never got abroad." Elinor sighed over the fancied necessity of this; but to a man and a soldier she presumed not to censure it. "Such," said Colonel Brandon, after a pause, "has been the unhappy resemblance between the fate of mother and daughter! and so imperfectly have I discharged my trust!" "Is she still in town?" "No; as soon as she recovered from her lying-in, for I found her near her delivery, I removed her and her child into the country, and there she remains." Recollecting, soon afterwards, that he was probably dividing Elinor from her sister, he put an end to his visit, receiving from her again the same grateful acknowledgments, and leaving her full of compassion and esteem for him.

Chapter 31

https://web.archive.org/web/20210419170735/https://www.gradesaver.com/sense-and-sensibility/study-guide/summary-chapters-31-40

Marianne still cannot see Willoughby for the blackguard that he is; she wants to believe him innocent, though wavers in her convictions. A letter from their mother arrives, and Marianne expresses her desire to be home immediately, though Elinor decides that they will wait for further advice from their mother. Colonel Brandon calls, and Marianne avoids his presence; he has come to speak to Elinor, and tells her of Willoughby's true character. Colonel Brandon was once in love with a ward to his family, Eliza, who was forced to marry his brother while he was sent into the army; the marriage was not happy, and after their divorce, she became a fallen woman and had an illegitimate daughter. Colonel Brandon finally found her when he came back from India, but she was dying in a poorhouse, with her young daughter. Colonel Brandon placed the daughter, Miss Williams, in care after her mother's death, but she had disappeared some months ago after becoming pregnant by Willoughby and then being abandoned by him. Colonel Brandon received news of Miss Williams's state on the day of the Delaford picnic, and this was the reason he left Barton so suddenly and could not return. The Colonel hopes that knowledge of Willoughby's blackness will help console Marianne about her loss, as she is lucky not to have been married to such a thoughtless, cruel man.

Here, Colonel Brandon's much hinted-about past is finally discussed, and explains much about his character and his present affections for Marianne. Marianne's great resemblance to his long-lost love is surely the reason why the Colonel has such affection for Marianne, and a wish to protect her as he failed to do with Eliza. A theme of recurring history is evident in the Colonel's story, as he is again in love with a passionate, imperiled woman at risk of losing herself and her reputation. But the Colonel's present knowledge and awareness that Eliza's and Marianne's "fortunes cannot be the same" foreshadows that the outcome of his concern for Marianne will be much less tragic. The story of Colonel Brandon's adopted daughter shows that although Marianne was flighty and indiscreet, she is lucky that she was not taken in as the other girl had been. Again, Willoughby's character is shown to be far more reprehensible than it ever appeared; the divide between Willoughby and Colonel Brandon becomes even greater, as the Colonel shows himself to be the kind of honorable, caring man that Willoughby only appeared to be

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/chapters_27_to_29.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Lord Jim/section_11_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapters 27-29

chapters 27-29

{"name": "Chapters 27-29", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210215030710/https://www.novelguide.com/lord-jim/summaries/chapter27-29", "summary": "Seven, Twenty Eight and Twenty Nine . Chapter Twenty Seven explains Jim's directions to attack Sherif Ali's camp. He supervised the cannons being moved up the hill and the 'simple folk' of the outlying villages came to believe he carried them on his back. Marlow notices how the surroundings and the praise influence Jim and sees it as part of his captivity. These people had trusted Jim implicitly and to date they have not regretted taking his advice. Jim also became involved in sorting out a dispute between a husband and wife as the husband came from a village miles away for his advice. Jim's word 'decided everything', 'ever since the smashing of Sherif Ali'. . . The narrative returns again to this attack and we are told about how Tamb' Itam, Jim's servant, is loyal to his 'white lord' to the point of being fanatical. The Patusan people celebrated after the success of beating Sherif Ali and this became Jim's 'seal of success'. This chapter ends with Marlow pointing out that the telling of the story dwarfs Jim's utter isolation, but 'his word was the one truth of every passing day'. . . In Chapter Twenty Eight, the readers are told that Sherif Ali left the country after his defeat without making another stand. In consultation with Dain Waris, Jim appointed the headmen and thus became the 'virtual ruler' of the land. Doramin is anxious about the future of his country and tells Marlow he fears Jim will return home as other white men have. Marlow replies 'no, no' and Doramin asks why, but Marlow does not explain. . . The 'individual side of the story' is given as Marlow also explains that Jim has become close with Jewel, the step-daughter of Cornelius . It is not until later that Marlow connects her name with an 'astonishing rumour' he heard on his journey there. ' A mysterious white man' was thought to have acquired an enormous emerald. The most amazing part of this 'Jim-myth' was that such a jewel 'is best preserved by being concealed about the person of a woman'. She also has to be young and insensible to the seductions of love and the rumour says that Jim hides the jewel in her bosom. . . Marlow points out, in Chapter Twenty Nine, how 300 miles from 'our civilisation' 'the haggard utilitarian lies' 'wither and die' and are replaced by 'pure exercises of imagination'. The true part of Jim's story is that romance has singled Jim out and he 'did not hide his jewel' - he is extremely proud of it. Marlow does not see Jewel very often, but when he does he notes she presents 'a curious combination of shyness and audacity' and shows a 'vigilant affection' for Jim: she guards her conquest 'inflexibly'. It is reiterated that Jim 'was imprisoned within the very freedom of his power'. . . The narrative then shifts to Cornelius, whom Marlow describes as 'abject'. Cornelius first greeted Jim with joy, but gave him little food. Cornelius also tried to blame his late wife for the bad state of the accounts. Jim's first six weeks in Patusan were 'beastly' as he tried to do his duty by Stein, but had other matters to consider such as the Rajah wanting him killed. .", "analysis": "Seven, Twenty Eight and Twenty Nine . These chapters outline Jim's rise to acceptance and even adoration in Patusan, in particular after his successful decision to co-ordinate an attack against Sherif Ali. His now strong position is an ambivalent one, however, as Marlow points out that Jim is made captive ironically by the freedom he possesses. His lover, Jewel, demonstrates a 'vigilant affection' for him and Doramin also fears that Jim will leave as other white men have done previously. His freedom of power is dependent, then, on remaining there."}

'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.''The defeated Sherif Ali fled the country without making another stand, and when the miserable hunted villagers began to crawl out of the jungle back to their rotting houses, it was Jim who, in consultation with Dain Waris, appointed the headmen. Thus he became the virtual ruler of the land. As to old Tunku Allang, his fears at first had known no bounds. It is said that at the intelligence of the successful storming of the hill he flung himself, face down, on the bamboo floor of his audience-hall, and lay motionless for a whole night and a whole day, uttering stifled sounds of such an appalling nature that no man dared approach his prostrate form nearer than a spear's length. Already he could see himself driven ignominiously out of Patusan, wandering abandoned, stripped, without opium, without his women, without followers, a fair game for the first comer to kill. After Sherif Ali his turn would come, and who could resist an attack led by such a devil? And indeed he owed his life and such authority as he still possessed at the time of my visit to Jim's idea of what was fair alone. The Bugis had been extremely anxious to pay off old scores, and the impassive old Doramin cherished the hope of yet seeing his son ruler of Patusan. During one of our interviews he deliberately allowed me to get a glimpse of this secret ambition. Nothing could be finer in its way than the dignified wariness of his approaches. He himself--he began by declaring--had used his strength in his young days, but now he had grown old and tired. . . . With his imposing bulk and haughty little eyes darting sagacious, inquisitive glances, he reminded one irresistibly of a cunning old elephant; the slow rise and fall of his vast breast went on powerful and regular, like the heave of a calm sea. He too, as he protested, had an unbounded confidence in Tuan Jim's wisdom. If he could only obtain a promise! One word would be enough! . . . His breathing silences, the low rumblings of his voice, recalled the last efforts of a spent thunderstorm. 'I tried to put the subject aside. It was difficult, for there could be no question that Jim had the power; in his new sphere there did not seem to be anything that was not his to hold or to give. But that, I repeat, was nothing in comparison with the notion, which occurred to me, while I listened with a show of attention, that he seemed to have come very near at last to mastering his fate. Doramin was anxious about the future of the country, and I was struck by the turn he gave to the argument. The land remains where God had put it; but white men--he said--they come to us and in a little while they go. They go away. Those they leave behind do not know when to look for their return. They go to their own land, to their people, and so this white man too would. . . . I don't know what induced me to commit myself at this point by a vigorous "No, no." The whole extent of this indiscretion became apparent when Doramin, turning full upon me his face, whose expression, fixed in rugged deep folds, remained unalterable, like a huge brown mask, said that this was good news indeed, reflectively; and then wanted to know why. 'His little, motherly witch of a wife sat on my other hand, with her head covered and her feet tucked up, gazing through the great shutter-hole. I could only see a straying lock of grey hair, a high cheek-bone, the slight masticating motion of the sharp chin. Without removing her eyes from the vast prospect of forests stretching as far as the hills, she asked me in a pitying voice why was it that he so young had wandered from his home, coming so far, through so many dangers? Had he no household there, no kinsmen in his own country? Had he no old mother, who would always remember his face? . . . 'I was completely unprepared for this. I could only mutter and shake my head vaguely. Afterwards I am perfectly aware I cut a very poor figure trying to extricate myself out of this difficulty. From that moment, however, the old nakhoda became taciturn. He was not very pleased, I fear, and evidently I had given him food for thought. Strangely enough, on the evening of that very day (which was my last in Patusan) I was once more confronted with the same question, with the unanswerable why of Jim's fate. And this brings me to the story of his love. 'I suppose you think it is a story that you can imagine for yourselves. We have heard so many such stories, and the majority of us don't believe them to be stories of love at all. For the most part we look upon them as stories of opportunities: episodes of passion at best, or perhaps only of youth and temptation, doomed to forgetfulness in the end, even if they pass through the reality of tenderness and regret. This view mostly is right, and perhaps in this case too. . . . Yet I don't know. To tell this story is by no means so easy as it should be--were the ordinary standpoint adequate. Apparently it is a story very much like the others: for me, however, there is visible in its background the melancholy figure of a woman, the shadow of a cruel wisdom buried in a lonely grave, looking on wistfully, helplessly, with sealed lips. The grave itself, as I came upon it during an early morning stroll, was a rather shapeless brown mound, with an inlaid neat border of white lumps of coral at the base, and enclosed within a circular fence made of split saplings, with the bark left on. A garland of leaves and flowers was woven about the heads of the slender posts--and the flowers were fresh. 'Thus, whether the shadow is of my imagination or not, I can at all events point out the significant fact of an unforgotten grave. When I tell you besides that Jim with his own hands had worked at the rustic fence, you will perceive directly the difference, the individual side of the story. There is in his espousal of memory and affection belonging to another human being something characteristic of his seriousness. He had a conscience, and it was a romantic conscience. Through her whole life the wife of the unspeakable Cornelius had no other companion, confidant, and friend but her daughter. How the poor woman had come to marry the awful little Malacca Portuguese--after the separation from the father of her girl--and how that separation had been brought about, whether by death, which can be sometimes merciful, or by the merciless pressure of conventions, is a mystery to me. From the little which Stein (who knew so many stories) had let drop in my hearing, I am convinced that she was no ordinary woman. Her own father had been a white; a high official; one of the brilliantly endowed men who are not dull enough to nurse a success, and whose careers so often end under a cloud. I suppose she too must have lacked the saving dullness--and her career ended in Patusan. Our common fate . . . for where is the man--I mean a real sentient man--who does not remember vaguely having been deserted in the fullness of possession by some one or something more precious than life? . . . our common fate fastens upon the women with a peculiar cruelty. It does not punish like a master, but inflicts lingering torment, as if to gratify a secret, unappeasable spite. One would think that, appointed to rule on earth, it seeks to revenge itself upon the beings that come nearest to rising above the trammels of earthly caution; for it is only women who manage to put at times into their love an element just palpable enough to give one a fright--an extra-terrestrial touch. I ask myself with wonder--how the world can look to them--whether it has the shape and substance _we_ know, the air _we_ breathe! Sometimes I fancy it must be a region of unreasonable sublimities seething with the excitement of their adventurous souls, lighted by the glory of all possible risks and renunciations. However, I suspect there are very few women in the world, though of course I am aware of the multitudes of mankind and of the equality of sexes--in point of numbers, that is. But I am sure that the mother was as much of a woman as the daughter seemed to be. I cannot help picturing to myself these two, at first the young woman and the child, then the old woman and the young girl, the awful sameness and the swift passage of time, the barrier of forest, the solitude and the turmoil round these two lonely lives, and every word spoken between them penetrated with sad meaning. There must have been confidences, not so much of fact, I suppose, as of innermost feelings--regrets--fears--warnings, no doubt: warnings that the younger did not fully understand till the elder was dead--and Jim came along. Then I am sure she understood much--not everything--the fear mostly, it seems. Jim called her by a word that means precious, in the sense of a precious gem--jewel. Pretty, isn't it? But he was capable of anything. He was equal to his fortune, as he--after all--must have been equal to his misfortune. Jewel he called her; and he would say this as he might have said "Jane," don't you know--with a marital, homelike, peaceful effect. I heard the name for the first time ten minutes after I had landed in his courtyard, when, after nearly shaking my arm off, he darted up the steps and began to make a joyous, boyish disturbance at the door under the heavy eaves. "Jewel! O Jewel! Quick! Here's a friend come," . . . and suddenly peering at me in the dim verandah, he mumbled earnestly, "You know--this--no confounded nonsense about it--can't tell you how much I owe to her--and so--you understand--I--exactly as if . . ." His hurried, anxious whispers were cut short by the flitting of a white form within the house, a faint exclamation, and a child-like but energetic little face with delicate features and a profound, attentive glance peeped out of the inner gloom, like a bird out of the recess of a nest. I was struck by the name, of course; but it was not till later on that I connected it with an astonishing rumour that had met me on my journey, at a little place on the coast about 230 miles south of Patusan River. Stein's schooner, in which I had my passage, put in there, to collect some produce, and, going ashore, I found to my great surprise that the wretched locality could boast of a third-class deputy-assistant resident, a big, fat, greasy, blinking fellow of mixed descent, with turned-out, shiny lips. I found him lying extended on his back in a cane chair, odiously unbuttoned, with a large green leaf of some sort on the top of his steaming head, and another in his hand which he used lazily as a fan . . . Going to Patusan? Oh yes. Stein's Trading Company. He knew. Had a permission? No business of his. It was not so bad there now, he remarked negligently, and, he went on drawling, "There's some sort of white vagabond has got in there, I hear. . . . Eh? What you say? Friend of yours? So! . . . Then it was true there was one of these verdammte--What was he up to? Found his way in, the rascal. Eh? I had not been sure. Patusan--they cut throats there--no business of ours." He interrupted himself to groan. "Phoo! Almighty! The heat! The heat! Well, then, there might be something in the story too, after all, and . . ." He shut one of his beastly glassy eyes (the eyelid went on quivering) while he leered at me atrociously with the other. "Look here," says he mysteriously, "if--do you understand?--if he has really got hold of something fairly good--none of your bits of green glass--understand?--I am a Government official--you tell the rascal . . . Eh? What? Friend of yours?" . . . He continued wallowing calmly in the chair . . . "You said so; that's just it; and I am pleased to give you the hint. I suppose you too would like to get something out of it? Don't interrupt. You just tell him I've heard the tale, but to my Government I have made no report. Not yet. See? Why make a report? Eh? Tell him to come to me if they let him get alive out of the country. He had better look out for himself. Eh? I promise to ask no questions. On the quiet--you understand? You too--you shall get something from me. Small commission for the trouble. Don't interrupt. I am a Government official, and make no report. That's business. Understand? I know some good people that will buy anything worth having, and can give him more money than the scoundrel ever saw in his life. I know his sort." He fixed me steadfastly with both his eyes open, while I stood over him utterly amazed, and asking myself whether he was mad or drunk. He perspired, puffed, moaning feebly, and scratching himself with such horrible composure that I could not bear the sight long enough to find out. Next day, talking casually with the people of the little native court of the place, I discovered that a story was travelling slowly down the coast about a mysterious white man in Patusan who had got hold of an extraordinary gem--namely, an emerald of an enormous size, and altogether priceless. The emerald seems to appeal more to the Eastern imagination than any other precious stone. The white man had obtained it, I was told, partly by the exercise of his wonderful strength and partly by cunning, from the ruler of a distant country, whence he had fled instantly, arriving in Patusan in utmost distress, but frightening the people by his extreme ferocity, which nothing seemed able to subdue. Most of my informants were of the opinion that the stone was probably unlucky,--like the famous stone of the Sultan of Succadana, which in the old times had brought wars and untold calamities upon that country. Perhaps it was the same stone--one couldn't say. Indeed the story of a fabulously large emerald is as old as the arrival of the first white men in the Archipelago; and the belief in it is so persistent that less than forty years ago there had been an official Dutch inquiry into the truth of it. Such a jewel--it was explained to me by the old fellow from whom I heard most of this amazing Jim-myth--a sort of scribe to the wretched little Rajah of the place;--such a jewel, he said, cocking his poor purblind eyes up at me (he was sitting on the cabin floor out of respect), is best preserved by being concealed about the person of a woman. Yet it is not every woman that would do. She must be young--he sighed deeply--and insensible to the seductions of love. He shook his head sceptically. But such a woman seemed to be actually in existence. He had been told of a tall girl, whom the white man treated with great respect and care, and who never went forth from the house unattended. People said the white man could be seen with her almost any day; they walked side by side, openly, he holding her arm under his--pressed to his side--thus--in a most extraordinary way. This might be a lie, he conceded, for it was indeed a strange thing for any one to do: on the other hand, there could be no doubt she wore the white man's jewel concealed upon her bosom.' 'This was the theory of Jim's marital evening walks. I made a third on more than one occasion, unpleasantly aware every time of Cornelius, who nursed the aggrieved sense of his legal paternity, slinking in the neighbourhood with that peculiar twist of his mouth as if he were perpetually on the point of gnashing his teeth. But do you notice how, three hundred miles beyond the end of telegraph cables and mail-boat lines, the haggard utilitarian lies of our civilisation wither and die, to be replaced by pure exercises of imagination, that have the futility, often the charm, and sometimes the deep hidden truthfulness, of works of art? Romance had singled Jim for its own--and that was the true part of the story, which otherwise was all wrong. He did not hide his jewel. In fact, he was extremely proud of it. 'It comes to me now that I had, on the whole, seen very little of her. What I remember best is the even, olive pallor of her complexion, and the intense blue-black gleams of her hair, flowing abundantly from under a small crimson cap she wore far back on her shapely head. Her movements were free, assured, and she blushed a dusky red. While Jim and I were talking, she would come and go with rapid glances at us, leaving on her passage an impression of grace and charm and a distinct suggestion of watchfulness. Her manner presented a curious combination of shyness and audacity. Every pretty smile was succeeded swiftly by a look of silent, repressed anxiety, as if put to flight by the recollection of some abiding danger. At times she would sit down with us and, with her soft cheek dimpled by the knuckles of her little hand, she would listen to our talk; her big clear eyes would remain fastened on our lips, as though each pronounced word had a visible shape. Her mother had taught her to read and write; she had learned a good bit of English from Jim, and she spoke it most amusingly, with his own clipping, boyish intonation. Her tenderness hovered over him like a flutter of wings. She lived so completely in his contemplation that she had acquired something of his outward aspect, something that recalled him in her movements, in the way she stretched her arm, turned her head, directed her glances. Her vigilant affection had an intensity that made it almost perceptible to the senses; it seemed actually to exist in the ambient matter of space, to envelop him like a peculiar fragrance, to dwell in the sunshine like a tremulous, subdued, and impassioned note. I suppose you think that I too am romantic, but it is a mistake. I am relating to you the sober impressions of a bit of youth, of a strange uneasy romance that had come in my way. I observed with interest the work of his--well--good fortune. He was jealously loved, but why she should be jealous, and of what, I could not tell. The land, the people, the forests were her accomplices, guarding him with vigilant accord, with an air of seclusion, of mystery, of invincible possession. There was no appeal, as it were; he was imprisoned within the very freedom of his power, and she, though ready to make a footstool of her head for his feet, guarded her conquest inflexibly--as though he were hard to keep. The very Tamb' Itam, marching on our journeys upon the heels of his white lord, with his head thrown back, truculent and be-weaponed like a janissary, with kriss, chopper, and lance (besides carrying Jim's gun); even Tamb' Itam allowed himself to put on the airs of uncompromising guardianship, like a surly devoted jailer ready to lay down his life for his captive. On the evenings when we sat up late, his silent, indistinct form would pass and repass under the verandah, with noiseless footsteps, or lifting my head I would unexpectedly make him out standing rigidly erect in the shadow. As a general rule he would vanish after a time, without a sound; but when we rose he would spring up close to us as if from the ground, ready for any orders Jim might wish to give. The girl too, I believe, never went to sleep till we had separated for the night. More than once I saw her and Jim through the window of my room come out together quietly and lean on the rough balustrade--two white forms very close, his arm about her waist, her head on his shoulder. Their soft murmurs reached me, penetrating, tender, with a calm sad note in the stillness of the night, like a self-communion of one being carried on in two tones. Later on, tossing on my bed under the mosquito-net, I was sure to hear slight creakings, faint breathing, a throat cleared cautiously--and I would know that Tamb' Itam was still on the prowl. Though he had (by the favour of the white lord) a house in the compound, had "taken wife," and had lately been blessed with a child, I believe that, during my stay at all events, he slept on the verandah every night. It was very difficult to make this faithful and grim retainer talk. Even Jim himself was answered in jerky short sentences, under protest as it were. Talking, he seemed to imply, was no business of his. The longest speech I heard him volunteer was one morning when, suddenly extending his hand towards the courtyard, he pointed at Cornelius and said, "Here comes the Nazarene." I don't think he was addressing me, though I stood at his side; his object seemed rather to awaken the indignant attention of the universe. Some muttered allusions, which followed, to dogs and the smell of roast-meat, struck me as singularly felicitous. The courtyard, a large square space, was one torrid blaze of sunshine, and, bathed in intense light, Cornelius was creeping across in full view with an inexpressible effect of stealthiness, of dark and secret slinking. He reminded one of everything that is unsavoury. His slow laborious walk resembled the creeping of a repulsive beetle, the legs alone moving with horrid industry while the body glided evenly. I suppose he made straight enough for the place where he wanted to get to, but his progress with one shoulder carried forward seemed oblique. He was often seen circling slowly amongst the sheds, as if following a scent; passing before the verandah with upward stealthy glances; disappearing without haste round the corner of some hut. That he seemed free of the place demonstrated Jim's absurd carelessness or else his infinite disdain, for Cornelius had played a very dubious part (to say the least of it) in a certain episode which might have ended fatally for Jim. As a matter of fact, it had redounded to his glory. But everything redounded to his glory; and it was the irony of his good fortune that he, who had been too careful of it once, seemed to bear a charmed life. 'You must know he had left Doramin's place very soon after his arrival--much too soon, in fact, for his safety, and of course a long time before the war. In this he was actuated by a sense of duty; he had to look after Stein's business, he said. Hadn't he? To that end, with an utter disregard of his personal safety, he crossed the river and took up his quarters with Cornelius. How the latter had managed to exist through the troubled times I can't say. As Stein's agent, after all, he must have had Doramin's protection in a measure; and in one way or another he had managed to wriggle through all the deadly complications, while I have no doubt that his conduct, whatever line he was forced to take, was marked by that abjectness which was like the stamp of the man. That was his characteristic; he was fundamentally and outwardly abject, as other men are markedly of a generous, distinguished, or venerable appearance. It was the element of his nature which permeated all his acts and passions and emotions; he raged abjectly, smiled abjectly, was abjectly sad; his civilities and his indignations were alike abject. I am sure his love would have been the most abject of sentiments--but can one imagine a loathsome insect in love? And his loathsomeness, too, was abject, so that a simply disgusting person would have appeared noble by his side. He has his place neither in the background nor in the foreground of the story; he is simply seen skulking on its outskirts, enigmatical and unclean, tainting the fragrance of its youth and of its naiveness. 'His position in any case could not have been other than extremely miserable, yet it may very well be that he found some advantages in it. Jim told me he had been received at first with an abject display of the most amicable sentiments. "The fellow apparently couldn't contain himself for joy," said Jim with disgust. "He flew at me every morning to shake both my hands--confound him!--but I could never tell whether there would be any breakfast. If I got three meals in two days I considered myself jolly lucky, and he made me sign a chit for ten dollars every week. Said he was sure Mr. Stein did not mean him to keep me for nothing. Well--he kept me on nothing as near as possible. Put it down to the unsettled state of the country, and made as if to tear his hair out, begging my pardon twenty times a day, so that I had at last to entreat him not to worry. It made me sick. Half the roof of his house had fallen in, and the whole place had a mangy look, with wisps of dry grass sticking out and the corners of broken mats flapping on every wall. He did his best to make out that Mr. Stein owed him money on the last three years' trading, but his books were all torn, and some were missing. He tried to hint it was his late wife's fault. Disgusting scoundrel! At last I had to forbid him to mention his late wife at all. It made Jewel cry. I couldn't discover what became of all the trade-goods; there was nothing in the store but rats, having a high old time amongst a litter of brown paper and old sacking. I was assured on every hand that he had a lot of money buried somewhere, but of course could get nothing out of him. It was the most miserable existence I led there in that wretched house. I tried to do my duty by Stein, but I had also other matters to think of. When I escaped to Doramin old Tunku Allang got frightened and returned all my things. It was done in a roundabout way, and with no end of mystery, through a Chinaman who keeps a small shop here; but as soon as I left the Bugis quarter and went to live with Cornelius it began to be said openly that the Rajah had made up his mind to have me killed before long. Pleasant, wasn't it? And I couldn't see what there was to prevent him if he really _had_ made up his mind. The worst of it was, I couldn't help feeling I wasn't doing any good either for Stein or for myself. Oh! it was beastly--the whole six weeks of it."'

Chapters 27-29

https://web.archive.org/web/20210215030710/https://www.novelguide.com/lord-jim/summaries/chapter27-29

Seven, Twenty Eight and Twenty Nine . Chapter Twenty Seven explains Jim's directions to attack Sherif Ali's camp. He supervised the cannons being moved up the hill and the 'simple folk' of the outlying villages came to believe he carried them on his back. Marlow notices how the surroundings and the praise influence Jim and sees it as part of his captivity. These people had trusted Jim implicitly and to date they have not regretted taking his advice. Jim also became involved in sorting out a dispute between a husband and wife as the husband came from a village miles away for his advice. Jim's word 'decided everything', 'ever since the smashing of Sherif Ali'. . . The narrative returns again to this attack and we are told about how Tamb' Itam, Jim's servant, is loyal to his 'white lord' to the point of being fanatical. The Patusan people celebrated after the success of beating Sherif Ali and this became Jim's 'seal of success'. This chapter ends with Marlow pointing out that the telling of the story dwarfs Jim's utter isolation, but 'his word was the one truth of every passing day'. . . In Chapter Twenty Eight, the readers are told that Sherif Ali left the country after his defeat without making another stand. In consultation with Dain Waris, Jim appointed the headmen and thus became the 'virtual ruler' of the land. Doramin is anxious about the future of his country and tells Marlow he fears Jim will return home as other white men have. Marlow replies 'no, no' and Doramin asks why, but Marlow does not explain. . . The 'individual side of the story' is given as Marlow also explains that Jim has become close with Jewel, the step-daughter of Cornelius . It is not until later that Marlow connects her name with an 'astonishing rumour' he heard on his journey there. ' A mysterious white man' was thought to have acquired an enormous emerald. The most amazing part of this 'Jim-myth' was that such a jewel 'is best preserved by being concealed about the person of a woman'. She also has to be young and insensible to the seductions of love and the rumour says that Jim hides the jewel in her bosom. . . Marlow points out, in Chapter Twenty Nine, how 300 miles from 'our civilisation' 'the haggard utilitarian lies' 'wither and die' and are replaced by 'pure exercises of imagination'. The true part of Jim's story is that romance has singled Jim out and he 'did not hide his jewel' - he is extremely proud of it. Marlow does not see Jewel very often, but when he does he notes she presents 'a curious combination of shyness and audacity' and shows a 'vigilant affection' for Jim: she guards her conquest 'inflexibly'. It is reiterated that Jim 'was imprisoned within the very freedom of his power'. . . The narrative then shifts to Cornelius, whom Marlow describes as 'abject'. Cornelius first greeted Jim with joy, but gave him little food. Cornelius also tried to blame his late wife for the bad state of the accounts. Jim's first six weeks in Patusan were 'beastly' as he tried to do his duty by Stein, but had other matters to consider such as the Rajah wanting him killed. .

Seven, Twenty Eight and Twenty Nine . These chapters outline Jim's rise to acceptance and even adoration in Patusan, in particular after his successful decision to co-ordinate an attack against Sherif Ali. His now strong position is an ambivalent one, however, as Marlow points out that Jim is made captive ironically by the freedom he possesses. His lover, Jewel, demonstrates a 'vigilant affection' for him and Doramin also fears that Jim will leave as other white men have done previously. His freedom of power is dependent, then, on remaining there.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/35.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_4_part_1.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 35

chapter 35

{"name": "Chapter 35", "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 finishes her story, which she had given in a monotone and without any displays of emotion. She watches the flame in the fireplace flicker, as everything around her seems to mock her situation with its lack of response. Angel stirs the fire, having not yet comprehended the events. His face withers as he cries out that this cannot be true. She begs for forgiveness, for she has forgiven him the same. Angel claims that forgiveness is irrelevant, for she was one person before and now is another. He calls her another woman in her shape. She bursts into tears as she asks whether or not she still belongs to him anymore. Tess vows not to do anything unless he orders her, and vows to behave as a wretched slave and die if he so desires. He tells her that there is a discordance between her present mood of self-sacrifice and her past mood of self-preservation. Angel leaves the room for a walk. Tess follows him, but the two say nothing. Finally she asks what she has done, saying that it is his mind that has changed and that she is not the deceitful woman that he thinks she is. She claims that she was a child when it happened and knew nothing of men. He claims he forgives her, but forgiveness is not all. Tess says that her mother has told her of many cases in which similar situations occur, in which the husband survives and still loves the wife. Angel claims that his situation is one for satirical laughter rather than tragedy, and asks Tess to return to the house to go to bed. Angel returns later to find her sleeping soundly. He turns to leave and sees a portrait of a d'Urberville lady that appears sinister.", "analysis": "There is little surprising in Angel's reaction to the news about Tess's imperfect history, yet Hardy finds irony in the external circumstances surrounding this event. For both Tess and Angel, the revelation that Tess had a child is a momentous event that inalterably changes Angel's perception of his new wife and brings the possibility for Tess to have a happy marriage to an essential end. However, as Tess notices, the actual external conditions around Tess do not change; while both characters believe to a great extent that their world has ended, essentially nothing differs from before. The character traits that Hardy has previously elucidated concerning Angel Clare become manifest in this chapter and his reaction to the news aligns completely with these traits. Angel exhibits a dogmatic inflexibility concerning his belief in Tess's moral infallibility. He cannot comprehend his own self-delusion toward Tess, for he cannot conceive of Tess as anything less than the perfect person whom he has envisioned. This recalls Angel's intellectualized ideas concerning his wife. Perhaps more than the actual person of Tess, Angel loves the theoretical conception of Tess. The news that she is not the chaste woman he assumed too greatly conflicts with this vision of Tess. The intellectual character of the love that Angel feels for Tess becomes apparent in Angel's reaction. He speaks calmly and rationally rather than resorting to a burst of anger at the news. His behavior is cold and clinical, and his words cautious and precise. This contrasts sharply with Tess's emotional behavior, as she vows that she would die for Angel if he were to so demand. This lends a particularly chilling quality to Angel's newfound contempt for Tess: he grounds his objections to Tess in such solid and inarguable ground, as when he contrasts her current self-sacrifice with past self-preservation, that he leaves no room for his own personal flexibility. Angel's principles doom him to forsake the woman that he previously loved"}

Her narrative ended; even its re-assertions and secondary explanations were done. Tess's voice throughout had hardly risen higher than its opening tone; there had been no exculpatory phrase of any kind, and she had not wept. But the complexion even of external things seemed to suffer transmutation as her announcement progressed. The fire in the grate looked impish--demoniacally funny, as if it did not care in the least about her strait. The fender grinned idly, as if it too did not care. The light from the water-bottle was merely engaged in a chromatic problem. All material objects around announced their irresponsibility with terrible iteration. And yet nothing had changed since the moments when he had been kissing her; or rather, nothing in the substance of things. But the essence of things had changed. When she ceased, the auricular impressions from their previous endearments seemed to hustle away into the corner of their brains, repeating themselves as echoes from a time of supremely purblind foolishness. Clare performed the irrelevant act of stirring the fire; the intelligence had not even yet got to the bottom of him. After stirring the embers he rose to his feet; all the force of her disclosure had imparted itself now. His face had withered. In the strenuousness of his concentration he treadled fitfully on the floor. He could not, by any contrivance, think closely enough; that was the meaning of his vague movement. When he spoke it was in the most inadequate, commonplace voice of the many varied tones she had heard from him. "Tess!" "Yes, dearest." "Am I to believe this? From your manner I am to take it as true. O you cannot be out of your mind! You ought to be! Yet you are not... My wife, my Tess--nothing in you warrants such a supposition as that?" "I am not out of my mind," she said. "And yet--" He looked vacantly at her, to resume with dazed senses: "Why didn't you tell me before? Ah, yes, you would have told me, in a way--but I hindered you, I remember!" These and other of his words were nothing but the perfunctory babble of the surface while the depths remained paralyzed. He turned away, and bent over a chair. Tess followed him to the middle of the room, where he was, and stood there staring at him with eyes that did not weep. Presently she slid down upon her knees beside his foot, and from this position she crouched in a heap. "In the name of our love, forgive me!" she whispered with a dry mouth. "I have forgiven you for the same!" And, as he did not answer, she said again-- "Forgive me as you are forgiven! _I_ forgive YOU, Angel." "You--yes, you do." "But you do not forgive me?" "O Tess, forgiveness does not apply to the case! You were one person; now you are another. My God--how can forgiveness meet such a grotesque--prestidigitation as that!" He paused, contemplating this definition; then suddenly broke into horrible laughter--as unnatural and ghastly as a laugh in hell. "Don't--don't! It kills me quite, that!" she shrieked. "O have mercy upon me--have mercy!" He did not answer; and, sickly white, she jumped up. "Angel, Angel! what do you mean by that laugh?" she cried out. "Do you know what this is to me?" He shook his head. "I have been hoping, longing, praying, to make you happy! I have thought what joy it will be to do it, what an unworthy wife I shall be if I do not! That's what I have felt, Angel!" "I know that." "I thought, Angel, that you loved me--me, my very self! If it is I you do love, O how can it be that you look and speak so? It frightens me! Having begun to love you, I love you for ever--in all changes, in all disgraces, because you are yourself. I ask no more. Then how can you, O my own husband, stop loving me?" "I repeat, the woman I have been loving is not you." "But who?" "Another woman in your shape." She perceived in his words the realization of her own apprehensive foreboding in former times. He looked upon her as a species of imposter; a guilty woman in the guise of an innocent one. Terror was upon her white face as she saw it; her cheek was flaccid, and her mouth had almost the aspect of a round little hole. The horrible sense of his view of her so deadened her that she staggered, and he stepped forward, thinking she was going to fall. "Sit down, sit down," he said gently. "You are ill; and it is natural that you should be." She did sit down, without knowing where she was, that strained look still upon her face, and her eyes such as to make his flesh creep. "I don't belong to you any more, then; do I, Angel?" she asked helplessly. "It is not me, but another woman like me that he loved, he says." The image raised caused her to take pity upon herself as one who was ill-used. Her eyes filled as she regarded her position further; she turned round and burst into a flood of self-sympathetic tears. Clare was relieved at this change, for the effect on her of what had happened was beginning to be a trouble to him only less than the woe of the disclosure itself. He waited patiently, apathetically, till the violence of her grief had worn itself out, and her rush of weeping had lessened to a catching gasp at intervals. "Angel," she said suddenly, in her natural tones, the insane, dry voice of terror having left her now. "Angel, am I too wicked for you and me to live together?" "I have not been able to think what we can do." "I shan't ask you to let me live with you, Angel, because I have no right to! I shall not write to mother and sisters to say we be married, as I said I would do; and I shan't finish the good-hussif' I cut out and meant to make while we were in lodgings." "Shan't you?" "No, I shan't do anything, unless you order me to; and if you go away from me I shall not follow 'ee; and if you never speak to me any more I shall not ask why, unless you tell me I may." "And if I order you to do anything?" "I will obey you like your wretched slave, even if it is to lie down and die." "You are very good. But it strikes me that there is a want of harmony between your present mood of self-sacrifice and your past mood of self-preservation." These were the first words of antagonism. To fling elaborate sarcasms at Tess, however, was much like flinging them at a dog or cat. The charms of their subtlety passed by her unappreciated, and she only received them as inimical sounds which meant that anger ruled. She remained mute, not knowing that he was smothering his affection for her. She hardly observed that a tear descended slowly upon his cheek, a tear so large that it magnified the pores of the skin over which it rolled, like the object lens of a microscope. Meanwhile reillumination as to the terrible and total change that her confession had wrought in his life, in his universe, returned to him, and he tried desperately to advance among the new conditions in which he stood. Some consequent action was necessary; yet what? "Tess," he said, as gently as he could speak, "I cannot stay--in this room--just now. I will walk out a little way." He quietly left the room, and the two glasses of wine that he had poured out for their supper--one for her, one for him--remained on the table untasted. This was what their _agape_ had come to. At tea, two or three hours earlier, they had, in the freakishness of affection, drunk from one cup. The closing of the door behind him, gently as it had been pulled to, roused Tess from her stupor. He was gone; she could not stay. Hastily flinging her cloak around her she opened the door and followed, putting out the candles as if she were never coming back. The rain was over and the night was now clear. She was soon close at his heels, for Clare walked slowly and without purpose. His form beside her light gray figure looked black, sinister, and forbidding, and she felt as sarcasm the touch of the jewels of which she had been momentarily so proud. Clare turned at hearing her footsteps, but his recognition of her presence seemed to make no difference to him, and he went on over the five yawning arches of the great bridge in front of the house. The cow and horse tracks in the road were full of water, the rain having been enough to charge them, but not enough to wash them away. Across these minute pools the reflected stars flitted in a quick transit as she passed; she would not have known they were shining overhead if she had not seen them there--the vastest things of the universe imaged in objects so mean. The place to which they had travelled to-day was in the same valley as Talbothays, but some miles lower down the river; and the surroundings being open, she kept easily in sight of him. Away from the house the road wound through the meads, and along these she followed Clare without any attempt to come up with him or to attract him, but with dumb and vacant fidelity. At last, however, her listless walk brought her up alongside him, and still he said nothing. The cruelty of fooled honesty is often great after enlightenment, and it was mighty in Clare now. The outdoor air had apparently taken away from him all tendency to act on impulse; she knew that he saw her without irradiation--in all her bareness; that Time was chanting his satiric psalm at her then-- Behold, when thy face is made bare, he that loved thee shall hate; Thy face shall be no more fair at the fall of thy fate. For thy life shall fall as a leaf and be shed as the rain; And the veil of thine head shall be grief, and the crown shall be pain. He was still intently thinking, and her companionship had now insufficient power to break or divert the strain of thought. What a weak thing her presence must have become to him! She could not help addressing Clare. "What have I done--what HAVE I done! I have not told of anything that interferes with or belies my love for you. You don't think I planned it, do you? It is in your own mind what you are angry at, Angel; it is not in me. O, it is not in me, and I am not that deceitful woman you think me!" "H'm--well. Not deceitful, my wife; but not the same. No, not the same. But do not make me reproach you. I have sworn that I will not; and I will do everything to avoid it." But she went on pleading in her distraction; and perhaps said things that would have been better left to silence. "Angel!--Angel! I was a child--a child when it happened! I knew nothing of men." "You were more sinned against than sinning, that I admit." "Then will you not forgive me?" "I do forgive you, but forgiveness is not all." "And love me?" To this question he did not answer. "O Angel--my mother says that it sometimes happens so!--she knows several cases where they were worse than I, and the husband has not minded it much--has got over it at least. And yet the woman had not loved him as I do you!" "Don't, Tess; don't argue. Different societies, different manners. You almost make me say you are an unapprehending peasant woman, who have never been initiated into the proportions of social things. You don't know what you say." "I am only a peasant by position, not by nature!" She spoke with an impulse to anger, but it went as it came. "So much the worse for you. I think that parson who unearthed your pedigree would have done better if he had held his tongue. I cannot help associating your decline as a family with this other fact--of your want of firmness. Decrepit families imply decrepit wills, decrepit conduct. Heaven, why did you give me a handle for despising you more by informing me of your descent! Here was I thinking you a new-sprung child of nature; there were you, the belated seedling of an effete aristocracy!" "Lots of families are as bad as mine in that! Retty's family were once large landowners, and so were Dairyman Billett's. And the Debbyhouses, who now are carters, were once the De Bayeux family. You find such as I everywhere; 'tis a feature of our county, and I can't help it." "So much the worse for the county." She took these reproaches in their bulk simply, not in their particulars; he did not love her as he had loved her hitherto, and to all else she was indifferent. They wandered on again in silence. It was said afterwards that a cottager of Wellbridge, who went out late that night for a doctor, met two lovers in the pastures, walking very slowly, without converse, one behind the other, as in a funeral procession, and the glimpse that he obtained of their faces seemed to denote that they were anxious and sad. Returning later, he passed them again in the same field, progressing just as slowly, and as regardless of the hour and of the cheerless night as before. It was only on account of his preoccupation with his own affairs, and the illness in his house, that he did not bear in mind the curious incident, which, however, he recalled a long while after. During the interval of the cottager's going and coming, she had said to her husband-- "I don't see how I can help being the cause of much misery to you all your life. The river is down there. I can put an end to myself in it. I am not afraid." "I don't wish to add murder to my other follies," he said. "I will leave something to show that I did it myself--on account of my shame. They will not blame you then." "Don't speak so absurdly--I wish not to hear it. It is nonsense to have such thoughts in this kind of case, which is rather one for satirical laughter than for tragedy. You don't in the least understand the quality of the mishap. It would be viewed in the light of a joke by nine-tenths of the world if it were known. Please oblige me by returning to the house, and going to bed." "I will," said she dutifully. They had rambled round by a road which led to the well-known ruins of the Cistercian abbey behind the mill, the latter having, in centuries past, been attached to the monastic establishment. The mill still worked on, food being a perennial necessity; the abbey had perished, creeds being transient. One continually sees the ministration of the temporary outlasting the ministration of the eternal. Their walk having been circuitous, they were still not far from the house, and in obeying his direction she only had to reach the large stone bridge across the main river and follow the road for a few yards. When she got back, everything remained as she had left it, the fire being still burning. She did not stay downstairs for more than a minute, but proceeded to her chamber, whither the luggage had been taken. Here she sat down on the edge of the bed, looking blankly around, and presently began to undress. In removing the light towards the bedstead its rays fell upon the tester of white dimity; something was hanging beneath it, and she lifted the candle to see what it was. A bough of mistletoe. Angel had put it there; she knew that in an instant. This was the explanation of that mysterious parcel which it had been so difficult to pack and bring; whose contents he would not explain to her, saying that time would soon show her the purpose thereof. In his zest and his gaiety he had hung it there. How foolish and inopportune that mistletoe looked now. Having nothing more to fear, having scarce anything to hope, for that he would relent there seemed no promise whatever, she lay down dully. When sorrow ceases to be speculative, sleep sees her opportunity. Among so many happier moods which forbid repose this was a mood which welcomed it, and in a few minutes the lonely Tess forgot existence, surrounded by the aromatic stillness of the chamber that had once, possibly, been the bride-chamber of her own ancestry. Later on that night Clare also retraced his steps to the house. Entering softly to the sitting-room he obtained a light, and with the manner of one who had considered his course he spread his rugs upon the old horse-hair sofa which stood there, and roughly shaped it to a sleeping-couch. Before lying down he crept shoeless upstairs, and listened at the door of her apartment. Her measured breathing told that she was sleeping profoundly. "Thank God!" murmured Clare; and yet he was conscious of a pang of bitterness at the thought--approximately true, though not wholly so--that having shifted the burden of her life to his shoulders, she was now reposing without care. He turned away to descend; then, irresolute, faced round to her door again. In the act he caught sight of one of the d'Urberville dames, whose portrait was immediately over the entrance to Tess's bedchamber. In the candlelight the painting was more than unpleasant. Sinister design lurked in the woman's features, a concentrated purpose of revenge on the other sex--so it seemed to him then. The Caroline bodice of the portrait was low--precisely as Tess's had been when he tucked it in to show the necklace; and again he experienced the distressing sensation of a resemblance between them. The check was sufficient. He resumed his retreat and descended. His air remained calm and cold, his small compressed mouth indexing his powers of self-control; his face wearing still that terrible sterile expression which had spread thereon since her disclosure. It was the face of a man who was no longer passion's slave, yet who found no advantage in his enfranchisement. He was simply regarding the harrowing contingencies of human experience, the unexpectedness of things. Nothing so pure, so sweet, so virginal as Tess had seemed possible all the long while that he had adored her, up to an hour ago; but The little less, and what worlds away! He argued erroneously when he said to himself that her heart was not indexed in the honest freshness of her face; but Tess had no advocate to set him right. Could it be possible, he continued, that eyes which as they gazed never expressed any divergence from what the tongue was telling, were yet ever seeing another world behind her ostensible one, discordant and contrasting? He reclined on his couch in the sitting-room, and extinguished the light. The night came in, and took up its place there, unconcerned and indifferent; the night which had already swallowed up his happiness, and was now digesting it listlessly; and was ready to swallow up the happiness of a thousand other people with as little disturbance or change of mien.

Chapter 35

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-5-chapters-35-44

Tess finishes her story, which she had given in a monotone and without any displays of emotion. She watches the flame in the fireplace flicker, as everything around her seems to mock her situation with its lack of response. Angel stirs the fire, having not yet comprehended the events. His face withers as he cries out that this cannot be true. She begs for forgiveness, for she has forgiven him the same. Angel claims that forgiveness is irrelevant, for she was one person before and now is another. He calls her another woman in her shape. She bursts into tears as she asks whether or not she still belongs to him anymore. Tess vows not to do anything unless he orders her, and vows to behave as a wretched slave and die if he so desires. He tells her that there is a discordance between her present mood of self-sacrifice and her past mood of self-preservation. Angel leaves the room for a walk. Tess follows him, but the two say nothing. Finally she asks what she has done, saying that it is his mind that has changed and that she is not the deceitful woman that he thinks she is. She claims that she was a child when it happened and knew nothing of men. He claims he forgives her, but forgiveness is not all. Tess says that her mother has told her of many cases in which similar situations occur, in which the husband survives and still loves the wife. Angel claims that his situation is one for satirical laughter rather than tragedy, and asks Tess to return to the house to go to bed. Angel returns later to find her sleeping soundly. He turns to leave and sees a portrait of a d'Urberville lady that appears sinister.

There is little surprising in Angel's reaction to the news about Tess's imperfect history, yet Hardy finds irony in the external circumstances surrounding this event. For both Tess and Angel, the revelation that Tess had a child is a momentous event that inalterably changes Angel's perception of his new wife and brings the possibility for Tess to have a happy marriage to an essential end. However, as Tess notices, the actual external conditions around Tess do not change; while both characters believe to a great extent that their world has ended, essentially nothing differs from before. The character traits that Hardy has previously elucidated concerning Angel Clare become manifest in this chapter and his reaction to the news aligns completely with these traits. Angel exhibits a dogmatic inflexibility concerning his belief in Tess's moral infallibility. He cannot comprehend his own self-delusion toward Tess, for he cannot conceive of Tess as anything less than the perfect person whom he has envisioned. This recalls Angel's intellectualized ideas concerning his wife. Perhaps more than the actual person of Tess, Angel loves the theoretical conception of Tess. The news that she is not the chaste woman he assumed too greatly conflicts with this vision of Tess. The intellectual character of the love that Angel feels for Tess becomes apparent in Angel's reaction. He speaks calmly and rationally rather than resorting to a burst of anger at the news. His behavior is cold and clinical, and his words cautious and precise. This contrasts sharply with Tess's emotional behavior, as she vows that she would die for Angel if he were to so demand. This lends a particularly chilling quality to Angel's newfound contempt for Tess: he grounds his objections to Tess in such solid and inarguable ground, as when he contrasts her current self-sacrifice with past self-preservation, that he leaves no room for his own personal flexibility. Angel's principles doom him to forsake the woman that he previously loved

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/1232-chapters/chapters_4_to_7.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Prince/section_1_part_0.txt

The Prince.chapters 4-7

section 2: chapters 4-7

{"name": "Section 2: Chapters IV-VII", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210417004655/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-prince/study-guide/summary-section-2-chapters-iv-vii", "summary": "There are two kinds of kingdoms: those in which the prince is the sole ruler and those in which power is split between the prince and the barons . This classification enables Machiavelli to argue, as the title of Chapter IV goes, \"Why the Successors of Alexander After His Death Did Not Lose the Kingdom He Had Conquered From Darius.\" The first kind of kingdom is difficult to conquer and easy to hold onto; the latter is easy to conquer and difficult to hold onto. What should a prince do if he has conquered a republic, as opposed to a kingdom? Herein lie a number of difficulties, enumerated in the next chapter, \"How Cities or States Should Be Ruled Which Lived By Their Own Laws Before Being Taken.\" The subjects of a conquered kingdom are not used to living in freedom or standing up for themselves, and are therefore slower to take up arms than are the citizens of a republic. There are three options for the conquering prince: destroy the republic, live there, or set up a puppet government. At the end of the day, Machiavelli seems to favor the first option. The Spartans established oligarchies in Athens and Thebes and lost both. The Romans destroyed Capua, Carthage, and Numantia and never lost them. \"Any man who becomes master of a city accustomed to freedom, and does not destroy it, may expect to be destroyed by it,\" Machiavelli writes. In the following chapter, \"About New Princedoms Acquired With One's Own Arms and Energy,\" Machiavelli digresses momentarily in order to explain why he relies so much on examples in his writing. \"A prudent man should always follow the footsteps of the great and imitate those who have been supreme,\" he writes. The most notable princes who became princes by their own force were, according to Machiavelli, Moses , Cyrus , Romulus , and Theseus . These are the giants of the past and the models for present and future princes to follow; men of this sort \"may have trouble gaining their power, but they find it easy to hold onto.\" Carving out one's own position of power single-handedly, without outside help, is an arduous task; but once accomplished, the prince who has risen on his own merits and by his own force will find his perch far easier to maintain. On the other hand, new states acquired either by fortune or outside assistance are easy to conquer; the difficulty lies in holding onto power, as Machiavelli argues in his next chapter, \"About New States Acquired With Other People's Arms and By Good Luck.\" Here Machiavelli zeroes in on a single protracted example: the story of Cesare Borgia, otherwise known as Duke Valentino, the son of Pope Alexander VI. Alexander wanted to give his son a state to rule, but the only ones he could offer were the papal states, and the Duke of Milan and the Venetians would never agree to that hand-off of power. So the Pope used his ties to King Louis of France to secure control of Romagna for his son. Louis offered up some of his own troops to aid in the cause after Alexander helped the French King enter Italy by dissolving his first marriage. Now that Cesare Borgia had Romagna, what was he to do next? Two problems faced him: he could not trust his army, composed of members of the Orsini clan , and he could not trust King Louis. His suspicions that these players might turn against him growing, Cesare decided to no longer rely on their support. He recruited to his cause all noble-ranked Orsinis and Colonna followers in Rome, thereby weakening the Orsini/Colonna factions. The city of Urbino, an Orsini stronghold, rebelled as a result, the Orsini family having realized what Cesare was up to. Cesare promptly squashed the revolt with the aid of the French. The Orsinis tried to reconcile with him, and Cesare used this opportunity to lure their leaders to Sinigaglia and kill them all. Cesare now possessed Romagna fully, but it was a territory rife with crime and disorder. He appointed Remirro de Orco, a notoriously cruel and ruthless man, as lieutenant general of the region. Quickly and mercilessly, Remirro pacified and unified Romagna. Then, in order to quell the hatred that this aggressiveness might have spawned, Cesare had Remirro tried and executed, making it clear that the cruelty had been the result of the lieutenant general's character, and not Cesare's own. Machiavelli expresses approval for all these drastic measures. However, the tide ultimately turned against Cesare. Alexander died, and Cesare himself fell ill. In the depths of his illness, he made the mistake of allowing Julius to become the next Pope. Machiavelli argues that he should instead have tried to make a Spaniard Pope, or else accepted Rouen's entreaties to the papacy, the reason being that both Spain and Rouen were \"bound to him by nationality and obligation.\" Julius, on the other hand, had reason to hate and fear Cesare: he had endured ten years of exile in France, and held a considerable grudge against the Borgia family. Machiavelli offers Cesare Borgia up as an example of what to do right should a prince acquire his power through the help of others, and the ways in which fortune can lay waste to even the best plans.", "analysis": "Out of the trials and tribulations of Cesare Borgia Machiavelli constructs a rise-and-fall saga that is itself a profoundly moving piece of storytelling. Machiavelli, especially in his later works, seemed to prefer to be thought of as an historian, and here he shows off his predilection for spinning the messiness of history into the stuff of great fiction to. That said, Machiavelli does much to undercut and subvert his own tendency to draw larger meanings out of complex events. For example, Machiavelli posits Borgia as a kind of latter-day mortal equivalent of the legends of history: Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus. Where those ancient figures exist shrouded in a haze, their exploits mythologized, Borgia is, for Machiavelli, a contemporary figure, and thus cannot hope to live up to these precedents. He is a flawed man, albeit one equipped with intelligence and courage, and yet when Machiavelli concludes by blaming Cesare's failure on bad luck, one senses a kind of half-heartedness in the decision. Julius's rise to the papacy sealed Cesare's doom, and that rise can be attributed, according to Machiavelli, to a lapse of reason on Cesare's part: \"his only error lay in making Julius pope, where he simply made a bad choice; because, as I said, though he couldn't make his own man pope, he could keep anyone else from the office.\" It is interesting to note the extent to which Machiavelli will decry or apologize for either figures of history or his contemporaries, when it comes to Borgia one senses some level of personal connection to or feeling for the material. \"Looking over all the duke's actions, then,\" he writes, \"I find nothing with which to reproach him; rather I think I'm right in proposing him, as I have done, as a model for all those who rise to power by means of the fortune and arms of others.\" There is a defensiveness in the tone that is worth considering. History is, indeed, inherently subjective. What gets told, not to mention why, is dependent on so many variables, and in the end it is the temperament of the historian that dictates the form history takes. From his decision to introduce The Prince with a letter to Lorenzo de Medici, itself a heartfelt plea for understanding and favor, to his construction of Borgia as a character and his use of the first person, it is clear that Machiavelli's writing is not the work of a faceless author who would rather disappear behind the veil of his own ostensibly objective formulations, but is rather a kind of first-person history, a sustained meditation on the foibles of human nature and how those foibles translate into larger results. In other words, The Prince is a work of philosophy in the traditional sense: a sustained piece of thought that personalizes the impersonal. To this effect, certain fibs can be identified in Machiavelli's history-making. One example that springs to mind is his reference to France as a major problem for the Romans. Not only does Machiavelli seem to equate pre-Capet France with the nation post-Capet, stretching his vision of a prince sharing power with barons, but in some sort of vaguely centralized manner, back in the days of Vercingetorix and the Gallic Wars, he also exaggerates Gaul's rebelliousness once conquered by the Roman Empire. In fact, Gaul became one of the Empire's calmer territories. That said, Machiavelli is not prone to historical inaccuracy, and his elision of certain facts in this case can be interpreted as a way of supporting his central argument - that states in which power is split between princes and barons are easy to conquer and difficult to hold onto."}

Considering the difficulties which men have had to hold to a newly acquired state, some might wonder how, seeing that Alexander the Great became the master of Asia in a few years, and died whilst it was scarcely settled (whence it might appear reasonable that the whole empire would have rebelled), nevertheless his successors maintained themselves, and had to meet no other difficulty than that which arose among themselves from their own ambitions. I answer that the principalities of which one has record are found to be governed in two different ways; either by a prince, with a body of servants, who assist him to govern the kingdom as ministers by his favour and permission; or by a prince and barons, who hold that dignity by antiquity of blood and not by the grace of the prince. Such barons have states and their own subjects, who recognize them as lords and hold them in natural affection. Those states that are governed by a prince and his servants hold their prince in more consideration, because in all the country there is no one who is recognized as superior to him, and if they yield obedience to another they do it as to a minister and official, and they do not bear him any particular affection. The examples of these two governments in our time are the Turk and the King of France. The entire monarchy of the Turk is governed by one lord, the others are his servants; and, dividing his kingdom into sanjaks, he sends there different administrators, and shifts and changes them as he chooses. But the King of France is placed in the midst of an ancient body of lords, acknowledged by their own subjects, and beloved by them; they have their own prerogatives, nor can the king take these away except at his peril. Therefore, he who considers both of these states will recognize great difficulties in seizing the state of the Turk, but, once it is conquered, great ease in holding it. The causes of the difficulties in seizing the kingdom of the Turk are that the usurper cannot be called in by the princes of the kingdom, nor can he hope to be assisted in his designs by the revolt of those whom the lord has around him. This arises from the reasons given above; for his ministers, being all slaves and bondmen, can only be corrupted with great difficulty, and one can expect little advantage from them when they have been corrupted, as they cannot carry the people with them, for the reasons assigned. Hence, he who attacks the Turk must bear in mind that he will find him united, and he will have to rely more on his own strength than on the revolt of others; but, if once the Turk has been conquered, and routed in the field in such a way that he cannot replace his armies, there is nothing to fear but the family of this prince, and, this being exterminated, there remains no one to fear, the others having no credit with the people; and as the conqueror did not rely on them before his victory, so he ought not to fear them after it. The contrary happens in kingdoms governed like that of France, because one can easily enter there by gaining over some baron of the kingdom, for one always finds malcontents and such as desire a change. Such men, for the reasons given, can open the way into the state and render the victory easy; but if you wish to hold it afterwards, you meet with infinite difficulties, both from those who have assisted you and from those you have crushed. Nor is it enough for you to have exterminated the family of the prince, because the lords that remain make themselves the heads of fresh movements against you, and as you are unable either to satisfy or exterminate them, that state is lost whenever time brings the opportunity. Now if you will consider what was the nature of the government of Darius, you will find it similar to the kingdom of the Turk, and therefore it was only necessary for Alexander, first to overthrow him in the field, and then to take the country from him. After which victory, Darius being killed, the state remained secure to Alexander, for the above reasons. And if his successors had been united they would have enjoyed it securely and at their ease, for there were no tumults raised in the kingdom except those they provoked themselves. But it is impossible to hold with such tranquillity states constituted like that of France. Hence arose those frequent rebellions against the Romans in Spain, France, and Greece, owing to the many principalities there were in these states, of which, as long as the memory of them endured, the Romans always held an insecure possession; but with the power and long continuance of the empire the memory of them passed away, and the Romans then became secure possessors. And when fighting afterwards amongst themselves, each one was able to attach to himself his own parts of the country, according to the authority he had assumed there; and the family of the former lord being exterminated, none other than the Romans were acknowledged. When these things are remembered no one will marvel at the ease with which Alexander held the Empire of Asia, or at the difficulties which others have had to keep an acquisition, such as Pyrrhus and many more; this is not occasioned by the little or abundance of ability in the conqueror, but by the want of uniformity in the subject state. Whenever those states which have been acquired as stated have been accustomed to live under their own laws and in freedom, there are three courses for those who wish to hold them: the first is to ruin them, the next is to reside there in person, the third is to permit them to live under their own laws, drawing a tribute, and establishing within it an oligarchy which will keep it friendly to you. Because such a government, being created by the prince, knows that it cannot stand without his friendship and interest, and does it utmost to support him; and therefore he who would keep a city accustomed to freedom will hold it more easily by the means of its own citizens than in any other way. There are, for example, the Spartans and the Romans. The Spartans held Athens and Thebes, establishing there an oligarchy; nevertheless they lost them. The Romans, in order to hold Capua, Carthage, and Numantia, dismantled them, and did not lose them. They wished to hold Greece as the Spartans held it, making it free and permitting its laws, and did not succeed. So to hold it they were compelled to dismantle many cities in the country, for in truth there is no safe way to retain them otherwise than by ruining them. And he who becomes master of a city accustomed to freedom and does not destroy it, may expect to be destroyed by it, for in rebellion it has always the watchword of liberty and its ancient privileges as a rallying point, which neither time nor benefits will ever cause it to forget. And whatever you may do or provide against, they never forget that name or their privileges unless they are disunited or dispersed, but at every chance they immediately rally to them, as Pisa after the hundred years she had been held in bondage by the Florentines. But when cities or countries are accustomed to live under a prince, and his family is exterminated, they, being on the one hand accustomed to obey and on the other hand not having the old prince, cannot agree in making one from amongst themselves, and they do not know how to govern themselves. For this reason they are very slow to take up arms, and a prince can gain them to himself and secure them much more easily. But in republics there is more vitality, greater hatred, and more desire for vengeance, which will never permit them to allow the memory of their former liberty to rest; so that the safest way is to destroy them or to reside there. Let no one be surprised if, in speaking of entirely new principalities as I shall do, I adduce the highest examples both of prince and of state; because men, walking almost always in paths beaten by others, and following by imitation their deeds, are yet unable to keep entirely to the ways of others or attain to the power of those they imitate. A wise man ought always to follow the paths beaten by great men, and to imitate those who have been supreme, so that if his ability does not equal theirs, at least it will savour of it. Let him act like the clever archers who, designing to hit the mark which yet appears too far distant, and knowing the limits to which the strength of their bow attains, take aim much higher than the mark, not to reach by their strength or arrow to so great a height, but to be able with the aid of so high an aim to hit the mark they wish to reach. I say, therefore, that in entirely new principalities, where there is a new prince, more or less difficulty is found in keeping them, accordingly as there is more or less ability in him who has acquired the state. Now, as the fact of becoming a prince from a private station presupposes either ability or fortune, it is clear that one or other of these things will mitigate in some degree many difficulties. Nevertheless, he who has relied least on fortune is established the strongest. Further, it facilitates matters when the prince, having no other state, is compelled to reside there in person. But to come to those who, by their own ability and not through fortune, have risen to be princes, I say that Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus, and such like are the most excellent examples. And although one may not discuss Moses, he having been a mere executor of the will of God, yet he ought to be admired, if only for that favour which made him worthy to speak with God. But in considering Cyrus and others who have acquired or founded kingdoms, all will be found admirable; and if their particular deeds and conduct shall be considered, they will not be found inferior to those of Moses, although he had so great a preceptor. And in examining their actions and lives one cannot see that they owed anything to fortune beyond opportunity, which brought them the material to mould into the form which seemed best to them. Without that opportunity their powers of mind would have been extinguished, and without those powers the opportunity would have come in vain. It was necessary, therefore, to Moses that he should find the people of Israel in Egypt enslaved and oppressed by the Egyptians, in order that they should be disposed to follow him so as to be delivered out of bondage. It was necessary that Romulus should not remain in Alba, and that he should be abandoned at his birth, in order that he should become King of Rome and founder of the fatherland. It was necessary that Cyrus should find the Persians discontented with the government of the Medes, and the Medes soft and effeminate through their long peace. Theseus could not have shown his ability had he not found the Athenians dispersed. These opportunities, therefore, made those men fortunate, and their high ability enabled them to recognize the opportunity whereby their country was ennobled and made famous. Those who by valorous ways become princes, like these men, acquire a principality with difficulty, but they keep it with ease. The difficulties they have in acquiring it rise in part from the new rules and methods which they are forced to introduce to establish their government and its security. And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things, because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them. Thus it happens that whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack they do it like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly, in such wise that the prince is endangered along with them. It is necessary, therefore, if we desire to discuss this matter thoroughly, to inquire whether these innovators can rely on themselves or have to depend on others: that is to say, whether, to consummate their enterprise, have they to use prayers or can they use force? In the first instance they always succeed badly, and never compass anything; but when they can rely on themselves and use force, then they are rarely endangered. Hence it is that all armed prophets have conquered, and the unarmed ones have been destroyed. Besides the reasons mentioned, the nature of the people is variable, and whilst it is easy to persuade them, it is difficult to fix them in that persuasion. And thus it is necessary to take such measures that, when they believe no longer, it may be possible to make them believe by force. If Moses, Cyrus, Theseus, and Romulus had been unarmed they could not have enforced their constitutions for long--as happened in our time to Fra Girolamo Savonarola, who was ruined with his new order of things immediately the multitude believed in him no longer, and he had no means of keeping steadfast those who believed or of making the unbelievers to believe. Therefore such as these have great difficulties in consummating their enterprise, for all their dangers are in the ascent, yet with ability they will overcome them; but when these are overcome, and those who envied them their success are exterminated, they will begin to be respected, and they will continue afterwards powerful, secure, honoured, and happy. To these great examples I wish to add a lesser one; still it bears some resemblance to them, and I wish it to suffice me for all of a like kind: it is Hiero the Syracusan.(*) This man rose from a private station to be Prince of Syracuse, nor did he, either, owe anything to fortune but opportunity; for the Syracusans, being oppressed, chose him for their captain, afterwards he was rewarded by being made their prince. He was of so great ability, even as a private citizen, that one who writes of him says he wanted nothing but a kingdom to be a king. This man abolished the old soldiery, organized the new, gave up old alliances, made new ones; and as he had his own soldiers and allies, on such foundations he was able to build any edifice: thus, whilst he had endured much trouble in acquiring, he had but little in keeping. (*) Hiero II, born about 307 B.C., died 216 B.C. 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.

Section 2: Chapters IV-VII

https://web.archive.org/web/20210417004655/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-prince/study-guide/summary-section-2-chapters-iv-vii

There are two kinds of kingdoms: those in which the prince is the sole ruler and those in which power is split between the prince and the barons . This classification enables Machiavelli to argue, as the title of Chapter IV goes, "Why the Successors of Alexander After His Death Did Not Lose the Kingdom He Had Conquered From Darius." The first kind of kingdom is difficult to conquer and easy to hold onto; the latter is easy to conquer and difficult to hold onto. What should a prince do if he has conquered a republic, as opposed to a kingdom? Herein lie a number of difficulties, enumerated in the next chapter, "How Cities or States Should Be Ruled Which Lived By Their Own Laws Before Being Taken." The subjects of a conquered kingdom are not used to living in freedom or standing up for themselves, and are therefore slower to take up arms than are the citizens of a republic. There are three options for the conquering prince: destroy the republic, live there, or set up a puppet government. At the end of the day, Machiavelli seems to favor the first option. The Spartans established oligarchies in Athens and Thebes and lost both. The Romans destroyed Capua, Carthage, and Numantia and never lost them. "Any man who becomes master of a city accustomed to freedom, and does not destroy it, may expect to be destroyed by it," Machiavelli writes. In the following chapter, "About New Princedoms Acquired With One's Own Arms and Energy," Machiavelli digresses momentarily in order to explain why he relies so much on examples in his writing. "A prudent man should always follow the footsteps of the great and imitate those who have been supreme," he writes. The most notable princes who became princes by their own force were, according to Machiavelli, Moses , Cyrus , Romulus , and Theseus . These are the giants of the past and the models for present and future princes to follow; men of this sort "may have trouble gaining their power, but they find it easy to hold onto." Carving out one's own position of power single-handedly, without outside help, is an arduous task; but once accomplished, the prince who has risen on his own merits and by his own force will find his perch far easier to maintain. On the other hand, new states acquired either by fortune or outside assistance are easy to conquer; the difficulty lies in holding onto power, as Machiavelli argues in his next chapter, "About New States Acquired With Other People's Arms and By Good Luck." Here Machiavelli zeroes in on a single protracted example: the story of Cesare Borgia, otherwise known as Duke Valentino, the son of Pope Alexander VI. Alexander wanted to give his son a state to rule, but the only ones he could offer were the papal states, and the Duke of Milan and the Venetians would never agree to that hand-off of power. So the Pope used his ties to King Louis of France to secure control of Romagna for his son. Louis offered up some of his own troops to aid in the cause after Alexander helped the French King enter Italy by dissolving his first marriage. Now that Cesare Borgia had Romagna, what was he to do next? Two problems faced him: he could not trust his army, composed of members of the Orsini clan , and he could not trust King Louis. His suspicions that these players might turn against him growing, Cesare decided to no longer rely on their support. He recruited to his cause all noble-ranked Orsinis and Colonna followers in Rome, thereby weakening the Orsini/Colonna factions. The city of Urbino, an Orsini stronghold, rebelled as a result, the Orsini family having realized what Cesare was up to. Cesare promptly squashed the revolt with the aid of the French. The Orsinis tried to reconcile with him, and Cesare used this opportunity to lure their leaders to Sinigaglia and kill them all. Cesare now possessed Romagna fully, but it was a territory rife with crime and disorder. He appointed Remirro de Orco, a notoriously cruel and ruthless man, as lieutenant general of the region. Quickly and mercilessly, Remirro pacified and unified Romagna. Then, in order to quell the hatred that this aggressiveness might have spawned, Cesare had Remirro tried and executed, making it clear that the cruelty had been the result of the lieutenant general's character, and not Cesare's own. Machiavelli expresses approval for all these drastic measures. However, the tide ultimately turned against Cesare. Alexander died, and Cesare himself fell ill. In the depths of his illness, he made the mistake of allowing Julius to become the next Pope. Machiavelli argues that he should instead have tried to make a Spaniard Pope, or else accepted Rouen's entreaties to the papacy, the reason being that both Spain and Rouen were "bound to him by nationality and obligation." Julius, on the other hand, had reason to hate and fear Cesare: he had endured ten years of exile in France, and held a considerable grudge against the Borgia family. Machiavelli offers Cesare Borgia up as an example of what to do right should a prince acquire his power through the help of others, and the ways in which fortune can lay waste to even the best plans.

Out of the trials and tribulations of Cesare Borgia Machiavelli constructs a rise-and-fall saga that is itself a profoundly moving piece of storytelling. Machiavelli, especially in his later works, seemed to prefer to be thought of as an historian, and here he shows off his predilection for spinning the messiness of history into the stuff of great fiction to. That said, Machiavelli does much to undercut and subvert his own tendency to draw larger meanings out of complex events. For example, Machiavelli posits Borgia as a kind of latter-day mortal equivalent of the legends of history: Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus. Where those ancient figures exist shrouded in a haze, their exploits mythologized, Borgia is, for Machiavelli, a contemporary figure, and thus cannot hope to live up to these precedents. He is a flawed man, albeit one equipped with intelligence and courage, and yet when Machiavelli concludes by blaming Cesare's failure on bad luck, one senses a kind of half-heartedness in the decision. Julius's rise to the papacy sealed Cesare's doom, and that rise can be attributed, according to Machiavelli, to a lapse of reason on Cesare's part: "his only error lay in making Julius pope, where he simply made a bad choice; because, as I said, though he couldn't make his own man pope, he could keep anyone else from the office." It is interesting to note the extent to which Machiavelli will decry or apologize for either figures of history or his contemporaries, when it comes to Borgia one senses some level of personal connection to or feeling for the material. "Looking over all the duke's actions, then," he writes, "I find nothing with which to reproach him; rather I think I'm right in proposing him, as I have done, as a model for all those who rise to power by means of the fortune and arms of others." There is a defensiveness in the tone that is worth considering. History is, indeed, inherently subjective. What gets told, not to mention why, is dependent on so many variables, and in the end it is the temperament of the historian that dictates the form history takes. From his decision to introduce The Prince with a letter to Lorenzo de Medici, itself a heartfelt plea for understanding and favor, to his construction of Borgia as a character and his use of the first person, it is clear that Machiavelli's writing is not the work of a faceless author who would rather disappear behind the veil of his own ostensibly objective formulations, but is rather a kind of first-person history, a sustained meditation on the foibles of human nature and how those foibles translate into larger results. In other words, The Prince is a work of philosophy in the traditional sense: a sustained piece of thought that personalizes the impersonal. To this effect, certain fibs can be identified in Machiavelli's history-making. One example that springs to mind is his reference to France as a major problem for the Romans. Not only does Machiavelli seem to equate pre-Capet France with the nation post-Capet, stretching his vision of a prince sharing power with barons, but in some sort of vaguely centralized manner, back in the days of Vercingetorix and the Gallic Wars, he also exaggerates Gaul's rebelliousness once conquered by the Roman Empire. In fact, Gaul became one of the Empire's calmer territories. That said, Machiavelli is not prone to historical inaccuracy, and his elision of certain facts in this case can be interpreted as a way of supporting his central argument - that states in which power is split between princes and barons are easy to conquer and difficult to hold onto.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/23042-chapters/1.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Tempest/section_0_part_0.txt

The Tempest.act i.scene i

act i, scene i

{"name": "Act I, scene i", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210131162607/https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/tempest/section1/", "summary": "A violent storm rages around a small ship at sea. The master of the ship calls for his boatswain to rouse the mariners to action and prevent the ship from being run aground by the tempest. Chaos ensues. Some mariners enter, followed by a group of nobles comprised of Alonso, King of Naples, Sebastian, his brother, Antonio, Gonzalo, and others. We do not learn these men's names in this scene, nor do we learn that they have just come from Tunis, in Africa, where Alonso's daughter, Claribel, has been married to the prince. As the Boatswain and his crew take in the topsail and the topmast, Alonso and his party are merely underfoot, and the Boatswain tells them to get below-decks. Gonzalo reminds the Boatswain that one of the passengers is of some importance, but the Boatswain is unmoved. He will do what he has to in order to save the ship, regardless of who is aboard. The lords go belowdecks, and then, adding to the chaos of the scene, three of them--Sebastian, Antonio, and Gonzalo--enter again only four lines later. Sebastian and Antonio curse the Boatswain in his labors, masking their fear with profanity. Some mariners enter wet and crying, and only at this point does the audience learn the identity of the passengers on-board. Gonzalo orders the mariners to pray for the king and the prince. There is a strange noise--perhaps the sound of thunder, splitting wood, or roaring water--and the cry of mariners. Antonio, Sebastian, and Gonzalo, preparing to sink to a watery grave, go in search of the king.", "analysis": "Analysis Even for a Shakespeare play, The Tempest is remarkable for its extraordinary breadth of imaginative vision. The play is steeped in magic and illusion. As a result, the play contains a tremendous amount of spectacle, yet things are often not as they seem. This opening scene certainly contains spectacle, in the form of the howling storm tossing the little ship about and threatening to kill the characters before the play has even begun. In terms of stagecraft, it was a significant gamble for Shakespeare to open his play with this spectacular natural event, given that, in the early seventeenth century when the play was written, special effects were largely left to the audience's imagination. Shakespeare's stage would have been almost entirely bare, without many physical signs that the actors were supposed to be on a ship, much less a ship in the midst of a lashing storm. As a result, the audience sees Shakespeare calling on all the resources of his theater to establish a certain level of realism. For example, the play begins with a \"noise of thunder and lightning\" . The first word, \"Boatswain!\" immediately indicates that the scene is the deck of a ship. In addition, characters rush frantically in and out, often with no purpose--as when Sebastian, Antonio, and Gonzalo exit at line 29 and re-enter at 33, indicating the general level of chaos and confusion. Cries from off-stage create the illusion of a space below-decks. But in addition to this spectacle, the play also uses its first scene to hint at some of the illusions and deceptions it will contain. Most plays of this era, by Shakespeare and others, use the introductory scene to present the main characters and hint at the general narrative to come--so Othello begins with Iago's jealousy, and King Lear begins with Lear's decision to abdicate his throne. But The Tempest begins toward the end of the actual story, late in Prospero's exile. Its opening scene is devoted to what appears to be an unexplained natural phenomenon, in which characters who are never named rush about frantically in service of no apparent plot. In fact, the confusion of the opening is itself misleading, for as we will learn later, the storm is not a natural phenomenon at all, but a deliberate magical conjuring by Prospero, designed to bring the ship to the island. The tempest is, in fact, central to the plot. But there is more going on in this scene than initially meets the eye. The apparently chaotic exchanges of the characters introduce the important motif of master-servant relationships. The characters on the boat are divided into nobles, such as Antonio and Gonzalo, and servants or professionals, such as the Boatswain. The mortal danger of the storm upsets the usual balance between these two groups, and the Boatswain, attempting to save the ship, comes into direct conflict with the hapless nobles, who, despite their helplessness, are extremely irritated at being rudely spoken to by a commoner. The characters in the scene are never named outright; they are only referred to in terms that indicate their social stations: \"Boatswain,\" \"Master,\" \"King,\" and \"Prince.\" As the scene progresses, the characters speak less about the storm than about the class conflict underlying their attempts to survive it--a conflict between masters and servants that, as the story progresses, becomes perhaps the major motif of the play. Gonzalo, for instance, jokes that the ship is safe because the uppity Boatswain was surely born to be hanged, not drowned in a storm: \"I have great comfort from this fellow: methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him; his complexion is perfect gallows\" . For his part, the Boatswain observes that social hierarchies are flimsy and unimportant in the face of nature's wrath. \"What cares these roarers,\" he asks, referring to the booming thunder, \"for the name of king?\" . The irony here, of course, is that, unbeknownst to the occupants of the ship, and to the audience, the storm is not natural at all, but is in fact a product of another kind power: Prospero's magic."}

ACT I. SCENE I. On a ship at sea: a tempestuous noise of thunder and lightning heard._ _Enter _a Ship-Master_ and _a Boatswain_._ _Mast._ Boatswain! _Boats._ Here, master: what cheer? _Mast._ Good, speak to the mariners: fall to't, yarely, or we run ourselves aground: bestir, bestir. [_Exit._ _Enter _Mariners_._ _Boats._ Heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts! 5 yare, yare! Take in the topsail. Tend to the master's whistle. Blow, till thou burst thy wind, if room enough! _Enter ALONSO, SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, FERDINAND, GONZALO, and others._ _Alon._ Good boatswain, have care. Where's the master? Play the men. _Boats._ I pray now, keep below. 10 _Ant._ Where is the master, boatswain? _Boats._ Do you not hear him? You mar our labour: keep your cabins: you do assist the storm. _Gon._ Nay, good, be patient. _Boats._ When the sea is. Hence! What cares these 15 roarers for the name of king? To cabin: silence! trouble us not. _Gon._ Good, yet remember whom thou hast aboard. _Boats._ None that I more love than myself. You are a Counsellor; if you can command these elements to silence, 20 and work the peace of the present, we will not hand a rope more; use your authority: if you cannot, give thanks you have lived so long, and make yourself ready in your cabin for the mischance of the hour, if it so hap. Cheerly, good hearts! Out of our way, I say. [_Exit._ 25 _Gon._ I have great comfort from this fellow: methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him; his complexion is perfect gallows. Stand fast, good Fate, to his hanging: make the rope of his destiny our cable, for our own doth little advantage. If he be not born to be hanged, our case 30 is miserable. [_Exeunt._ _Re-enter Boatswain._ _Boats._ Down with the topmast! yare! lower, lower! Bring her to try with main-course. [_A cry within._] A plague upon this howling! they are louder than the weather or our office. 35 _Re-enter SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, and GONZALO._ Yet again! what do you here? Shall we give o'er, and drown? Have you a mind to sink? _Seb._ A pox o' your throat, you bawling, blasphemous, incharitable dog! _Boats._ Work you, then. 40 _Ant._ Hang, cur! hang, you whoreson, insolent noise-maker. We are less afraid to be drowned than thou art. _Gon._ I'll warrant him for drowning; though the ship were no stronger than a nutshell, and as leaky as an unstanched wench. 45 _Boats._ Lay her a-hold, a-hold! set her two courses off to sea again; lay her off. _Enter _Mariners_ wet._ _Mariners._ All lost! to prayers, to prayers! all lost! _Boats._ What, must our mouths be cold? _Gon._ The king and prince at prayers! let's assist them, 50 For our case is as theirs. _Seb._ I'm out of patience. _Ant._ We are merely cheated of our lives by drunkards: This wide-chapp'd rascal,--would thou mightst lie drowning The washing of ten tides! _Gon._ He'll be hang'd yet, Though every drop of water swear against it, 55 And gape at widest to glut him. [_A confused noise within:_ "Mercy on us!"-- "We split, we split!"-- "Farewell my wife and children!"-- "Farewell, brother!"-- "We split, we split, we split!"] _Ant._ Let's all sink with the king. 60 _Seb._ Let's take leave of him. [_Exeunt Ant. and Seb._ _Gon._ Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground, long heath, brown furze, any thing. The wills above be done! but I would fain die a dry death. [_Exeunt._ 65 Notes: I, 1. SC. I. On a ship at sea] Pope. Enter ... Boatswain] Collier MS. adds 'shaking off wet.' 3: _Good,_] Rowe. _Good:_ Ff. _Good._ Collier. 7: _till thou burst thy wind_] _till thou burst, wind_ Johnson conj. _till thou burst thee, wind_ Steevens conj. 8: Capell adds stage direction [Exeunt Mariners aloft. 11: _boatswain_] Pope. _boson_ Ff. 11-18: Verse. S. Walker conj. 15: _cares_] _care_ Rowe. See note (I). 31: [Exeunt] Theobald. [Exit. Ff. 33: _Bring her to try_] F4. _Bring her to Try_ F1 F2 F3. _Bring her to. Try_ Story conj. 33-35: Text as in Capell. _A plague_--A cry within. Enter Sebastian, Anthonio, and Gonzalo. _upon this howling._ Ff. 34-37: Verse. S. Walker conj. 43: _for_] _from_ Theobald. 46: _two courses off to sea_] _two courses; off to sea_ Steevens (Holt conj.). 46: [Enter...] [Re-enter... Dyce. 47: [Exeunt. Theobald. 50: _at_] _are at_ Rowe. 50-54: Printed as prose in Ff. 56: _to glut_] _t' englut_ Johnson conj. 57: See note (II). 59: _Farewell, brother!_] _Brother, farewell!_ Theobald. 60: _with the_] Rowe. _with'_ F1 F2. _with_ F3 F4. 61: [Exeunt A. and S.] [Exit. Ff. 63: _furze_ Rowe. _firrs_ F1 F2 F3. _firs_ F4. _long heath, brown furze_] _ling, heath, broom, furze_ Hanmer.] 65: [Exeunt] [Exit F1, om. F2 F3 F4.]

Act I, scene i

https://web.archive.org/web/20210131162607/https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/tempest/section1/

A violent storm rages around a small ship at sea. The master of the ship calls for his boatswain to rouse the mariners to action and prevent the ship from being run aground by the tempest. Chaos ensues. Some mariners enter, followed by a group of nobles comprised of Alonso, King of Naples, Sebastian, his brother, Antonio, Gonzalo, and others. We do not learn these men's names in this scene, nor do we learn that they have just come from Tunis, in Africa, where Alonso's daughter, Claribel, has been married to the prince. As the Boatswain and his crew take in the topsail and the topmast, Alonso and his party are merely underfoot, and the Boatswain tells them to get below-decks. Gonzalo reminds the Boatswain that one of the passengers is of some importance, but the Boatswain is unmoved. He will do what he has to in order to save the ship, regardless of who is aboard. The lords go belowdecks, and then, adding to the chaos of the scene, three of them--Sebastian, Antonio, and Gonzalo--enter again only four lines later. Sebastian and Antonio curse the Boatswain in his labors, masking their fear with profanity. Some mariners enter wet and crying, and only at this point does the audience learn the identity of the passengers on-board. Gonzalo orders the mariners to pray for the king and the prince. There is a strange noise--perhaps the sound of thunder, splitting wood, or roaring water--and the cry of mariners. Antonio, Sebastian, and Gonzalo, preparing to sink to a watery grave, go in search of the king.

Analysis Even for a Shakespeare play, The Tempest is remarkable for its extraordinary breadth of imaginative vision. The play is steeped in magic and illusion. As a result, the play contains a tremendous amount of spectacle, yet things are often not as they seem. This opening scene certainly contains spectacle, in the form of the howling storm tossing the little ship about and threatening to kill the characters before the play has even begun. In terms of stagecraft, it was a significant gamble for Shakespeare to open his play with this spectacular natural event, given that, in the early seventeenth century when the play was written, special effects were largely left to the audience's imagination. Shakespeare's stage would have been almost entirely bare, without many physical signs that the actors were supposed to be on a ship, much less a ship in the midst of a lashing storm. As a result, the audience sees Shakespeare calling on all the resources of his theater to establish a certain level of realism. For example, the play begins with a "noise of thunder and lightning" . The first word, "Boatswain!" immediately indicates that the scene is the deck of a ship. In addition, characters rush frantically in and out, often with no purpose--as when Sebastian, Antonio, and Gonzalo exit at line 29 and re-enter at 33, indicating the general level of chaos and confusion. Cries from off-stage create the illusion of a space below-decks. But in addition to this spectacle, the play also uses its first scene to hint at some of the illusions and deceptions it will contain. Most plays of this era, by Shakespeare and others, use the introductory scene to present the main characters and hint at the general narrative to come--so Othello begins with Iago's jealousy, and King Lear begins with Lear's decision to abdicate his throne. But The Tempest begins toward the end of the actual story, late in Prospero's exile. Its opening scene is devoted to what appears to be an unexplained natural phenomenon, in which characters who are never named rush about frantically in service of no apparent plot. In fact, the confusion of the opening is itself misleading, for as we will learn later, the storm is not a natural phenomenon at all, but a deliberate magical conjuring by Prospero, designed to bring the ship to the island. The tempest is, in fact, central to the plot. But there is more going on in this scene than initially meets the eye. The apparently chaotic exchanges of the characters introduce the important motif of master-servant relationships. The characters on the boat are divided into nobles, such as Antonio and Gonzalo, and servants or professionals, such as the Boatswain. The mortal danger of the storm upsets the usual balance between these two groups, and the Boatswain, attempting to save the ship, comes into direct conflict with the hapless nobles, who, despite their helplessness, are extremely irritated at being rudely spoken to by a commoner. The characters in the scene are never named outright; they are only referred to in terms that indicate their social stations: "Boatswain," "Master," "King," and "Prince." As the scene progresses, the characters speak less about the storm than about the class conflict underlying their attempts to survive it--a conflict between masters and servants that, as the story progresses, becomes perhaps the major motif of the play. Gonzalo, for instance, jokes that the ship is safe because the uppity Boatswain was surely born to be hanged, not drowned in a storm: "I have great comfort from this fellow: methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him; his complexion is perfect gallows" . For his part, the Boatswain observes that social hierarchies are flimsy and unimportant in the face of nature's wrath. "What cares these roarers," he asks, referring to the booming thunder, "for the name of king?" . The irony here, of course, is that, unbeknownst to the occupants of the ship, and to the audience, the storm is not natural at all, but is in fact a product of another kind power: Prospero's magic.

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/38.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Lord Jim/section_36_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapter 38

chapter 38

{"name": "Chapter 38", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim47.asp", "summary": "Marlow continues his narrative with a description of Brown, who comes to Patusan and brings an end to the peaceful life there. People fear this Australian ruffian, almost like a devil, for he is an arrogant scoundrel with a vile temper and an immoral lifestyle. In Australia, where he had been a smuggler, he was known for killing people for no apparent reason. It is reported that he fell in love with the wife of a missionary with whom he eloped. She fell ill and died soon after, leaving him grief-stricken. Brown was caught in his illegal activities by a Spanish patrol cutter near Mindanao. They intended to take him to prison in Zamboanga, but when they stopped at one of the Spanish settlements, Brown stole a ship and escaped. While sailing towards Zanzibar, where he planned to sell the ship, he noticed the island of Patusan on his map. It struck him that he could live safely there since the island was cut off from the rest of the world. When Brown and his men landed, they armed themselves, went ashore, and found a village, where they were greeted with a burst of cannon fire. Brown's men counter-fired. Soon, however, the invaders were surrounded by Raja Allang's men. They made a barricade, but since their position was not secure and there were only fourteen of them, they were easy targets.", "analysis": "Notes The chapter serves two important purposes. It contrasts the deliberate and continuous evil acts of Brown with the honest character of Jim. Since Brown does not value life, as evidenced in his murdering people for no reason, he is not afraid to die himself; this makes him a difficult and dangerous adversary. The chapter also gives an idea about the geographical location of Patusan. The fictitious island is probably located among the Sunda Islands, somewhere near the coast of Sumatra."}

'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.'

Chapter 38

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim47.asp

Marlow continues his narrative with a description of Brown, who comes to Patusan and brings an end to the peaceful life there. People fear this Australian ruffian, almost like a devil, for he is an arrogant scoundrel with a vile temper and an immoral lifestyle. In Australia, where he had been a smuggler, he was known for killing people for no apparent reason. It is reported that he fell in love with the wife of a missionary with whom he eloped. She fell ill and died soon after, leaving him grief-stricken. Brown was caught in his illegal activities by a Spanish patrol cutter near Mindanao. They intended to take him to prison in Zamboanga, but when they stopped at one of the Spanish settlements, Brown stole a ship and escaped. While sailing towards Zanzibar, where he planned to sell the ship, he noticed the island of Patusan on his map. It struck him that he could live safely there since the island was cut off from the rest of the world. When Brown and his men landed, they armed themselves, went ashore, and found a village, where they were greeted with a burst of cannon fire. Brown's men counter-fired. Soon, however, the invaders were surrounded by Raja Allang's men. They made a barricade, but since their position was not secure and there were only fourteen of them, they were easy targets.

Notes The chapter serves two important purposes. It contrasts the deliberate and continuous evil acts of Brown with the honest character of Jim. Since Brown does not value life, as evidenced in his murdering people for no reason, he is not afraid to die himself; this makes him a difficult and dangerous adversary. The chapter also gives an idea about the geographical location of Patusan. The fictitious island is probably located among the Sunda Islands, somewhere near the coast of Sumatra.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/62.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Far from the Madding Crowd/section_54_part_0.txt

Far from the Madding Crowd.chapter 55

chapter 55

{"name": "Chapter 55", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-55", "summary": "On a bleak day three months later, a number of people gathered on Yalbury Hill. The high sheriff waited in a carriage. Another carriage arrived carrying the judge of the circuit court; he switched carriages, trumpets flourished, and a procession went into town. Bathsheba's men discussed their hopes that the judge would be merciful to Boldwood. Much had been learned of Boldwood's behavior. No one had guessed the extent of his derangement. The closets in his home were found to contain an expensive and elegant collection of ladies' clothes, muffs, and jewelry, all wrapped, labeled \"Bathsheba Boldwood,\" and dated six years ahead. Boldwood had bought the things in Bath and elsewhere and had brought them to his home. The group which gathered at the malthouse thoroughly discussed the question of Boldwood's odd behavior. Once the suggestion had been raised, it was simple to find examples of the farmer's oddity. \"The conviction that Boldwood had not been morally responsible for his later acts now became general.\" But Gabriel arrived to announce the verdict: \"Boldwood, as every one supposed he would do, had pleaded guilty, and had been sentenced to death.\" A petition was sent to the home secretary, asking for reconsideration of the verdict because of Boldwood's state of mind. But not too many inhabitants of Casterbridge signed it. Shopkeepers resented Boldwood's patronage of other towns to purchase the finery for Bathsheba. A few merciful men prodded others into signing. The reply to the petition had not arrived by the Friday preceding the day set for the execution. Coming from the jail where he had bidden farewell to Boldwood, Gabriel saw the scaffold being erected. Bathsheba was in bed, wasting away. She constantly asked whether the messenger had arrived with an answer to the petition. Gabriel too was worried. His \"anxiety was great that Boldwood might be saved, even though in his conscience he felt that he ought to die; for there had been qualities in the farmer which Oak loved.\" At last, late that night, a rider brought the answer they awaited. The sentence had been commuted to \"confinement during Her Majesty's pleasure.\" \"'Hurrah!' said Coggan, with a swelling heart. 'God's above the devil yet!\"'", "analysis": "In this chapter we learn most of the news through hearsay and the expression of the views of the townsfolk. Liddy, for example, tells us that Bathsheba's \"sufferings have been dreadful\", and that she fears for her mistress' sanity if Boldwood is executed. Oak, as always, remains steadfast"}

THE MARCH FOLLOWING--"BATHSHEBA BOLDWOOD" We pass rapidly on into the month of March, to a breezy day without sunshine, frost, or dew. On Yalbury Hill, about midway between Weatherbury and Casterbridge, where the turnpike road passes over the crest, a numerous concourse of people had gathered, the eyes of the greater number being frequently stretched afar in a northerly direction. The groups consisted of a throng of idlers, a party of javelin-men, and two trumpeters, and in the midst were carriages, one of which contained the high sheriff. With the idlers, many of whom had mounted to the top of a cutting formed for the road, were several Weatherbury men and boys--among others Poorgrass, Coggan, and Cain Ball. At the end of half-an-hour a faint dust was seen in the expected quarter, and shortly after a travelling-carriage, bringing one of the two judges on the Western Circuit, came up the hill and halted on the top. The judge changed carriages whilst a flourish was blown by the big-cheeked trumpeters, and a procession being formed of the vehicles and javelin-men, they all proceeded towards the town, excepting the Weatherbury men, who as soon as they had seen the judge move off returned home again to their work. "Joseph, I seed you squeezing close to the carriage," said Coggan, as they walked. "Did ye notice my lord judge's face?" "I did," said Poorgrass. "I looked hard at en, as if I would read his very soul; and there was mercy in his eyes--or to speak with the exact truth required of us at this solemn time, in the eye that was towards me." "Well, I hope for the best," said Coggan, "though bad that must be. However, I shan't go to the trial, and I'd advise the rest of ye that bain't wanted to bide away. 'Twill disturb his mind more than anything to see us there staring at him as if he were a show." "The very thing I said this morning," observed Joseph, "'Justice is come to weigh him in the balances,' I said in my reflectious way, 'and if he's found wanting, so be it unto him,' and a bystander said 'Hear, hear! A man who can talk like that ought to be heard.' But I don't like dwelling upon it, for my few words are my few words, and not much; though the speech of some men is rumoured abroad as though by nature formed for such." "So 'tis, Joseph. And now, neighbours, as I said, every man bide at home." The resolution was adhered to; and all waited anxiously for the news next day. Their suspense was diverted, however, by a discovery which was made in the afternoon, throwing more light on Boldwood's conduct and condition than any details which had preceded it. That he had been from the time of Greenhill Fair until the fatal Christmas Eve in excited and unusual moods was known to those who had been intimate with him; but nobody imagined that there had shown in him unequivocal symptoms of the mental derangement which Bathsheba and Oak, alone of all others and at different times, had momentarily suspected. In a locked closet was now discovered an extraordinary collection of articles. There were several sets of ladies' dresses in the piece, of sundry expensive materials; silks and satins, poplins and velvets, all of colours which from Bathsheba's style of dress might have been judged to be her favourites. There were two muffs, sable and ermine. Above all there was a case of jewellery, containing four heavy gold bracelets and several lockets and rings, all of fine quality and manufacture. These things had been bought in Bath and other towns from time to time, and brought home by stealth. They were all carefully packed in paper, and each package was labelled "Bathsheba Boldwood," a date being subjoined six years in advance in every instance. These somewhat pathetic evidences of a mind crazed with care and love were the subject of discourse in Warren's malt-house when Oak entered from Casterbridge with tidings of sentence. He came in the afternoon, and his face, as the kiln glow shone upon it, told the tale sufficiently well. Boldwood, as every one supposed he would do, had pleaded guilty, and had been sentenced to death. The conviction that Boldwood had not been morally responsible for his later acts now became general. Facts elicited previous to the trial had pointed strongly in the same direction, but they had not been of sufficient weight to lead to an order for an examination into the state of Boldwood's mind. It was astonishing, now that a presumption of insanity was raised, how many collateral circumstances were remembered to which a condition of mental disease seemed to afford the only explanation--among others, the unprecedented neglect of his corn stacks in the previous summer. A petition was addressed to the Home Secretary, advancing the circumstances which appeared to justify a request for a reconsideration of the sentence. It was not "numerously signed" by the inhabitants of Casterbridge, as is usual in such cases, for Boldwood had never made many friends over the counter. The shops thought it very natural that a man who, by importing direct from the producer, had daringly set aside the first great principle of provincial existence, namely that God made country villages to supply customers to county towns, should have confused ideas about the Decalogue. The prompters were a few merciful men who had perhaps too feelingly considered the facts latterly unearthed, and the result was that evidence was taken which it was hoped might remove the crime in a moral point of view, out of the category of wilful murder, and lead it to be regarded as a sheer outcome of madness. The upshot of the petition was waited for in Weatherbury with solicitous interest. The execution had been fixed for eight o'clock on a Saturday morning about a fortnight after the sentence was passed, and up to Friday afternoon no answer had been received. At that time Gabriel came from Casterbridge Gaol, whither he had been to wish Boldwood good-bye, and turned down a by-street to avoid the town. When past the last house he heard a hammering, and lifting his bowed head he looked back for a moment. Over the chimneys he could see the upper part of the gaol entrance, rich and glowing in the afternoon sun, and some moving figures were there. They were carpenters lifting a post into a vertical position within the parapet. He withdrew his eyes quickly, and hastened on. It was dark when he reached home, and half the village was out to meet him. "No tidings," Gabriel said, wearily. "And I'm afraid there's no hope. I've been with him more than two hours." "Do ye think he REALLY was out of his mind when he did it?" said Smallbury. "I can't honestly say that I do," Oak replied. "However, that we can talk of another time. Has there been any change in mistress this afternoon?" "None at all." "Is she downstairs?" "No. And getting on so nicely as she was too. She's but very little better now again than she was at Christmas. She keeps on asking if you be come, and if there's news, till one's wearied out wi' answering her. Shall I go and say you've come?" "No," said Oak. "There's a chance yet; but I couldn't stay in town any longer--after seeing him too. So Laban--Laban is here, isn't he?" "Yes," said Tall. "What I've arranged is, that you shall ride to town the last thing to-night; leave here about nine, and wait a while there, getting home about twelve. If nothing has been received by eleven to-night, they say there's no chance at all." "I do so hope his life will be spared," said Liddy. "If it is not, she'll go out of her mind too. Poor thing; her sufferings have been dreadful; she deserves anybody's pity." "Is she altered much?" said Coggan. "If you haven't seen poor mistress since Christmas, you wouldn't know her," said Liddy. "Her eyes are so miserable that she's not the same woman. Only two years ago she was a romping girl, and now she's this!" Laban departed as directed, and at eleven o'clock that night several of the villagers strolled along the road to Casterbridge and awaited his arrival--among them Oak, and nearly all the rest of Bathsheba's men. Gabriel's anxiety was great that Boldwood might be saved, even though in his conscience he felt that he ought to die; for there had been qualities in the farmer which Oak loved. At last, when they all were weary the tramp of a horse was heard in the distance-- First dead, as if on turf it trode, Then, clattering on the village road In other pace than forth he yode. "We shall soon know now, one way or other." said Coggan, and they all stepped down from the bank on which they had been standing into the road, and the rider pranced into the midst of them. "Is that you, Laban?" said Gabriel. "Yes--'tis come. He's not to die. 'Tis confinement during Her Majesty's pleasure." "Hurrah!" said Coggan, with a swelling heart. "God's above the devil yet!"

Chapter 55

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-55

On a bleak day three months later, a number of people gathered on Yalbury Hill. The high sheriff waited in a carriage. Another carriage arrived carrying the judge of the circuit court; he switched carriages, trumpets flourished, and a procession went into town. Bathsheba's men discussed their hopes that the judge would be merciful to Boldwood. Much had been learned of Boldwood's behavior. No one had guessed the extent of his derangement. The closets in his home were found to contain an expensive and elegant collection of ladies' clothes, muffs, and jewelry, all wrapped, labeled "Bathsheba Boldwood," and dated six years ahead. Boldwood had bought the things in Bath and elsewhere and had brought them to his home. The group which gathered at the malthouse thoroughly discussed the question of Boldwood's odd behavior. Once the suggestion had been raised, it was simple to find examples of the farmer's oddity. "The conviction that Boldwood had not been morally responsible for his later acts now became general." But Gabriel arrived to announce the verdict: "Boldwood, as every one supposed he would do, had pleaded guilty, and had been sentenced to death." A petition was sent to the home secretary, asking for reconsideration of the verdict because of Boldwood's state of mind. But not too many inhabitants of Casterbridge signed it. Shopkeepers resented Boldwood's patronage of other towns to purchase the finery for Bathsheba. A few merciful men prodded others into signing. The reply to the petition had not arrived by the Friday preceding the day set for the execution. Coming from the jail where he had bidden farewell to Boldwood, Gabriel saw the scaffold being erected. Bathsheba was in bed, wasting away. She constantly asked whether the messenger had arrived with an answer to the petition. Gabriel too was worried. His "anxiety was great that Boldwood might be saved, even though in his conscience he felt that he ought to die; for there had been qualities in the farmer which Oak loved." At last, late that night, a rider brought the answer they awaited. The sentence had been commuted to "confinement during Her Majesty's pleasure." "'Hurrah!' said Coggan, with a swelling heart. 'God's above the devil yet!"'

In this chapter we learn most of the news through hearsay and the expression of the views of the townsfolk. Liddy, for example, tells us that Bathsheba's "sufferings have been dreadful", and that she fears for her mistress' sanity if Boldwood is executed. Oak, as always, remains steadfast

shmoop

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finished_summaries/shmoop/The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra/section_0_part_0.txt

The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra.act i.scene i

act i, scene i

{"name": "Act I, Scene i", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210116191009/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/antony-cleopatra/summary/act-i-scene-i", "summary": "Two Roman soldiers, Demetrius and Philo, are at Cleopatra's palace in Alexandria, Egypt. They discuss how their dear leader and friend, Mark Antony, is totally smitten with Egypt's queen, Cleopatra. Because of this, he acts less like a ruler and more like a teenager in love. Cleopatra and Antony show up, and Cleopatra demands that Antony tells her how much he loves her. He does so with much fawning. A messenger arrives with news from Rome, and Cleopatra taunts him that the message is either from Antony's wife Fulvia, who's angry about his absence, or maybe orders from Octavius Caesar in Rome. Antony insists he won't hear the message, because everything he cares about is in front of him. Cleopatra again taunts her love: she wonders whether Antony might care as little for her as for Fulvia, his wife back home. Antony scolds her for being so hot and cold. They leave the messenger without hearing the message, and Demetrius and Philo lament that all the rumors in Rome about Antony having fallen off the manly wagon are true.", "analysis": ""}

ACT I. SCENE I. Alexandria. CLEOPATRA'S palace Enter DEMETRIUS and PHILO PHILO. Nay, but this dotage of our general's O'erflows the measure. Those his goodly eyes, That o'er the files and musters of the war Have glow'd like plated Mars, now bend, now turn, The office and devotion of their view Upon a tawny front. His captain's heart, Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper, And is become the bellows and the fan To cool a gipsy's lust. Flourish. Enter ANTONY, CLEOPATRA, her LADIES, the train, with eunuchs fanning her Look where they come! Take but good note, and you shall see in him The triple pillar of the world transform'd Into a strumpet's fool. Behold and see. CLEOPATRA. If it be love indeed, tell me how much. ANTONY. There's beggary in the love that can be reckon'd. CLEOPATRA. I'll set a bourn how far to be belov'd. ANTONY. Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth. Enter a MESSENGER MESSENGER. News, my good lord, from Rome. ANTONY. Grates me the sum. CLEOPATRA. Nay, hear them, Antony. Fulvia perchance is angry; or who knows If the scarce-bearded Caesar have not sent His pow'rful mandate to you: 'Do this or this; Take in that kingdom and enfranchise that; Perform't, or else we damn thee.' ANTONY. How, my love? CLEOPATRA. Perchance? Nay, and most like, You must not stay here longer; your dismission Is come from Caesar; therefore hear it, Antony. Where's Fulvia's process? Caesar's I would say? Both? Call in the messengers. As I am Egypt's Queen, Thou blushest, Antony, and that blood of thine Is Caesar's homager. Else so thy cheek pays shame When shrill-tongu'd Fulvia scolds. The messengers! ANTONY. Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch Of the rang'd empire fall! Here is my space. Kingdoms are clay; our dungy earth alike Feeds beast as man. The nobleness of life Is to do thus [emhracing], when such a mutual pair And such a twain can do't, in which I bind, On pain of punishment, the world to weet We stand up peerless. CLEOPATRA. Excellent falsehood! Why did he marry Fulvia, and not love her? I'll seem the fool I am not. Antony Will be himself. ANTONY. But stirr'd by Cleopatra. Now for the love of Love and her soft hours, Let's not confound the time with conference harsh; There's not a minute of our lives should stretch Without some pleasure now. What sport to-night? CLEOPATRA. Hear the ambassadors. ANTONY. Fie, wrangling queen! Whom everything becomes- to chide, to laugh, To weep; whose every passion fully strives To make itself in thee fair and admir'd. No messenger but thine, and all alone To-night we'll wander through the streets and note The qualities of people. Come, my queen; Last night you did desire it. Speak not to us. Exeunt ANTONY and CLEOPATRA, with the train DEMETRIUS. Is Caesar with Antonius priz'd so slight? PHILO. Sir, sometimes when he is not Antony, He comes too short of that great property Which still should go with Antony. DEMETRIUS. I am full sorry That he approves the common liar, who Thus speaks of him at Rome; but I will hope Of better deeds to-morrow. Rest you happy! Exeunt

Act I, Scene i

https://web.archive.org/web/20210116191009/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/antony-cleopatra/summary/act-i-scene-i

Two Roman soldiers, Demetrius and Philo, are at Cleopatra's palace in Alexandria, Egypt. They discuss how their dear leader and friend, Mark Antony, is totally smitten with Egypt's queen, Cleopatra. Because of this, he acts less like a ruler and more like a teenager in love. Cleopatra and Antony show up, and Cleopatra demands that Antony tells her how much he loves her. He does so with much fawning. A messenger arrives with news from Rome, and Cleopatra taunts him that the message is either from Antony's wife Fulvia, who's angry about his absence, or maybe orders from Octavius Caesar in Rome. Antony insists he won't hear the message, because everything he cares about is in front of him. Cleopatra again taunts her love: she wonders whether Antony might care as little for her as for Fulvia, his wife back home. Antony scolds her for being so hot and cold. They leave the messenger without hearing the message, and Demetrius and Philo lament that all the rumors in Rome about Antony having fallen off the manly wagon are true.

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/32.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Lord Jim/section_31_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapter 32

chapter 32

{"name": "Chapter 32", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim41.asp", "summary": "When Jim saw the other three men hiding in the storeroom, he ordered them to link arms and walk out. Jim followed the men and ordered them to the river, with Jewel by his side. He then told the three of them to jump into the river and take his greetings to Sherif Ali. Jim, left alone with Jewel, realized how much he loved her. He again promised himself never to leave Patusan, where he was loved and respected. At the same time, he remembered his shame. Neither Patusan nor Jewel could make him forget the disgrace of his past failure. One day Jewel met Marlow. She told him that she was terrified that Jim would leave her. She was afraid that he would return to the world outside, and she would be left in misery in Patusan. Her mother had warned her against white men before she died. Now she was afraid that Marlow had come to take Jim away. He tried to reassure her that Jim planned to stay in Patusan forever and reminded her that she was the only one in Patusan that doubted Jim's word. At the same time Marlow realized that she could kill him if he did not convince her that Jim was not leaving with him.", "analysis": "Notes In this chapter, Jewel is developed more fully. She is depicted as intelligent and thinking; but she is also shown to be naive. She has a great fear of the \"unknown,\" the world outside of Patusan, for she has never been off the island. She is also truly afraid that Marlow has come to take Jim away from her. When he tries to reassure her, she has trouble understanding why Jim would want to stay in Patusan forever; but she hopes that he does. The fierceness of Jewel's love is brought out clearly. She thinks that Jim will eventually desert her, having been warned by her mother to never trust white men. She also would not hesitate to kill the person who came between her and her man. Marlow understands that his life is constantly in danger in Patusan; just as he could be killed by Raja Allang, he could also be killed by Jewel. Marlow also understands that Jim is now under Jewel's power, just as he is under the power of Patusan. The gradual darkening of the river and the night, erasing everything but vague outlines, is symbolic of Jim's being pulled into the darkness of Patusan. Marlow's idea that Jewel is overpowering Jim is a part of the fear of the native \"other\" which European imperialists entertained. As a woman, she is doubly \"other\" to the European man. Her partial European heritage seems to function only to make her an acceptable lover for Jim. Her characterization paints her as almost wholly \"native.\""}

'Jim took up an advantageous position and shepherded them out in a bunch through the doorway: all that time the torch had remained vertical in the grip of a little hand, without so much as a tremble. The three men obeyed him, perfectly mute, moving automatically. He ranged them in a row. "Link arms!" he ordered. They did so. "The first who withdraws his arm or turns his head is a dead man," he said. "March!" They stepped out together, rigidly; he followed, and at the side the girl, in a trailing white gown, her black hair falling as low as her waist, bore the light. Erect and swaying, she seemed to glide without touching the earth; the only sound was the silky swish and rustle of the long grass. "Stop!" cried Jim. 'The river-bank was steep; a great freshness ascended, the light fell on the edge of smooth dark water frothing without a ripple; right and left the shapes of the houses ran together below the sharp outlines of the roofs. "Take my greetings to Sherif Ali--till I come myself," said Jim. Not one head of the three budged. "Jump!" he thundered. The three splashes made one splash, a shower flew up, black heads bobbed convulsively, and disappeared; but a great blowing and spluttering went on, growing faint, for they were diving industriously in great fear of a parting shot. Jim turned to the girl, who had been a silent and attentive observer. His heart seemed suddenly to grow too big for his breast and choke him in the hollow of his throat. This probably made him speechless for so long, and after returning his gaze she flung the burning torch with a wide sweep of the arm into the river. The ruddy fiery glare, taking a long flight through the night, sank with a vicious hiss, and the calm soft starlight descended upon them, unchecked. 'He did not tell me what it was he said when at last he recovered his voice. I don't suppose he could be very eloquent. The world was still, the night breathed on them, one of those nights that seem created for the sheltering of tenderness, and there are moments when our souls, as if freed from their dark envelope, glow with an exquisite sensibility that makes certain silences more lucid than speeches. As to the girl, he told me, "She broke down a bit. Excitement--don't you know. Reaction. Deucedly tired she must have been--and all that kind of thing. And--and--hang it all--she was fond of me, don't you see. . . . I too . . . didn't know, of course . . . never entered my head . . ." 'Then he got up and began to walk about in some agitation. "I--I love her dearly. More than I can tell. Of course one cannot tell. You take a different view of your actions when you come to understand, when you are _made_ to understand every day that your existence is necessary--you see, absolutely necessary--to another person. I am made to feel that. Wonderful! But only try to think what her life has been. It is too extravagantly awful! Isn't it? And me finding her here like this--as you may go out for a stroll and come suddenly upon somebody drowning in a lonely dark place. Jove! No time to lose. Well, it is a trust too . . . I believe I am equal to it . . ." 'I must tell you the girl had left us to ourselves some time before. He slapped his chest. "Yes! I feel that, but I believe I am equal to all my luck!" He had the gift of finding a special meaning in everything that happened to him. This was the view he took of his love affair; it was idyllic, a little solemn, and also true, since his belief had all the unshakable seriousness of youth. Some time after, on another occasion, he said to me, "I've been only two years here, and now, upon my word, I can't conceive being able to live anywhere else. The very thought of the world outside is enough to give me a fright; because, don't you see," he continued, with downcast eyes watching the action of his boot busied in squashing thoroughly a tiny bit of dried mud (we were strolling on the river-bank)--"because I have not forgotten why I came here. Not yet!" 'I refrained from looking at him, but I think I heard a short sigh; we took a turn or two in silence. "Upon my soul and conscience," he began again, "if such a thing can be forgotten, then I think I have a right to dismiss it from my mind. Ask any man here" . . . his voice changed. "Is it not strange," he went on in a gentle, almost yearning tone, "that all these people, all these people who would do anything for me, can never be made to understand? Never! If you disbelieved me I could not call them up. It seems hard, somehow. I am stupid, am I not? What more can I want? If you ask them who is brave--who is true--who is just--who is it they would trust with their lives?--they would say, Tuan Jim. And yet they can never know the real, real truth . . ." 'That's what he said to me on my last day with him. I did not let a murmur escape me: I felt he was going to say more, and come no nearer to the root of the matter. The sun, whose concentrated glare dwarfs the earth into a restless mote of dust, had sunk behind the forest, and the diffused light from an opal sky seemed to cast upon a world without shadows and without brilliance the illusion of a calm and pensive greatness. I don't know why, listening to him, I should have noted so distinctly the gradual darkening of the river, of the air; the irresistible slow work of the night settling silently on all the visible forms, effacing the outlines, burying the shapes deeper and deeper, like a steady fall of impalpable black dust. '"Jove!" he began abruptly, "there are days when a fellow is too absurd for anything; only I know I can tell you what I like. I talk about being done with it--with the bally thing at the back of my head . . . Forgetting . . . Hang me if I know! I can think of it quietly. After all, what has it proved? Nothing. I suppose you don't think so . . ." 'I made a protesting murmur. '"No matter," he said. "I am satisfied . . . nearly. I've got to look only at the face of the first man that comes along, to regain my confidence. They can't be made to understand what is going on in me. What of that? Come! I haven't done so badly." '"Not so badly," I said. '"But all the same, you wouldn't like to have me aboard your own ship hey?" '"Confound you!" I cried. "Stop this." '"Aha! You see," he said, crowing, as it were, over me placidly. "Only," he went on, "you just try to tell this to any of them here. They would think you a fool, a liar, or worse. And so I can stand it. I've done a thing or two for them, but this is what they have done for me." '"My dear chap," I cried, "you shall always remain for them an insoluble mystery." Thereupon we were silent. '"Mystery," he repeated, before looking up. "Well, then let me always remain here." 'After the sun had set, the darkness seemed to drive upon us, borne in every faint puff of the breeze. In the middle of a hedged path I saw the arrested, gaunt, watchful, and apparently one-legged silhouette of Tamb' Itam; and across the dusky space my eye detected something white moving to and fro behind the supports of the roof. As soon as Jim, with Tamb' Itam at his heels, had started upon his evening rounds, I went up to the house alone, and, unexpectedly, found myself waylaid by the girl, who had been clearly waiting for this opportunity. 'It is hard to tell you what it was precisely she wanted to wrest from me. Obviously it would be something very simple--the simplest impossibility in the world; as, for instance, the exact description of the form of a cloud. She wanted an assurance, a statement, a promise, an explanation--I don't know how to call it: the thing has no name. It was dark under the projecting roof, and all I could see were the flowing lines of her gown, the pale small oval of her face, with the white flash of her teeth, and, turned towards me, the big sombre orbits of her eyes, where there seemed to be a faint stir, such as you may fancy you can detect when you plunge your gaze to the bottom of an immensely deep well. What is it that moves there? you ask yourself. Is it a blind monster or only a lost gleam from the universe? It occurred to me--don't laugh--that all things being dissimilar, she was more inscrutable in her childish ignorance than the Sphinx propounding childish riddles to wayfarers. She had been carried off to Patusan before her eyes were open. She had grown up there; she had seen nothing, she had known nothing, she had no conception of anything. I ask myself whether she were sure that anything else existed. What notions she may have formed of the outside world is to me inconceivable: all that she knew of its inhabitants were a betrayed woman and a sinister pantaloon. Her lover also came to her from there, gifted with irresistible seductions; but what would become of her if he should return to these inconceivable regions that seemed always to claim back their own? Her mother had warned her of this with tears, before she died . . . 'She had caught hold of my arm firmly, and as soon as I had stopped she had withdrawn her hand in haste. She was audacious and shrinking. She feared nothing, but she was checked by the profound incertitude and the extreme strangeness--a brave person groping in the dark. I belonged to this Unknown that might claim Jim for its own at any moment. I was, as it were, in the secret of its nature and of its intentions--the confidant of a threatening mystery--armed with its power perhaps! I believe she supposed I could with a word whisk Jim away out of her very arms; it is my sober conviction she went through agonies of apprehension during my long talks with Jim; through a real and intolerable anguish that might have conceivably driven her into plotting my murder, had the fierceness of her soul been equal to the tremendous situation it had created. This is my impression, and it is all I can give you: the whole thing dawned gradually upon me, and as it got clearer and clearer I was overwhelmed by a slow incredulous amazement. She made me believe her, but there is no word that on my lips could render the effect of the headlong and vehement whisper, of the soft, passionate tones, of the sudden breathless pause and the appealing movement of the white arms extended swiftly. They fell; the ghostly figure swayed like a slender tree in the wind, the pale oval of the face drooped; it was impossible to distinguish her features, the darkness of the eyes was unfathomable; two wide sleeves uprose in the dark like unfolding wings, and she stood silent, holding her head in her hands.'

Chapter 32

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim41.asp

When Jim saw the other three men hiding in the storeroom, he ordered them to link arms and walk out. Jim followed the men and ordered them to the river, with Jewel by his side. He then told the three of them to jump into the river and take his greetings to Sherif Ali. Jim, left alone with Jewel, realized how much he loved her. He again promised himself never to leave Patusan, where he was loved and respected. At the same time, he remembered his shame. Neither Patusan nor Jewel could make him forget the disgrace of his past failure. One day Jewel met Marlow. She told him that she was terrified that Jim would leave her. She was afraid that he would return to the world outside, and she would be left in misery in Patusan. Her mother had warned her against white men before she died. Now she was afraid that Marlow had come to take Jim away. He tried to reassure her that Jim planned to stay in Patusan forever and reminded her that she was the only one in Patusan that doubted Jim's word. At the same time Marlow realized that she could kill him if he did not convince her that Jim was not leaving with him.

Notes In this chapter, Jewel is developed more fully. She is depicted as intelligent and thinking; but she is also shown to be naive. She has a great fear of the "unknown," the world outside of Patusan, for she has never been off the island. She is also truly afraid that Marlow has come to take Jim away from her. When he tries to reassure her, she has trouble understanding why Jim would want to stay in Patusan forever; but she hopes that he does. The fierceness of Jewel's love is brought out clearly. She thinks that Jim will eventually desert her, having been warned by her mother to never trust white men. She also would not hesitate to kill the person who came between her and her man. Marlow understands that his life is constantly in danger in Patusan; just as he could be killed by Raja Allang, he could also be killed by Jewel. Marlow also understands that Jim is now under Jewel's power, just as he is under the power of Patusan. The gradual darkening of the river and the night, erasing everything but vague outlines, is symbolic of Jim's being pulled into the darkness of Patusan. Marlow's idea that Jewel is overpowering Jim is a part of the fear of the native "other" which European imperialists entertained. As a woman, she is doubly "other" to the European man. Her partial European heritage seems to function only to make her an acceptable lover for Jim. Her characterization paints her as almost wholly "native."

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/22.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Far from the Madding Crowd/section_21_part_0.txt

Far from the Madding Crowd.chapter 22

chapter 22

{"name": "Chapter 22", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-22", "summary": "\"Gabriel lately, for the first time since his prostration by misfortune, had been independent in thought and vigorous in action to a marked extent. . . . But this incurable loitering beside Bathsheba Everdene stole his time ruinously.\" On this first of June, Gabriel enjoyed the blossoming countryside and, in the ecclesiastical atmosphere suggested by the architecture of the huge and ancient barn, he participated in the ritual and pageantry of the centuries-old rite of sheep-shearing. Each man played his greater or lesser role in the service. In the background, women gathered the shorn fleeces. Bathsheba made sure that the men would shear closely yet give no wounds. Carelessness was reprimanded. While Bathsheba watched, chattering constantly, Gabriel sheared a sheep in a surprisingly short time -- twenty-three and one-half minutes. Cainy brought the tar pot. The initials B. E. were stamped on the newly shorn skin, and the panting animal leaped away, joining \"the shirtless flock outside.\" Unexpectedly, Boldwood appeared and talked to Bathsheba as Gabriel continued shearing. The girl left, reappearing in her new riding habit. Distracted, Gabriel cut a sheep. Bathsheba reproved him. Superficially unmoved, Gabriel medicated the wound. The other two went off to view Boldwood's Leicesters. \"That means matrimony,\" predicted one woman, beginning the gossip. Henery, still resentful that he had not been appointed bailiff, was most talkative. Gabriel brooded. All the others looked forward to the feasting which would crown the ritual of the shearing.", "analysis": "Still another fine description of Wessex life is drawn here. The animation and motion are absorbing as we follow the careful work of the shearers. Gabriel's tension rises when Boldwood appears. \"Gabriel at this time of his life had outgrown the instinctive dislike which every Christian boy has for reading the Bible, perusing it now quite frequently, and he inwardly said, 'I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets!' This was mere exclamation -- the froth of the storm. He adored Bathsheba just the same.\" Note that this quotation follows the indirect reference in the preceding chapter to a man's using distraction by a woman as an alibi for not making progress in his profession."}

THE GREAT BARN AND THE SHEEP-SHEARERS Men thin away to insignificance and oblivion quite as often by not making the most of good spirits when they have them as by lacking good spirits when they are indispensable. Gabriel lately, for the first time since his prostration by misfortune, had been independent in thought and vigorous in action to a marked extent--conditions which, powerless without an opportunity as an opportunity without them is barren, would have given him a sure lift upwards when the favourable conjunction should have occurred. But this incurable loitering beside Bathsheba Everdene stole his time ruinously. The spring tides were going by without floating him off, and the neap might soon come which could not. It was the first day of June, and the sheep-shearing season culminated, the landscape, even to the leanest pasture, being all health and colour. Every green was young, every pore was open, and every stalk was swollen with racing currents of juice. God was palpably present in the country, and the devil had gone with the world to town. Flossy catkins of the later kinds, fern-sprouts like bishops' croziers, the square-headed moschatel, the odd cuckoo-pint,--like an apoplectic saint in a niche of malachite,--snow-white ladies'-smocks, the toothwort, approximating to human flesh, the enchanter's night-shade, and the black-petaled doleful-bells, were among the quainter objects of the vegetable world in and about Weatherbury at this teeming time; and of the animal, the metamorphosed figures of Mr. Jan Coggan, the master-shearer; the second and third shearers, who travelled in the exercise of their calling, and do not require definition by name; Henery Fray the fourth shearer, Susan Tall's husband the fifth, Joseph Poorgrass the sixth, young Cain Ball as assistant-shearer, and Gabriel Oak as general supervisor. None of these were clothed to any extent worth mentioning, each appearing to have hit in the matter of raiment the decent mean between a high and low caste Hindoo. An angularity of lineament, and a fixity of facial machinery in general, proclaimed that serious work was the order of the day. They sheared in the great barn, called for the nonce the Shearing-barn, which on ground-plan resembled a church with transepts. It not only emulated the form of the neighbouring church of the parish, but vied with it in antiquity. Whether the barn had ever formed one of a group of conventual buildings nobody seemed to be aware; no trace of such surroundings remained. The vast porches at the sides, lofty enough to admit a waggon laden to its highest with corn in the sheaf, were spanned by heavy-pointed arches of stone, broadly and boldly cut, whose very simplicity was the origin of a grandeur not apparent in erections where more ornament has been attempted. The dusky, filmed, chestnut roof, braced and tied in by huge collars, curves, and diagonals, was far nobler in design, because more wealthy in material, than nine-tenths of those in our modern churches. Along each side wall was a range of striding buttresses, throwing deep shadows on the spaces between them, which were perforated by lancet openings, combining in their proportions the precise requirements both of beauty and ventilation. One could say about this barn, what could hardly be said of either the church or the castle, akin to it in age and style, that the purpose which had dictated its original erection was the same with that to which it was still applied. Unlike and superior to either of those two typical remnants of mediaevalism, the old barn embodied practices which had suffered no mutilation at the hands of time. Here at least the spirit of the ancient builders was at one with the spirit of the modern beholder. Standing before this abraded pile, the eye regarded its present usage, the mind dwelt upon its past history, with a satisfied sense of functional continuity throughout--a feeling almost of gratitude, and quite of pride, at the permanence of the idea which had heaped it up. The fact that four centuries had neither proved it to be founded on a mistake, inspired any hatred of its purpose, nor given rise to any reaction that had battered it down, invested this simple grey effort of old minds with a repose, if not a grandeur, which a too curious reflection was apt to disturb in its ecclesiastical and military compeers. For once mediaevalism and modernism had a common stand-point. The lanceolate windows, the time-eaten archstones and chamfers, the orientation of the axis, the misty chestnut work of the rafters, referred to no exploded fortifying art or worn-out religious creed. The defence and salvation of the body by daily bread is still a study, a religion, and a desire. To-day the large side doors were thrown open towards the sun to admit a bountiful light to the immediate spot of the shearers' operations, which was the wood threshing-floor in the centre, formed of thick oak, black with age and polished by the beating of flails for many generations, till it had grown as slippery and as rich in hue as the state-room floors of an Elizabethan mansion. Here the shearers knelt, the sun slanting in upon their bleached shirts, tanned arms, and the polished shears they flourished, causing these to bristle with a thousand rays strong enough to blind a weak-eyed man. Beneath them a captive sheep lay panting, quickening its pants as misgiving merged in terror, till it quivered like the hot landscape outside. This picture of to-day in its frame of four hundred years ago did not produce that marked contrast between ancient and modern which is implied by the contrast of date. In comparison with cities, Weatherbury was immutable. The citizen's THEN is the rustic's NOW. In London, twenty or thirty-years ago are old times; in Paris ten years, or five; in Weatherbury three or four score years were included in the mere present, and nothing less than a century set a mark on its face or tone. Five decades hardly modified the cut of a gaiter, the embroidery of a smock-frock, by the breadth of a hair. Ten generations failed to alter the turn of a single phrase. In these Wessex nooks the busy outsider's ancient times are only old; his old times are still new; his present is futurity. So the barn was natural to the shearers, and the shearers were in harmony with the barn. The spacious ends of the building, answering ecclesiastically to nave and chancel extremities, were fenced off with hurdles, the sheep being all collected in a crowd within these two enclosures; and in one angle a catching-pen was formed, in which three or four sheep were continuously kept ready for the shearers to seize without loss of time. In the background, mellowed by tawny shade, were the three women, Maryann Money, and Temperance and Soberness Miller, gathering up the fleeces and twisting ropes of wool with a wimble for tying them round. They were indifferently well assisted by the old maltster, who, when the malting season from October to April had passed, made himself useful upon any of the bordering farmsteads. Behind all was Bathsheba, carefully watching the men to see that there was no cutting or wounding through carelessness, and that the animals were shorn close. Gabriel, who flitted and hovered under her bright eyes like a moth, did not shear continuously, half his time being spent in attending to the others and selecting the sheep for them. At the present moment he was engaged in handing round a mug of mild liquor, supplied from a barrel in the corner, and cut pieces of bread and cheese. Bathsheba, after throwing a glance here, a caution there, and lecturing one of the younger operators who had allowed his last finished sheep to go off among the flock without re-stamping it with her initials, came again to Gabriel, as he put down the luncheon to drag a frightened ewe to his shear-station, flinging it over upon its back with a dexterous twist of the arm. He lopped off the tresses about its head, and opened up the neck and collar, his mistress quietly looking on. "She blushes at the insult," murmured Bathsheba, watching the pink flush which arose and overspread the neck and shoulders of the ewe where they were left bare by the clicking shears--a flush which was enviable, for its delicacy, by many queens of coteries, and would have been creditable, for its promptness, to any woman in the world. Poor Gabriel's soul was fed with a luxury of content by having her over him, her eyes critically regarding his skilful shears, which apparently were going to gather up a piece of the flesh at every close, and yet never did so. Like Guildenstern, Oak was happy in that he was not over happy. He had no wish to converse with her: that his bright lady and himself formed one group, exclusively their own, and containing no others in the world, was enough. So the chatter was all on her side. There is a loquacity that tells nothing, which was Bathsheba's; and there is a silence which says much: that was Gabriel's. Full of this dim and temperate bliss, he went on to fling the ewe over upon her other side, covering her head with his knee, gradually running the shears line after line round her dewlap; thence about her flank and back, and finishing over the tail. "Well done, and done quickly!" said Bathsheba, looking at her watch as the last snip resounded. "How long, miss?" said Gabriel, wiping his brow. "Three-and-twenty minutes and a half since you took the first lock from its forehead. It is the first time that I have ever seen one done in less than half an hour." The clean, sleek creature arose from its fleece--how perfectly like Aphrodite rising from the foam should have been seen to be realized--looking startled and shy at the loss of its garment, which lay on the floor in one soft cloud, united throughout, the portion visible being the inner surface only, which, never before exposed, was white as snow, and without flaw or blemish of the minutest kind. "Cain Ball!" "Yes, Mister Oak; here I be!" Cainy now runs forward with the tar-pot. "B. E." is newly stamped upon the shorn skin, and away the simple dam leaps, panting, over the board into the shirtless flock outside. Then up comes Maryann; throws the loose locks into the middle of the fleece, rolls it up, and carries it into the background as three-and-a-half pounds of unadulterated warmth for the winter enjoyment of persons unknown and far away, who will, however, never experience the superlative comfort derivable from the wool as it here exists, new and pure--before the unctuousness of its nature whilst in a living state has dried, stiffened, and been washed out--rendering it just now as superior to anything WOOLLEN as cream is superior to milk-and-water. But heartless circumstance could not leave entire Gabriel's happiness of this morning. The rams, old ewes, and two-shear ewes had duly undergone their stripping, and the men were proceeding with the shear-lings and hogs, when Oak's belief that she was going to stand pleasantly by and time him through another performance was painfully interrupted by Farmer Boldwood's appearance in the extremest corner of the barn. Nobody seemed to have perceived his entry, but there he certainly was. Boldwood always carried with him a social atmosphere of his own, which everybody felt who came near him; and the talk, which Bathsheba's presence had somewhat suppressed, was now totally suspended. He crossed over towards Bathsheba, who turned to greet him with a carriage of perfect ease. He spoke to her in low tones, and she instinctively modulated her own to the same pitch, and her voice ultimately even caught the inflection of his. She was far from having a wish to appear mysteriously connected with him; but woman at the impressionable age gravitates to the larger body not only in her choice of words, which is apparent every day, but even in her shades of tone and humour, when the influence is great. What they conversed about was not audible to Gabriel, who was too independent to get near, though too concerned to disregard. The issue of their dialogue was the taking of her hand by the courteous farmer to help her over the spreading-board into the bright June sunlight outside. Standing beside the sheep already shorn, they went on talking again. Concerning the flock? Apparently not. Gabriel theorized, not without truth, that in quiet discussion of any matter within reach of the speakers' eyes, these are usually fixed upon it. Bathsheba demurely regarded a contemptible straw lying upon the ground, in a way which suggested less ovine criticism than womanly embarrassment. She became more or less red in the cheek, the blood wavering in uncertain flux and reflux over the sensitive space between ebb and flood. Gabriel sheared on, constrained and sad. She left Boldwood's side, and he walked up and down alone for nearly a quarter of an hour. Then she reappeared in her new riding-habit of myrtle green, which fitted her to the waist as a rind fits its fruit; and young Bob Coggan led on her mare, Boldwood fetching his own horse from the tree under which it had been tied. Oak's eyes could not forsake them; and in endeavouring to continue his shearing at the same time that he watched Boldwood's manner, he snipped the sheep in the groin. The animal plunged; Bathsheba instantly gazed towards it, and saw the blood. "Oh, Gabriel!" she exclaimed, with severe remonstrance, "you who are so strict with the other men--see what you are doing yourself!" To an outsider there was not much to complain of in this remark; but to Oak, who knew Bathsheba to be well aware that she herself was the cause of the poor ewe's wound, because she had wounded the ewe's shearer in a still more vital part, it had a sting which the abiding sense of his inferiority to both herself and Boldwood was not calculated to heal. But a manly resolve to recognize boldly that he had no longer a lover's interest in her, helped him occasionally to conceal a feeling. "Bottle!" he shouted, in an unmoved voice of routine. Cainy Ball ran up, the wound was anointed, and the shearing continued. Boldwood gently tossed Bathsheba into the saddle, and before they turned away she again spoke out to Oak with the same dominative and tantalizing graciousness. "I am going now to see Mr. Boldwood's Leicesters. Take my place in the barn, Gabriel, and keep the men carefully to their work." The horses' heads were put about, and they trotted away. Boldwood's deep attachment was a matter of great interest among all around him; but, after having been pointed out for so many years as the perfect exemplar of thriving bachelorship, his lapse was an anticlimax somewhat resembling that of St. John Long's death by consumption in the midst of his proofs that it was not a fatal disease. "That means matrimony," said Temperance Miller, following them out of sight with her eyes. "I reckon that's the size o't," said Coggan, working along without looking up. "Well, better wed over the mixen than over the moor," said Laban Tall, turning his sheep. Henery Fray spoke, exhibiting miserable eyes at the same time: "I don't see why a maid should take a husband when she's bold enough to fight her own battles, and don't want a home; for 'tis keeping another woman out. But let it be, for 'tis a pity he and she should trouble two houses." As usual with decided characters, Bathsheba invariably provoked the criticism of individuals like Henery Fray. Her emblazoned fault was to be too pronounced in her objections, and not sufficiently overt in her likings. We learn that it is not the rays which bodies absorb, but those which they reject, that give them the colours they are known by; and in the same way people are specialized by their dislikes and antagonisms, whilst their goodwill is looked upon as no attribute at all. Henery continued in a more complaisant mood: "I once hinted my mind to her on a few things, as nearly as a battered frame dared to do so to such a froward piece. You all know, neighbours, what a man I be, and how I come down with my powerful words when my pride is boiling wi' scarn?" "We do, we do, Henery." "So I said, 'Mistress Everdene, there's places empty, and there's gifted men willing; but the spite'--no, not the spite--I didn't say spite--'but the villainy of the contrarikind,' I said (meaning womankind), 'keeps 'em out.' That wasn't too strong for her, say?" "Passably well put." "Yes; and I would have said it, had death and salvation overtook me for it. Such is my spirit when I have a mind." "A true man, and proud as a lucifer." "You see the artfulness? Why, 'twas about being baily really; but I didn't put it so plain that she could understand my meaning, so I could lay it on all the stronger. That was my depth! ... However, let her marry an she will. Perhaps 'tis high time. I believe Farmer Boldwood kissed her behind the spear-bed at the sheep-washing t'other day--that I do." "What a lie!" said Gabriel. "Ah, neighbour Oak--how'st know?" said, Henery, mildly. "Because she told me all that passed," said Oak, with a pharisaical sense that he was not as other shearers in this matter. "Ye have a right to believe it," said Henery, with dudgeon; "a very true right. But I mid see a little distance into things! To be long-headed enough for a baily's place is a poor mere trifle--yet a trifle more than nothing. However, I look round upon life quite cool. Do you heed me, neighbours? My words, though made as simple as I can, mid be rather deep for some heads." "O yes, Henery, we quite heed ye." "A strange old piece, goodmen--whirled about from here to yonder, as if I were nothing! A little warped, too. But I have my depths; ha, and even my great depths! I might gird at a certain shepherd, brain to brain. But no--O no!" "A strange old piece, ye say!" interposed the maltster, in a querulous voice. "At the same time ye be no old man worth naming--no old man at all. Yer teeth bain't half gone yet; and what's a old man's standing if so be his teeth bain't gone? Weren't I stale in wedlock afore ye were out of arms? 'Tis a poor thing to be sixty, when there's people far past four-score--a boast weak as water." It was the unvarying custom in Weatherbury to sink minor differences when the maltster had to be pacified. "Weak as water! yes," said Jan Coggan. "Malter, we feel ye to be a wonderful veteran man, and nobody can gainsay it." "Nobody," said Joseph Poorgrass. "Ye be a very rare old spectacle, malter, and we all admire ye for that gift." "Ay, and as a young man, when my senses were in prosperity, I was likewise liked by a good-few who knowed me," said the maltster. "'Ithout doubt you was--'ithout doubt." The bent and hoary man was satisfied, and so apparently was Henery Fray. That matters should continue pleasant Maryann spoke, who, what with her brown complexion, and the working wrapper of rusty linsey, had at present the mellow hue of an old sketch in oils--notably some of Nicholas Poussin's:-- "Do anybody know of a crooked man, or a lame, or any second-hand fellow at all that would do for poor me?" said Maryann. "A perfect one I don't expect to get at my time of life. If I could hear of such a thing twould do me more good than toast and ale." Coggan furnished a suitable reply. Oak went on with his shearing, and said not another word. Pestilent moods had come, and teased away his quiet. Bathsheba had shown indications of anointing him above his fellows by installing him as the bailiff that the farm imperatively required. He did not covet the post relatively to the farm: in relation to herself, as beloved by him and unmarried to another, he had coveted it. His readings of her seemed now to be vapoury and indistinct. His lecture to her was, he thought, one of the absurdest mistakes. Far from coquetting with Boldwood, she had trifled with himself in thus feigning that she had trifled with another. He was inwardly convinced that, in accordance with the anticipations of his easy-going and worse-educated comrades, that day would see Boldwood the accepted husband of Miss Everdene. Gabriel at this time of his life had out-grown the instinctive dislike which every Christian boy has for reading the Bible, perusing it now quite frequently, and he inwardly said, "'I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets!'" This was mere exclamation--the froth of the storm. He adored Bathsheba just the same. "We workfolk shall have some lordly junketing to-night," said Cainy Ball, casting forth his thoughts in a new direction. "This morning I see 'em making the great puddens in the milking-pails--lumps of fat as big as yer thumb, Mister Oak! I've never seed such splendid large knobs of fat before in the days of my life--they never used to be bigger then a horse-bean. And there was a great black crock upon the brandish with his legs a-sticking out, but I don't know what was in within." "And there's two bushels of biffins for apple-pies," said Maryann. "Well, I hope to do my duty by it all," said Joseph Poorgrass, in a pleasant, masticating manner of anticipation. "Yes; victuals and drink is a cheerful thing, and gives nerves to the nerveless, if the form of words may be used. 'Tis the gospel of the body, without which we perish, so to speak it."

Chapter 22

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-22

"Gabriel lately, for the first time since his prostration by misfortune, had been independent in thought and vigorous in action to a marked extent. . . . But this incurable loitering beside Bathsheba Everdene stole his time ruinously." On this first of June, Gabriel enjoyed the blossoming countryside and, in the ecclesiastical atmosphere suggested by the architecture of the huge and ancient barn, he participated in the ritual and pageantry of the centuries-old rite of sheep-shearing. Each man played his greater or lesser role in the service. In the background, women gathered the shorn fleeces. Bathsheba made sure that the men would shear closely yet give no wounds. Carelessness was reprimanded. While Bathsheba watched, chattering constantly, Gabriel sheared a sheep in a surprisingly short time -- twenty-three and one-half minutes. Cainy brought the tar pot. The initials B. E. were stamped on the newly shorn skin, and the panting animal leaped away, joining "the shirtless flock outside." Unexpectedly, Boldwood appeared and talked to Bathsheba as Gabriel continued shearing. The girl left, reappearing in her new riding habit. Distracted, Gabriel cut a sheep. Bathsheba reproved him. Superficially unmoved, Gabriel medicated the wound. The other two went off to view Boldwood's Leicesters. "That means matrimony," predicted one woman, beginning the gossip. Henery, still resentful that he had not been appointed bailiff, was most talkative. Gabriel brooded. All the others looked forward to the feasting which would crown the ritual of the shearing.

Still another fine description of Wessex life is drawn here. The animation and motion are absorbing as we follow the careful work of the shearers. Gabriel's tension rises when Boldwood appears. "Gabriel at this time of his life had outgrown the instinctive dislike which every Christian boy has for reading the Bible, perusing it now quite frequently, and he inwardly said, 'I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets!' This was mere exclamation -- the froth of the storm. He adored Bathsheba just the same." Note that this quotation follows the indirect reference in the preceding chapter to a man's using distraction by a woman as an alibi for not making progress in his profession.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/03.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_2_part_0.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 3

chapter 3

{"name": "Phase I: \"The Maiden,\" Chapter Three", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-3", "summary": "Tess takes some time to dismiss the strange young man from her mind. Other men want to dance with her, but she's not in the mood anymore. After the stranger is out of sight, she's able to shake off her melancholy and dance again. She dances for a while, but she remembers her father's strange behavior, and gets worried, so she hurries home. She finds her mother at home with her younger siblings. Joan Durbeyfield, Tess's mother, is singing and rocking the baby's cradle with one foot, while balancing on the other foot and washing clothes in a tub . Mrs. Durbeyfield, the narrator tells us, has a knack for putting off her household work until the last minute, which makes it seem much harder and more of a pain than it needs to be. Sound like a familiar habit, anyone? Tess feels bad that she was out having fun all afternoon while her mother was at home doing the wash , so she offers to rock the baby or to help with the wash, after changing out of her best gown. Tess's mother is described as aging , but still fresh and pretty. Tess's mother explains to Tess about the discovery of their aristocratic family, and that he had taken the carriage home because of that, and not because he'd been drinking. Tess asks if the news will do them any good, and her mother says that great things might come of it. Tess then asks where her father is. Her mother avoids the question, telling Tess what the doctor had said about Jack Durbeyfield's heart. Apparently his heart is weakened and could go at any time. Tess is alarmed by the news, but asks again where her father is. Her mother admits that Jack Durbeyfield is at Rolliver's--a nearby pub--to \"get up his strength for his journey to-morrow with that load of beehives,\" even though he'll have to be leaving before 1 a.m. to get the hives delivered on time . Tess is dismayed that her father would be so irresponsible, and that her mother must have agreed to his going. Her mother says that she didn't agree, but had to wait for Tess to come back to take care of the younger children while she went to fetch him back. Tess offers to go, but Mrs. Durbeyfield insists on going herself. The narrator informs us that Mrs. Durbeyfield enjoys \"fetching her husband from Rolliver's,\" and that it's one of the few bits of fun she has still in her married life. At Rolliver's, she can pretend that she isn't responsible for seven children back home, and she can be as irresponsible as her husband. On her way out the door, she asks Tess to take the Complete Fortune-Teller to the outhouse. Tess wonders what her mother was consulting in the Complete Fortune-Teller, and guesses that it has something to do with the news about their family. She doesn't guess that it was how the news about their family would affect her in particular. Tess finishes doing the laundry, with help from her nine-year-old brother, Abraham, and her twelve-year-old sister, Eliza-Louisa , and put the youngest ones to bed. 'Liza-Lu is the next oldest sibling, but there's a four year difference between her and Tess . So the age difference makes Tess a kind of foster mother to her younger siblings when their mother is away. After 'Liza-Lu and Abraham there are two more girls, then a three-year-old boy, and then the one-year-old baby, making for a total of seven living children, besides the two that had died. That's a lot of children. Time goes by, and neither of her parents returns. Tess knows that her mother just wanted to join Jack Durbeyfield at the pub for a bit of fun, and that she never intended to fetch him right back. So Tess sends Abraham out to bring both parents home. But half an hour passed, and Abraham doesn't return, either. Tess realizes she must go herself. She locks up the house, and hurries down the \"dark and crooked lane\" towards Rolliver's.", "analysis": ""}

As for Tess Durbeyfield, she did not so easily dislodge the incident from her consideration. She had no spirit to dance again for a long time, though she might have had plenty of partners; but ah! they did not speak so nicely as the strange young man had done. It was not till the rays of the sun had absorbed the young stranger's retreating figure on the hill that she shook off her temporary sadness and answered her would-be partner in the affirmative. She remained with her comrades till dusk, and participated with a certain zest in the dancing; though, being heart-whole as yet, she enjoyed treading a measure purely for its own sake; little divining when she saw "the soft torments, the bitter sweets, the pleasing pains, and the agreeable distresses" of those girls who had been wooed and won, what she herself was capable of in that kind. The struggles and wrangles of the lads for her hand in a jig were an amusement to her--no more; and when they became fierce she rebuked them. She might have stayed even later, but the incident of her father's odd appearance and manner returned upon the girl's mind to make her anxious, and wondering what had become of him she dropped away from the dancers and bent her steps towards the end of the village at which the parental cottage lay. While yet many score yards off, other rhythmic sounds than those she had quitted became audible to her; sounds that she knew well--so well. They were a regular series of thumpings from the interior of the house, occasioned by the violent rocking of a cradle upon a stone floor, to which movement a feminine voice kept time by singing, in a vigorous gallopade, the favourite ditty of "The Spotted Cow"-- I saw her lie do'-own in yon'-der green gro'-ove; Come, love!' and I'll tell' you where!' The cradle-rocking and the song would cease simultaneously for a moment, and an exclamation at highest vocal pitch would take the place of the melody. "God bless thy diment eyes! And thy waxen cheeks! And thy cherry mouth! And thy Cubit's thighs! And every bit o' thy blessed body!" After this invocation the rocking and the singing would recommence, and the "Spotted Cow" proceed as before. So matters stood when Tess opened the door and paused upon the mat within it, surveying the scene. The interior, in spite of the melody, struck upon the girl's senses with an unspeakable dreariness. From the holiday gaieties of the field--the white gowns, the nosegays, the willow-wands, the whirling movements on the green, the flash of gentle sentiment towards the stranger--to the yellow melancholy of this one-candled spectacle, what a step! Besides the jar of contrast there came to her a chill self-reproach that she had not returned sooner, to help her mother in these domesticities, instead of indulging herself out-of-doors. There stood her mother amid the group of children, as Tess had left her, hanging over the Monday washing-tub, which had now, as always, lingered on to the end of the week. Out of that tub had come the day before--Tess felt it with a dreadful sting of remorse--the very white frock upon her back which she had so carelessly greened about the skirt on the damping grass--which had been wrung up and ironed by her mother's own hands. As usual, Mrs Durbeyfield was balanced on one foot beside the tub, the other being engaged in the aforesaid business of rocking her youngest child. The cradle-rockers had done hard duty for so many years, under the weight of so many children, on that flagstone floor, that they were worn nearly flat, in consequence of which a huge jerk accompanied each swing of the cot, flinging the baby from side to side like a weaver's shuttle, as Mrs Durbeyfield, excited by her song, trod the rocker with all the spring that was left in her after a long day's seething in the suds. Nick-knock, nick-knock, went the cradle; the candle-flame stretched itself tall, and began jigging up and down; the water dribbled from the matron's elbows, and the song galloped on to the end of the verse, Mrs Durbeyfield regarding her daughter the while. Even now, when burdened with a young family, Joan Durbeyfield was a passionate lover of tune. No ditty floated into Blackmoor Vale from the outer world but Tess's mother caught up its notation in a week. There still faintly beamed from the woman's features something of the freshness, and even the prettiness, of her youth; rendering it probable that the personal charms which Tess could boast of were in main part her mother's gift, and therefore unknightly, unhistorical. "I'll rock the cradle for 'ee, mother," said the daughter gently. "Or I'll take off my best frock and help you wring up? I thought you had finished long ago." Her mother bore Tess no ill-will for leaving the housework to her single-handed efforts for so long; indeed, Joan seldom upbraided her thereon at any time, feeling but slightly the lack of Tess's assistance whilst her instinctive plan for relieving herself of her labours lay in postponing them. To-night, however, she was even in a blither mood than usual. There was a dreaminess, a pre-occupation, an exaltation, in the maternal look which the girl could not understand. "Well, I'm glad you've come," her mother said, as soon as the last note had passed out of her. "I want to go and fetch your father; but what's more'n that, I want to tell 'ee what have happened. Y'll be fess enough, my poppet, when th'st know!" (Mrs Durbeyfield habitually spoke the dialect; her daughter, who had passed the Sixth Standard in the National School under a London-trained mistress, spoke two languages: the dialect at home, more or less; ordinary English abroad and to persons of quality.) "Since I've been away?" Tess asked. "Ay!" "Had it anything to do with father's making such a mommet of himself in thik carriage this afternoon? Why did 'er? I felt inclined to sink into the ground with shame!" "That wer all a part of the larry! We've been found to be the greatest gentlefolk in the whole county--reaching all back long before Oliver Grumble's time--to the days of the Pagan Turks--with monuments, and vaults, and crests, and 'scutcheons, and the Lord knows what all. In Saint Charles's days we was made Knights o' the Royal Oak, our real name being d'Urberville! ... Don't that make your bosom plim? 'Twas on this account that your father rode home in the vlee; not because he'd been drinking, as people supposed." "I'm glad of that. Will it do us any good, mother?" "O yes! 'Tis thoughted that great things may come o't. No doubt a mampus of volk of our own rank will be down here in their carriages as soon as 'tis known. Your father learnt it on his way hwome from Shaston, and he has been telling me the whole pedigree of the matter." "Where is father now?" asked Tess suddenly. Her mother gave irrelevant information by way of answer: "He called to see the doctor to-day in Shaston. It is not consumption at all, it seems. It is fat round his heart, 'a says. There, it is like this." Joan Durbeyfield, as she spoke, curved a sodden thumb and forefinger to the shape of the letter C, and used the other forefinger as a pointer. "'At the present moment,' he says to your father, 'your heart is enclosed all round there, and all round there; this space is still open,' 'a says. 'As soon as it do meet, so,'"--Mrs Durbeyfield closed her fingers into a circle complete--"'off you will go like a shadder, Mr Durbeyfield,' 'a says. 'You mid last ten years; you mid go off in ten months, or ten days.'" Tess looked alarmed. Her father possibly to go behind the eternal cloud so soon, notwithstanding this sudden greatness! "But where IS father?" she asked again. Her mother put on a deprecating look. "Now don't you be bursting out angry! The poor man--he felt so rafted after his uplifting by the pa'son's news--that he went up to Rolliver's half an hour ago. He do want to get up his strength for his journey to-morrow with that load of beehives, which must be delivered, family or no. He'll have to start shortly after twelve to-night, as the distance is so long." "Get up his strength!" said Tess impetuously, the tears welling to her eyes. "O my God! Go to a public-house to get up his strength! And you as well agreed as he, mother!" Her rebuke and her mood seemed to fill the whole room, and to impart a cowed look to the furniture, and candle, and children playing about, and to her mother's face. "No," said the latter touchily, "I be not agreed. I have been waiting for 'ee to bide and keep house while I go fetch him." "I'll go." "O no, Tess. You see, it would be no use." Tess did not expostulate. She knew what her mother's objection meant. Mrs Durbeyfield's jacket and bonnet were already hanging slily upon a chair by her side, in readiness for this contemplated jaunt, the reason for which the matron deplored more than its necessity. "And take the _Compleat Fortune-Teller_ to the outhouse," Joan continued, rapidly wiping her hands, and donning the garments. The _Compleat Fortune-Teller_ was an old thick volume, which lay on a table at her elbow, so worn by pocketing that the margins had reached the edge of the type. Tess took it up, and her mother started. This going to hunt up her shiftless husband at the inn was one of Mrs Durbeyfield's still extant enjoyments in the muck and muddle of rearing children. To discover him at Rolliver's, to sit there for an hour or two by his side and dismiss all thought and care of the children during the interval, made her happy. A sort of halo, an occidental glow, came over life then. Troubles and other realities took on themselves a metaphysical impalpability, sinking to mere mental phenomena for serene contemplation, and no longer stood as pressing concretions which chafed body and soul. The youngsters, not immediately within sight, seemed rather bright and desirable appurtenances than otherwise; the incidents of daily life were not without humorousness and jollity in their aspect there. She felt a little as she had used to feel when she sat by her now wedded husband in the same spot during his wooing, shutting her eyes to his defects of character, and regarding him only in his ideal presentation as lover. Tess, being left alone with the younger children, went first to the outhouse with the fortune-telling book, and stuffed it into the thatch. A curious fetishistic fear of this grimy volume on the part of her mother prevented her ever allowing it to stay in the house all night, and hither it was brought back whenever it had been consulted. Between the mother, with her fast-perishing lumber of superstitions, folk-lore, dialect, and orally transmitted ballads, and the daughter, with her trained National teachings and Standard knowledge under an infinitely Revised Code, there was a gap of two hundred years as ordinarily understood. When they were together the Jacobean and the Victorian ages were juxtaposed. Returning along the garden path Tess mused on what the mother could have wished to ascertain from the book on this particular day. She guessed the recent ancestral discovery to bear upon it, but did not divine that it solely concerned herself. Dismissing this, however, she busied herself with sprinkling the linen dried during the day-time, in company with her nine-year-old brother Abraham, and her sister Eliza-Louisa of twelve and a half, called "'Liza-Lu," the youngest ones being put to bed. There was an interval of four years and more between Tess and the next of the family, the two who had filled the gap having died in their infancy, and this lent her a deputy-maternal attitude when she was alone with her juniors. Next in juvenility to Abraham came two more girls, Hope and Modesty; then a boy of three, and then the baby, who had just completed his first year. All these young souls were passengers in the Durbeyfield ship--entirely dependent on the judgement of the two Durbeyfield adults for their pleasures, their necessities, their health, even their existence. If the heads of the Durbeyfield household chose to sail into difficulty, disaster, starvation, disease, degradation, death, thither were these half-dozen little captives under hatches compelled to sail with them--six helpless creatures, who had never been asked if they wished for life on any terms, much less if they wished for it on such hard conditions as were involved in being of the shiftless house of Durbeyfield. Some people would like to know whence the poet whose philosophy is in these days deemed as profound and trustworthy as his song is breezy and pure, gets his authority for speaking of "Nature's holy plan." It grew later, and neither father nor mother reappeared. Tess looked out of the door, and took a mental journey through Marlott. The village was shutting its eyes. Candles and lamps were being put out everywhere: she could inwardly behold the extinguisher and the extended hand. Her mother's fetching simply meant one more to fetch. Tess began to perceive that a man in indifferent health, who proposed to start on a journey before one in the morning, ought not to be at an inn at this late hour celebrating his ancient blood. "Abraham," she said to her little brother, "do you put on your hat--you bain't afraid?--and go up to Rolliver's, and see what has gone wi' father and mother." The boy jumped promptly from his seat, and opened the door, and the night swallowed him up. Half an hour passed yet again; neither man, woman, nor child returned. Abraham, like his parents, seemed to have been limed and caught by the ensnaring inn. "I must go myself," she said. 'Liza-Lu then went to bed, and Tess, locking them all in, started on her way up the dark and crooked lane or street not made for hasty progress; a street laid out before inches of land had value, and when one-handed clocks sufficiently subdivided the day.

Phase I: "The Maiden," Chapter Three

https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-3

Tess takes some time to dismiss the strange young man from her mind. Other men want to dance with her, but she's not in the mood anymore. After the stranger is out of sight, she's able to shake off her melancholy and dance again. She dances for a while, but she remembers her father's strange behavior, and gets worried, so she hurries home. She finds her mother at home with her younger siblings. Joan Durbeyfield, Tess's mother, is singing and rocking the baby's cradle with one foot, while balancing on the other foot and washing clothes in a tub . Mrs. Durbeyfield, the narrator tells us, has a knack for putting off her household work until the last minute, which makes it seem much harder and more of a pain than it needs to be. Sound like a familiar habit, anyone? Tess feels bad that she was out having fun all afternoon while her mother was at home doing the wash , so she offers to rock the baby or to help with the wash, after changing out of her best gown. Tess's mother is described as aging , but still fresh and pretty. Tess's mother explains to Tess about the discovery of their aristocratic family, and that he had taken the carriage home because of that, and not because he'd been drinking. Tess asks if the news will do them any good, and her mother says that great things might come of it. Tess then asks where her father is. Her mother avoids the question, telling Tess what the doctor had said about Jack Durbeyfield's heart. Apparently his heart is weakened and could go at any time. Tess is alarmed by the news, but asks again where her father is. Her mother admits that Jack Durbeyfield is at Rolliver's--a nearby pub--to "get up his strength for his journey to-morrow with that load of beehives," even though he'll have to be leaving before 1 a.m. to get the hives delivered on time . Tess is dismayed that her father would be so irresponsible, and that her mother must have agreed to his going. Her mother says that she didn't agree, but had to wait for Tess to come back to take care of the younger children while she went to fetch him back. Tess offers to go, but Mrs. Durbeyfield insists on going herself. The narrator informs us that Mrs. Durbeyfield enjoys "fetching her husband from Rolliver's," and that it's one of the few bits of fun she has still in her married life. At Rolliver's, she can pretend that she isn't responsible for seven children back home, and she can be as irresponsible as her husband. On her way out the door, she asks Tess to take the Complete Fortune-Teller to the outhouse. Tess wonders what her mother was consulting in the Complete Fortune-Teller, and guesses that it has something to do with the news about their family. She doesn't guess that it was how the news about their family would affect her in particular. Tess finishes doing the laundry, with help from her nine-year-old brother, Abraham, and her twelve-year-old sister, Eliza-Louisa , and put the youngest ones to bed. 'Liza-Lu is the next oldest sibling, but there's a four year difference between her and Tess . So the age difference makes Tess a kind of foster mother to her younger siblings when their mother is away. After 'Liza-Lu and Abraham there are two more girls, then a three-year-old boy, and then the one-year-old baby, making for a total of seven living children, besides the two that had died. That's a lot of children. Time goes by, and neither of her parents returns. Tess knows that her mother just wanted to join Jack Durbeyfield at the pub for a bit of fun, and that she never intended to fetch him right back. So Tess sends Abraham out to bring both parents home. But half an hour passed, and Abraham doesn't return, either. Tess realizes she must go herself. She locks up the house, and hurries down the "dark and crooked lane" towards Rolliver's.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/1929-chapters/act_ii.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/The School for Scandal/section_1_part_0.txt

The School for Scandal.act ii.scene i-scene iii

act ii

{"name": "Act II", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180409073536/http://www.gradesaver.com/the-school-for-scandal/study-guide/summary-act-ii", "summary": "Act II opens with Sir Peter and his wife arguing about how much money she spends. They repeatedly bring up that she grew up in the country, not used to the lavish living of London; now, however, she wants money for all kinds of frivolous things, such as flowers in the winter. The two move on to arguing about the company Lady Teazle keeps: people who talk rudely about others and spread rumors. Lady Teazle sets off for Lady Sneerwell's house and Sir Peter agrees to join later. After his wife leaves, Sir Peter admits in a soliloquy that his wife is especially beautiful when she is angry. At Lady Sneerwell's, a group of society people are again pressuring Benjamin Backbite to share his writing. He shares a simple poem that he wrote while on horseback. Lady Teazle and Maria arrive at Lady Sneerwell's, and Lady Teazle tells Lady Sneerwell that her husband will come later. Everyone begins to gossip rudely about people absent from the gathering. They gossip especially about makeup, but Maria refuses to join in. Sir Peter arrives; he also dislikes the gossip that is happening, but it continues. The conversation turns to wit and good nature in general, with Sir Peter saying that he would prefer it if there were laws governing gossip in order to help preserve people's reputations. Sir Peter leaves and Sir Benjamin tells Lady Teazle that he could tell some gossip about Sir Peter himself. All but Joseph and Maria leave the stage. Joseph starts flirting with Maria but she refuses him once again, even as he kneels in front of her. Lady Teazle re-enters and finds Joseph kneeling in front of Maria. He thinks quickly and acts as if he had been begging Maria not to tell Sir Peter about the relationship she suspects between Joseph and Lady Teazle. Lady Teazle thinks that it would be strange for him to ask this while kneeling, but eventually she seems to believe him. Joseph, Maria, and Lady Teazle plan to join with the full group again, but they must not re-enter the party together since it would rouse suspicion. Lady Teazle exits first, and Joseph gives a soliloquy about how he once wanted to spend more time with Lady Teazle so that she would support his advances on Maria ; now, however, he has become too seriously involved with her. Scene III opens with Sir Oliver talking to Rowley about Sir Peter's marriage as he waits for his friend to come back home. Sir Oliver meets with Sir Peter, and they talk about Joseph and Charles. While Sir Peter praises Joseph, Sir Oliver thinks that Joseph may be a hypocrite; thus, Sir Oliver is not so quick to believe everything Sir Peter says.", "analysis": "The first issue introduced in Act II is the fraught relationship between Sir Peter and Lady Teazle, newlyweds with differences of personality and experience that keep them constantly arguing now that their period of wooing has ended. One of Lady Teazle's most biting remarks in this act underscores a theme that has already shown up in Act I and will continue to be a strong theme throughout the play: gender. Lady Teazle tells her husband, \"if you wanted authority over me, you should have adopted me, and not married me: I am sure you were old enough\" . Not only does this comment mock Sir Peter for his advanced age, something he is already self-conscious about due to the age difference between him and his new wife, but it also acknowledges the power structure he expected from marriage due to men's superior position in society at the time the play was written. Furthermore, the remark shows the two main choices women had in how they related to men: either as family members or as love interests . As the argument between Lady Teazle and Sir Peter goes on in Act II, it becomes clear that it is not only about gender and power but also about money and social class. Sir Peter evidently felt that he was doing Lady Teazle a favor by taking her to London from the country, and he also was attracted to the simplicity of Lady Teazle's life and demeanor. However, Lady Teazle acutely feels the pressures put on her by upper-class London society to spend money on things like clothing and house decorations, along with the necessity of spreading gossip to solidify one's position as part of the in-group of wealthy society. Sir Peter chides her for these things, but he is more immune to these things Lady Teazle sees as necessities since he has always been wealthy and is a male--two factors that make it easier for him to maintain his social status. When Lady Teazle goes to a gathering at Lady Sneerwell's house, the audience witnesses another scene of vicious gossip. It is even more clear in this scene how many of the characters see wit and meanness as intertwined, as there is something of a battle of figurative language, especially between Lady Sneerwell, Sir Benjamin, and Lady Teazle. This conversation is mostly about the physical appearances and the use of makeup by some characters that we do not see in the play. This conversation is lively and humorous, including more meaningful names that Sheridan uses to highlight things about characters' qualities or roles in society. The focus on appearance, and especially on makeup, underscores the play's themes of the need to disguise one's true self in the public sphere, and the importance of beauty and age to one's social status. Satires are inherently political, pushing a particular message about an aspect of society that the author thinks needs to change or receive more attention and understanding. In this play, the theme of politics intertwines with the more general theme of gossip or scandal. It seems that there were not laws in place at the time to protect individuals from false rumors, or slander, which Sheridan shows has the power to ruin people's reputations and cause unrest in society as a whole. In this act, Lady Teazle challenges Sir Peter by asking, \"Would you restrain the freedom of speech?\" , and a scene later he has a prepared retort when the subject arises again, responding \"if were to consider the sporting with reputation of as much importance as poaching on manors, and pass an act for the preservation of fame, I believe many would thank them for the bill...in all cases of slander currency, whenever the drawer of the lie was not to be found, the injured parties should have a right to come on any of the indorsers\" . Sir Peter believes punishment should be wrought both on the original creators of the rumor and those who spread them, something Mrs. Candour brought up earlier in the play, but which is perhaps only believed by the play's highly moral characters, Sir Peter and Maria. The word \"politics\" is used quite differently later in the act by Joseph Surface after he is caught by Lady Teazle while attempting to woo Maria. He clarifies to the audience in a soliloquy that he has been pretending to want to have an affair with Lady Teazle precisely to get her approval for his courting of Maria, but he pushed the game too far and is now romantically involved with Lady Teazle. He remarks, \"A curious dilemma, truly, my politics have run me into!\" , using politics to describe the push and pull of allegiances, plots, and lies, which is perhaps a more realistic view of politics than Sir Peter's optimistic ideas for the creation of moral and protective laws."}

ACT II SCENE I. --SIR PETER and LADY TEAZLE SIR PETER. Lady Teazle--Lady Teazle I'll not bear it. LADY TEAZLE. Sir Peter--Sir Peter you--may scold or smile, according to your Humour[,] but I ought to have my own way in everything, and what's more I will too--what! tho' I was educated in the country I know very well that women of Fashion in London are accountable to nobody after they are married. SIR PETER. Very well! ma'am very well! so a husband is to have no influence, no authority? LADY TEAZLE. Authority! no, to be sure--if you wanted authority over me, you should have adopted me and not married me[:] I am sure you were old enough. SIR PETER. Old enough--aye there it is--well--well--Lady Teazle, tho' my life may be made unhappy by your Temper--I'll not be ruined by your extravagance-- LADY TEAZLE. My extravagance! I'm sure I'm not more extravagant than a woman of Fashion ought to be. SIR PETER. No no Madam, you shall throw away no more sums on such unmeaning Luxury--'Slife to spend as much to furnish your Dressing Room with Flowers in winter as would suffice to turn the Pantheon into a Greenhouse, and give a Fete Champetre at Christmas. LADY TEAZLE. Lord! Sir Peter am I to blame because Flowers are dear in cold weather? You should find fault with the Climate, and not with me. For my Part I'm sure I wish it was spring all the year round--and that Roses grew under one's Feet! SIR PETER. Oons! Madam--if you had been born to those Fopperies I shouldn't wonder at your talking thus;--but you forget what your situation was when I married you-- LADY TEAZLE. No, no, I don't--'twas a very disagreeable one or I should never nave married you. SIR PETER. Yes, yes, madam, you were then in somewhat a humbler Style--the daughter of a plain country Squire. Recollect Lady Teazle when I saw you first--sitting at your tambour in a pretty figured linen gown--with a Bunch of Keys at your side, and your apartment hung round with Fruits in worsted, of your own working-- LADY TEAZLE. O horrible!--horrible!--don't put me in mind of it! SIR PETER. Yes, yes Madam and your daily occupation to inspect the Dairy, superintend the Poultry, make extracts from the Family Receipt-book, and comb your aunt Deborah's Lap Dog. LADY TEAZLE. Abominable! SIR PETER. Yes Madam--and what were your evening amusements? to draw Patterns for Ruffles, which you hadn't the materials to make--play Pope Joan with the Curate--to read a sermon to your Aunt--or be stuck down to an old Spinet to strum your father to sleep after a Fox Chase. LADY TEAZLE. Scandalous--Sir Peter not a word of it true-- SIR PETER. Yes, Madam--These were the recreations I took you from--and now--no one more extravagantly in the Fashion--Every Fopery adopted--a head-dress to o'er top Lady Pagoda with feathers pendant horizontal and perpendicular--you forget[,] Lady Teazle--when a little wired gauze with a few Beads made you a fly Cap not much bigger than a blew-bottle, and your Hair was comb'd smooth over a Roll-- LADY TEAZLE. Shocking! horrible Roll!! SIR PETER. But now--you must have your coach--Vis-a-vis, and three powder'd Footmen before your Chair--and in the summer a pair of white cobs to draw you to Kensington Gardens--no recollection when y ou were content to ride double, behind the Butler, on a docked Coach-Horse? LADY TEAZLE. Horrid!--I swear I never did. SIR PETER. This, madam, was your situation--and what have I not done for you? I have made you woman of Fashion of Fortune of Rank--in short I have made you my wife. LADY TEAZLE. Well then and there is but one thing more you can make me to add to the obligation. SIR PETER. What's that pray? LADY TEAZLE. Your widow.-- SIR PETER. Thank you Madam--but don't flatter yourself for though your ill-conduct may disturb my Peace it shall never break my Heart I promise you--however I am equally obliged to you for the Hint. LADY TEAZLE. Then why will you endeavour to make yourself so disagreeable to me--and thwart me in every little elegant expense. SIR PETER. 'Slife--Madam I pray, had you any of these elegant expenses when you married me? LADY TEAZLE. Lud Sir Peter would you have me be out of the Fashion? SIR PETER. The Fashion indeed!--what had you to do with the Fashion before you married me? LADY TEAZLE. For my Part--I should think you would like to have your wife thought a woman of Taste-- SIR PETER. Aye there again--Taste! Zounds Madam you had no Taste when you married me-- LADY TEAZLE. That's very true indeed Sir Peter! after having married you I should never pretend to Taste again I allow. SIR PETER. So--so then--Madam--if these are your Sentiments pray how came I to be honour'd with your Hand? LADY TEAZLE. Shall I tell you the Truth? SIR PETER. If it's not too great a Favour. LADY TEAZLE. Why the Fact is I was tired of all those agreeable Recreations which you have so good naturally [naturedly] Described--and having a Spirit to spend and enjoy a Fortune--I determined to marry the first rich man that would have me. SIR PETER. A very honest confession--truly--but pray madam was there no one else you might have tried to ensnare but me. LADY TEAZLE. O lud--I drew my net at several but you were the only one I could catch. SIR PETER. This is plain dealing indeed-- LADY TEAZLE. But now Sir Peter if we have finish'd our daily Jangle I presume I may go to my engagement at Lady Sneerwell's? SIR PETER. Aye--there's another Precious circumstance--a charming set of acquaintance--you have made there! LADY TEAZLE. Nay Sir Peter they are People of Rank and Fortune--and remarkably tenacious of reputation. SIR PETER. Yes egad they are tenacious of Reputation with a vengeance, for they don't chuse anybody should have a Character but themselves! Such a crew! Ah! many a wretch has rid on hurdles who has done less mischief than these utterers of forged Tales, coiners of Scandal, and clippers of Reputation. LADY TEAZLE. What would you restrain the freedom of speech? SIR PETER. Aye they have made you just as bad [as] any one of the Society. LADY TEAZLE. Why--I believe I do bear a Part with a tolerable Grace--But I vow I bear no malice against the People I abuse, when I say an ill-natured thing, 'tis out of pure Good Humour--and I take it for granted they deal exactly in the same manner with me, but Sir Peter you know you promised to come to Lady Sneerwell's too. SIR PETER. Well well I'll call in, just to look after my own character. LADY TEAZLE. Then, indeed, you must make Haste after me, or you'll be too late--so good bye to ye. SIR PETER. So--I have gain'd much by my intended expostulation--yet with what a charming air she contradicts every thing I say--and how pleasingly she shows her contempt of my authority--Well tho' I can't make her love me, there is certainly a great satisfaction in quarrelling with her; and I think she never appears to such advantage as when she is doing everything in her Power to plague me. [Exit.] SCENE II. --At LADY SNEERWELL'S LADY SNEERWELL, MRS. CANDOUR, CRABTREE, SIR BENJAMIN BACKBITE, and SURFACE LADY SNEERWELL. Nay, positively, we will hear it. SURFACE. Yes--yes the Epigram by all means. SiR BENJAMIN. O plague on't unkle--'tis mere nonsense-- CRABTREE. No no; 'fore gad very clever for an extempore! SIR BENJAMIN. But ladies you should be acquainted with the circumstances. You must know that one day last week as Lady Betty Curricle was taking the Dust in High Park, in a sort of duodecimo Phaeton--she desired me to write some verses on her Ponies--upon which I took out my Pocket-Book--and in one moment produced--the following:-- 'Sure never were seen two such beautiful Ponies; Other Horses are Clowns--and these macaronies, Nay to give 'em this Title, I'm sure isn't wrong, Their Legs are so slim--and their Tails are so long. CRABTREE. There Ladies--done in the smack of a whip and on Horseback too. SURFACE. A very Phoebus, mounted--indeed Sir Benjamin. SIR BENJAMIN. Oh dear Sir--Trifles--Trifles. Enter LADY TEAZLE and MARIA MRS. CANDOUR. I must have a Copy-- LADY SNEERWELL. Lady Teazle--I hope we shall see Sir Peter? LADY TEAZLE. I believe He'll wait on your Ladyship presently. LADY SNEERWELL. Maria my love you look grave. Come, you sit down to Piquet with Mr. Surface. MARIA. I take very little Pleasure in cards--however, I'll do as you Please. LADY TEAZLE. I am surprised Mr. Surface should sit down her--I thought He would have embraced this opportunity of speaking to me before Sir Peter came--[Aside.] MRS. CANDOUR. Now, I'll die but you are so scandalous I'll forswear your society. LADY TEAZLE. What's the matter, Mrs. Candour? MRS. CANDOUR. They'll not allow our friend Miss Vermillion to be handsome. LADY SNEERWELL. Oh, surely she is a pretty woman. . . . [CRABTREE.] I am very glad you think so ma'am. MRS. CANDOUR. She has a charming fresh Colour. CRABTREE. Yes when it is fresh put on-- LADY TEAZLE. O fie! I'll swear her colour is natural--I have seen it come and go-- CRABTREE. I dare swear you have, ma'am: it goes of a Night, and comes again in the morning. SIR BENJAMIN. True, uncle, it not only comes and goes but what's more egad her maid can fetch and carry it-- MRS. CANDOUR. Ha! ha! ha! how I hate to hear you talk so! But surely, now, her Sister, is or was very handsome. CRABTREE. Who? Mrs. Stucco? O lud! she's six-and-fifty if she's an hour! MRS. CANDOUR. Now positively you wrong her[;] fifty-two, or fifty-three is the utmost--and I don't think she looks more. SIR BENJAMIN. Ah! there's no judging by her looks, unless one was to see her Face. LADY SNEERWELL. Well--well--if she does take some pains to repair the ravages of Time--you must allow she effects it with great ingenuity--and surely that's better than the careless manner in which the widow Ocre chaulks her wrinkles. SIR BENJAMIN. Nay now--you are severe upon the widow--come--come, it isn't that she paints so ill--but when she has finished her Face she joins it on so badly to her Neck, that she looks like a mended Statue, in which the Connoisseur sees at once that the Head's modern tho' the Trunk's antique---- CRABTREE. Ha! ha! ha! well said, Nephew! MRS. CANDOUR. Ha! ha! ha! Well, you make me laugh but I vow I hate you for it--what do you think of Miss Simper? SIR BENJAMIN. Why, she has very pretty Teeth. LADY TEAZLE. Yes and on that account, when she is neither speaking nor laughing (which very seldom happens)--she never absolutely shuts her mouth, but leaves it always on a-Jar, as it were---- MRS. CANDOUR. How can you be so ill-natured! LADY TEAZLE. Nay, I allow even that's better than the Pains Mrs. Prim takes to conceal her losses in Front--she draws her mouth till it resembles the aperture of a Poor's-Box, and all her words appear to slide out edgewise. LADY SNEERWELL. Very well Lady Teazle I see you can be a little severe. LADY TEAZLE. In defence of a Friend it is but justice, but here comes Sir Peter to spoil our Pleasantry. Enter SIR PETER SIR PETER. Ladies, your obedient--Mercy on me--here is the whole set! a character's dead at every word, I suppose. MRS. CANDOUR. I am rejoiced you are come, Sir Peter--they have been so censorious and Lady Teazle as bad as any one. SIR PETER. That must be very distressing to you, Mrs. Candour I dare swear. MRS. CANDOUR. O they will allow good Qualities to nobody--not even good nature to our Friend Mrs. Pursy. LADY TEAZLE. What, the fat dowager who was at Mrs. Codrille's [Quadrille's] last Night? LADY SNEERWELL. Nay--her bulk is her misfortune and when she takes such Pains to get rid of it you ought not to reflect on her. MRS. CANDOUR. 'Tis very true, indeed. LADY TEAZLE. Yes, I know she almost lives on acids and small whey--laces herself by pulleys and often in the hottest noon of summer you may see her on a little squat Pony, with her hair plaited up behind like a Drummer's and puffing round the Ring on a full trot. MRS. CANDOUR. I thank you Lady Teazle for defending her. SIR PETER. Yes, a good Defence, truly! MRS. CANDOUR. But for Sir Benjamin, He is as censorious as Miss Sallow. CRABTREE. Yes and she is a curious Being to pretend to be censorious--an awkward Gawky, without any one good Point under Heaven! LADY SNEERWELL. Positively you shall not be so very severe. Miss Sallow is a Relation of mine by marriage, and, as for her Person great allowance is to be made--for, let me tell you a woman labours under many disadvantages who tries to pass for a girl at six-and-thirty. MRS. CANDOUR. Tho', surely she is handsome still--and for the weakness in her eyes considering how much she reads by candle-light it is not to be wonder'd at. LADY SNEERWELL. True and then as to her manner--upon my word I think it is particularly graceful considering she never had the least Education[:] for you know her Mother was a Welch milliner, and her Father a sugar-Baker at Bristow.-- SIR BENJAMIN. Ah! you are both of you too good-natured! SIR PETER. Yes, damned good-natured! Her own relation! mercy on me! [Aside.] MRS. CANDOUR. For my Part I own I cannot bear to hear a friend ill-spoken of? SIR PETER. No, to be sure! SIR BENJAMIN. Ah you are of a moral turn Mrs. Candour and can sit for an hour to hear Lady Stucco talk sentiments. LADY SNEERWELL. Nay I vow Lady Stucco is very well with the Dessert after Dinner for she's just like the Spanish Fruit one cracks for mottoes--made up of Paint and Proverb. MRS. CANDOUR. Well, I never will join in ridiculing a Friend--and so I constantly tell my cousin Ogle--and you all know what pretensions she has to be critical in Beauty. LADY TEAZLE. O to be sure she has herself the oddest countenance that ever was seen--'tis a collection of Features from all the different Countries of the globe. SIR BENJAMIN. So she has indeed--an Irish Front---- CRABTREE. Caledonian Locks---- SIR BENJAMIN. Dutch Nose---- CRABTREE. Austrian Lips---- SIR BENJAMIN. Complexion of a Spaniard---- CRABTREE. And Teeth a la Chinoise---- SIR BENJAMIN. In short, her Face resembles a table d'hote at Spa--where no two guests are of a nation---- CRABTREE. Or a Congress at the close of a general War--wherein all the members even to her eyes appear to have a different interest and her Nose and Chin are the only Parties likely to join issue. MRS. CANDOUR. Ha! ha! ha! SIR PETER. Mercy on my Life[!] a Person they dine with twice a week! [Aside.] LADY SNEERWELL. Go--go--you are a couple of provoking Toads. MRS. CANDOUR. Nay but I vow you shall not carry the Laugh off so--for give me leave to say, that Mrs. Ogle---- SIR PETER. Madam--madam--I beg your Pardon--there's no stopping these good Gentlemen's Tongues--but when I tell you Mrs. Candour that the Lady they are abusing is a particular Friend of mine, I hope you'll not take her Part. LADY SNEERWELL. Ha! ha! ha! well said, Sir Peter--but you are a cruel creature--too Phlegmatic yourself for a jest and too peevish to allow wit in others. SIR PETER. Ah Madam true wit is more nearly allow'd [allied?] to good Nature than your Ladyship is aware of. LADY SNEERWELL. True Sir Peter--I believe they are so near akin that they can never be united. SIR BENJAMIN. O rather Madam suppose them man and wife because one seldom sees them together. LADY TEAZLE. But Sir Peter is such an Enemy to Scandal I believe He would have it put down by Parliament. SIR PETER. 'Fore heaven! Madam, if they were to consider the Sporting with Reputation of as much importance as poaching on manors--and pass an Act for the Preservation of Fame--there are many would thank them for the Bill. LADY SNEERWELL. O Lud! Sir Peter would you deprive us of our Privileges-- SIR PETER. Aye Madam--and then no person should be permitted to kill characters or run down reputations, but qualified old Maids and disappointed Widows.-- LADY SNEERWELL. Go, you monster-- MRS. CANDOUR. But sure you would not be quite so severe on those who only report what they hear? SIR PETER. Yes Madam, I would have Law Merchant for that too--and in all cases of slander currency, whenever the Drawer of the Lie was not to be found, the injured Party should have a right to come on any of the indorsers. CRABTREE. Well for my Part I believe there never was a Scandalous Tale without some foundation.<3> LADY SNEERWELL. Come Ladies shall we sit down to Cards in the next Room? Enter SERVANT, whispers SIR PETER SIR PETER. I'll be with them directly.-- [Exit SERVANT.] I'll get away unperceived. LADY SNEERWELL. Sir Peter you are not leaving us? SIR PETER. Your Ladyship must excuse me--I'm called away by particular Business--but I leave my Character behind me-- [Exit.] SIR BENJAMIN. Well certainly Lady Teazle that lord of yours is a strange being--I could tell you some stories of him would make you laugh heartily if He wern't your Husband. LADY TEAZLE. O pray don't mind that--come do let's hear 'em. [join the rest of the Company going into the Next Room.] SURFACE. Maria I see you have no satisfaction in this society. MARIA. How is it possible I should? If to raise malicious smiles at the infirmities or misfortunes of those who have never injured us be the province of wit or Humour, Heaven grant me a double Portion of Dullness-- SURFACE. Yet they appear more ill-natured than they are--they have no malice at heart-- MARIA. Then is their conduct still more contemptible[;] for in my opinion--nothing could excuse the intemperance of their tongues but a natural and ungovernable bitterness of Mind. SURFACE. Undoubtedly Madam--and it has always been a sentiment of mine--that to propagate a malicious Truth wantonly--is more despicable than to falsify from Revenge, but can you Maria feel thus [f]or others and be unkind to me alone--nay is hope to be denied the tenderest Passion.-- MARIA. Why will you distress me by renewing this subject-- SURFACE. Ah! Maria! you would not treat me thus and oppose your guardian's Sir Peter's wishes--but that I see that my Profligate Brother is still a favour'd Rival. MARIA. Ungenerously urged--but whatever my sentiments of that unfortunate young man are, be assured I shall not feel more bound to give him up because his Distresses have sunk him so low as to deprive him of the regard even of a Brother. SURFACE. Nay but Maria do not leave me with a Frown--by all that's honest, I swear----Gad's Life here's Lady Teazle--you must not--no you shall--for tho' I have the greatest Regard for Lady Teazle---- MARIA. Lady Teazle! SURFACE. Yet were Sir Peter to suspect---- [Enter LADY TEAZLE, and comes forward] LADY TEAZLE. What's this, Pray--do you take her for me!--Child you are wanted in the next Room.--What's all this, pray-- SURFACE. O the most unlucky circumstance in Nature. Maria has somehow suspected the tender concern I have for your happiness, and threaten'd to acquaint Sir Peter with her suspicions--and I was just endeavouring to reason with her when you came. LADY TEAZLE. Indeed but you seem'd to adopt--a very tender mode of reasoning--do you usually argue on your knees? SURFACE. O she's a Child--and I thought a little Bombast----but Lady Teazle when are you to give me your judgment on my Library as you promised---- LADY TEAZLE. No--no I begin to think it would be imprudent--and you know I admit you as a Lover no farther than Fashion requires. SURFACE. True--a mere Platonic Cicisbeo, what every London wife is entitled to. LADY TEAZLE. Certainly one must not be out of the Fashion--however, I have so much of my country Prejudices left--that--though Sir Peter's ill humour may vex me ever so, it never shall provoke me to---- SURFACE. The only revenge in your Power--well I applaud your moderation. LADY TEAZLE. Go--you are an insinuating Hypocrite--but we shall be miss'd--let us join the company. SURFACE. True, but we had best not return together. LADY TEAZLE. Well don't stay--for Maria shan't come to hear any more of your Reasoning, I promise you-- [Exit.] SURFACE. A curious Dilemma truly my Politics have run me into. I wanted at first only to ingratiate myself with Lady Teazle that she might not be my enemy with Maria--and I have I don't know how--become her serious Lover, so that I stand a chance of Committing a Crime I never meditated--and probably of losing Maria by the Pursuit!--Sincerely I begin to wish I had never made such a Point of gaining so very good a character, for it has led me into so many curst Rogueries that I doubt I shall be exposed at last. [Exit.] SCENE III. --At SIR PETER'S --ROWLEY and SIR OLIVER-- SIR OLIVER. Ha! ha! ha! and so my old Friend is married, hey?--a young wife out of the country!--ha! ha! that he should have stood Bluff to old Bachelor so long and sink into a Husband at last! ROWLEY. But you must not rally him on the subject Sir Oliver--'tis a tender Point I assure you though He has been married only seven months. SIR OLIVER. Ah then he has been just half a year on the stool of Repentance--Poor Peter! But you say he has entirely given up Charles--never sees him, hey? ROWLEY. His Prejudice against him is astonishing--and I am sure greatly increased by a jealousy of him with Lady Teazle--which he has been industriously led into by a scandalous Society--in the neighbourhood--who have contributed not a little to Charles's ill name. Whereas the truth is[,] I believe[,] if the lady is partial to either of them his Brother is the Favourite. SIR OLIVER. Aye--I know--there are a set of malicious prating prudent Gossips both male and Female, who murder characters to kill time, and will rob a young Fellow of his good name before He has years to know the value of it. . . but I am not to be prejudiced against my nephew by such I promise you! No! no--if Charles has done nothing false or mean, I shall compound for his extravagance. ROWLEY. Then my life on't, you will reclaim him. Ah, Sir, it gives me new vigour to find that your heart is not turned against him--and that the son of my good old master has one friend however left-- SIR OLIVER. What! shall I forget Master Rowley--when I was at his house myself--egad my Brother and I were neither of us very prudent youths--and yet I believe you have not seen many better men than your old master was[.] ROWLEY. 'Tis this Reflection gives me assurance that Charles may yet be a credit to his Family--but here comes Sir Peter---- SIR OLIVER. Egad so He does--mercy on me--He's greatly altered--and seems to have a settled married look--one may read Husband in his Face at this Distance.-- Enter SIR PETER SIR PETER. Ha! Sir Oliver--my old Friend--welcome to England--a thousand Times! SIR OLIVER. Thank you--thank you--Sir Peter--and Efaith I am as glad to find you well[,] believe me-- SIR PETER. Ah! 'tis a long time since we met--sixteen year I doubt Sir Oliver--and many a cross accident in the Time-- SIR OLIVER. Aye I have had my share--but, what[!] I find you are married--hey my old Boy--well--well it can't be help'd--and so I wish you joy with all my heart-- SIR PETER. Thank you--thanks Sir Oliver.--Yes, I have entered into the happy state but we'll not talk of that now. SIR OLIVER. True true Sir Peter old Friends shouldn't begin on grievances at first meeting. No, no-- ROWLEY. Take care pray Sir---- SIR OLIVER. Well--so one of my nephews I find is a wild Rogue--hey? SIR PETER. Wild!--oh! my old Friend--I grieve for your disappointment there--He's a lost young man indeed--however his Brother will make you amends; Joseph is indeed what a youth should be--everybody in the world speaks well of him-- SIR OLIVER. I am sorry to hear it--he has too good a character to be an honest Fellow. Everybody speaks well of him! Psha! then He has bow'd as low to Knaves and Fools as to the honest dignity of Virtue. SIR PETER. What Sir Oliver do you blame him for not making Enemies? SIR OLIVER. Yes--if He has merit enough to deserve them. SIR PETER. Well--well--you'll be convinced when you know him--'tis edification to hear him converse--he professes the noblest Sentiments. SIR OLIVER. Ah plague on his Sentiments--if he salutes me with a scrap sentence of morality in his mouth I shall be sick directly--but however don't mistake me Sir Peter I don't mean to defend Charles's Errors--but before I form my judgment of either of them, I intend to make a trial of their Hearts--and my Friend Rowley and I have planned something for the Purpose. ROWLEY. And Sir Peter shall own he has been for once mistaken. SIR PETER. My life on Joseph's Honour---- SIR OLIVER. Well come give us a bottle of good wine--and we'll drink the Lads' Healths and tell you our scheme. SIR PETER. Alons [Allons], then---- SIR OLIVER. But don't Sir Peter be so severe against your old Friend's son. SIR PETER. 'Tis his Vices and Follies have made me his Enemy.-- ROWLEY. Come--come--Sir Peter consider how early He was left to his own guidance. SIR OLIVER. Odds my Life--I am not sorry that He has run out of the course a little--for my Part, I hate to see dry Prudence clinging to the green juices of youth--'tis like ivy round a sapling and spoils the growth of the Tree. END OF THE SECOND ACT

Act II

https://web.archive.org/web/20180409073536/http://www.gradesaver.com/the-school-for-scandal/study-guide/summary-act-ii

Act II opens with Sir Peter and his wife arguing about how much money she spends. They repeatedly bring up that she grew up in the country, not used to the lavish living of London; now, however, she wants money for all kinds of frivolous things, such as flowers in the winter. The two move on to arguing about the company Lady Teazle keeps: people who talk rudely about others and spread rumors. Lady Teazle sets off for Lady Sneerwell's house and Sir Peter agrees to join later. After his wife leaves, Sir Peter admits in a soliloquy that his wife is especially beautiful when she is angry. At Lady Sneerwell's, a group of society people are again pressuring Benjamin Backbite to share his writing. He shares a simple poem that he wrote while on horseback. Lady Teazle and Maria arrive at Lady Sneerwell's, and Lady Teazle tells Lady Sneerwell that her husband will come later. Everyone begins to gossip rudely about people absent from the gathering. They gossip especially about makeup, but Maria refuses to join in. Sir Peter arrives; he also dislikes the gossip that is happening, but it continues. The conversation turns to wit and good nature in general, with Sir Peter saying that he would prefer it if there were laws governing gossip in order to help preserve people's reputations. Sir Peter leaves and Sir Benjamin tells Lady Teazle that he could tell some gossip about Sir Peter himself. All but Joseph and Maria leave the stage. Joseph starts flirting with Maria but she refuses him once again, even as he kneels in front of her. Lady Teazle re-enters and finds Joseph kneeling in front of Maria. He thinks quickly and acts as if he had been begging Maria not to tell Sir Peter about the relationship she suspects between Joseph and Lady Teazle. Lady Teazle thinks that it would be strange for him to ask this while kneeling, but eventually she seems to believe him. Joseph, Maria, and Lady Teazle plan to join with the full group again, but they must not re-enter the party together since it would rouse suspicion. Lady Teazle exits first, and Joseph gives a soliloquy about how he once wanted to spend more time with Lady Teazle so that she would support his advances on Maria ; now, however, he has become too seriously involved with her. Scene III opens with Sir Oliver talking to Rowley about Sir Peter's marriage as he waits for his friend to come back home. Sir Oliver meets with Sir Peter, and they talk about Joseph and Charles. While Sir Peter praises Joseph, Sir Oliver thinks that Joseph may be a hypocrite; thus, Sir Oliver is not so quick to believe everything Sir Peter says.

The first issue introduced in Act II is the fraught relationship between Sir Peter and Lady Teazle, newlyweds with differences of personality and experience that keep them constantly arguing now that their period of wooing has ended. One of Lady Teazle's most biting remarks in this act underscores a theme that has already shown up in Act I and will continue to be a strong theme throughout the play: gender. Lady Teazle tells her husband, "if you wanted authority over me, you should have adopted me, and not married me: I am sure you were old enough" . Not only does this comment mock Sir Peter for his advanced age, something he is already self-conscious about due to the age difference between him and his new wife, but it also acknowledges the power structure he expected from marriage due to men's superior position in society at the time the play was written. Furthermore, the remark shows the two main choices women had in how they related to men: either as family members or as love interests . As the argument between Lady Teazle and Sir Peter goes on in Act II, it becomes clear that it is not only about gender and power but also about money and social class. Sir Peter evidently felt that he was doing Lady Teazle a favor by taking her to London from the country, and he also was attracted to the simplicity of Lady Teazle's life and demeanor. However, Lady Teazle acutely feels the pressures put on her by upper-class London society to spend money on things like clothing and house decorations, along with the necessity of spreading gossip to solidify one's position as part of the in-group of wealthy society. Sir Peter chides her for these things, but he is more immune to these things Lady Teazle sees as necessities since he has always been wealthy and is a male--two factors that make it easier for him to maintain his social status. When Lady Teazle goes to a gathering at Lady Sneerwell's house, the audience witnesses another scene of vicious gossip. It is even more clear in this scene how many of the characters see wit and meanness as intertwined, as there is something of a battle of figurative language, especially between Lady Sneerwell, Sir Benjamin, and Lady Teazle. This conversation is mostly about the physical appearances and the use of makeup by some characters that we do not see in the play. This conversation is lively and humorous, including more meaningful names that Sheridan uses to highlight things about characters' qualities or roles in society. The focus on appearance, and especially on makeup, underscores the play's themes of the need to disguise one's true self in the public sphere, and the importance of beauty and age to one's social status. Satires are inherently political, pushing a particular message about an aspect of society that the author thinks needs to change or receive more attention and understanding. In this play, the theme of politics intertwines with the more general theme of gossip or scandal. It seems that there were not laws in place at the time to protect individuals from false rumors, or slander, which Sheridan shows has the power to ruin people's reputations and cause unrest in society as a whole. In this act, Lady Teazle challenges Sir Peter by asking, "Would you restrain the freedom of speech?" , and a scene later he has a prepared retort when the subject arises again, responding "if were to consider the sporting with reputation of as much importance as poaching on manors, and pass an act for the preservation of fame, I believe many would thank them for the bill...in all cases of slander currency, whenever the drawer of the lie was not to be found, the injured parties should have a right to come on any of the indorsers" . Sir Peter believes punishment should be wrought both on the original creators of the rumor and those who spread them, something Mrs. Candour brought up earlier in the play, but which is perhaps only believed by the play's highly moral characters, Sir Peter and Maria. The word "politics" is used quite differently later in the act by Joseph Surface after he is caught by Lady Teazle while attempting to woo Maria. He clarifies to the audience in a soliloquy that he has been pretending to want to have an affair with Lady Teazle precisely to get her approval for his courting of Maria, but he pushed the game too far and is now romantically involved with Lady Teazle. He remarks, "A curious dilemma, truly, my politics have run me into!" , using politics to describe the push and pull of allegiances, plots, and lies, which is perhaps a more realistic view of politics than Sir Peter's optimistic ideas for the creation of moral and protective laws.

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King Solomon's Mines.chapter 5

chapter 5

{"name": "Chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200804024551/https://www.gradesaver.com/king-solomons-mines/study-guide/summary-chapters-5-and-6", "summary": "Having killed a total of nine elephants, Quatermain's hunting party sets about cutting out and burying the precious ivory tusks. Quatermain notes that the tusks average about forty to fifty pounds of ivory each, with the vicious bull elephant's tusks weighing in at one hundred and seventy pounds for the pair. The bull elephant's victim, Khiva, is buried with due ceremony, and the expedition continues. In due time the party reaches Sitanda's Kraal near the Lukanga River, the true jumping-off point for their journey to the Suliman Mountains. Quatermain spots the stony slope upon which he had seen Silvestre return twenty years ago. Nearby is the desert they must cross in order to reach their destination. They pitch camp and in the evening light can spy the faint outline of the Suliman Berg. Despite Quatermain's fatalistic pessimism, Sir Henry insists that he will somehow reach his brother to learn his fate. In an unusual interchange, Umbopa addresses Sir Henry familiarly as \"Incubu\". Quatermain takes issue with Umbopa's lack of respect for his superior, to which Umbopa replies \"How dost thou know that I am not the equal of the Inkosi I serve. Umbopa then insists that Quatermain translate his language into Sir Henry's English. Quatermain does so begrudgingly, still angered at Umbopa's impertinence. Umbopa warns Sir Henry that their upcoming journey is likely to end in death. He hints that he has some knowledge about the route they will take, but only admits to having heard of a white man who resembled Sir Henry, along with a servant named Jim, having attempted the expedition two years ago. Sir Henry recognizes the description of his brother George, while Quatermain confirms the identity of Jim. Umbopa then launches into a semi-poetic speech regarding the nature of life and death. He then assures Quatermain that he has not ill designs on the white men and departs. The next day Quatermain finishes preparations for their journey. He makes a long list of the items they are able to bring with them and expresses frustration at the many items they must leave behind. Among the excess are several guns, which Quatermain loads and warns the erstwhile guardian not to touch. The man, predictably, touches one, which fires and kills one of his oxen. Quatermain then berates him and threatens to destroy his family and livelihood with white man's magic should he dare to take anything left in his care. The man fearfully acknowledges his charge and insists the guns be placed somewhere far out of reach for the safety of everyone involved. After a short journey, the expedition pitches camp in the last shade before the desert. The next morning Sir Henry insists they take a moment to pray for their journey; Quatermain acknowledges that he is not much of a praying man, but that this is one of the most sincere appeals to his Maker he has ever made in his life. The expedition then sets out into the burning heat of the desert. Their only hope is the old Silvestre map's indication of a dirty oases in the middle of the route to the Suliman Mountains. After much travel Quatermain begins to despair that the map is inaccurate or that they are off course. The heat begins to affect the entire party, and they are beset by flies. They can find no shelter, and so awaken each morning to blistering heat. Sir Henry, Captain Good, and Quatermain assess their water supply and come to the conclusion that if they do not reach a source of water the next day, they will all die of dehydration. Despite the ominous conditions, Quatermain is so tired that he is able to drift off to sleep", "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."}

We had killed nine elephants, and it took us two days to cut out the tusks, and having brought them into camp, to bury them carefully in the sand under a large tree, which made a conspicuous mark for miles round. It was a wonderfully fine lot of ivory. I never saw a better, averaging as it did between forty and fifty pounds a tusk. The tusks of the great bull that killed poor Khiva scaled one hundred and seventy pounds the pair, so nearly as we could judge. As for Khiva himself, we buried what remained of him in an ant-bear hole, together with an assegai to protect himself with on his journey to a better world. On the third day we marched again, hoping that we might live to return to dig up our buried ivory, and in due course, after a long and wearisome tramp, and many adventures which I have not space to detail, we reached Sitanda's Kraal, near the Lukanga River, the real starting-point of our expedition. Very well do I recollect our arrival at that place. To the right was a scattered native settlement with a few stone cattle kraals and some cultivated lands down by the water, where these savages grew their scanty supply of grain, and beyond it stretched great tracts of waving "veld" covered with tall grass, over which herds of the smaller game were wandering. To the left lay the vast desert. This spot appears to be the outpost of the fertile country, and it would be difficult to say to what natural causes such an abrupt change in the character of the soil is due. But so it is. Just below our encampment flowed a little stream, on the farther side of which is a stony slope, the same down which, twenty years before, I had seen poor Silvestre creeping back after his attempt to reach Solomon's Mines, and beyond that slope begins the waterless desert, covered with a species of karoo shrub. It was evening when we pitched our camp, and the great ball of the sun was sinking into the desert, sending glorious rays of many-coloured light flying all over its vast expanse. Leaving Good to superintend the arrangement of our little camp, I took Sir Henry with me, and walking to the top of the slope opposite, we gazed across the desert. The air was very clear, and far, far away I could distinguish the faint blue outlines, here and there capped with white, of the Suliman Berg. "There," I said, "there is the wall round Solomon's Mines, but God knows if we shall ever climb it." "My brother should be there, and if he is, I shall reach him somehow," said Sir Henry, in that tone of quiet confidence which marked the man. "I hope so," I answered, and turned to go back to the camp, when I saw that we were not alone. Behind us, also gazing earnestly towards the far-off mountains, stood the great Kafir Umbopa. The Zulu spoke when he saw that I had observed him, addressing Sir Henry, to whom he had attached himself. "Is it to that land that thou wouldst journey, Incubu?" (a native word meaning, I believe, an elephant, and the name given to Sir Henry by the Kafirs), he said, pointing towards the mountain with his broad assegai. I asked him sharply what he meant by addressing his master in that familiar way. It is very well for natives to have a name for one among themselves, but it is not decent that they should call a white man by their heathenish appellations to his face. The Zulu laughed a quiet little laugh which angered me. "How dost thou know that I am not the equal of the Inkosi whom I serve?" he said. "He is of a royal house, no doubt; one can see it in his size and by his mien; so, mayhap, am I. At least, I am as great a man. Be my mouth, O Macumazahn, and say my words to the Inkoos Incubu, my master, for I would speak to him and to thee." I was angry with the man, for I am not accustomed to be talked to in that way by Kafirs, but somehow he impressed me, and besides I was curious to know what he had to say. So I translated, expressing my opinion at the same time that he was an impudent fellow, and that his swagger was outrageous. "Yes, Umbopa," answered Sir Henry, "I would journey there." "The desert is wide and there is no water in it, the mountains are high and covered with snow, and man cannot say what lies beyond them behind the place where the sun sets; how shalt thou come thither, Incubu, and wherefore dost thou go?" I translated again. "Tell him," answered Sir Henry, "that I go because I believe that a man of my blood, my brother, has gone there before me, and I journey to seek him." "That is so, Incubu; a Hottentot I met on the road told me that a white man went out into the desert two years ago towards those mountains with one servant, a hunter. They never came back." "How do you know it was my brother?" asked Sir Henry. "Nay, I know not. But the Hottentot, when I asked what the white man was like, said that he had thine eyes and a black beard. He said, too, that the name of the hunter with him was Jim; that he was a Bechuana hunter and wore clothes." "There is no doubt about it," said I; "I knew Jim well." Sir Henry nodded. "I was sure of it," he said. "If George set his mind upon a thing he generally did it. It was always so from his boyhood. If he meant to cross the Suliman Berg he has crossed it, unless some accident overtook him, and we must look for him on the other side." Umbopa understood English, though he rarely spoke it. "It is a far journey, Incubu," he put in, and I translated his remark. "Yes," answered Sir Henry, "it is far. But there is no journey upon this earth that a man may not make if he sets his heart to it. There is nothing, Umbopa, that he cannot do, there are no mountains he may not climb, there are no deserts he cannot cross, save a mountain and a desert of which you are spared the knowledge, if love leads him and he holds his life in his hands counting it as nothing, ready to keep it or lose it as Heaven above may order." I translated. "Great words, my father," answered the Zulu--I always called him a Zulu, though he was not really one--"great swelling words fit to fill the mouth of a man. Thou art right, my father Incubu. Listen! what is life? It is a feather, it is the seed of the grass, blown hither and thither, sometimes multiplying itself and dying in the act, sometimes carried away into the heavens. But if that seed be good and heavy it may perchance travel a little way on the road it wills. It is well to try and journey one's road and to fight with the air. Man must die. At the worst he can but die a little sooner. I will go with thee across the desert and over the mountains, unless perchance I fall to the ground on the way, my father." He paused awhile, and then went on with one of those strange bursts of rhetorical eloquence that Zulus sometimes indulge in, which to my mind, full though they are of vain repetitions, show that the race is by no means devoid of poetic instinct and of intellectual power. "What is life? Tell me, O white men, who are wise, who know the secrets of the world, and of the world of stars, and the world that lies above and around the stars; who flash your words from afar without a voice; tell me, white men, the secret of our life--whither it goes and whence it comes! "You cannot answer me; you know not. Listen, I will answer. Out of the dark we came, into the dark we go. Like a storm-driven bird at night we fly out of the Nowhere; for a moment our wings are seen in the light of the fire, and, lo! we are gone again into the Nowhere. Life is nothing. Life is all. It is the Hand with which we hold off Death. It is the glow-worm that shines in the night-time and is black in the morning; it is the white breath of the oxen in winter; it is the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself at sunset." "You are a strange man," said Sir Henry, when he had ceased. Umbopa laughed. "It seems to me that we are much alike, Incubu. Perhaps _I_ seek a brother over the mountains." I looked at him suspiciously. "What dost thou mean?" I asked; "what dost thou know of those mountains?" "A little; a very little. There is a strange land yonder, a land of witchcraft and beautiful things; a land of brave people, and of trees, and streams, and snowy peaks, and of a great white road. I have heard of it. But what is the good of talking? It grows dark. Those who live to see will see." Again I looked at him doubtfully. The man knew too much. "You need not fear me, Macumazahn," he said, interpreting my look. "I dig no holes for you to fall in. I make no plots. If ever we cross those mountains behind the sun I will tell what I know. But Death sits upon them. Be wise and turn back. Go and hunt elephants, my masters. I have spoken." And without another word he lifted his spear in salutation, and returned towards the camp, where shortly afterwards we found him cleaning a gun like any other Kafir. "That is an odd man," said Sir Henry. "Yes," answered I, "too odd by half. I don't like his little ways. He knows something, and will not speak out. But I suppose it is no use quarrelling with him. We are in for a curious trip, and a mysterious Zulu won't make much difference one way or another." Next day we made our arrangements for starting. Of course it was impossible to drag our heavy elephant rifles and other kit with us across the desert, so, dismissing our bearers, we made an arrangement with an old native who had a kraal close by to take care of them till we returned. It went to my heart to leave such things as those sweet tools to the tender mercies of an old thief of a savage whose greedy eyes I could see gloating over them. But I took some precautions. First of all I loaded all the rifles, placing them at full cock, and informed him that if he touched them they would go off. He tried the experiment instantly with my eight-bore, and it did go off, and blew a hole right through one of his oxen, which were just then being driven up to the kraal, to say nothing of knocking him head over heels with the recoil. He got up considerably startled, and not at all pleased at the loss of the ox, which he had the impudence to ask me to pay for, and nothing would induce him to touch the guns again. "Put the live devils out of the way up there in the thatch," he said, "or they will murder us all." Then I told him that, when we came back, if one of those things was missing I would kill him and his people by witchcraft; and if we died and he tried to steal the rifles I would come and haunt him and turn his cattle mad and his milk sour till life was a weariness, and would make the devils in the guns come out and talk to him in a way he did not like, and generally gave him a good idea of judgment to come. After that he promised to look after them as though they were his father's spirit. He was a very superstitious old Kafir and a great villain. Having thus disposed of our superfluous gear we arranged the kit we five--Sir Henry, Good, myself, Umbopa, and the Hottentot Ventvoegel--were to take with us on our journey. It was small enough, but do what we would we could not get its weight down under about forty pounds a man. This is what it consisted of:-- The three express rifles and two hundred rounds of ammunition. The two Winchester repeating rifles (for Umbopa and Ventvoegel), with two hundred rounds of cartridge. Five Cochrane's water-bottles, each holding four pints. Five blankets. Twenty-five pounds' weight of biltong--i.e. sun-dried game flesh. Ten pounds' weight of best mixed beads for gifts. A selection of medicine, including an ounce of quinine, and one or two small surgical instruments. Our knives, a few sundries, such as a compass, matches, a pocket filter, tobacco, a trowel, a bottle of brandy, and the clothes we stood in. This was our total equipment, a small one indeed for such a venture, but we dared not attempt to carry more. Indeed, that load was a heavy one per man with which to travel across the burning desert, for in such places every additional ounce tells. But we could not see our way to reducing the weight. There was nothing taken but what was absolutely necessary. With great difficulty, and by the promise of a present of a good hunting-knife each, I succeeded in persuading three wretched natives from the village to come with us for the first stage, twenty miles, and to carry a large gourd holding a gallon of water apiece. My object was to enable us to refill our water-bottles after the first night's march, for we determined to start in the cool of the evening. I gave out to these natives that we were going to shoot ostriches, with which the desert abounded. They jabbered and shrugged their shoulders, saying that we were mad and should perish of thirst, which I must say seemed probable; but being desirous of obtaining the knives, which were almost unknown treasures up there, they consented to come, having probably reflected that, after all, our subsequent extinction would be no affair of theirs. All next day we rested and slept, and at sunset ate a hearty meal of fresh beef washed down with tea, the last, as Good remarked sadly, we were likely to drink for many a long day. Then, having made our final preparations, we lay down and waited for the moon to rise. At last, about nine o'clock, up she came in all her glory, flooding the wild country with light, and throwing a silver sheen on the expanse of rolling desert before us, which looked as solemn and quiet and as alien to man as the star-studded firmament above. We rose up, and in a few minutes were ready, and yet we hesitated a little, as human nature is prone to hesitate on the threshold of an irrevocable step. We three white men stood by ourselves. Umbopa, assegai in hand and a rifle across his shoulders, looked out fixedly across the desert a few paces ahead of us; while the hired natives, with the gourds of water, and Ventvoegel, were gathered in a little knot behind. "Gentlemen," said Sir Henry presently, in his deep voice, "we are going on about as strange a journey as men can make in this world. It is very doubtful if we can succeed in it. But we are three men who will stand together for good or for evil to the last. Now before we start let us for a moment pray to the Power who shapes the destinies of men, and who ages since has marked out our paths, that it may please Him to direct our steps in accordance with His will." Taking off his hat, for the space of a minute or so, he covered his face with his hands, and Good and I did likewise. I do not say that I am a first-rate praying man, few hunters are, and as for Sir Henry, I never heard him speak like that before, and only once since, though deep down in his heart I believe that he is very religious. Good too is pious, though apt to swear. Anyhow I do not remember, excepting on one single occasion, ever putting up a better prayer in my life than I did during that minute, and somehow I felt the happier for it. Our future was so completely unknown, and I think that the unknown and the awful always bring a man nearer to his Maker. "And now," said Sir Henry, "_trek_!" So we started. We had nothing to guide ourselves by except the distant mountains and old Jose da Silvestre's chart, which, considering that it was drawn by a dying and half-distraught man on a fragment of linen three centuries ago, was not a very satisfactory sort of thing to work with. Still, our sole hope of success depended upon it, such as it was. If we failed in finding that pool of bad water which the old Dom marked as being situated in the middle of the desert, about sixty miles from our starting-point, and as far from the mountains, in all probability we must perish miserably of thirst. But to my mind the chances of our finding it in that great sea of sand and karoo scrub seemed almost infinitesimal. Even supposing that da Silvestra had marked the pool correctly, what was there to prevent its having been dried up by the sun generations ago, or trampled in by game, or filled with the drifting sand? On we tramped silently as shades through the night and in the heavy sand. The karoo bushes caught our feet and retarded us, and the sand worked into our veldtschoons and Good's shooting-boots, so that every few miles we had to stop and empty them; but still the night kept fairly cool, though the atmosphere was thick and heavy, giving a sort of creamy feel to the air, and we made fair progress. It was very silent and lonely there in the desert, oppressively so indeed. Good felt this, and once began to whistle "The Girl I left behind me," but the notes sounded lugubrious in that vast place, and he gave it up. Shortly afterwards a little incident occurred which, though it startled us at the time, gave rise to a laugh. Good was leading, as the holder of the compass, which, being a sailor, of course he understood thoroughly, and we were toiling along in single file behind him, when suddenly we heard the sound of an exclamation, and he vanished. Next second there arose all around us a most extraordinary hubbub, snorts, groans, and wild sounds of rushing feet. In the faint light, too, we could descry dim galloping forms half hidden by wreaths of sand. The natives threw down their loads and prepared to bolt, but remembering that there was nowhere to run to, they cast themselves upon the ground and howled out that it was ghosts. As for Sir Henry and myself, we stood amazed; nor was our amazement lessened when we perceived the form of Good careering off in the direction of the mountains, apparently mounted on the back of a horse and halloaing wildly. In another second he threw up his arms, and we heard him come to the earth with a thud. Then I saw what had happened; we had stumbled upon a herd of sleeping quagga, on to the back of one of which Good actually had fallen, and the brute naturally enough got up and made off with him. Calling out to the others that it was all right, I ran towards Good, much afraid lest he should be hurt, but to my great relief I found him sitting in the sand, his eye-glass still fixed firmly in his eye, rather shaken and very much frightened, but not in any way injured. After this we travelled on without any further misadventure till about one o'clock, when we called a halt, and having drunk a little water, not much, for water was precious, and rested for half an hour, we started again. On, on we went, till at last the east began to blush like the cheek of a girl. Then there came faint rays of primrose light, that changed presently to golden bars, through which the dawn glided out across the desert. The stars grew pale and paler still, till at last they vanished; the golden moon waxed wan, and her mountain ridges stood out against her sickly face like the bones on the cheek of a dying man. Then came spear upon spear of light flashing far away across the boundless wilderness, piercing and firing the veils of mist, till the desert was draped in a tremulous golden glow, and it was day. Still we did not halt, though by this time we should have been glad enough to do so, for we knew that when once the sun was fully up it would be almost impossible for us to travel. At length, about an hour later, we spied a little pile of boulders rising out of the plain, and to this we dragged ourselves. As luck would have it, here we found an overhanging slab of rock carpeted beneath with smooth sand, which afforded a most grateful shelter from the heat. Underneath this we crept, and each of us having drunk some water and eaten a bit of biltong, we lay down and soon were sound asleep. It was three o'clock in the afternoon before we woke, to find our bearers preparing to return. They had seen enough of the desert already, and no number of knives would have tempted them to come a step farther. So we took a hearty drink, and having emptied our water-bottles, filled them up again from the gourds that they had brought with them, and then watched them depart on their twenty miles' tramp home. At half-past four we also started. It was lonely and desolate work, for with the exception of a few ostriches there was not a single living creature to be seen on all the vast expanse of sandy plain. Evidently it was too dry for game, and with the exception of a deadly-looking cobra or two we saw no reptiles. One insect, however, we found abundant, and that was the common or house fly. There they came, "not as single spies, but in battalions," as I think the Old Testament[1] says somewhere. He is an extraordinary insect is the house fly. Go where you will you find him, and so it must have been always. I have seen him enclosed in amber, which is, I was told, quite half a million years old, looking exactly like his descendant of to-day, and I have little doubt but that when the last man lies dying on the earth he will be buzzing round--if this event happens to occur in summer--watching for an opportunity to settle on his nose. At sunset we halted, waiting for the moon to rise. At last she came up, beautiful and serene as ever, and, with one halt about two o'clock in the morning, we trudged on wearily through the night, till at last the welcome sun put a period to our labours. We drank a little and flung ourselves down on the sand, thoroughly tired out, and soon were all asleep. There was no need to set a watch, for we had nothing to fear from anybody or anything in that vast untenanted plain. Our only enemies were heat, thirst, and flies, but far rather would I have faced any danger from man or beast than that awful trinity. This time we were not so lucky as to find a sheltering rock to guard us from the glare of the sun, with the result that about seven o'clock we woke up experiencing the exact sensations one would attribute to a beefsteak on a gridiron. We were literally being baked through and through. The burning sun seemed to be sucking our very blood out of us. We sat up and gasped. "Phew," said I, grabbing at the halo of flies which buzzed cheerfully round my head. The heat did not affect _them_. "My word!" said Sir Henry. "It is hot!" echoed Good. It was hot, indeed, and there was not a bit of shelter to be found. Look where we would there was no rock or tree, nothing but an unending glare, rendered dazzling by the heated air that danced over the surface of the desert as it dances over a red-hot stove. "What is to be done?" asked Sir Henry; "we can't stand this for long." We looked at each other blankly. "I have it," said Good, "we must dig a hole, get in it, and cover ourselves with the karoo bushes." It did not seem a very promising suggestion, but at least it was better than nothing, so we set to work, and, with the trowel we had brought with us and the help of our hands, in about an hour we succeeded in delving out a patch of ground some ten feet long by twelve wide to the depth of two feet. Then we cut a quantity of low scrub with our hunting-knives, and creeping into the hole, pulled it over us all, with the exception of Ventvoegel, on whom, being a Hottentot, the heat had no particular effect. This gave us some slight shelter from the burning rays of the sun, but the atmosphere in that amateur grave can be better imagined than described. The Black Hole of Calcutta must have been a fool to it; indeed, to this moment I do not know how we lived through the day. There we lay panting, and every now and again moistening our lips from our scanty supply of water. Had we followed our inclinations we should have finished all we possessed in the first two hours, but we were forced to exercise the most rigid care, for if our water failed us we knew that very soon we must perish miserably. But everything has an end, if only you live long enough to see it, and somehow that miserable day wore on towards evening. About three o'clock in the afternoon we determined that we could bear it no longer. It would be better to die walking that to be killed slowly by heat and thirst in this dreadful hole. So taking each of us a little drink from our fast diminishing supply of water, now warmed to about the same temperature as a man's blood, we staggered forward. We had then covered some fifty miles of wilderness. If the reader will refer to the rough copy and translation of old da Silvestra's map, he will see that the desert is marked as measuring forty leagues across, and the "pan bad water" is set down as being about in the middle of it. Now forty leagues is one hundred and twenty miles, consequently we ought at the most to be within twelve or fifteen miles of the water if any should really exist. Through the afternoon we crept slowly and painfully along, scarcely doing more than a mile and a half in an hour. At sunset we rested again, waiting for the moon, and after drinking a little managed to get some sleep. Before we lay down, Umbopa pointed out to us a slight and indistinct hillock on the flat surface of the plain about eight miles away. At the distance it looked like an ant-hill, and as I was dropping off to sleep I fell to wondering what it could be. With the moon we marched again, feeling dreadfully exhausted, and suffering tortures from thirst and prickly heat. Nobody who has not felt it can know what we went through. We walked no longer, we staggered, now and again falling from exhaustion, and being obliged to call a halt every hour or so. We had scarcely energy left in us to speak. Up to this Good had chatted and joked, for he is a merry fellow; but now he had not a joke in him. At last, about two o'clock, utterly worn out in body and mind, we came to the foot of the queer hill, or sand koppie, which at first sight resembled a gigantic ant-heap about a hundred feet high, and covering at the base nearly two acres of ground. Here we halted, and driven to it by our desperate thirst, sucked down our last drops of water. We had but half a pint a head, and each of us could have drunk a gallon. Then we lay down. Just as I was dropping off to sleep I heard Umbopa remark to himself in Zulu-- "If we cannot find water we shall all be dead before the moon rises to-morrow." I shuddered, hot as it was. The near prospect of such an awful death is not pleasant, but even the thought of it could not keep me from sleeping. [1] Readers must beware of accepting Mr. Quatermain's references as accurate, as, it has been found, some are prone to do. Although his reading evidently was limited, the impression produced by it upon his mind was mixed. Thus to him the Old Testament and Shakespeare were interchangeable authorities.--Editor.

Chapter 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20200804024551/https://www.gradesaver.com/king-solomons-mines/study-guide/summary-chapters-5-and-6

Having killed a total of nine elephants, Quatermain's hunting party sets about cutting out and burying the precious ivory tusks. Quatermain notes that the tusks average about forty to fifty pounds of ivory each, with the vicious bull elephant's tusks weighing in at one hundred and seventy pounds for the pair. The bull elephant's victim, Khiva, is buried with due ceremony, and the expedition continues. In due time the party reaches Sitanda's Kraal near the Lukanga River, the true jumping-off point for their journey to the Suliman Mountains. Quatermain spots the stony slope upon which he had seen Silvestre return twenty years ago. Nearby is the desert they must cross in order to reach their destination. They pitch camp and in the evening light can spy the faint outline of the Suliman Berg. Despite Quatermain's fatalistic pessimism, Sir Henry insists that he will somehow reach his brother to learn his fate. In an unusual interchange, Umbopa addresses Sir Henry familiarly as "Incubu". Quatermain takes issue with Umbopa's lack of respect for his superior, to which Umbopa replies "How dost thou know that I am not the equal of the Inkosi I serve. Umbopa then insists that Quatermain translate his language into Sir Henry's English. Quatermain does so begrudgingly, still angered at Umbopa's impertinence. Umbopa warns Sir Henry that their upcoming journey is likely to end in death. He hints that he has some knowledge about the route they will take, but only admits to having heard of a white man who resembled Sir Henry, along with a servant named Jim, having attempted the expedition two years ago. Sir Henry recognizes the description of his brother George, while Quatermain confirms the identity of Jim. Umbopa then launches into a semi-poetic speech regarding the nature of life and death. He then assures Quatermain that he has not ill designs on the white men and departs. The next day Quatermain finishes preparations for their journey. He makes a long list of the items they are able to bring with them and expresses frustration at the many items they must leave behind. Among the excess are several guns, which Quatermain loads and warns the erstwhile guardian not to touch. The man, predictably, touches one, which fires and kills one of his oxen. Quatermain then berates him and threatens to destroy his family and livelihood with white man's magic should he dare to take anything left in his care. The man fearfully acknowledges his charge and insists the guns be placed somewhere far out of reach for the safety of everyone involved. After a short journey, the expedition pitches camp in the last shade before the desert. The next morning Sir Henry insists they take a moment to pray for their journey; Quatermain acknowledges that he is not much of a praying man, but that this is one of the most sincere appeals to his Maker he has ever made in his life. The expedition then sets out into the burning heat of the desert. Their only hope is the old Silvestre map's indication of a dirty oases in the middle of the route to the Suliman Mountains. After much travel Quatermain begins to despair that the map is inaccurate or that they are off course. The heat begins to affect the entire party, and they are beset by flies. They can find no shelter, and so awaken each morning to blistering heat. Sir Henry, Captain Good, and Quatermain assess their water supply and come to the conclusion that if they do not reach a source of water the next day, they will all die of dehydration. Despite the ominous conditions, Quatermain is so tired that he is able to drift off to sleep

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.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/09.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Far From the Madding Crowd/section_8_part_0.txt

Far From the Madding Crowd.chapter 9

chapter 9

{"name": "Chapter 9", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-9", "summary": "Bathsheba and her servant Liddy are sitting on the floor of Bathsheba's bedroom and looking through a bunch of papers related to the farm. The narrator describes Liddy as a lighthearted English country girl. They hear someone riding a horse up to the door of the house, and Bathsheba sends a servant to go check it out. When the woman opens the door, a man with a low voice asks if Miss Everdene is at home. The guy is a rich neighbor named Mr. Boldwood. Bathsheba doesn't want to see him, though, because she's not presentable. The man just wants to know if there's been any word about Fanny Robin. When Boldwood leaves, Bathsheba asks who he is, and her servants say that he's a handsome, respected man who's been courted by all the women of the neighborhood. But apparently this guy wants to stay a bachelor forever. Liddy asks, out of the blue, whether anyone has ever proposed to Bathsheba. Bathsheba says yeah, but that she said no because the man wasn't good enough for her. She's talking about Oak, btw. Bathsheba admits that she liked Oak. Oh yeah? That's kind of a shocker. Bathsheba doesn't tell Liddy that the man she's talking about is her new shepherd. The meeting is broken up by the arrival of Bathsheba's workmen, who have come to collect their wages. Without a bailiff anymore, Bathsheba is in charge of this business herself.", "analysis": ""}

THE HOMESTEAD--A VISITOR--HALF-CONFIDENCES By daylight, the bower of Oak's new-found mistress, Bathsheba Everdene, presented itself as a hoary building, of the early stage of Classic Renaissance as regards its architecture, and of a proportion which told at a glance that, as is so frequently the case, it had once been the memorial hall upon a small estate around it, now altogether effaced as a distinct property, and merged in the vast tract of a non-resident landlord, which comprised several such modest demesnes. Fluted pilasters, worked from the solid stone, decorated its front, and above the roof the chimneys were panelled or columnar, some coped gables with finials and like features still retaining traces of their Gothic extraction. Soft brown mosses, like faded velveteen, formed cushions upon the stone tiling, and tufts of the houseleek or sengreen sprouted from the eaves of the low surrounding buildings. A gravel walk leading from the door to the road in front was encrusted at the sides with more moss--here it was a silver-green variety, the nut-brown of the gravel being visible to the width of only a foot or two in the centre. This circumstance, and the generally sleepy air of the whole prospect here, together with the animated and contrasting state of the reverse facade, suggested to the imagination that on the adaptation of the building for farming purposes the vital principle of the house had turned round inside its body to face the other way. Reversals of this kind, strange deformities, tremendous paralyses, are often seen to be inflicted by trade upon edifices--either individual or in the aggregate as streets and towns--which were originally planned for pleasure alone. Lively voices were heard this morning in the upper rooms, the main staircase to which was of hard oak, the balusters, heavy as bed-posts, being turned and moulded in the quaint fashion of their century, the handrail as stout as a parapet-top, and the stairs themselves continually twisting round like a person trying to look over his shoulder. Going up, the floors above were found to have a very irregular surface, rising to ridges, sinking into valleys; and being just then uncarpeted, the face of the boards was seen to be eaten into innumerable vermiculations. Every window replied by a clang to the opening and shutting of every door, a tremble followed every bustling movement, and a creak accompanied a walker about the house, like a spirit, wherever he went. In the room from which the conversation proceeded Bathsheba and her servant-companion, Liddy Smallbury, were to be discovered sitting upon the floor, and sorting a complication of papers, books, bottles, and rubbish spread out thereon--remnants from the household stores of the late occupier. Liddy, the maltster's great-granddaughter, was about Bathsheba's equal in age, and her face was a prominent advertisement of the light-hearted English country girl. The beauty her features might have lacked in form was amply made up for by perfection of hue, which at this winter-time was the softened ruddiness on a surface of high rotundity that we meet with in a Terburg or a Gerard Douw; and, like the presentations of those great colourists, it was a face which kept well back from the boundary between comeliness and the ideal. Though elastic in nature she was less daring than Bathsheba, and occasionally showed some earnestness, which consisted half of genuine feeling, and half of mannerliness superadded by way of duty. Through a partly-opened door the noise of a scrubbing-brush led up to the charwoman, Maryann Money, a person who for a face had a circular disc, furrowed less by age than by long gazes of perplexity at distant objects. To think of her was to get good-humoured; to speak of her was to raise the image of a dried Normandy pippin. "Stop your scrubbing a moment," said Bathsheba through the door to her. "I hear something." Maryann suspended the brush. The tramp of a horse was apparent, approaching the front of the building. The paces slackened, turned in at the wicket, and, what was most unusual, came up the mossy path close to the door. The door was tapped with the end of a crop or stick. "What impertinence!" said Liddy, in a low voice. "To ride up the footpath like that! Why didn't he stop at the gate? Lord! 'Tis a gentleman! I see the top of his hat." "Be quiet!" said Bathsheba. The further expression of Liddy's concern was continued by aspect instead of narrative. "Why doesn't Mrs. Coggan go to the door?" Bathsheba continued. Rat-tat-tat-tat resounded more decisively from Bathsheba's oak. "Maryann, you go!" said she, fluttering under the onset of a crowd of romantic possibilities. "Oh ma'am--see, here's a mess!" The argument was unanswerable after a glance at Maryann. "Liddy--you must," said Bathsheba. Liddy held up her hands and arms, coated with dust from the rubbish they were sorting, and looked imploringly at her mistress. "There--Mrs. Coggan is going!" said Bathsheba, exhaling her relief in the form of a long breath which had lain in her bosom a minute or more. The door opened, and a deep voice said-- "Is Miss Everdene at home?" "I'll see, sir," said Mrs. Coggan, and in a minute appeared in the room. "Dear, what a thirtover place this world is!" continued Mrs. Coggan (a wholesome-looking lady who had a voice for each class of remark according to the emotion involved; who could toss a pancake or twirl a mop with the accuracy of pure mathematics, and who at this moment showed hands shaggy with fragments of dough and arms encrusted with flour). "I am never up to my elbows, Miss, in making a pudding but one of two things do happen--either my nose must needs begin tickling, and I can't live without scratching it, or somebody knocks at the door. Here's Mr. Boldwood wanting to see you, Miss Everdene." A woman's dress being a part of her countenance, and any disorder in the one being of the same nature with a malformation or wound in the other, Bathsheba said at once-- "I can't see him in this state. Whatever shall I do?" Not-at-homes were hardly naturalized in Weatherbury farmhouses, so Liddy suggested--"Say you're a fright with dust, and can't come down." "Yes--that sounds very well," said Mrs. Coggan, critically. "Say I can't see him--that will do." Mrs. Coggan went downstairs, and returned the answer as requested, adding, however, on her own responsibility, "Miss is dusting bottles, sir, and is quite a object--that's why 'tis." "Oh, very well," said the deep voice indifferently. "All I wanted to ask was, if anything had been heard of Fanny Robin?" "Nothing, sir--but we may know to-night. William Smallbury is gone to Casterbridge, where her young man lives, as is supposed, and the other men be inquiring about everywhere." The horse's tramp then recommenced and retreated, and the door closed. "Who is Mr. Boldwood?" said Bathsheba. "A gentleman-farmer at Little Weatherbury." "Married?" "No, miss." "How old is he?" "Forty, I should say--very handsome--rather stern-looking--and rich." "What a bother this dusting is! I am always in some unfortunate plight or other," Bathsheba said, complainingly. "Why should he inquire about Fanny?" "Oh, because, as she had no friends in her childhood, he took her and put her to school, and got her her place here under your uncle. He's a very kind man that way, but Lord--there!" "What?" "Never was such a hopeless man for a woman! He's been courted by sixes and sevens--all the girls, gentle and simple, for miles round, have tried him. Jane Perkins worked at him for two months like a slave, and the two Miss Taylors spent a year upon him, and he cost Farmer Ives's daughter nights of tears and twenty pounds' worth of new clothes; but Lord--the money might as well have been thrown out of the window." A little boy came up at this moment and looked in upon them. This child was one of the Coggans, who, with the Smallburys, were as common among the families of this district as the Avons and Derwents among our rivers. He always had a loosened tooth or a cut finger to show to particular friends, which he did with an air of being thereby elevated above the common herd of afflictionless humanity--to which exhibition people were expected to say "Poor child!" with a dash of congratulation as well as pity. "I've got a pen-nee!" said Master Coggan in a scanning measure. "Well--who gave it you, Teddy?" said Liddy. "Mis-terr Bold-wood! He gave it to me for opening the gate." "What did he say?" "He said, 'Where are you going, my little man?' and I said, 'To Miss Everdene's please,' and he said, 'She is a staid woman, isn't she, my little man?' and I said, 'Yes.'" "You naughty child! What did you say that for?" "'Cause he gave me the penny!" "What a pucker everything is in!" said Bathsheba, discontentedly when the child had gone. "Get away, Maryann, or go on with your scrubbing, or do something! You ought to be married by this time, and not here troubling me!" "Ay, mistress--so I did. But what between the poor men I won't have, and the rich men who won't have me, I stand as a pelican in the wilderness!" "Did anybody ever want to marry you miss?" Liddy ventured to ask when they were again alone. "Lots of 'em, I daresay?" Bathsheba paused, as if about to refuse a reply, but the temptation to say yes, since it was really in her power was irresistible by aspiring virginity, in spite of her spleen at having been published as old. "A man wanted to once," she said, in a highly experienced tone, and the image of Gabriel Oak, as the farmer, rose before her. "How nice it must seem!" said Liddy, with the fixed features of mental realization. "And you wouldn't have him?" "He wasn't quite good enough for me." "How sweet to be able to disdain, when most of us are glad to say, 'Thank you!' I seem I hear it. 'No, sir--I'm your better.' or 'Kiss my foot, sir; my face is for mouths of consequence.' And did you love him, miss?" "Oh, no. But I rather liked him." "Do you now?" "Of course not--what footsteps are those I hear?" Liddy looked from a back window into the courtyard behind, which was now getting low-toned and dim with the earliest films of night. A crooked file of men was approaching the back door. The whole string of trailing individuals advanced in the completest balance of intention, like the remarkable creatures known as Chain Salpae, which, distinctly organized in other respects, have one will common to a whole family. Some were, as usual, in snow-white smock-frocks of Russia duck, and some in whitey-brown ones of drabbet--marked on the wrists, breasts, backs, and sleeves with honeycomb-work. Two or three women in pattens brought up the rear. "The Philistines be upon us," said Liddy, making her nose white against the glass. "Oh, very well. Maryann, go down and keep them in the kitchen till I am dressed, and then show them in to me in the hall."

Chapter 9

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-9

Bathsheba and her servant Liddy are sitting on the floor of Bathsheba's bedroom and looking through a bunch of papers related to the farm. The narrator describes Liddy as a lighthearted English country girl. They hear someone riding a horse up to the door of the house, and Bathsheba sends a servant to go check it out. When the woman opens the door, a man with a low voice asks if Miss Everdene is at home. The guy is a rich neighbor named Mr. Boldwood. Bathsheba doesn't want to see him, though, because she's not presentable. The man just wants to know if there's been any word about Fanny Robin. When Boldwood leaves, Bathsheba asks who he is, and her servants say that he's a handsome, respected man who's been courted by all the women of the neighborhood. But apparently this guy wants to stay a bachelor forever. Liddy asks, out of the blue, whether anyone has ever proposed to Bathsheba. Bathsheba says yeah, but that she said no because the man wasn't good enough for her. She's talking about Oak, btw. Bathsheba admits that she liked Oak. Oh yeah? That's kind of a shocker. Bathsheba doesn't tell Liddy that the man she's talking about is her new shepherd. The meeting is broken up by the arrival of Bathsheba's workmen, who have come to collect their wages. Without a bailiff anymore, Bathsheba is in charge of this business herself.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/36.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Lord Jim/section_35_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapter 36

chapter 36

{"name": "Chapter 36", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-36", "summary": "Two years later, one of the people who listened to Marlow's epic story on the verandah gets some snail mail. It's a package of letters from Marlow. In one of the letters, Marlow explains that the enclosed documents do what they can to piece together the last part of Jim's story. We're all ears.", "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.'

Chapter 36

https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-36

Two years later, one of the people who listened to Marlow's epic story on the verandah gets some snail mail. It's a package of letters from Marlow. In one of the letters, Marlow explains that the enclosed documents do what they can to piece together the last part of Jim's story. We're all ears.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/31.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_3_part_7.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 31

chapter 31

{"name": "Chapter 31", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-4-chapters-25-34", "summary": "Tess writes a letter to her mother the next day, and by the end of the week receives a reply. Her mother gives Tess her best wishes and tells her not to tell Angel anything about her past, for many women have trouble in their time and she should not trumpet hers when others do not trumpet theirs. This advice reassures Tess, who dismisses her past, treading upon it and putting it out as a smoldering, dangerous coal. As a suitor, Angel is more spiritual than animal. Tess worries when the two walk in public as a couple, thinking that it may reach his friends at Emminster that he is walking about with a milkmaid. He thinks it absurd that a d'Urberville hurt the dignity of a Clare. One evening Tess abruptly tells Angel that she is not worthy of him, but Angel tells her that he will not have her speak as such. Angel asks on what day they shall be married, but he does not want to think like this. The news of their engagement reaches the other milkmaids and Dairyman Crick. Tess tells the other girls that Angel ought to marry one of them, for all are better than she. The girls try to hate Tess for her relationship but Angel, but find that they cannot.", "analysis": "Tess operates under a great sense of guilt and paranoia in this chapter, in which her decision to marry Angel and not tell him of her past serves as an accumulating burden for Tess. She believes that her history makes her unworthy of Angel, yet remains on the course for marriage despite this fact. Although Tess feels reassured by the letter from her mother advising her not to tell Angel about Alec, Tess regains her worry about Angel once the news of their engagement becomes public. This paranoia serves as a motivating force for Tess, once again opening up the possibility that she may confess to Angel her former sins. Hardy foreshadows trouble between Angel and Tess with the descriptions of Angel as a suitor. Angel loves Tess intellectually, conceiving her as an ideal as well as an actual person. This increases the possibility that Angel may react poorly to news about Tess. This also serves as a greater contrast between Angel and Alec; while Alec is carnal and ruled by his passions, Angel operates under his principles and ideals. Yet his dedication to ideals will prove as dangerous to Tess as Alec's rapacious desires"}

Tess wrote a most touching and urgent letter to her mother the very next day, and by the end of the week a response to her communication arrived in Joan Durbeyfield's wandering last-century hand. DEAR TESS,-- J write these few lines Hoping they will find you well, as they leave me at Present, thank God for it. Dear Tess, we are all glad to Hear that you are going really to be married soon. But with respect to your question, Tess, J say between ourselves, quite private but very strong, that on no account do you say a word of your Bygone Trouble to him. J did not tell everything to your Father, he being so Proud on account of his Respectability, which, perhaps, your Intended is the same. Many a woman--some of the Highest in the Land--have had a Trouble in their time; and why should you Trumpet yours when others don't Trumpet theirs? No girl would be such a Fool, specially as it is so long ago, and not your Fault at all. J shall answer the same if you ask me fifty times. Besides, you must bear in mind that, knowing it to be your Childish Nature to tell all that's in your heart--so simple!--J made you promise me never to let it out by Word or Deed, having your Welfare in my Mind; and you most solemnly did promise it going from this Door. J have not named either that Question or your coming marriage to your Father, as he would blab it everywhere, poor Simple Man. Dear Tess, keep up your Spirits, and we mean to send you a Hogshead of Cyder for you Wedding, knowing there is not much in your parts, and thin Sour Stuff what there is. So no more at present, and with kind love to your Young Man.--From your affectte. Mother, J. DURBEYFIELD "O mother, mother!" murmured Tess. She was recognizing how light was the touch of events the most oppressive upon Mrs Durbeyfield's elastic spirit. Her mother did not see life as Tess saw it. That haunting episode of bygone days was to her mother but a passing accident. But perhaps her mother was right as to the course to be followed, whatever she might be in her reasons. Silence seemed, on the face of it, best for her adored one's happiness: silence it should be. Thus steadied by a command from the only person in the world who had any shadow of right to control her action, Tess grew calmer. The responsibility was shifted, and her heart was lighter than it had been for weeks. The days of declining autumn which followed her assent, beginning with the month of October, formed a season through which she lived in spiritual altitudes more nearly approaching ecstasy than any other period of her life. There was hardly a touch of earth in her love for Clare. To her sublime trustfulness he was all that goodness could be--knew all that a guide, philosopher, and friend should know. She thought every line in the contour of his person the perfection of masculine beauty, his soul the soul of a saint, his intellect that of a seer. The wisdom of her love for him, as love, sustained her dignity; she seemed to be wearing a crown. The compassion of his love for her, as she saw it, made her lift up her heart to him in devotion. He would sometimes catch her large, worshipful eyes, that had no bottom to them looking at him from their depths, as if she saw something immortal before her. She dismissed the past--trod upon it and put it out, as one treads on a coal that is smouldering and dangerous. She had not known that men could be so disinterested, chivalrous, protective, in their love for women as he. Angel Clare was far from all that she thought him in this respect; absurdly far, indeed; but he was, in truth, more spiritual than animal; he had himself well in hand, and was singularly free from grossness. Though not cold-natured, he was rather bright than hot--less Byronic than Shelleyan; could love desperately, but with a love more especially inclined to the imaginative and ethereal; it was a fastidious emotion which could jealously guard the loved one against his very self. This amazed and enraptured Tess, whose slight experiences had been so infelicitous till now; and in her reaction from indignation against the male sex she swerved to excess of honour for Clare. They unaffectedly sought each other's company; in her honest faith she did not disguise her desire to be with him. The sum of her instincts on this matter, if clearly stated, would have been that the elusive quality of her sex which attracts men in general might be distasteful to so perfect a man after an avowal of love, since it must in its very nature carry with it a suspicion of art. The country custom of unreserved comradeship out of doors during betrothal was the only custom she knew, and to her it had no strangeness; though it seemed oddly anticipative to Clare till he saw how normal a thing she, in common with all the other dairy-folk, regarded it. Thus, during this October month of wonderful afternoons they roved along the meads by creeping paths which followed the brinks of trickling tributary brooks, hopping across by little wooden bridges to the other side, and back again. They were never out of the sound of some purling weir, whose buzz accompanied their own murmuring, while the beams of the sun, almost as horizontal as the mead itself, formed a pollen of radiance over the landscape. They saw tiny blue fogs in the shadows of trees and hedges, all the time that there was bright sunshine elsewhere. The sun was so near the ground, and the sward so flat, that the shadows of Clare and Tess would stretch a quarter of a mile ahead of them, like two long fingers pointing afar to where the green alluvial reaches abutted against the sloping sides of the vale. Men were at work here and there--for it was the season for "taking up" the meadows, or digging the little waterways clear for the winter irrigation, and mending their banks where trodden down by the cows. The shovelfuls of loam, black as jet, brought there by the river when it was as wide as the whole valley, were an essence of soils, pounded champaigns of the past, steeped, refined, and subtilized to extraordinary richness, out of which came all the fertility of the mead, and of the cattle grazing there. Clare hardily kept his arm round her waist in sight of these watermen, with the air of a man who was accustomed to public dalliance, though actually as shy as she who, with lips parted and eyes askance on the labourers, wore the look of a wary animal the while. "You are not ashamed of owning me as yours before them!" she said gladly. "O no!" "But if it should reach the ears of your friends at Emminster that you are walking about like this with me, a milkmaid--" "The most bewitching milkmaid ever seen." "They might feel it a hurt to their dignity." "My dear girl--a d'Urberville hurt the dignity of a Clare! It is a grand card to play--that of your belonging to such a family, and I am reserving it for a grand effect when we are married, and have the proofs of your descent from Parson Tringham. Apart from that, my future is to be totally foreign to my family--it will not affect even the surface of their lives. We shall leave this part of England--perhaps England itself--and what does it matter how people regard us here? You will like going, will you not?" She could answer no more than a bare affirmative, so great was the emotion aroused in her at the thought of going through the world with him as his own familiar friend. Her feelings almost filled her ears like a babble of waves, and surged up to her eyes. She put her hand in his, and thus they went on, to a place where the reflected sun glared up from the river, under a bridge, with a molten-metallic glow that dazzled their eyes, though the sun itself was hidden by the bridge. They stood still, whereupon little furred and feathered heads popped up from the smooth surface of the water; but, finding that the disturbing presences had paused, and not passed by, they disappeared again. Upon this river-brink they lingered till the fog began to close round them--which was very early in the evening at this time of the year--settling on the lashes of her eyes, where it rested like crystals, and on his brows and hair. They walked later on Sundays, when it was quite dark. Some of the dairy-people, who were also out of doors on the first Sunday evening after their engagement, heard her impulsive speeches, ecstasized to fragments, though they were too far off to hear the words discoursed; noted the spasmodic catch in her remarks, broken into syllables by the leapings of her heart, as she walked leaning on his arm; her contented pauses, the occasional little laugh upon which her soul seemed to ride--the laugh of a woman in company with the man she loves and has won from all other women--unlike anything else in nature. They marked the buoyancy of her tread, like the skim of a bird which has not quite alighted. Her affection for him was now the breath and life of Tess's being; it enveloped her as a photosphere, irradiated her into forgetfulness of her past sorrows, keeping back the gloomy spectres that would persist in their attempts to touch her--doubt, fear, moodiness, care, shame. She knew that they were waiting like wolves just outside the circumscribing light, but she had long spells of power to keep them in hungry subjection there. A spiritual forgetfulness co-existed with an intellectual remembrance. She walked in brightness, but she knew that in the background those shapes of darkness were always spread. They might be receding, or they might be approaching, one or the other, a little every day. One evening Tess and Clare were obliged to sit indoors keeping house, all the other occupants of the domicile being away. As they talked she looked thoughtfully up at him, and met his two appreciative eyes. "I am not worthy of you--no, I am not!" she burst out, jumping up from her low stool as though appalled at his homage, and the fulness of her own joy thereat. Clare, deeming the whole basis of her excitement to be that which was only the smaller part of it, said-- "I won't have you speak like it, dear Tess! Distinction does not consist in the facile use of a contemptible set of conventions, but in being numbered among those who are true, and honest, and just, and pure, and lovely, and of good report--as you are, my Tess." She struggled with the sob in her throat. How often had that string of excellences made her young heart ache in church of late years, and how strange that he should have cited them now. "Why didn't you stay and love me when I--was sixteen; living with my little sisters and brothers, and you danced on the green? O, why didn't you, why didn't you!" she said, impetuously clasping her hands. Angel began to comfort and reassure her, thinking to himself, truly enough, what a creature of moods she was, and how careful he would have to be of her when she depended for her happiness entirely on him. "Ah--why didn't I stay!" he said. "That is just what I feel. If I had only known! But you must not be so bitter in your regret--why should you be?" With the woman's instinct to hide she diverged hastily-- "I should have had four years more of your heart than I can ever have now. Then I should not have wasted my time as I have done--I should have had so much longer happiness!" It was no mature woman with a long dark vista of intrigue behind her who was tormented thus, but a girl of simple life, not yet one-and twenty, who had been caught during her days of immaturity like a bird in a springe. To calm herself the more completely, she rose from her little stool and left the room, overturning the stool with her skirts as she went. He sat on by the cheerful firelight thrown from a bundle of green ash-sticks laid across the dogs; the sticks snapped pleasantly, and hissed out bubbles of sap from their ends. When she came back she was herself again. "Do you not think you are just a wee bit capricious, fitful, Tess?" he said, good-humouredly, as he spread a cushion for her on the stool, and seated himself in the settle beside her. "I wanted to ask you something, and just then you ran away." "Yes, perhaps I am capricious," she murmured. She suddenly approached him, and put a hand upon each of his arms. "No, Angel, I am not really so--by nature, I mean!" The more particularly to assure him that she was not, she placed herself close to him in the settle, and allowed her head to find a resting-place against Clare's shoulder. "What did you want to ask me--I am sure I will answer it," she continued humbly. "Well, you love me, and have agreed to marry me, and hence there follows a thirdly, 'When shall the day be?'" "I like living like this." "But I must think of starting in business on my own hook with the new year, or a little later. And before I get involved in the multifarious details of my new position, I should like to have secured my partner." "But," she timidly answered, "to talk quite practically, wouldn't it be best not to marry till after all that?--Though I can't bear the thought o' your going away and leaving me here!" "Of course you cannot--and it is not best in this case. I want you to help me in many ways in making my start. When shall it be? Why not a fortnight from now?" "No," she said, becoming grave: "I have so many things to think of first." "But--" He drew her gently nearer to him. The reality of marriage was startling when it loomed so near. Before discussion of the question had proceeded further there walked round the corner of the settle into the full firelight of the apartment Mr Dairyman Crick, Mrs Crick, and two of the milkmaids. Tess sprang like an elastic ball from his side to her feet, while her face flushed and her eyes shone in the firelight. "I knew how it would be if I sat so close to him!" she cried, with vexation. "I said to myself, they are sure to come and catch us! But I wasn't really sitting on his knee, though it might ha' seemed as if I was almost!" "Well--if so be you hadn't told us, I am sure we shouldn't ha' noticed that ye had been sitting anywhere at all in this light," replied the dairyman. He continued to his wife, with the stolid mien of a man who understood nothing of the emotions relating to matrimony--"Now, Christianer, that shows that folks should never fancy other folks be supposing things when they bain't. O no, I should never ha' thought a word of where she was a sitting to, if she hadn't told me--not I." "We are going to be married soon," said Clare, with improvised phlegm. "Ah--and be ye! Well, I am truly glad to hear it, sir. I've thought you mid do such a thing for some time. She's too good for a dairymaid--I said so the very first day I zid her--and a prize for any man; and what's more, a wonderful woman for a gentleman-farmer's wife; he won't be at the mercy of his baily wi' her at his side." Somehow Tess disappeared. She had been even more struck with the look of the girls who followed Crick than abashed by Crick's blunt praise. After supper, when she reached her bedroom, they were all present. A light was burning, and each damsel was sitting up whitely in her bed, awaiting Tess, the whole like a row of avenging ghosts. But she saw in a few moments that there was no malice in their mood. They could scarcely feel as a loss what they had never expected to have. Their condition was objective, contemplative. "He's going to marry her!" murmured Retty, never taking eyes off Tess. "How her face do show it!" "You BE going to marry him?" asked Marian. "Yes," said Tess. "When?" "Some day." They thought that this was evasiveness only. "YES--going to MARRY him--a gentleman!" repeated Izz Huett. And by a sort of fascination the three girls, one after another, crept out of their beds, and came and stood barefooted round Tess. Retty put her hands upon Tess's shoulders, as if to realize her friend's corporeality after such a miracle, and the other two laid their arms round her waist, all looking into her face. "How it do seem! Almost more than I can think of!" said Izz Huett. Marian kissed Tess. "Yes," she murmured as she withdrew her lips. "Was that because of love for her, or because other lips have touched there by now?" continued Izz drily to Marian. "I wasn't thinking o' that," said Marian simply. "I was on'y feeling all the strangeness o't--that she is to be his wife, and nobody else. I don't say nay to it, nor either of us, because we did not think of it--only loved him. Still, nobody else is to marry'n in the world--no fine lady, nobody in silks and satins; but she who do live like we." "Are you sure you don't dislike me for it?" said Tess in a low voice. They hung about her in their white nightgowns before replying, as if they considered their answer might lie in her look. "I don't know--I don't know," murmured Retty Priddle. "I want to hate 'ee; but I cannot!" "That's how I feel," echoed Izz and Marian. "I can't hate her. Somehow she hinders me!" "He ought to marry one of you," murmured Tess. "Why?" "You are all better than I." "We better than you?" said the girls in a low, slow whisper. "No, no, dear Tess!" "You are!" she contradicted impetuously. And suddenly tearing away from their clinging arms she burst into a hysterical fit of tears, bowing herself on the chest of drawers and repeating incessantly, "O yes, yes, yes!" Having once given way she could not stop her weeping. "He ought to have had one of you!" she cried. "I think I ought to make him even now! You would be better for him than--I don't know what I'm saying! O! O!" They went up to her and clasped her round, but still her sobs tore her. "Get some water," said Marian, "She's upset by us, poor thing, poor thing!" They gently led her back to the side of her bed, where they kissed her warmly. "You are best for'n," said Marian. "More ladylike, and a better scholar than we, especially since he had taught 'ee so much. But even you ought to be proud. You BE proud, I'm sure!" "Yes, I am," she said; "and I am ashamed at so breaking down." When they were all in bed, and the light was out, Marian whispered across to her-- "You will think of us when you be his wife, Tess, and of how we told 'ee that we loved him, and how we tried not to hate you, and did not hate you, and could not hate you, because you were his choice, and we never hoped to be chose by him." They were not aware that, at these words, salt, stinging tears trickled down upon Tess's pillow anew, and how she resolved, with a bursting heart, to tell all her history to Angel Clare, despite her mother's command--to let him for whom she lived and breathed despise her if he would, and her mother regard her as a fool, rather then preserve a silence which might be deemed a treachery to him, and which somehow seemed a wrong to these.

Chapter 31

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-4-chapters-25-34

Tess writes a letter to her mother the next day, and by the end of the week receives a reply. Her mother gives Tess her best wishes and tells her not to tell Angel anything about her past, for many women have trouble in their time and she should not trumpet hers when others do not trumpet theirs. This advice reassures Tess, who dismisses her past, treading upon it and putting it out as a smoldering, dangerous coal. As a suitor, Angel is more spiritual than animal. Tess worries when the two walk in public as a couple, thinking that it may reach his friends at Emminster that he is walking about with a milkmaid. He thinks it absurd that a d'Urberville hurt the dignity of a Clare. One evening Tess abruptly tells Angel that she is not worthy of him, but Angel tells her that he will not have her speak as such. Angel asks on what day they shall be married, but he does not want to think like this. The news of their engagement reaches the other milkmaids and Dairyman Crick. Tess tells the other girls that Angel ought to marry one of them, for all are better than she. The girls try to hate Tess for her relationship but Angel, but find that they cannot.

Tess operates under a great sense of guilt and paranoia in this chapter, in which her decision to marry Angel and not tell him of her past serves as an accumulating burden for Tess. She believes that her history makes her unworthy of Angel, yet remains on the course for marriage despite this fact. Although Tess feels reassured by the letter from her mother advising her not to tell Angel about Alec, Tess regains her worry about Angel once the news of their engagement becomes public. This paranoia serves as a motivating force for Tess, once again opening up the possibility that she may confess to Angel her former sins. Hardy foreshadows trouble between Angel and Tess with the descriptions of Angel as a suitor. Angel loves Tess intellectually, conceiving her as an ideal as well as an actual person. This increases the possibility that Angel may react poorly to news about Tess. This also serves as a greater contrast between Angel and Alec; while Alec is carnal and ruled by his passions, Angel operates under his principles and ideals. Yet his dedication to ideals will prove as dangerous to Tess as Alec's rapacious desires

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/23042-chapters/3.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/The Tempest/section_2_part_0.txt

The Tempest.act 2.scene 1

scene 1

{"name": "Scene 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219151049/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/the-tempest/summary-and-analysis/act-ii-scene-1", "summary": "This scene opens with all the passengers from the ship, except for Ferdinand, gathered on stage. Gonzalo begins with a speech celebrating their survival of the storm and their relative safety on the island, but King Alonso cannot be cheered because he is sure that his missing son, Ferdinand, has drowned. In the meantime, Antonio and Sebastian whisper among themselves and belittle both Alonso's grief and Gonzalo's cheer. When Antonio and Sebastian join the general conversation around the king, they make no attempt to soothe him. Instead, they tell Alonso that he should not have permitted his daughter to marry the African. Sebastian tells Alonso that, had he not permitted the marriage, the royal party would not have been at sea and, thus, never in the storm. In short, Ferdinand would still be alive if Alonso had acted properly. These are harsh words to the grieving father, and Gonzalo gently chastises Sebastian for his insensitivity. Ariel now enters, unseen by the group on stage, and puts all of them to sleep, except for Sebastian and Antonio. Left awake, Antonio and Sebastian devise a plot in which Sebastian will seize his brother's crown, much as Antonio had years earlier seized his brother's title and property. Although Sebastian has some concerns of conscience, Antonio dismisses such worries and urges action while everyone is asleep. Sebastian needs little convincing, and with Antonio, the two draw their swords and advance on the sleeping king and his party. At this moment, Ariel takes action. He awakens Gonzalo in time to prevent the murders. Antonio and Sebastian quickly concoct a story to explain their drawn swords, warning of great noise, as if from bulls or lions. Alonso is easily convinced of his brother's sincerity, and the scene ends with the royal party leaving the stage in search of Ferdinand.", "analysis": "This act better defines the personalities of the king's party and more clearly establishes the good characters from the bad. Alonso's first thought is for his son's well-being. In Act I, Prospero's tale of Alonso's complicity in his personal tragedy created an image of an uncaring ruler, one who was willing to overlook Antonio's deceit as long as it was beneficial to the king. But now, the picture is that of a grief-stricken father, beyond comfort. Alonso says little, but Gonzalo's efforts to care for and cheer his king, and the efforts of Adrian and Francisco to comfort their king, reflect well on Alonso's character. Gonzalo's character is also realized in more depth than in Act I, where his attention was focused on the storm and on the boatswain's insolence. Beyond the efforts to comfort and reassure his king, Gonzalo relates a vision of a utopian society. In this society, he would be king. There would be no commerce or law and no servant class. No one would grow food, and no one would work. Nature would simply create all that men needed. This vision reveals that Gonzalo, too, has some concerns about authority and privilege. In Gonzalo's vision, there would be no inherited wealth, and land would not be enclosed. Thus, there would be no aristocracy and no country estates. In short, the source of many of the conflicts that exist in English society would be eliminated. Gonzalo wants the authority that Alonso holds, since Gonzalo would be king in this visionary world, but he lacks the impetus to put his dreams into actions, as Antonio and Sebastian would do. In spite of his dreams of personal grandeur, Gonzalo is capable of seeing the positive aspects of their situation. He alone realizes that their survival of the storm is an achievement. He is thankful that they have landed on such a lovely island, and he remains hopeful that Ferdinand has survived. Gonzalo's outlook is positive in many ways, but his utopian dream indicates that there is a complexity to his personality. On the surface he appears happy with his situation, but his dreams of being king reveal that he is not completely satisfied with his lot in life. In contrast, Antonio and Sebastian's characters are developing as unpleasant and arrogant. Their sarcastic asides counter Gonzalo's good humor. They justly point out the flaws in Gonzalo's utopian dream, but they go beyond pointing out the flaws to compete between themselves to see who can devise the cruelest ridicule of both Alonso and Gonzalo. The two are reminiscent of schoolboys, who giggle and whisper in the back of a classroom, in defiance of their teacher. And like schoolboys, Antonio and Sebastian are capable of cruelty, as when they tell Alonso that had he not married his daughter to the African, they would not be on this journey and Ferdinand would not be drowned. They are more than thoughtless and cruel, since they are also capable of forming a conspiracy to murder their king and Sebastian's brother. Sebastian and Antonio's action hearkens back to the scene between the boatswain and Alonso in Act I. Alonso is king and represents authority. To plot his murder and to seize the crown is to usurp authority given by God. In England, the idea that a king was anointed by god was a crucial point in maintaining authority over the people. To kill God's representative on earth was a rebellion against the highest authority in the heavens. These two conspirators seek greater freedom and power than they are entitled to, and so they plot a coup. However, they forget that they are stranded on this island, with no kingdom to assume. Their plot to make Sebastian king neglects to ask king of what? They are far from Naples, with little expectation of rescue. Indeed, they never mention rescue, and thus, their plot to murder the king and seize his title would make Sebastian king of nothing. The blending of illusion and reality, which was created in Act I with the imaginary storm, is carried forward in this scene, with Gonzalo's observation that their clothing is unharmed by the salt water, appearing as it did before the storm occurred. Gonzalo envisions a utopia, but the impossibility of such a thing happening is best illustrated by Antonio and Sebastian's plot. Even when there is no reason to plot a murder, they do so. It is in their nature, and one reason why Gonzalo's vision lacks reality is simply because it neglects to consider human nature, which fails to bow to illusion. The party's whole existence on the island is an illusion and nothing is as it appears. Behind the scene and watching and manipulating all the action is Prospero. Although he never appears in this scene, he is very much present, functioning as a god-like entity. Antonio and Sebastian's swords are stayed because a higher authority prevents their actions. Prospero functions as a god would, protecting the innocent and guiding the action. However, Prospero is not a god, and that, perhaps, is the greatest illusion of all. Glossary tawny brownish-yellow; here used to mean that the sun has turned the ground a parched brown color. rate opinion. bourn a limit; boundary. Here used to mean that no land would be divided among landowners. foison plenty; here, specifically, an abundance of produce. hereditary sloth the natural inclination of a younger brother to be lazy, according to Sebastian, who sees the lack of a hereditary title as a reason to achieve nothing on his own. feater more graceful. Here, Antonio's new rank -- and clothes that befit it -- looks graceful on him. kibe a chapped or ulcerated sore, esp. on the heel. If Antonio's conscience were a sore on his foot, Antonio might put on a slipper."}

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.

Scene 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219151049/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/the-tempest/summary-and-analysis/act-ii-scene-1

This scene opens with all the passengers from the ship, except for Ferdinand, gathered on stage. Gonzalo begins with a speech celebrating their survival of the storm and their relative safety on the island, but King Alonso cannot be cheered because he is sure that his missing son, Ferdinand, has drowned. In the meantime, Antonio and Sebastian whisper among themselves and belittle both Alonso's grief and Gonzalo's cheer. When Antonio and Sebastian join the general conversation around the king, they make no attempt to soothe him. Instead, they tell Alonso that he should not have permitted his daughter to marry the African. Sebastian tells Alonso that, had he not permitted the marriage, the royal party would not have been at sea and, thus, never in the storm. In short, Ferdinand would still be alive if Alonso had acted properly. These are harsh words to the grieving father, and Gonzalo gently chastises Sebastian for his insensitivity. Ariel now enters, unseen by the group on stage, and puts all of them to sleep, except for Sebastian and Antonio. Left awake, Antonio and Sebastian devise a plot in which Sebastian will seize his brother's crown, much as Antonio had years earlier seized his brother's title and property. Although Sebastian has some concerns of conscience, Antonio dismisses such worries and urges action while everyone is asleep. Sebastian needs little convincing, and with Antonio, the two draw their swords and advance on the sleeping king and his party. At this moment, Ariel takes action. He awakens Gonzalo in time to prevent the murders. Antonio and Sebastian quickly concoct a story to explain their drawn swords, warning of great noise, as if from bulls or lions. Alonso is easily convinced of his brother's sincerity, and the scene ends with the royal party leaving the stage in search of Ferdinand.

This act better defines the personalities of the king's party and more clearly establishes the good characters from the bad. Alonso's first thought is for his son's well-being. In Act I, Prospero's tale of Alonso's complicity in his personal tragedy created an image of an uncaring ruler, one who was willing to overlook Antonio's deceit as long as it was beneficial to the king. But now, the picture is that of a grief-stricken father, beyond comfort. Alonso says little, but Gonzalo's efforts to care for and cheer his king, and the efforts of Adrian and Francisco to comfort their king, reflect well on Alonso's character. Gonzalo's character is also realized in more depth than in Act I, where his attention was focused on the storm and on the boatswain's insolence. Beyond the efforts to comfort and reassure his king, Gonzalo relates a vision of a utopian society. In this society, he would be king. There would be no commerce or law and no servant class. No one would grow food, and no one would work. Nature would simply create all that men needed. This vision reveals that Gonzalo, too, has some concerns about authority and privilege. In Gonzalo's vision, there would be no inherited wealth, and land would not be enclosed. Thus, there would be no aristocracy and no country estates. In short, the source of many of the conflicts that exist in English society would be eliminated. Gonzalo wants the authority that Alonso holds, since Gonzalo would be king in this visionary world, but he lacks the impetus to put his dreams into actions, as Antonio and Sebastian would do. In spite of his dreams of personal grandeur, Gonzalo is capable of seeing the positive aspects of their situation. He alone realizes that their survival of the storm is an achievement. He is thankful that they have landed on such a lovely island, and he remains hopeful that Ferdinand has survived. Gonzalo's outlook is positive in many ways, but his utopian dream indicates that there is a complexity to his personality. On the surface he appears happy with his situation, but his dreams of being king reveal that he is not completely satisfied with his lot in life. In contrast, Antonio and Sebastian's characters are developing as unpleasant and arrogant. Their sarcastic asides counter Gonzalo's good humor. They justly point out the flaws in Gonzalo's utopian dream, but they go beyond pointing out the flaws to compete between themselves to see who can devise the cruelest ridicule of both Alonso and Gonzalo. The two are reminiscent of schoolboys, who giggle and whisper in the back of a classroom, in defiance of their teacher. And like schoolboys, Antonio and Sebastian are capable of cruelty, as when they tell Alonso that had he not married his daughter to the African, they would not be on this journey and Ferdinand would not be drowned. They are more than thoughtless and cruel, since they are also capable of forming a conspiracy to murder their king and Sebastian's brother. Sebastian and Antonio's action hearkens back to the scene between the boatswain and Alonso in Act I. Alonso is king and represents authority. To plot his murder and to seize the crown is to usurp authority given by God. In England, the idea that a king was anointed by god was a crucial point in maintaining authority over the people. To kill God's representative on earth was a rebellion against the highest authority in the heavens. These two conspirators seek greater freedom and power than they are entitled to, and so they plot a coup. However, they forget that they are stranded on this island, with no kingdom to assume. Their plot to make Sebastian king neglects to ask king of what? They are far from Naples, with little expectation of rescue. Indeed, they never mention rescue, and thus, their plot to murder the king and seize his title would make Sebastian king of nothing. The blending of illusion and reality, which was created in Act I with the imaginary storm, is carried forward in this scene, with Gonzalo's observation that their clothing is unharmed by the salt water, appearing as it did before the storm occurred. Gonzalo envisions a utopia, but the impossibility of such a thing happening is best illustrated by Antonio and Sebastian's plot. Even when there is no reason to plot a murder, they do so. It is in their nature, and one reason why Gonzalo's vision lacks reality is simply because it neglects to consider human nature, which fails to bow to illusion. The party's whole existence on the island is an illusion and nothing is as it appears. Behind the scene and watching and manipulating all the action is Prospero. Although he never appears in this scene, he is very much present, functioning as a god-like entity. Antonio and Sebastian's swords are stayed because a higher authority prevents their actions. Prospero functions as a god would, protecting the innocent and guiding the action. However, Prospero is not a god, and that, perhaps, is the greatest illusion of all. Glossary tawny brownish-yellow; here used to mean that the sun has turned the ground a parched brown color. rate opinion. bourn a limit; boundary. Here used to mean that no land would be divided among landowners. foison plenty; here, specifically, an abundance of produce. hereditary sloth the natural inclination of a younger brother to be lazy, according to Sebastian, who sees the lack of a hereditary title as a reason to achieve nothing on his own. feater more graceful. Here, Antonio's new rank -- and clothes that befit it -- looks graceful on him. kibe a chapped or ulcerated sore, esp. on the heel. If Antonio's conscience were a sore on his foot, Antonio might put on a slipper.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/35.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_34_part_0.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 5.chapter 4

book 5, chapter 4

{"name": "Book 5, Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-5-chapter-4", "summary": "Ivan continues to explain his refusal to accept the world that God created by citing the suffering of the most innocent of human beings: small children. He lists for Alyosha examples of horrendous child abuse: a Turk killing a Bulgarian child before its mother; a Swiss named Richard who had a miserable childhood and grew up to kill a man, but eagerly awaited his hanging because he'd meet God, or so he's told; parents who flog their daughter mercilessly, and the public outcry that the parents were even brought before a court; parents who made their daughter sleep in an outhouse all night; and a general who, furious that a kid hurt his dog, ordered his hounds to hunt the kid down and tear him apart. After these horrendous examples, Ivan concludes that he could not accept a world founded on the suffering of just one child, and asks Alyosha if he could either. Alyosha agrees, but he then suggests that the world is founded on the suffering of an innocent who did have the right to forgive all wrongs - Jesus Christ. Ivan rejects Alyosha's reply and tells Alyosha that he'd like to share a little poem with him, which - get this - he hasn't written, but has memorized.", "analysis": ""}

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."

Book 5, Chapter 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-5-chapter-4

Ivan continues to explain his refusal to accept the world that God created by citing the suffering of the most innocent of human beings: small children. He lists for Alyosha examples of horrendous child abuse: a Turk killing a Bulgarian child before its mother; a Swiss named Richard who had a miserable childhood and grew up to kill a man, but eagerly awaited his hanging because he'd meet God, or so he's told; parents who flog their daughter mercilessly, and the public outcry that the parents were even brought before a court; parents who made their daughter sleep in an outhouse all night; and a general who, furious that a kid hurt his dog, ordered his hounds to hunt the kid down and tear him apart. After these horrendous examples, Ivan concludes that he could not accept a world founded on the suffering of just one child, and asks Alyosha if he could either. Alyosha agrees, but he then suggests that the world is founded on the suffering of an innocent who did have the right to forgive all wrongs - Jesus Christ. Ivan rejects Alyosha's reply and tells Alyosha that he'd like to share a little poem with him, which - get this - he hasn't written, but has memorized.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/48.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Sense and Sensibility/section_4_part_8.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 48

chapter 48

{"name": "Chapter 48", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210419170735/https://www.gradesaver.com/sense-and-sensibility/study-guide/summary-chapters-41-50", "summary": "Although Elinor knew before that Edward and Lucy would probably be married, she is still pained at the news, since she had hope that they might be separated by some mischance. She wishes to hear more news, but none comes; they expect Colonel Brandon any day, so Elinor can ask him if the couple are indeed settled at Delaford. Elinor is convinced that the Colonel has arrived at the cottage, but is surprised to find that it is Edward instead. They all try to hide their anxiety, and their conversation is awkward at best; but, when Mrs. Dashwood inquires about his wife, he informs them that it is his brother who has been married to Lucy, and not him. Elinor immediately runs from the room, crying out of joy; Edward then senses Elinor's regard for him, and is very happy too.", "analysis": "This new development has hardly been foreshadowed in Austen's text; Robert and Lucy hardly seemed to know each other before in town, and Robert had proclaimed Lucy plain and undesirable before. Their personalities being similar, and their scruples almost nonexistent, it is perhaps not a surprise that they would be drawn together. However, perhaps it is a failure of Austen's that this is a bombshell with absolutely no prior indications, and seems more like a convenient development than a natural event in the text"}

Elinor now found the difference between the expectation of an unpleasant event, however certain the mind may be told to consider it, and certainty itself. She now found, that in spite of herself, she had always admitted a hope, while Edward remained single, that something would occur to prevent his marrying Lucy; that some resolution of his own, some mediation of friends, or some more eligible opportunity of establishment for the lady, would arise to assist the happiness of all. But he was now married; and she condemned her heart for the lurking flattery, which so much heightened the pain of the intelligence. That he should be married soon, before (as she imagined) he could be in orders, and consequently before he could be in possession of the living, surprised her a little at first. But she soon saw how likely it was that Lucy, in her self-provident care, in her haste to secure him, should overlook every thing but the risk of delay. They were married, married in town, and now hastening down to her uncle's. What had Edward felt on being within four miles from Barton, on seeing her mother's servant, on hearing Lucy's message! They would soon, she supposed, be settled at Delaford.--Delaford,--that place in which so much conspired to give her an interest; which she wished to be acquainted with, and yet desired to avoid. She saw them in an instant in their parsonage-house; saw in Lucy, the active, contriving manager, uniting at once a desire of smart appearance with the utmost frugality, and ashamed to be suspected of half her economical practices;--pursuing her own interest in every thought, courting the favour of Colonel Brandon, of Mrs. Jennings, and of every wealthy friend. In Edward--she knew not what she saw, nor what she wished to see;--happy or unhappy,--nothing pleased her; she turned away her head from every sketch of him. Elinor flattered herself that some one of their connections in London would write to them to announce the event, and give farther particulars,--but day after day passed off, and brought no letter, no tidings. Though uncertain that any one were to blame, she found fault with every absent friend. They were all thoughtless or indolent. "When do you write to Colonel Brandon, ma'am?" was an inquiry which sprung from the impatience of her mind to have something going on. "I wrote to him, my love, last week, and rather expect to see, than to hear from him again. I earnestly pressed his coming to us, and should not be surprised to see him walk in today or tomorrow, or any day." This was gaining something, something to look forward to. Colonel Brandon must have some information to give. Scarcely had she so determined it, when the figure of a man on horseback drew her eyes to the window. He stopt at their gate. It was a gentleman, it was Colonel Brandon himself. Now she could hear more; and she trembled in expectation of it. But--it was NOT Colonel Brandon--neither his air--nor his height. Were it possible, she must say it must be Edward. She looked again. He had just dismounted;--she could not be mistaken,--it WAS Edward. She moved away and sat down. "He comes from Mr. Pratt's purposely to see us. I WILL be calm; I WILL be mistress of myself." In a moment she perceived that the others were likewise aware of the mistake. She saw her mother and Marianne change colour; saw them look at herself, and whisper a few sentences to each other. She would have given the world to be able to speak--and to make them understand that she hoped no coolness, no slight, would appear in their behaviour to him;--but she had no utterance, and was obliged to leave all to their own discretion. Not a syllable passed aloud. They all waited in silence for the appearance of their visitor. His footsteps were heard along the gravel path; in a moment he was in the passage, and in another he was before them. His countenance, as he entered the room, was not too happy, even for Elinor. His complexion was white with agitation, and he looked as if fearful of his reception, and conscious that he merited no kind one. Mrs. Dashwood, however, conforming, as she trusted, to the wishes of that daughter, by whom she then meant in the warmth of her heart to be guided in every thing, met with a look of forced complacency, gave him her hand, and wished him joy. He coloured, and stammered out an unintelligible reply. Elinor's lips had moved with her mother's, and, when the moment of action was over, she wished that she had shaken hands with him too. But it was then too late, and with a countenance meaning to be open, she sat down again and talked of the weather. Marianne had retreated as much as possible out of sight, to conceal her distress; and Margaret, understanding some part, but not the whole of the case, thought it incumbent on her to be dignified, and therefore took a seat as far from him as she could, and maintained a strict silence. When Elinor had ceased to rejoice in the dryness of the season, a very awful pause took place. It was put an end to by Mrs. Dashwood, who felt obliged to hope that he had left Mrs. Ferrars very well. In a hurried manner, he replied in the affirmative. Another pause. Elinor resolving to exert herself, though fearing the sound of her own voice, now said, "Is Mrs. Ferrars at Longstaple?" "At Longstaple!" he replied, with an air of surprise.-- "No, my mother is in town." "I meant," said Elinor, taking up some work from the table, "to inquire for Mrs. EDWARD Ferrars." She dared not look up;--but her mother and Marianne both turned their eyes on him. He coloured, seemed perplexed, looked doubtingly, and, after some hesitation, said,-- "Perhaps you mean--my brother--you mean Mrs.--Mrs. ROBERT Ferrars." "Mrs. Robert Ferrars!"--was repeated by Marianne and her mother in an accent of the utmost amazement;--and though Elinor could not speak, even HER eyes were fixed on him with the same impatient wonder. He rose from his seat, and walked to the window, apparently from not knowing what to do; took up a pair of scissors that lay there, and while spoiling both them and their sheath by cutting the latter to pieces as he spoke, said, in a hurried voice, "Perhaps you do not know--you may not have heard that my brother is lately married to--to the youngest--to Miss Lucy Steele." His words were echoed with unspeakable astonishment by all but Elinor, who sat with her head leaning over her work, in a state of such agitation as made her hardly know where she was. "Yes," said he, "they were married last week, and are now at Dawlish." Elinor could sit it no longer. She almost ran out of the room, and as soon as the door was closed, burst into tears of joy, which at first she thought would never cease. Edward, who had till then looked any where, rather than at her, saw her hurry away, and perhaps saw--or even heard, her emotion; for immediately afterwards he fell into a reverie, which no remarks, no inquiries, no affectionate address of Mrs. Dashwood could penetrate, and at last, without saying a word, quitted the room, and walked out towards the village--leaving the others in the greatest astonishment and perplexity on a change in his situation, so wonderful and so sudden;--a perplexity which they had no means of lessening but by their own conjectures.

Chapter 48

https://web.archive.org/web/20210419170735/https://www.gradesaver.com/sense-and-sensibility/study-guide/summary-chapters-41-50

Although Elinor knew before that Edward and Lucy would probably be married, she is still pained at the news, since she had hope that they might be separated by some mischance. She wishes to hear more news, but none comes; they expect Colonel Brandon any day, so Elinor can ask him if the couple are indeed settled at Delaford. Elinor is convinced that the Colonel has arrived at the cottage, but is surprised to find that it is Edward instead. They all try to hide their anxiety, and their conversation is awkward at best; but, when Mrs. Dashwood inquires about his wife, he informs them that it is his brother who has been married to Lucy, and not him. Elinor immediately runs from the room, crying out of joy; Edward then senses Elinor's regard for him, and is very happy too.

This new development has hardly been foreshadowed in Austen's text; Robert and Lucy hardly seemed to know each other before in town, and Robert had proclaimed Lucy plain and undesirable before. Their personalities being similar, and their scruples almost nonexistent, it is perhaps not a surprise that they would be drawn together. However, perhaps it is a failure of Austen's that this is a bombshell with absolutely no prior indications, and seems more like a convenient development than a natural event in the text

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/book_5_chapters_1_to_4.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_6_part_0.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 5.chapters 1-4

book 5 chapters 1-4

{"name": "Book V: Chapters 1-4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219142226/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/b/the-brothers-karamazov/summary-and-analysis/part-2-book-v-chapters-14", "summary": "When Alyosha returns to Madame Hohlakov's to report his failure with the captain, he learns that Katerina has developed a fever following her hysterical outburst and is now upstairs, unconscious. To Lise, Alyosha explains the nature of his mission and his failure and analyzes the captain's character for her. As he talks, Lise becomes very impressed with such deep insight and such warmth and love of humanity. She confesses that she indeed meant what she wrote in the letter. The revelation is startling, and she and Alyosha discuss their feelings for each other and begin to make plans for marriage. For his part, Alyosha admits that he has told a white lie concerning the letter. He did not return it, not because he did not have it but because he valued it too much. Meanwhile, Madame Hohlakov, who has eavesdropped on the conversation, stops Alyosha as he is leaving and expresses deep disapproval of the match. Alyosha assures her that the marriage is yet far in the future, that Lise is much too young to marry presently. Alyosha, then, puzzling over Dmitri's actions of the previous night, decides to try to find his brother. It is more important, he believes, to \"have saved something\" of Dmitri's honor than to flee back to the monastery. The summerhouse seems a likely place to find his brother; this is where he often watches for Grushenka and dreams of her. As Alyosha waits, he overhears Smerdyakov singing and playing the guitar for the housekeeper's daughter. Alyosha interrupts, with apologies, and asks Smerdyakov if he has seen Dmitri. The cook is able to help Alyosha and says that Ivan has made an appointment to meet Dmitri at the Metropolis restaurant. Alyosha rushes there but Dmitri is not to be found. Instead, Ivan is dining alone. Ivan beckons to his brother, and Alyosha accepts his brother's invitation to talk. Ivan admits, first off, that he is eager to know Alyosha better; he has come to respect and admire the boy. Ivan also admits that he has an intense longing for life even though he constantly encounters only disorder and injustice. Alyosha, however, is more concerned about Dmitri and what will happen to him and what will happen to Fyodor if Ivan leaves the family. To this, Ivan insists that he is absolutely not his brother's keeper, nor his father's keeper, and confesses finally that he is dining at the restaurant for only one reason: he cannot bear the presence of his loathsome father. That settled, Ivan begins to tell Alyosha of his views on \"the existence of God and immortality.\" He says that he does not reject God but cannot accept Him. If God does exist and if He indeed created the world, the human mind should be able to fathom the deed and understand the purpose of creation. Ivan cannot and therefore rejects the world God created. If, he adds, this means that he must reject God, then that is another problem. Alyosha queries more closely, asking Ivan to be more specific as to why he cannot accept the world. Ivan answers by saying that he can love man at a distance but that he is unable to love his next-door neighbor. For him, \"Christ-like love for men is a miracle impossible on earth.\" That which makes it especially difficult to accept the world, as it is, is the vast suffering and brutality in the world. If God exists, says Ivan, how can this horror be accounted for? He singles out the suffering of children as prime evidence of the world's indifferent cruelty. Children have had no time to sin, but they suffer. Why? Certainly not because of sin, supposedly the cause of suffering. He then recites several horrible examples of atrocities inflicted upon children by other human beings. Because such injustice is allowed to happen, Ivan simply cannot accept the mythical \"harmony of God\" or accept a universe in which one who is tortured embraces his torturer. Such \"harmony,\" says Ivan, \"is not worth the tears of one tortured child.\" He concludes that if truth must be bought at the price of the suffering of children, then such truth is not worth the price. He tells Alyosha: \"It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return Him the ticket.\" Alyosha is horrified and tells Ivan that these thoughts constitute rebellion. Ivan offers Alyosha a further example: suppose, he says, one could create a perfect world for man but it could survive only by torturing to death \"one tiny creature.\" Would Alyosha be the architect of such a world? As an answer, Ivan is reminded that there is One who can forgive everything \"because He gave His innocent blood for all and everything.\" Ivan assures his brother that he has not forgotten \"the One without sin\" and recites a prose poem that he wrote several years ago. He calls his poem \"The Grand Inquisitor.\"", "analysis": "As Alyosha tells Lise of his encounter with the captain, we see that he, like Zossima, has a deeply penetrating mind and understands the inner workings of those whom he is trying to help. This understanding of human nature proves Alyosha much more than a simple person of simple faith. Zossima, remember, has commanded Alyosha to marry. Because of the elder, Alyosha has chosen Lise; no one, he believes, will make him a better wife. But for all of Zossima's influence, he is not a puppet-master. Alyosha is objective about the wisdom of his mentor's teachings, and although he knows that Zossima is dying, he feels that it is a higher duty to find Dmitri than to go to the elder's deathbed. Thus Alyosha matures into a man of worldly responsibility and makes other men much more than only of spiritual concern. In Chapter 3, Dostoevsky makes clear the earlier ambiguities of Ivan's character. Previously, the brother maintained a distance from Alyosha because he had been evaluating him to see if he is merely an empty-minded religious fanatic. Now, however, Ivan has learned to respect and admire Alyosha because \"you do stand firm and I like people who are firm like that, whatever it is that they stand by.\" Ivan is now ready to thoroughly discuss his beliefs with his brother. In addition, Ivan also feels that his impending departure makes it imperative to explain himself to Alyosha. But if he is concerned for Alyosha, he is certainly not concerned for Dmitri; he refuses to be either his brother's keeper or the \"keeper\" of Fyodor. He is quite adamant concerning this, and his vehemence is easily recalled when the idea of Fyodor's being vulnerable for murder is discussed. Preluding his views on religion, Ivan announces that he has a strong desire to live. He loves life even though he finds it illogical. Such an acknowledgement of a love of living is important because Ivan, with a philosophy seemingly nihilistic, might too easily be categorized as a suicidal cynic. Ivan is morally much stronger and is deeply committed to the business of living. Both brothers, Ivan and Alyosha, agree that \"for real Russians the questions of God's existence and of immortality . . . come first and foremost and so they should.\" In its largest context, this is the subject of the novel. These ideas are central not just to the characters but to an understanding of Dostoevsky's entire point of view. Ivan surprises Alyosha by announcing, \"perhaps I too accept God,\" reminding his brother of the saying, \"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.\" For Ivan, the astonishing factor of Christianity is that man is basically such a \"savage, vicious beast\" that it is illogical that he could conceive of an idea so noble and magnificent as \"God.\" Ivan is, of course, leading into his views about the baseness of most humans and the difficulty of believing man sufficiently noble to conceive of something so totally transcending his own vicious nature. Most of all, Ivan desires a world in which his human intellect can fully comprehend the logic and purpose of life. He uses the analogy of two parallel lines, which, according to Euclid, can never meet. Ivan's mind can comprehend this concept because he has a \"Euclidian earthly mind.\" But if someone tells him that two parallel lines might meet somewhere in infinity, and even if he sees it himself, he still cannot accept the theory. Therefore, even though he is willing to accept God, His Wisdom, and His purpose, he cannot accept \"this world of God's . . . it's the world created by Him that I don't and can't accept.\" To explain further why he does not accept the world, Ivan examines the brutality found in the world, saying that he cannot love his neighbor. It is easy to love man in the abstract sense, certainly, but when one looks into the face of a man, it is impossible to love him. For Christ, to love men was easy because He was God; but for ordinary men to love one's neighbor -- the idea is ridiculously impossible. Later, Ivan will elaborate upon this in his poem \"The Grand Inquisitor.\" Ivan uses the suffering of innocent children as his principal grounds for the world's unacceptability. The idea of the suffering innocent has plagued philosophers since time's beginning; it is the subject of such great works as the Book of Job. But Ivan does not concern himself with the sufferings of adults. For them, a philosophical justification is possible: the adult has sinned, and his suffering is a punishment for his sins. Children, however, have not yet sinned, and therefore Ivan cannot understand a world created by God that justifies their suffering. And regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with Ivan, one must recognize the logic at work in this system of thinking. Life, for Ivan, must be rational -- it must especially be rational if one is to appreciate God's wonder and love Him as one should. So well has Ivan considered his philosophy that he is even amused by the term \"bestial cruelty,\" for this, he believes, is an insult to beasts. An animal kills only for food and kills rapidly, but man kills slowly, deliberately, and often only for the sadistic pleasure of watching his victim suffer. As Ivan speaks, he is quite aware that he is causing Alyosha to suffer; he knows well of Alyosha's fondness for children. But, although he is not his \"brother's keeper,\" he is far from heartless; for him, children are revered. He can find no logic that justifies their suffering. He asks Alyosha what would be the basis of an eternal harmony if a victim would \"rise up and embrace his murderer.\" If this higher harmony would, even in part, be based on such suffering, then Ivan must renounce it. Truth is not worth such a price. In reference to the story of the general who had his dogs kill a peasant boy, Ivan states, \"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!\" Ivan rejects such monstrous injustice; he would rather remain with his \"unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation.\" When Alyosha tells Ivan that his view is that of rebellion, Ivan presents Alyosha with the following hypothesis: \"Imagine 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 . . . to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?\" This analogy of Ivan's offers the same view as that expressed throughout the chapter -- that a world created for men should not be founded on innocent suffering. As a humanist, Ivan cannot accept happiness or eternal harmony at the expense of any \"unexpiated blood.\" Alyosha reminds Ivan that he has forgotten the one Being Who \"gave His innocent blood for all.\" Because of Alyosha's objection, Ivan is provoked to narrate his prose poem, \"The Grand Inquisitor.\""}

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."

Book V: Chapters 1-4

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219142226/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/b/the-brothers-karamazov/summary-and-analysis/part-2-book-v-chapters-14

When Alyosha returns to Madame Hohlakov's to report his failure with the captain, he learns that Katerina has developed a fever following her hysterical outburst and is now upstairs, unconscious. To Lise, Alyosha explains the nature of his mission and his failure and analyzes the captain's character for her. As he talks, Lise becomes very impressed with such deep insight and such warmth and love of humanity. She confesses that she indeed meant what she wrote in the letter. The revelation is startling, and she and Alyosha discuss their feelings for each other and begin to make plans for marriage. For his part, Alyosha admits that he has told a white lie concerning the letter. He did not return it, not because he did not have it but because he valued it too much. Meanwhile, Madame Hohlakov, who has eavesdropped on the conversation, stops Alyosha as he is leaving and expresses deep disapproval of the match. Alyosha assures her that the marriage is yet far in the future, that Lise is much too young to marry presently. Alyosha, then, puzzling over Dmitri's actions of the previous night, decides to try to find his brother. It is more important, he believes, to "have saved something" of Dmitri's honor than to flee back to the monastery. The summerhouse seems a likely place to find his brother; this is where he often watches for Grushenka and dreams of her. As Alyosha waits, he overhears Smerdyakov singing and playing the guitar for the housekeeper's daughter. Alyosha interrupts, with apologies, and asks Smerdyakov if he has seen Dmitri. The cook is able to help Alyosha and says that Ivan has made an appointment to meet Dmitri at the Metropolis restaurant. Alyosha rushes there but Dmitri is not to be found. Instead, Ivan is dining alone. Ivan beckons to his brother, and Alyosha accepts his brother's invitation to talk. Ivan admits, first off, that he is eager to know Alyosha better; he has come to respect and admire the boy. Ivan also admits that he has an intense longing for life even though he constantly encounters only disorder and injustice. Alyosha, however, is more concerned about Dmitri and what will happen to him and what will happen to Fyodor if Ivan leaves the family. To this, Ivan insists that he is absolutely not his brother's keeper, nor his father's keeper, and confesses finally that he is dining at the restaurant for only one reason: he cannot bear the presence of his loathsome father. That settled, Ivan begins to tell Alyosha of his views on "the existence of God and immortality." He says that he does not reject God but cannot accept Him. If God does exist and if He indeed created the world, the human mind should be able to fathom the deed and understand the purpose of creation. Ivan cannot and therefore rejects the world God created. If, he adds, this means that he must reject God, then that is another problem. Alyosha queries more closely, asking Ivan to be more specific as to why he cannot accept the world. Ivan answers by saying that he can love man at a distance but that he is unable to love his next-door neighbor. For him, "Christ-like love for men is a miracle impossible on earth." That which makes it especially difficult to accept the world, as it is, is the vast suffering and brutality in the world. If God exists, says Ivan, how can this horror be accounted for? He singles out the suffering of children as prime evidence of the world's indifferent cruelty. Children have had no time to sin, but they suffer. Why? Certainly not because of sin, supposedly the cause of suffering. He then recites several horrible examples of atrocities inflicted upon children by other human beings. Because such injustice is allowed to happen, Ivan simply cannot accept the mythical "harmony of God" or accept a universe in which one who is tortured embraces his torturer. Such "harmony," says Ivan, "is not worth the tears of one tortured child." He concludes that if truth must be bought at the price of the suffering of children, then such truth is not worth the price. He tells Alyosha: "It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return Him the ticket." Alyosha is horrified and tells Ivan that these thoughts constitute rebellion. Ivan offers Alyosha a further example: suppose, he says, one could create a perfect world for man but it could survive only by torturing to death "one tiny creature." Would Alyosha be the architect of such a world? As an answer, Ivan is reminded that there is One who can forgive everything "because He gave His innocent blood for all and everything." Ivan assures his brother that he has not forgotten "the One without sin" and recites a prose poem that he wrote several years ago. He calls his poem "The Grand Inquisitor."

As Alyosha tells Lise of his encounter with the captain, we see that he, like Zossima, has a deeply penetrating mind and understands the inner workings of those whom he is trying to help. This understanding of human nature proves Alyosha much more than a simple person of simple faith. Zossima, remember, has commanded Alyosha to marry. Because of the elder, Alyosha has chosen Lise; no one, he believes, will make him a better wife. But for all of Zossima's influence, he is not a puppet-master. Alyosha is objective about the wisdom of his mentor's teachings, and although he knows that Zossima is dying, he feels that it is a higher duty to find Dmitri than to go to the elder's deathbed. Thus Alyosha matures into a man of worldly responsibility and makes other men much more than only of spiritual concern. In Chapter 3, Dostoevsky makes clear the earlier ambiguities of Ivan's character. Previously, the brother maintained a distance from Alyosha because he had been evaluating him to see if he is merely an empty-minded religious fanatic. Now, however, Ivan has learned to respect and admire Alyosha because "you do stand firm and I like people who are firm like that, whatever it is that they stand by." Ivan is now ready to thoroughly discuss his beliefs with his brother. In addition, Ivan also feels that his impending departure makes it imperative to explain himself to Alyosha. But if he is concerned for Alyosha, he is certainly not concerned for Dmitri; he refuses to be either his brother's keeper or the "keeper" of Fyodor. He is quite adamant concerning this, and his vehemence is easily recalled when the idea of Fyodor's being vulnerable for murder is discussed. Preluding his views on religion, Ivan announces that he has a strong desire to live. He loves life even though he finds it illogical. Such an acknowledgement of a love of living is important because Ivan, with a philosophy seemingly nihilistic, might too easily be categorized as a suicidal cynic. Ivan is morally much stronger and is deeply committed to the business of living. Both brothers, Ivan and Alyosha, agree that "for real Russians the questions of God's existence and of immortality . . . come first and foremost and so they should." In its largest context, this is the subject of the novel. These ideas are central not just to the characters but to an understanding of Dostoevsky's entire point of view. Ivan surprises Alyosha by announcing, "perhaps I too accept God," reminding his brother of the saying, "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him." For Ivan, the astonishing factor of Christianity is that man is basically such a "savage, vicious beast" that it is illogical that he could conceive of an idea so noble and magnificent as "God." Ivan is, of course, leading into his views about the baseness of most humans and the difficulty of believing man sufficiently noble to conceive of something so totally transcending his own vicious nature. Most of all, Ivan desires a world in which his human intellect can fully comprehend the logic and purpose of life. He uses the analogy of two parallel lines, which, according to Euclid, can never meet. Ivan's mind can comprehend this concept because he has a "Euclidian earthly mind." But if someone tells him that two parallel lines might meet somewhere in infinity, and even if he sees it himself, he still cannot accept the theory. Therefore, even though he is willing to accept God, His Wisdom, and His purpose, he cannot accept "this world of God's . . . it's the world created by Him that I don't and can't accept." To explain further why he does not accept the world, Ivan examines the brutality found in the world, saying that he cannot love his neighbor. It is easy to love man in the abstract sense, certainly, but when one looks into the face of a man, it is impossible to love him. For Christ, to love men was easy because He was God; but for ordinary men to love one's neighbor -- the idea is ridiculously impossible. Later, Ivan will elaborate upon this in his poem "The Grand Inquisitor." Ivan uses the suffering of innocent children as his principal grounds for the world's unacceptability. The idea of the suffering innocent has plagued philosophers since time's beginning; it is the subject of such great works as the Book of Job. But Ivan does not concern himself with the sufferings of adults. For them, a philosophical justification is possible: the adult has sinned, and his suffering is a punishment for his sins. Children, however, have not yet sinned, and therefore Ivan cannot understand a world created by God that justifies their suffering. And regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with Ivan, one must recognize the logic at work in this system of thinking. Life, for Ivan, must be rational -- it must especially be rational if one is to appreciate God's wonder and love Him as one should. So well has Ivan considered his philosophy that he is even amused by the term "bestial cruelty," for this, he believes, is an insult to beasts. An animal kills only for food and kills rapidly, but man kills slowly, deliberately, and often only for the sadistic pleasure of watching his victim suffer. As Ivan speaks, he is quite aware that he is causing Alyosha to suffer; he knows well of Alyosha's fondness for children. But, although he is not his "brother's keeper," he is far from heartless; for him, children are revered. He can find no logic that justifies their suffering. He asks Alyosha what would be the basis of an eternal harmony if a victim would "rise up and embrace his murderer." If this higher harmony would, even in part, be based on such suffering, then Ivan must renounce it. Truth is not worth such a price. In reference to the story of the general who had his dogs kill a peasant boy, Ivan states, "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!" Ivan rejects such monstrous injustice; he would rather remain with his "unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation." When Alyosha tells Ivan that his view is that of rebellion, Ivan presents Alyosha with the following hypothesis: "Imagine 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 . . . to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?" This analogy of Ivan's offers the same view as that expressed throughout the chapter -- that a world created for men should not be founded on innocent suffering. As a humanist, Ivan cannot accept happiness or eternal harmony at the expense of any "unexpiated blood." Alyosha reminds Ivan that he has forgotten the one Being Who "gave His innocent blood for all." Because of Alyosha's objection, Ivan is provoked to narrate his prose poem, "The Grand Inquisitor."

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/part_1_chapters_6_to_8.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/The Red and the Black/section_2_part_0.txt

The Red and the Black.part 1.chapters 6-8

chapters 6-8

{"name": "Chapters 6-8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201128052739/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/the-red-and-the-black/summary-and-analysis/part-1-chapters-68", "summary": "Mme. de Renal receives Julien, and after their mutual embarrassment has changed -- for Mme. de Renal to relief and for Julien to a beginning of composure -- he is outfitted in a new suit and presented to the children. Now in complete command of himself, Julien recites at random entire passages of the Bible in Latin, earning the respect and admiration of all. Within a month, he is considered as a real prize by M. de Renal. During the next five weeks, Julien engages in petty negotiations beginning his scheme of success through hypocrisy. The self-righteousness that this society feels causes him to feel superior to it, and this, in turn, alienates him from it. His utter ignorance of most matters prevents him, at this stage, from understanding much of what he hears. He craftily convinces Renal of the necessity of taking out a subscription with the liberal bookseller, presenting the matter in such a way that it will not offend the vanity of the Royalist. Julien is extremely wary of Mme. de Renal since her beauty caused him to stumble when he first arrived. She, on the other hand, is becoming increasingly drawn to this charming and intelligent young man. Unaware of what love is, she gives no thought to the fact that she is attentive to his needs and that her husband is becoming increasingly unbearable to her. Mme. de Renal's maid, Elisa, has designs on Julien, and Father Chelan urges him to consider favorably the possibility of such a match and discourages him from entering the priesthood. Julien's burning ardor makes Chelan fear for his salvation should he pursue a career in the Church. Julien retreats, then returns to try to impress the priest by a new tactic. To no avail, for Chelan is not fooled. This is a defeat for Julien. Mme. de Renal is overjoyed to hear Elisa confess tearfully that Julien has rejected her. Soon Mme. de Renal becomes aware that she is in love with Julien. In the spring, the family moves to the summer home in the neighboring village of Vergy. Animated by a fresh outlook, Mme. de Renal agrees to Julien's suggestion to create a meandering path \"a la Julie,\" among the walnut trees. Catching butterflies provides a new activity and topic of conversation for the inexperienced couple. Mme. de Renal changes clothes two or three times a day, unaware, however, of what prompts this interest in her appearance. The arrival of Mme. Derville creates a happy threesome. Julien relaxes to the point of reading not only at night in the solitude of his room but during the day. This increased reading finally gives him some ideas about women. The three begin to assemble at night outside in the darkness for conversation. One evening, in his animated gesticulation, Julien happens to touch Mme. de Renal's hand. When it is instantly withdrawn, he decides it is his duty to hold it. A new challenge disturbs his peace.", "analysis": "In these chapters, Stendhal brings Julien and Mme. de Renal together for the first time, then concentrates on their separate progression. As will be typical of Julien's character, he reacts spontaneously when surprised by Mme. de Renal. An aspiring hypocrite must learn to control his reactions. He hates her \"because she is beautiful\" -- that is, her beauty produces a violent reaction in him, a superior being born to exalt in beauty and to be offended by ugliness, but his reaction is spontaneous, and in betraying it, he ruins his \"pose.\" His pride is offended when she expresses amazement at his knowledge of Latin. Her supplicating tone causes him momentarily to forget his pride, and as his self-confidence becomes progressively stronger, he dares himself to kiss her hand. This daring act he accomplishes. His composure is shattered again when he gives way to the expression of joy, caused by his new clothes, but once again, after collecting himself in his room, he reassumes the calm and dignity befitting a tutor. The scene relating Julien's arrival is important for several reasons. It establishes the pattern of conduct that will characterize him throughout the novel. In him there seethes a conflict between spontaneous expression of joy associated with happiness and the hypocritical wearing of a mask imposed by ambition. The scene illustrates the tender irony that characterizes Stendhal's attitude toward his \"chosen\" characters. He deliberately places them in awkward situations that will challenge and embarrass them after already creating them with a contradictory nature that will cause them to stumble. He has great affection for his \"chosen\" characters, but he demands of them as much as he demands of himself. Julien's petty maneuvering wins him minor triumphs in this household which he disdains. Throughout the novel, his prodigious memory will be a sure means of winning for him the admiration of others, but it seems to produce a special effect on the provincial bourgeois, incapable, says Stendhal, of appreciating intelligence in any other form. The almost photographic memory that Julien possesses would seem to serve in place of keen reasoning and eloquence to convince the reader of Julien's superior nature, as we will see. Misunderstanding it, Julien rebuffs Mme. de Renal's offer of money and succeeds in tricking the mayor on two occasions. His social behavior is quite unacceptable, and his efforts to play a role accentuate his ineptness. On the other hand, he unknowingly charms Mme. de Renal with his eyes. He is unable to deceive Chelan, and the great emotion he experiences at the love and concern shown him by the priest betrays an ardent soul thirsting for friendship and happiness. Thus, to enjoy this emotion completely, Julien takes refuge in the mountains, where his superior soul may not be surprised -- unguarded -- by the watchful eyes of society. Stendhal intervenes at this point to assure the reader that Julien will succeed as a hypocrite -- he is only a beginner. This intervention betrays the sympathy of the author for his amoral hero and dictates the reader's reaction. Since the novel is also the story of the education of Julien, Stendhal will intervene periodically to praise or censure the conduct of his hero. For the first time in his life, Julien is happy -- interestingly enough, only when he momentarily forgets his relentless ambition and hypocrisy. His ambition reawakens at a gesture of Mme. de Renal: When she withdraws her hand, Julien vows, in a chivalric way, to force her to leave her hand in his. His code of honor is very demanding and depends entirely upon personal criteria. For Julien, personal honor replaces morality. The chapters advance Mme. de Renal toward her role as mistress more so than Julien toward his of lover, although the affair will necessarily begin awkwardly and almost by accident, both parties lacking experience and even a conception of what love is. The awakening and development of love in his characters is illustrative of the crystallization process that Stendhal elaborated in De l'Amour. The feeling manifests itself autonomously of will and, after a preliminary stage of admiration and hope, soon crystallizes in the mind of the lover. This means that it becomes the exclusive obsession of the victim smitten, and every subject, no matter how far removed in appearance, ultimately leads one back to discover new perfections in the loved one. Mme. de Renal has never before been so deeply moved by a purely agreeable sensation as when she learns that this delightful young man is the stern priest she had anticipated. Note that only when her mind is at ease over the fate of her children does she notice Julien's good looks. She will remain in the early stages of \"admiration\" for a seemingly long period of time because of utter inexperience and ignorance of love. She feels in Julien a kindred spirit and has never imagined that such a man existed, so different is he from the husband whom she has considered the prototype of manhood. She involuntarily conceals her pleasure at the prospect of Julien's staying, her subconscious forcing the opposite reaction in the conscious. Mme. de Renal is greatly moved when she finds Julien beaten by his brothers. She notices the attentiveness that Elisa shows him, then wants to show him kindnesses. Increasingly she disapproves of the lack of delicacy and tact in her husband. Leaning on Julien's arm during a walk, she offers him the gift. His refusal leaves her trembling, and she takes some pleasure in his reprimand. She redoubles her attentions, giving herself the pretext that she has offended him. She becomes physically ill when Elisa speaks to her of Julien's refusal. At this point, Mme. de Renal becomes consciously aware that she is in love; what pleasure it is to plead the cause of Elisa, to speak of Julien knowing that he has refused. She actually faints from the joy that the interview causes her. With this realization does not come guilt since Mme. de Renal is unaware of what love implies. Thus she plunges head on, in her innocence, attending to her toilette with unprecedented care."}

CHAPTER VI ENNUI Non so piu cosa son Cosa facio. MOZART (_Figaro_). Madame de Renal was going out of the salon by the folding window which opened on to the garden with that vivacity and grace which was natural to her when she was free from human observation, when she noticed a young peasant near the entrance gate. He was still almost a child, extremely pale, and looked as though he had been crying. He was in a white shirt and had under his arm a perfectly new suit of violet frieze. The little peasant's complexion was so white and his eyes were so soft, that Madame de Renal's somewhat romantic spirit thought at first that it might be a young girl in disguise, who had come to ask some favour of the M. the Mayor. She took pity on this poor creature, who had stopped at the entrance of the door, and who apparently did not dare to raise its hand to the bell. Madame de Renal approached, forgetting for the moment the bitter chagrin occasioned by the tutor's arrival. Julien, who was turned towards the gate, did not see her advance. He trembled when a soft voice said quite close to his ear: "What do you want here, my child." Julien turned round sharply and was so struck by Madame de Renal's look, full of graciousness as it was, that up to a certain point he forgot to be nervous. Overcome by her beauty he soon forgot everything, even what he had come for. Madame de Renal repeated her question. "I have come here to be tutor, Madame," he said at last, quite ashamed of his tears which he was drying as best as he could. Madame de Renal remained silent. They had a view of each other at close range. Julien had never seen a human being so well-dressed, and above all he had never seen a woman with so dazzling a complexion speak to him at all softly. Madame de Renal observed the big tears which had lingered on the cheeks of the young peasant, those cheeks which had been so pale and were now so pink. Soon she began to laugh with all the mad gaiety of a young girl, she made fun of herself, and was unable to realise the extent of her happiness. So this was that tutor whom she had imagined a dirty, badly dressed priest, who was coming to scold and flog her children. "What! Monsieur," she said to him at last, "you know Latin?" The word "Monsieur" astonished Julien so much that he reflected for a moment. "Yes, Madame," he said timidly. Madame de Renal was so happy that she plucked up the courage to say to Julien, "You will not scold the poor children too much?" "I scold them!" said Julien in astonishment; "why should I?" "You won't, will you, Monsieur," she added after a little silence, in a soft voice whose emotion became more and more intense. "You will be nice to them, you promise me?" To hear himself called "Monsieur" again in all seriousness by so well dressed a lady was beyond all Julien's expectations. He had always said to himself in all the castles of Spain that he had built in his youth, that no real lady would ever condescend to talk to him except when he had a fine uniform. Madame de Renal, on her side, was completely taken in by Julien's beautiful complexion, his big black eyes, and his pretty hair, which was more than usually curly, because he had just plunged his head into the basin of the public fountain in order to refresh himself. She was over-joyed to find that this sinister tutor, whom she had feared to find so harsh and severe to her children, had, as a matter of fact, the timid manner of a girl. The contrast between her fears and what she now saw, proved a great event for Madame de Renal's peaceful temperament. Finally, she recovered from her surprise. She was astonished to find herself at the gate of her own house talking in this way and at such close quarters to this young and somewhat scantily dressed man. "Let us go in, Monsieur," she said to him with a certain air of embarrassment. During Madame de Renal's whole life she had never been so deeply moved by such a sense of pure pleasure. Never had so gracious a vision followed in the wake of her disconcerting fears. So these pretty children of whom she took such care were not after all to fall into the hands of a dirty grumbling priest. She had scarcely entered the vestibule when she turned round towards Julien, who was following her trembling. His astonishment at the sight of so fine a house proved but an additional charm in Madame de Renal's eyes. She could not believe her own eyes. It seemed to her, above all, that the tutor ought to have a black suit. "But is it true, Monsieur," she said to him, stopping once again, and in mortal fear that she had made a mistake, so happy had her discovery made her. "Is it true that you know Latin?" These words offended Julien's pride, and dissipated the charming atmosphere which he had been enjoying for the last quarter of an hour. "Yes, Madame," he said, trying to assume an air of coldness, "I know Latin as well as the cure, who has been good enough to say sometimes that I know it even better." Madame de Renal thought that Julien looked extremely wicked. He had stopped two paces from her. She approached and said to him in a whisper: "You won't beat my children the first few days, will you, even if they do not know their lessons?" The softness and almost supplication of so beautiful a lady made Julien suddenly forget what he owed to his reputation as a Latinist. Madame de Renal's face was close to his own. He smelt the perfume of a woman's summer clothing, a quite astonishing experience for a poor peasant. Julien blushed extremely, and said with a sigh in a faltering voice: "Fear nothing, Madame, I will obey you in everything." It was only now, when her anxiety about her children had been relieved once and for all, that Madame de Renal was struck by Julien's extreme beauty. The comparative effeminancy of his features and his air of extreme embarrassment did not seem in any way ridiculous to a woman who was herself extremely timid. The male air, which is usually considered essential to a man's beauty, would have terrified her. "How old are you, sir," she said to Julien. "Nearly nineteen." "My elder son is eleven," went on Madame de Renal, who had completely recovered her confidence. "He will be almost a chum for you. You will talk sensibly to him. His father started beating him once. The child was ill for a whole week, and yet it was only a little tap." What a difference between him and me, thought Julien. Why, it was only yesterday that my father beat me. How happy these rich people are. Madame de Renal, who had already begun to observe the fine nuances of the workings in the tutor's mind, took this fit of sadness for timidity and tried to encourage him. "What is your name, Monsieur?" she said to him, with an accent and a graciousness whose charm Julien appreciated without being able to explain. "I am called Julien Sorel, Madame. I feel nervous of entering a strange house for the first time in my life. I have need of your protection and I want you to make many allowances for me during the first few days. I have never been to the college, I was too poor. I have never spoken to anyone else except my cousin who was Surgeon-Major, Member of the Legion of Honour, and M. the cure Chelan. He will give you a good account of me. My brothers always used to beat me, and you must not believe them if they speak badly of me to you. You must forgive my faults, Madame. I shall always mean everything for the best." Julien had regained his confidence during this long speech. He was examining Madame de Renal. Perfect grace works wonders when it is natural to the character, and above all, when the person whom it adorns never thinks of trying to affect it. Julien, who was quite a connoisseur in feminine beauty, would have sworn at this particular moment that she was not more than twenty. The rash idea of kissing her hand immediately occurred to him. He soon became frightened of his idea. A minute later he said to himself, it will be an act of cowardice if I do not carry out an action which may be useful to me, and lessen the contempt which this fine lady probably has for a poor workman just taken away from the saw-mill. Possibly Julien was a little encouraged through having heard some young girls repeat on Sundays during the last six months the words "pretty boy." During this internal debate, Madame de Renal was giving him two or three hints on the way to commence handling the children. The strain Julien was putting on himself made him once more very pale. He said with an air of constraint. "I will never beat your children, Madame. I swear it before God." In saying this, he dared to take Madame de Renal's hand and carry it to his lips. She was astonished at this act, and after reflecting, became shocked. As the weather was very warm, her arm was quite bare underneath the shawl, and Julien's movement in carrying her hand to his lips entirely uncovered it. After a few moments she scolded herself. It seemed to her that her anger had not been quick enough. M. de Renal, who had heard voices, came out of his study, and assuming the same air of paternal majesty with which he celebrated marriages at the mayoral office, said to Julien: "It is essential for me to have a few words with you before my children see you." He made Julien enter a room and insisted on his wife being present, although she wished to leave them alone. Having closed the door M. Renal sat down. "M. the cure has told me that you are a worthy person, and everybody here will treat you with respect. If I am satisfied with you I will later on help you in having a little establishment of your own. I do not wish you to see either anything more of your relatives or your friends. Their tone is bound to be prejudicial to my children. Here are thirty-six francs for the first month, but I insist on your word not to give a sou of this money to your father." M. de Renal was piqued against the old man for having proved the shrewder bargainer. "Now, Monsieur, for I have given orders for everybody here to call you Monsieur, and you will appreciate the advantage of having entered the house of real gentle folk, now, Monsieur, it is not becoming for the children to see you in a jacket." "Have the servants seen him?" said M. de Renal to his wife. "No, my dear," she answered, with an air of deep pensiveness. "All the better. Put this on," he said to the surprised young man, giving him a frock-coat of his own. "Let us now go to M. Durand's the draper." When M. de Renal came back with the new tutor in his black suit more than an hour later, he found his wife still seated in the same place. She felt calmed by Julien's presence. When she examined him she forgot to be frightened of him. Julien was not thinking about her at all. In spite of all his distrust of destiny and mankind, his soul at this moment was as simple as that of a child. It seemed as though he had lived through years since the moment, three hours ago, when he had been all atremble in the church. He noticed Madame de Renal's frigid manner and realised that she was very angry, because he had dared to kiss her hand. But the proud consciousness which was given to him by the feel of clothes so different from those which he usually wore, transported him so violently and he had so great a desire to conceal his exultation, that all his movements were marked by a certain spasmodic irresponsibility. Madame de Renal looked at him with astonishment. "Monsieur," said M. de Renal to him, "dignity above all is necessary if you wish to be respected by my children." "Sir," answered Julien, "I feel awkward in my new clothes. I am a poor peasant and have never wore anything but jackets. If you allow it, I will retire to my room." "What do you think of this 'acquisition?'" said M. de Renal to his wife. Madame de Renal concealed the truth from her husband, obeying an almost instinctive impulse which she certainly did not own to herself. "I am not as fascinated as you are by this little peasant. Your favours will result in his not being able to keep his place, and you will have to send him back before the month is out." "Oh, well! we'll send him back then, he cannot run me into more than a hundred francs, and Verrieres will have got used to seeing M. de Renal's children with a tutor. That result would not have been achieved if I had allowed Julien to wear a workman's clothes. If I do send him back, I shall of course keep the complete black suit which I have just ordered at the draper's. All he will keep is the ready-made suit which I have just put him into at the the tailor's." The hour that Julien spent in his room seemed only a minute to Madame de Renal. The children who had been told about their new tutor began to overwhelm their mother with questions. Eventually Julien appeared. He was quite another man. It would be incorrect to say that he was grave--he was the very incarnation of gravity. He was introduced to the children and spoke to them in a manner that astonished M. de Renal himself. "I am here, gentlemen, he said, as he finished his speech, to teach you Latin. You know what it means to recite a lesson. Here is the Holy Bible, he said, showing them a small volume in thirty-two mo., bound in black. It deals especially with the history of our Lord Jesus Christ and is the part which is called the New Testament. I shall often make you recite your lesson, but do you make me now recite mine." Adolphe, the eldest of the children, had taken up the book. "Open it anywhere you like," went on Julien and tell me the first word of any verse, "I will then recite by heart that sacred book which governs our conduct towards the whole world, until you stop me." Adolphe opened the book and read a word, and Julien recited the whole of the page as easily as though he had been talking French. M. de Renal looked at his wife with an air of triumph The children, seeing the astonishment of their parents, opened their eyes wide. A servant came to the door of the drawing-room; Julien went on talking Latin. The servant first remained motionless, and then disappeared. Soon Madame's house-maid, together with the cook, arrived at the door. Adolphe had already opened the book at eight different places, while Julien went on reciting all the time with the same facility. "Great heavens!" said the cook, a good and devout girl, quite aloud, "what a pretty little priest!" M. de Renal's self-esteem became uneasy. Instead of thinking of examining the tutor, his mind was concentrated in racking his memory for some other Latin words. Eventually he managed to spout a phrase of Horace. Julien knew no other Latin except his Bible. He answered with a frown. "The holy ministry to which I destine myself has forbidden me to read so profane a poet." M. de Renal quoted quite a large number of alleged verses from Horace. He explained to his children who Horace was, but the admiring children, scarcely attended to what he was saying: they were looking at Julien. The servants were still at the door. Julien thought that he ought to prolong the test--"M. Stanislas-Xavier also," he said to the youngest of the children, "must give me a passage from the holy book." Little Stanislas, who was quite flattered, read indifferently the first word of a verse, and Julien said the whole page. To put the finishing touch on M. de Renal's triumph, M. Valenod, the owner of the fine Norman horses, and M. Charcot de Maugiron, the sub-prefect of the district came in when Julien was reciting. This scene earned for Julien the title of Monsieur; even the servants did not dare to refuse it to him. That evening all Verrieres flocked to M. de Renal's to see the prodigy. Julien answered everybody in a gloomy manner and kept his own distance. His fame spread so rapidly in the town that a few hours afterwards M. de Renal, fearing that he would be taken away by somebody else, proposed to that he should sign an engagement for two years. "No, Monsieur," Julien answered coldly, "if you wished to dismiss me, I should have to go. An engagement which binds me without involving you in any obligation is not an equal one and I refuse it." Julien played his cards so well, that in less than a month of his arrival at the house, M. de Renal himself respected him. As the cure had quarrelled with both M. de Renal and M. Valenod, there was no one who could betray Julien's old passion for Napoleon. He always spoke of Napoleon with abhorrence. CHAPTER VII THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES They only manage to touch the heart by wounding it.--_A Modern_. The children adored him, but he did not like them in the least. His thoughts were elsewhere. But nothing which the little brats ever did made him lose his patience. Cold, just and impassive, and none the less liked, inasmuch his arrival had more or less driven ennui out of the house, he was a good tutor. As for himself, he felt nothing but hate and abhorrence for that good society into which he had been admitted; admitted, it is true at the bottom of the table, a circumstance which perhaps explained his hate and his abhorrence. There were certain 'full-dress' dinners at which he was scarcely able to control his hate for everything that surrounded him. One St. Louis feast day in particular, when M. Valenod was monopolizing the conversation of M. de Renal, Julien was on the point of betraying himself. He escaped into the garden on the pretext of finding the children. "What praise of honesty," he exclaimed. "One would say that was the only virtue, and yet think how they respect and grovel before a man who has almost doubled and trebled his fortune since he has administered the poor fund. I would bet anything that he makes a profit even out of the monies which are intended for the foundlings of these poor creatures whose misery is even more sacred than that of others. Oh, Monsters! Monsters! And I too, am a kind of foundling, hated as I am by my father, my brothers, and all my family." Some days before the feast of St. Louis, when Julien was taking a solitary walk and reciting his breviary in the little wood called the Belvedere, which dominates the _Cours de la Fidelite_, he had endeavoured in vain to avoid his two brothers whom he saw coming along in the distance by a lonely path. The jealousy of these coarse workmen had been provoked to such a pitch by their brother's fine black suit, by his air of extreme respectability, and by the sincere contempt which he had for them, that they had beaten him until he had fainted and was bleeding all over. Madame de Renal, who was taking a walk with M. de Renal and the sub-prefect, happened to arrive in the little wood. She saw Julien lying on the ground and thought that he was dead. She was so overcome that she made M. Valenod jealous. His alarm was premature. Julien found Madame de Renal very pretty, but he hated her on account of her beauty, for that had been the first danger which had almost stopped his career. He talked to her as little as possible, in order to make her forget the transport which had induced him to kiss her hand on the first day. Madame de Renal's housemaid, Elisa, had lost no time in falling in love with the young tutor. She often talked about him to her mistress. Elisa's love had earned for Julien the hatred of one of the men-servants. One day he heard the man saying to Elisa, "You haven't a word for me now that this dirty tutor has entered the household." The insult was undeserved, but Julien with the instinctive vanity of a pretty boy redoubled his care of his personal appearance. M. Valenod's hate also increased. He said publicly, that it was not becoming for a young abbe to be such a fop. Madame de Renal observed that Julien talked more frequently than usual to Mademoiselle Elisa. She learnt that the reason of these interviews was the poverty of Julien's extremely small wardrobe. He had so little linen that he was obliged to have it very frequently washed outside the house, and it was in these little matters that Elisa was useful to him. Madame de Renal was touched by this extreme poverty which she had never suspected before. She was anxious to make him presents, but she did not dare to do so. This inner conflict was the first painful emotion that Julien had caused her. Till then Julien's name had been synonymous with a pure and quite intellectual joy. Tormented by the idea of Julien's poverty, Madame de Renal spoke to her husband about giving him some linen for a present. "What nonsense," he answered, "the very idea of giving presents to a man with whom we are perfectly satisfied and who is a good servant. It will only be if he is remiss that we shall have to stimulate his zeal." Madame de Renal felt humiliated by this way of looking at things, though she would never have noticed it in the days before Julien's arrival. She never looked at the young abbe's attire, with its combination of simplicity and absolute cleanliness, without saying to herself, "The poor boy, how can he manage?" Little by little, instead of being shocked by all Julien's deficiencies, she pitied him for them. Madame de Renal was one of those provincial women whom one is apt to take for fools during the first fortnight of acquaintanceship. She had no experience of the world and never bothered to keep up the conversation. Nature had given her a refined and fastidious soul, while that instinct for happiness which is innate in all human beings caused her, as a rule, to pay no attention to the acts of the coarse persons in whose midst chance had thrown her. If she had received the slightest education, she would have been noticeable for the spontaneity and vivacity of her mind, but being an heiress, she had been brought up in a Convent of Nuns, who were passionate devotees of the _Sacred Heart of Jesus_ and animated by a violent hate for the French as being the enemies of the Jesuits. Madame de Renal had had enough sense to forget quickly all the nonsense which she had learned at the convent, but had substituted nothing for it, and in the long run knew nothing. The flatteries which had been lavished on her when still a child, by reason of the great fortune of which she was the heiress, and a decided tendency to passionate devotion, had given her quite an inner life of her own. In spite of her pose of perfect affability and her elimination of her individual will which was cited as a model example by all the husbands in Verrieres and which made M. de Renal feel very proud, the moods of her mind were usually dictated by a spirit of the most haughty discontent. Many a princess who has become a bye-word for pride has given infinitely more attention to what her courtiers have been doing around her than did this apparently gentle and demure woman to anything which her husband either said or did. Up to the time of Julien's arrival she had never really troubled about anything except her children. Their little maladies, their troubles, their little joys, occupied all the sensibility of that soul, who, during her whole life, had adored no one but God, when she had been at the Sacred Heart of Besancon. A feverish attack of one of her sons would affect her almost as deeply as if the child had died, though she would not deign to confide in anyone. A burst of coarse laughter, a shrug of the shoulders, accompanied by some platitude on the folly of women, had been the only welcome her husband had vouchsafed to those confidences about her troubles, which the need of unburdening herself had induced her to make during the first years of their marriage. Jokes of this kind, and above all, when they were directed at her children's ailments, were exquisite torture to Madame de Renal. And these jokes were all she found to take the place of those exaggerated sugary flatteries with which she had been regaled at the Jesuit Convent where she had passed her youth. Her education had been given her by suffering. Too proud even to talk to her friend, Madame Derville, about troubles of this kind, she imagined that all men were like her husband, M. Valenod, and the sub-prefect, M. Charcot de Maugiron. Coarseness, and the most brutal callousness to everything except financial gain, precedence, or orders, together with blind hate of every argument to which they objected, seemed to her as natural to the male sex as wearing boots and felt hats. After many years, Madame de Renal had still failed to acclimatize herself to those monied people in whose society she had to live. Hence the success of the little peasant Julien. She found in the sympathy of this proud and noble soul a sweet enjoyment which had all the glamour and fascination of novelty. Madame de Renal soon forgave him that extreme ignorance, which constituted but an additional charm, and the roughness of his manner which she succeeded in correcting. She thought that he was worth listening to, even when the conversation turned on the most ordinary events, even in fact when it was only a question of a poor dog which had been crushed as he crossed the street by a peasant's cart going at a trot. The sight of the dog's pain made her husband indulge in his coarse laugh, while she noticed Julien frown, with his fine black eyebrows which were so beautifully arched. Little by little, it seemed to her that generosity, nobility of soul and humanity were to be found in nobody else except this young abbe. She felt for him all the sympathy and even all the admiration which those virtues excite in well-born souls. If the scene had been Paris, Julien's position towards Madame de Renal would have been soon simplified. But at Paris, love is a creature of novels. The young tutor and his timid mistress would soon have found the elucidation of their position in three or four novels, and even in the couplets of the Gymnase Theatre. The novels which have traced out for them the part they would play, and showed them the model which they were to imitate, and Julien would sooner or later have been forced by his vanity to follow that model, even though it had given him no pleasure and had perhaps actually gone against the grain. If the scene had been laid in a small town in Aveyron or the Pyrenees, the slightest episode would have been rendered crucial by the fiery condition of the atmosphere. But under our more gloomy skies, a poor young man who is only ambitious because his natural refinement makes him feel the necessity of some of those joys which only money can give, can see every day a woman of thirty who is sincerely virtuous, is absorbed in her children, and never goes to novels for her examples of conduct. Everything goes slowly, everything happens gradually, in the provinces where there is far more naturalness. Madame de Renal was often overcome to the point of tears when she thought of the young tutor's poverty. Julien surprised her one day actually crying. "Oh Madame! has any misfortune happened to you?" "No, my friend," she answered, "call the children, let us go for a walk." She took his arm and leant on it in a manner that struck Julien as singular. It was the first time she had called Julien "My friend." Towards the end of the walk, Julien noticed that she was blushing violently. She slackened her pace. "You have no doubt heard," she said, without looking at him, "that I am the only heiress of a very rich aunt who lives at Besancon. She loads me with presents.... My sons are getting on so wonderfully that I should like to ask you to accept a small present as a token of my gratitude. It is only a matter of a few louis to enable you to get some linen. But--" she added, blushing still more, and she left off speaking-- "But what, Madame?" said Julien. "It is unnecessary," she went on lowering her head, "to mention this to my husband." "I may not be big, Madame, but I am not mean," answered Julien, stopping, and drawing himself up to his full height, with his eyes shining with rage, "and this is what you have not realised sufficiently. I should be lower than a menial if I were to put myself in the position of concealing from M de. Renal anything at all having to do with my money." Madame de Renal was thunderstruck. "The Mayor," went on Julien, "has given me on five occasions sums of thirty-six francs since I have been living in his house. I am ready to show any account-book to M. de Renal and anyone else, even to M. Valenod who hates me." As the result of this outburst, Madame de Renal remained pale and nervous, and the walk ended without either one or the other finding any pretext for renewing the conversation. Julien's proud heart had found it more and more impossible to love Madame de Renal. As for her, she respected him, she admired him, and she had been scolded by him. Under the pretext of making up for the involuntary humiliation which she had caused him, she indulged in acts of the most tender solicitude. The novelty of these attentions made Madame de Renal happy for eight days. Their effect was to appease to some extent Julien's anger. He was far from seeing anything in them in the nature of a fancy for himself personally. "That is just what rich people are," he said to himself--"they snub you and then they think they can make up for everything by a few monkey tricks." Madame de Renal's heart was too full, and at the same time too innocent, for her not too tell her husband, in spite of her resolutions not to do so, about the offer she had made to Julien, and the manner in which she had been rebuffed. "How on earth," answered M. de Renal, keenly piqued, "could you put up with a refusal on the part of a servant,"--and, when Madame de Renal protested against the word "Servant," "I am using, madam, the words of the late Prince of Conde, when he presented his Chamberlains to his new wife. 'All these people' he said 'are servants.' I have also read you this passage from the Memoirs of Besenval, a book which is indispensable on all questions of etiquette. 'Every person, not a gentleman, who lives in your house and receives a salary is your servant.' I'll go and say a few words to M. Julien and give him a hundred francs." "Oh, my dear," said Madame De Renal trembling, "I hope you won't do it before the servants!" "Yes, they might be jealous and rightly so," said her husband as he took his leave, thinking of the greatness of the sum. Madame de Renal fell on a chair almost fainting in her anguish. He is going to humiliate Julien, and it is my fault! She felt an abhorrence for her husband and hid her face in her hands. She resolved that henceforth she would never make any more confidences. When she saw Julien again she was trembling all over. Her chest was so cramped that she could not succeed in pronouncing a single word. In her embarrassment she took his hands and pressed them. "Well, my friend," she said to him at last, "are you satisfied with my husband?" "How could I be otherwise," answered Julien, with a bitter smile, "he has given me a hundred francs." Madame de Renal looked at him doubtfully. "Give me your arm," she said at last, with a courageous intonation that Julien had not heard before. She dared to go as far as the shop of the bookseller of Verrieres, in spite of his awful reputation for Liberalism. In the shop she chose ten louis worth of books for a present for her sons. But these books were those which she knew Julien was wanting. She insisted on each child writing his name then and there in the bookseller's shop in those books which fell to his lot. While Madame de Renal was rejoicing over the kind reparation which she had had the courage to make to Julien, the latter was overwhelmed with astonishment at the quantity of books which he saw at the bookseller's. He had never dared to enter so profane a place. His heart was palpitating. Instead of trying to guess what was passing in Madame de Renal's heart he pondered deeply over the means by which a young theological student could procure some of those books. Eventually it occurred to him that it would be possible, with tact, to persuade M. de Renal that one of the proper subjects of his sons' curriculum would be the history of the celebrated gentlemen who had been born in the province. After a month of careful preparation Julien witnessed the success of this idea. The success was so great that he actually dared to risk mentioning to M. de Renal in conversation, a matter which the noble mayor found disagreeable from quite another point of view. The suggestion was to contribute to the fortune of a Liberal by taking a subscription at the bookseller's. M. de Renal agreed that it would be wise to give his elder son a first hand acquaintance with many works which he would hear mentioned in conversation when he went to the Military School. But Julien saw that the mayor had determined to go no further. He suspected some secret reason but could not guess it. "I was thinking, sir," he said to him one day, "that it would be highly undesirable for the name of so good a gentleman as a Renal to appear on a bookseller's dirty ledger." M. de Renal's face cleared. "It would also be a black mark," continued Julien in a more humble tone, "against a poor theology student if it ever leaked out that his name had been on the ledger of a bookseller who let out books. The Liberals might go so far as to accuse me of having asked for the most infamous books. Who knows if they will not even go so far as to write the titles of those perverse volumes after my name?" But Julien was getting off the track. He noticed that the Mayor's physiognomy was re-assuming its expression of embarrassment and displeasure. Julien was silent. "I have caught my man," he said to himself. It so happened that a few days afterwards the elder of the children asked Julien, in M. de Renal's presence, about a book which had been advertised in the _Quotidienne_. "In order to prevent the Jacobin Party having the slightest pretext for a score," said the young tutor, "and yet give me the means of answering M. de Adolphe's question, you can make your most menial servant take out a subscription at the booksellers." "That's not a bad idea," said M. de Renal, who was obviously very delighted. "You will have to stipulate all the same," said Julien in that solemn and almost melancholy manner which suits some people so well when they see the realization of matters which they have desired for a long time past, "you will have to stipulate that the servant should not take out any novels. Those dangerous books, once they got into the house, might corrupt Madame de Renal's maids, and even the servant himself." "You are forgetting the political pamphlets," went on M. de Renal with an important air. He was anxious to conceal the admiration with which the cunning "middle course" devised by his children's tutor had filled him. In this way Julien's life was made up of a series of little acts of diplomacy, and their success gave him far more food for thought than the marked manifestation of favouritism which he could have read at any time in Madame de Renal's heart, had he so wished. The psychological position in which he had found himself all his life was renewed again in the mayor of Verrieres' house. Here in the same way as at his father's saw-mill, he deeply despised the people with whom he lived, and was hated by them. He saw every day in the conversation of the sub-perfect, M. Valenod and the other friends of the family, about things which had just taken place under their very eyes, how little ideas corresponded to reality. If an action seemed to Julien worthy of admiration, it was precisely that very action which would bring down upon itself the censure of the people with whom he lived. His inner mental reply always was, "What beasts or what fools!" The joke was that, in spite of all his pride, he often understood absolutely nothing what they were talking about. Throughout his whole life he had only spoken sincerely to the old Surgeon-Major. The few ideas he had were about Buonaparte's Italian Campaigns or else surgery. His youthful courage revelled in the circumstantial details of the most terrible operations. He said to himself. "I should not have flinched." The first time that Madame de Renal tried to enter into conversation independently of the children's education, he began to talk of surgical operations. She grew pale and asked him to leave off. Julien knew nothing beyond that. So it came about that, though he passed his life in Madame de Renal's company, the most singular silence would reign between them as soon as they were alone. When he was in the salon, she noticed in his eyes, in spite of all the humbleness of his demeanour, an air of intellectual superiority towards everyone who came to visit her. If she found herself alone with him for a single moment, she saw that he was palpably embarrassed. This made her feel uneasy, for her woman's instinct caused her to realise that this embarrassment was not inspired by any tenderness. Owing to some mysterious idea, derived from some tale of good society, such as the old Surgeon-Major had seen it, Julien felt humiliated whenever the conversation languished on any occasion when he found himself in a woman's society, as though the particular pause were his own special fault. This sensation was a hundred times more painful in _tete-a-tete_. His imagination, full as it was of the most extravagant and most Spanish ideas of what a man ought to say when he is alone with a woman, only suggested to the troubled youth things which were absolutely impossible. His soul was in the clouds. Nevertheless he was unable to emerge from this most humiliating silence. Consequently, during his long walks with Madame de Renal and the children, the severity of his manner was accentuated by the poignancy of his sufferings. He despised himself terribly. If, by any luck, he made himself speak, he came out with the most absurd things. To put the finishing touch on his misery, he saw his own absurdity and exaggerated its extent, but what he did not see was the expression in his eyes, which were so beautiful and betokened so ardent a soul, that like good actors, they sometimes gave charm to something which is really devoid of it. Madame de Renal noticed that when he was alone with her he never chanced to say a good thing except when he was taken out of himself by some unexpected event, and consequently forgot to try and turn a compliment. As the friends of the house did not spoil her by regaling her with new and brilliant ideas, she enjoyed with delight all the flashes of Julien's intellect. After the fall of Napoleon, every appearance of gallantry has been severely exiled from provincial etiquette. People are frightened of losing their jobs. All rascals look to the religious order for support, and hypocrisy has made firm progress even among the Liberal classes. One's ennui is doubled. The only pleasures left are reading and agriculture. Madame de Renal, the rich heiress of a devout aunt, and married at sixteen to a respectable gentleman, had never felt or seen in her whole life anything that had the slightest resemblance in the whole world to love. Her confessor, the good cure Chelan, had once mentioned love to her, in discussing the advances of M. de Valenod, and had drawn so loathsome a picture of the passion that the word now stood to her for nothing but the most abject debauchery. She had regarded love, such as she had come across it, in the very small number of novels with which chance had made her acquainted, as an exception if not indeed as something absolutely abnormal. It was, thanks to this ignorance, that Madame de Renal, although incessantly absorbed in Julien, was perfectly happy, and never thought of reproaching herself in the slightest. CHAPTER VIII LITTLE EPISODES "Then there were sighs, the deeper for suppression, And stolen glances sweeter for the theft, And burning blushes, though for no transgression." _Don Juan_, c. I, st. 74. It was only when Madame de Renal began to think of her maid Elisa that there was some slight change in that angelic sweetness which she owed both to her natural character and her actual happiness. The girl had come into a fortune, went to confess herself to the cure Chelan and confessed to him her plan of marrying Julien. The cure was truly rejoiced at his friend's good fortune, but he was extremely surprised when Julien resolutely informed him that Mademoiselle Elisa's offer could not suit him. "Beware, my friend, of what is passing within your heart," said the cure with a frown, "I congratulate you on your mission, if that is the only reason why you despise a more than ample fortune. It is fifty-six years since I was first cure of Verrieres, and yet I shall be turned out, according to all appearances. I am distressed by it, and yet my income amounts to eight hundred francs. I inform you of this detail so that you may not be under any illusions as to what awaits you in your career as a priest. If you think of paying court to the men who enjoy power, your eternal damnation is assured. You may make your fortune, but you will have to do harm to the poor, flatter the sub-prefect, the mayor, the man who enjoys prestige, and pander to his passion; this conduct, which in the world is called knowledge of life, is not absolutely incompatible with salvation so far as a layman is concerned; but in our career we have to make a choice; it is a question of making one's fortune either in this world or the next; there is no middle course. Come, my dear friend, reflect, and come back in three days with a definite answer. I am pained to detect that there is at the bottom of your character a sombre passion which is far from indicating to me that moderation and that perfect renunciation of earthly advantages so necessary for a priest; I augur well of your intellect, but allow me to tell you," added the good cure with tears in his eyes, "I tremble for your salvation in your career as a priest." Julien was ashamed of his emotion; he found himself loved for the first time in his life; he wept with delight; and went to hide his tears in the great woods behind Verrieres. "Why am I in this position?" he said to himself at last, "I feel that I would give my life a hundred times over for this good cure Chelan, and he has just proved to me that I am nothing more than a fool. It is especially necessary for me to deceive him, and he manages to find me out. The secret ardour which he refers to is my plan of making my fortune. He thinks I am unworthy of being a priest, that too, just when I was imagining that my sacrifice of fifty louis would give him the very highest idea of my piety and devotion to my mission." "In future," continued Julien, "I will only reckon on those elements in my character which I have tested. Who could have told me that I should find any pleasure in shedding tears? How I should like some one to convince me that I am simply a fool!" Three days later, Julien found the excuse with which he ought to have been prepared on the first day; the excuse was a piece of calumny, but what did it matter? He confessed to the cure, with a great deal of hesitation, that he had been persuaded from the suggested union by a reason he could not explain, inasmuch as it tended to damage a third party. This was equivalent to impeaching Elisa's conduct. M. Chelan found that his manner betrayed a certain worldly fire which was very different from that which ought to have animated a young acolyte. "My friend," he said to him again, "be a good country citizen, respected and educated, rather than a priest without a true mission." So far as words were concerned, Julien answered these new remonstrances very well. He managed to find the words which a young and ardent seminarist would have employed, but the tone in which he pronounced them, together with the thinly concealed fire which blazed in his eye, alarmed M. Chelan. You must not have too bad an opinion of Julien's prospects. He invented with correctness all the words suitable to a prudent and cunning hypocrisy. It was not bad for his age. As for his tone and his gestures, he had spent his life with country people; he had never been given an opportunity of seeing great models. Consequently, as soon as he was given a chance of getting near such gentlemen, his gestures became as admirable as his words. Madame de Renal was astonished that her maid's new fortune did not make her more happy. She saw her repeatedly going to the cure and coming back with tears in her eyes. At last Elisa talked to her of her marriage. Madame de Renal thought she was ill. A kind of fever prevented her from sleeping. She only lived when either her maid or Julien were in sight. She was unable to think of anything except them and the happiness which they would find in their home. Her imagination depicted in the most fascinating colours the poverty of the little house, where they were to live on their income of fifty louis a year. Julien could quite well become an advocate at Bray, the sub-prefecture, two leagues from Verrieres. In that case she would see him sometimes. Madame de Renal sincerely believed she would go mad. She said so to her husband and finally fell ill. That very evening when her maid was attending her, she noticed that the girl was crying. She abhorred Elisa at that moment, and started to scold her; she then begged her pardon. Elisa's tears redoubled. She said if her mistress would allow her, she would tell her all her unhappiness. "Tell me," answered Madame de Renal. "Well, Madame, he refuses me, some wicked people must have spoken badly about me. He believes them." "Who refuses you?" said Madame de Renal, scarcely breathing. "Who else, Madame, but M. Julien," answered the maid sobbing. "M. the cure had been unable to overcome his resistance, for M. the cure thinks that he ought not to refuse an honest girl on the pretext that she has been a maid. After all, M. Julien's father is nothing more than a carpenter, and how did he himself earn his living before he was at Madame's?" Madame de Renal stopped listening; her excessive happiness had almost deprived her of her reason. She made the girl repeat several times the assurance that Julien had refused her, with a positiveness which shut the door on the possibility of his coming round to a more prudent decision. "I will make a last attempt," she said to her maid. "I will speak to M. Julien." The following day, after breakfast, Madame de Renal indulged in the delightful luxury of pleading her rival's cause, and of seeing Elisa's hand and fortune stubbornly refused for a whole hour. Julien gradually emerged from his cautiously worded answers, and finished by answering with spirit Madame de Renal's good advice. She could not help being overcome by the torrent of happiness which, after so many days of despair, now inundated her soul. She felt quite ill. When she had recovered and was comfortably in her own room she sent everyone away. She was profoundly astonished. "Can I be in love with Julien?" she finally said to herself. This discovery, which at any other time would have plunged her into remorse and the deepest agitation, now only produced the effect of a singular, but as it were, indifferent spectacle. Her soul was exhausted by all that she had just gone through, and had no more sensibility to passion left. Madame de Renal tried to work, and fell into a deep sleep; when she woke up she did not frighten herself so much as she ought to have. She was too happy to be able to see anything wrong in anything. Naive and innocent as she was, this worthy provincial woman had never tortured her soul in her endeavours to extract from it a little sensibility to some new shade of sentiment or unhappiness. Entirely absorbed as she had been before Julien's arrival with that mass of work which falls to the lot of a good mistress of a household away from Paris, Madame de Renal thought of passion in the same way in which we think of a lottery: a certain deception, a happiness sought after by fools. The dinner bell rang. Madame de Renal blushed violently. She heard the voice of Julien who was bringing in the children. Having grown somewhat adroit since her falling in love, she complained of an awful headache in order to explain her redness. "That's just like what all women are," answered M. de Renal with a coarse laugh. "Those machines have always got something or other to be put right." Although she was accustomed to this type of wit, Madame de Renal was shocked by the tone of voice. In order to distract herself, she looked at Julien's physiognomy; he would have pleased her at this particular moment, even if he had been the ugliest man imaginable. M. de Renal, who always made a point of copying the habits of the gentry of the court, established himself at Vergy in the first fine days of the spring; this is the village rendered celebrated by the tragic adventure of Gabrielle. A hundred paces from the picturesque ruin of the old Gothic church, M. de Renal owns an old chateau with its four towers and a garden designed like the one in the Tuileries with a great many edging verges of box and avenues of chestnut trees which are cut twice in the year. An adjacent field, crowded with apple trees, served for a promenade. Eight or ten magnificent walnut trees were at the end of the orchard. Their immense foliage went as high as perhaps eighty feet. "Each of these cursed walnut trees," M. de Renal was in the habit of saying, whenever his wife admired them, "costs me the harvest of at least half an acre; corn cannot grow under their shade." Madame de Renal found the sight of the country novel: her admiration reached the point of enthusiasm. The sentiment by which she was animated gave her both ideas and resolution. M. de Renal had returned to the town, for mayoral business, two days after their arrival in Vergy. But Madame de Renal engaged workmen at her own expense. Julien had given her the idea of a little sanded path which was to go round the orchard and under the big walnut trees, and render it possible for the children to take their walk in the very earliest hours of the morning without getting their feet wet from the dew. This idea was put into execution within twenty-four hours of its being conceived. Madame de Renal gaily spent the whole day with Julien in supervising the workmen. When the Mayor of Verrieres came back from the town he was very surprised to find the avenue completed. His arrival surprised Madame de Renal as well. She had forgotten his existence. For two months he talked with irritation about the boldness involved in making so important a repair without consulting him, but Madame de Renal had had it executed at her own expense, a fact which somewhat consoled him. She spent her days in running about the orchard with her children, and in catching butterflies. They had made big hoods of clear gauze with which they caught the poor _lepidoptera_. This is the barbarous name which Julien taught Madame de Renal. For she had had M. Godart's fine work ordered from Besancon, and Julien used to tell her about the strange habits of the creatures. They ruthlessly transfixed them by means of pins in a great cardboard box which Julien had prepared. Madame de Renal and Julien had at last a topic of conversation; he was no longer exposed to the awful torture that had been occasioned by their moments of silence. They talked incessantly and with extreme interest, though always about very innocent matters. This gay, full, active life, pleased the fancy of everyone, except Mademoiselle Elisa who found herself overworked. Madame had never taken so much trouble with her dress, even at carnival time, when there is a ball at Verrieres, she would say; she changes her gowns two or three times a day. As it is not our intention to flatter anyone, we do not propose to deny that Madame de Renal, who had a superb skin, arranged her gowns in such a way as to leave her arms and her bosom very exposed. She was extremely well made, and this style of dress suited her delightfully. "You have never been _so young_, Madame," her Verrieres friends would say to her, when they came to dinner at Vergy (this is one of the local expressions). It is a singular thing, and one which few amongst us will believe, but Madame de Renal had no specific object in taking so much trouble. She found pleasure in it and spent all the time which she did not pass in hunting butterflies with the children and Julien, in working with Elisa at making gowns, without giving the matter a further thought. Her only expedition to Verrieres was caused by her desire to buy some new summer gowns which had just come from Mulhouse. She brought back to Vergy a young woman who was a relative of hers. Since her marriage, Madame de Renal had gradually become attached to Madame Derville, who had once been her school mate at the _Sacre Coeur_. Madame Derville laughed a great deal at what she called her cousin's mad ideas: "I would never have thought of them alone," she said. When Madame de Renal was with her husband, she was ashamed of those sudden ideas, which, are called sallies in Paris, and thought them quite silly: but Madame Derville's presence gave her courage. She would start to telling her her thoughts in a timid voice, but after the ladies had been alone for a long time, Madame de Renal's brain became more animated, and a long morning spent together by the two friends passed like a second, and left them in the best of spirits. On this particular journey, however, the acute Madame Derville thought her cousin much less merry, but much more happy than usual. Julien, on his side, had since coming to the country lived like an absolute child, and been as happy as his pupils in running after the butterflies. After so long a period of constraint and wary diplomacy, he was at last alone and far from human observation; he was instinctively free from any apprehension on the score of Madame de Renal, and abandoned himself to the sheer pleasure of being alive, which is so keen at so young an age, especially among the most beautiful mountains in the world. Ever since Madame Derville's arrival, Julien thought that she was his friend; he took the first opportunity of showing her the view from the end of the new avenue, under the walnut tree; as a matter of fact it is equal, if not superior, to the most wonderful views that Switzerland and the Italian lakes can offer. If you ascend the steep slope which commences some paces from there, you soon arrive at great precipices fringed by oak forests, which almost jut on to the river. It was to the peaked summits of these rocks that Julien, who was now happy, free, and king of the household into the bargain, would take the two friends, and enjoy their admiration these sublime views. "To me it's like Mozart's music," Madame Derville would say. The country around Verrieres had been spoilt for Julien by the jealousy of his brothers and the presence of a tyranous and angry father. He was free from these bitter memories at Vergy; for the first time in his life, he failed to see an enemy. When, as frequently happened, M. de Renal was in town, he ventured to read; soon, instead of reading at night time, a procedure, moreover, which involved carefully hiding his lamp at the bottom of a flower-pot turned upside down, he was able to indulge in sleep; in the day, however, in the intervals between the children's lessons, he would come among these rocks with that book which was the one guide of his conduct and object of his enthusiasm. He found in it simultaneously happiness, ecstasy and consolation for his moments of discouragement. Certain remarks of Napoleon about women, several discussions about the merits of the novels which were fashionable in his reign, furnished him now for the first time with some ideas which any other young man of his age would have had for a long time. The dog days arrived. They started the habit of spending the evenings under an immense pine tree some yards from the house. The darkness was profound. One evening, Julien was speaking and gesticulating, enjoying to the full the pleasure of being at his best when talking to young women; in one of his gestures, he touched the hand of Madame de Renal which was leaning on the back of one of those chairs of painted wood, which are so frequently to be seen in gardens. The hand was quickly removed, but Julien thought it a point of duty to secure that that hand should not be removed when he touched it. The idea of a duty to be performed and the consciousness of his stultification, or rather of his social inferiority, if he should fail in achieving it, immediately banished all pleasure from his heart.

Chapters 6-8

https://web.archive.org/web/20201128052739/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/the-red-and-the-black/summary-and-analysis/part-1-chapters-68

Mme. de Renal receives Julien, and after their mutual embarrassment has changed -- for Mme. de Renal to relief and for Julien to a beginning of composure -- he is outfitted in a new suit and presented to the children. Now in complete command of himself, Julien recites at random entire passages of the Bible in Latin, earning the respect and admiration of all. Within a month, he is considered as a real prize by M. de Renal. During the next five weeks, Julien engages in petty negotiations beginning his scheme of success through hypocrisy. The self-righteousness that this society feels causes him to feel superior to it, and this, in turn, alienates him from it. His utter ignorance of most matters prevents him, at this stage, from understanding much of what he hears. He craftily convinces Renal of the necessity of taking out a subscription with the liberal bookseller, presenting the matter in such a way that it will not offend the vanity of the Royalist. Julien is extremely wary of Mme. de Renal since her beauty caused him to stumble when he first arrived. She, on the other hand, is becoming increasingly drawn to this charming and intelligent young man. Unaware of what love is, she gives no thought to the fact that she is attentive to his needs and that her husband is becoming increasingly unbearable to her. Mme. de Renal's maid, Elisa, has designs on Julien, and Father Chelan urges him to consider favorably the possibility of such a match and discourages him from entering the priesthood. Julien's burning ardor makes Chelan fear for his salvation should he pursue a career in the Church. Julien retreats, then returns to try to impress the priest by a new tactic. To no avail, for Chelan is not fooled. This is a defeat for Julien. Mme. de Renal is overjoyed to hear Elisa confess tearfully that Julien has rejected her. Soon Mme. de Renal becomes aware that she is in love with Julien. In the spring, the family moves to the summer home in the neighboring village of Vergy. Animated by a fresh outlook, Mme. de Renal agrees to Julien's suggestion to create a meandering path "a la Julie," among the walnut trees. Catching butterflies provides a new activity and topic of conversation for the inexperienced couple. Mme. de Renal changes clothes two or three times a day, unaware, however, of what prompts this interest in her appearance. The arrival of Mme. Derville creates a happy threesome. Julien relaxes to the point of reading not only at night in the solitude of his room but during the day. This increased reading finally gives him some ideas about women. The three begin to assemble at night outside in the darkness for conversation. One evening, in his animated gesticulation, Julien happens to touch Mme. de Renal's hand. When it is instantly withdrawn, he decides it is his duty to hold it. A new challenge disturbs his peace.

In these chapters, Stendhal brings Julien and Mme. de Renal together for the first time, then concentrates on their separate progression. As will be typical of Julien's character, he reacts spontaneously when surprised by Mme. de Renal. An aspiring hypocrite must learn to control his reactions. He hates her "because she is beautiful" -- that is, her beauty produces a violent reaction in him, a superior being born to exalt in beauty and to be offended by ugliness, but his reaction is spontaneous, and in betraying it, he ruins his "pose." His pride is offended when she expresses amazement at his knowledge of Latin. Her supplicating tone causes him momentarily to forget his pride, and as his self-confidence becomes progressively stronger, he dares himself to kiss her hand. This daring act he accomplishes. His composure is shattered again when he gives way to the expression of joy, caused by his new clothes, but once again, after collecting himself in his room, he reassumes the calm and dignity befitting a tutor. The scene relating Julien's arrival is important for several reasons. It establishes the pattern of conduct that will characterize him throughout the novel. In him there seethes a conflict between spontaneous expression of joy associated with happiness and the hypocritical wearing of a mask imposed by ambition. The scene illustrates the tender irony that characterizes Stendhal's attitude toward his "chosen" characters. He deliberately places them in awkward situations that will challenge and embarrass them after already creating them with a contradictory nature that will cause them to stumble. He has great affection for his "chosen" characters, but he demands of them as much as he demands of himself. Julien's petty maneuvering wins him minor triumphs in this household which he disdains. Throughout the novel, his prodigious memory will be a sure means of winning for him the admiration of others, but it seems to produce a special effect on the provincial bourgeois, incapable, says Stendhal, of appreciating intelligence in any other form. The almost photographic memory that Julien possesses would seem to serve in place of keen reasoning and eloquence to convince the reader of Julien's superior nature, as we will see. Misunderstanding it, Julien rebuffs Mme. de Renal's offer of money and succeeds in tricking the mayor on two occasions. His social behavior is quite unacceptable, and his efforts to play a role accentuate his ineptness. On the other hand, he unknowingly charms Mme. de Renal with his eyes. He is unable to deceive Chelan, and the great emotion he experiences at the love and concern shown him by the priest betrays an ardent soul thirsting for friendship and happiness. Thus, to enjoy this emotion completely, Julien takes refuge in the mountains, where his superior soul may not be surprised -- unguarded -- by the watchful eyes of society. Stendhal intervenes at this point to assure the reader that Julien will succeed as a hypocrite -- he is only a beginner. This intervention betrays the sympathy of the author for his amoral hero and dictates the reader's reaction. Since the novel is also the story of the education of Julien, Stendhal will intervene periodically to praise or censure the conduct of his hero. For the first time in his life, Julien is happy -- interestingly enough, only when he momentarily forgets his relentless ambition and hypocrisy. His ambition reawakens at a gesture of Mme. de Renal: When she withdraws her hand, Julien vows, in a chivalric way, to force her to leave her hand in his. His code of honor is very demanding and depends entirely upon personal criteria. For Julien, personal honor replaces morality. The chapters advance Mme. de Renal toward her role as mistress more so than Julien toward his of lover, although the affair will necessarily begin awkwardly and almost by accident, both parties lacking experience and even a conception of what love is. The awakening and development of love in his characters is illustrative of the crystallization process that Stendhal elaborated in De l'Amour. The feeling manifests itself autonomously of will and, after a preliminary stage of admiration and hope, soon crystallizes in the mind of the lover. This means that it becomes the exclusive obsession of the victim smitten, and every subject, no matter how far removed in appearance, ultimately leads one back to discover new perfections in the loved one. Mme. de Renal has never before been so deeply moved by a purely agreeable sensation as when she learns that this delightful young man is the stern priest she had anticipated. Note that only when her mind is at ease over the fate of her children does she notice Julien's good looks. She will remain in the early stages of "admiration" for a seemingly long period of time because of utter inexperience and ignorance of love. She feels in Julien a kindred spirit and has never imagined that such a man existed, so different is he from the husband whom she has considered the prototype of manhood. She involuntarily conceals her pleasure at the prospect of Julien's staying, her subconscious forcing the opposite reaction in the conscious. Mme. de Renal is greatly moved when she finds Julien beaten by his brothers. She notices the attentiveness that Elisa shows him, then wants to show him kindnesses. Increasingly she disapproves of the lack of delicacy and tact in her husband. Leaning on Julien's arm during a walk, she offers him the gift. His refusal leaves her trembling, and she takes some pleasure in his reprimand. She redoubles her attentions, giving herself the pretext that she has offended him. She becomes physically ill when Elisa speaks to her of Julien's refusal. At this point, Mme. de Renal becomes consciously aware that she is in love; what pleasure it is to plead the cause of Elisa, to speak of Julien knowing that he has refused. She actually faints from the joy that the interview causes her. With this realization does not come guilt since Mme. de Renal is unaware of what love implies. Thus she plunges head on, in her innocence, attending to her toilette with unprecedented care.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/174-chapters/15.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Picture of Dorian Gray/section_14_part_0.txt

The Picture of Dorian Gray.chapter 15

chapter 15

{"name": "Chapter 15", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210304030722/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/picture-dorian-gray/summary/chapter-15", "summary": "That night, Dorian attends a very dull dinner party at the home of Lady Narborough, a clever but ugly socialite. She's very fond of Dorian, and she apologizes for how dull her other guests are that evening. Fortunately, Lord Henry arrives, which livens up the party a bit. Still, Dorian's feeling listless; he can't touch a bite of the exquisite dinner, and he drowns his sorrows in champagne. Henry and Lady Narborough rag Dorian a bit for being so low. Lady Narborough assumes he's in love, which directs the conversation to related topic, Dorian's friend, the infamous Madame de Ferrol. This famously beautiful lady is on her fourth husband, and they have a pleasant time gossiping sassily about her for a while. However, Dorian is still feeling down. Lady Narborough tells him he ought to get married; Henry agrees, though it doesn't stop him from sharing his cynical views on marriage. The conversation is interrupted by some of the other guests, who really aren't of interest to us. Lord Henry and Dorian take this opportunity to talk privately. Dorian won't admit that anything's wrong, and just says that he's tired. They discuss plans for an upcoming holiday in the countryside. Henry makes the mistake of asking Dorian what he was up to last night; Dorian has a minor freak out, and reacts defensively. Dorian apologizes to Henry for being so irritable, and heads off home, full of anxiety. At home, Dorian can't shake his feeling of terror. He burns Basil's traveling bag, making sure that there's no evidence that he was ever there, then tries to calm down. Suddenly, he's filled with a craving--he reaches inside a cabinet for a small, ornate box. Inside is a mysterious substance that can only be one thing: opium. Dorian puts the box back, then, disguised as a commoner, sneaks out of his house. He hails a cab and asks to be taken to a mysterious, distant location.", "analysis": ""}

That evening, at eight-thirty, exquisitely dressed and wearing a large button-hole of Parma violets, Dorian Gray was ushered into Lady Narborough's drawing-room by bowing servants. His forehead was throbbing with maddened nerves, and he felt wildly excited, but his manner as he bent over his hostess's hand was as easy and graceful as ever. Perhaps one never seems so much at one's ease as when one has to play a part. Certainly no one looking at Dorian Gray that night could have believed that he had passed through a tragedy as horrible as any tragedy of our age. Those finely shaped fingers could never have clutched a knife for sin, nor those smiling lips have cried out on God and goodness. He himself could not help wondering at the calm of his demeanour, and for a moment felt keenly the terrible pleasure of a double life. It was a small party, got up rather in a hurry by Lady Narborough, who was a very clever woman with what Lord Henry used to describe as the remains of really remarkable ugliness. She had proved an excellent wife to one of our most tedious ambassadors, and having buried her husband properly in a marble mausoleum, which she had herself designed, and married off her daughters to some rich, rather elderly men, she devoted herself now to the pleasures of French fiction, French cookery, and French _esprit_ when she could get it. Dorian was one of her especial favourites, and she always told him that she was extremely glad she had not met him in early life. "I know, my dear, I should have fallen madly in love with you," she used to say, "and thrown my bonnet right over the mills for your sake. It is most fortunate that you were not thought of at the time. As it was, our bonnets were so unbecoming, and the mills were so occupied in trying to raise the wind, that I never had even a flirtation with anybody. However, that was all Narborough's fault. He was dreadfully short-sighted, and there is no pleasure in taking in a husband who never sees anything." Her guests this evening were rather tedious. The fact was, as she explained to Dorian, behind a very shabby fan, one of her married daughters had come up quite suddenly to stay with her, and, to make matters worse, had actually brought her husband with her. "I think it is most unkind of her, my dear," she whispered. "Of course I go and stay with them every summer after I come from Homburg, but then an old woman like me must have fresh air sometimes, and besides, I really wake them up. You don't know what an existence they lead down there. It is pure unadulterated country life. They get up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early, because they have so little to think about. There has not been a scandal in the neighbourhood since the time of Queen Elizabeth, and consequently they all fall asleep after dinner. You shan't sit next either of them. You shall sit by me and amuse me." Dorian murmured a graceful compliment and looked round the room. Yes: it was certainly a tedious party. Two of the people he had never seen before, and the others consisted of Ernest Harrowden, one of those middle-aged mediocrities so common in London clubs who have no enemies, but are thoroughly disliked by their friends; Lady Ruxton, an overdressed woman of forty-seven, with a hooked nose, who was always trying to get herself compromised, but was so peculiarly plain that to her great disappointment no one would ever believe anything against her; Mrs. Erlynne, a pushing nobody, with a delightful lisp and Venetian-red hair; Lady Alice Chapman, his hostess's daughter, a dowdy dull girl, with one of those characteristic British faces that, once seen, are never remembered; and her husband, a red-cheeked, white-whiskered creature who, like so many of his class, was under the impression that inordinate joviality can atone for an entire lack of ideas. He was rather sorry he had come, till Lady Narborough, looking at the great ormolu gilt clock that sprawled in gaudy curves on the mauve-draped mantelshelf, exclaimed: "How horrid of Henry Wotton to be so late! I sent round to him this morning on chance and he promised faithfully not to disappoint me." It was some consolation that Harry was to be there, and when the door opened and he heard his slow musical voice lending charm to some insincere apology, he ceased to feel bored. But at dinner he could not eat anything. Plate after plate went away untasted. Lady Narborough kept scolding him for what she called "an insult to poor Adolphe, who invented the _menu_ specially for you," and now and then Lord Henry looked across at him, wondering at his silence and abstracted manner. From time to time the butler filled his glass with champagne. He drank eagerly, and his thirst seemed to increase. "Dorian," said Lord Henry at last, as the _chaud-froid_ was being handed round, "what is the matter with you to-night? You are quite out of sorts." "I believe he is in love," cried Lady Narborough, "and that he is afraid to tell me for fear I should be jealous. He is quite right. I certainly should." "Dear Lady Narborough," murmured Dorian, smiling, "I have not been in love for a whole week--not, in fact, since Madame de Ferrol left town." "How you men can fall in love with that woman!" exclaimed the old lady. "I really cannot understand it." "It is simply because she remembers you when you were a little girl, Lady Narborough," said Lord Henry. "She is the one link between us and your short frocks." "She does not remember my short frocks at all, Lord Henry. But I remember her very well at Vienna thirty years ago, and how _decolletee_ she was then." "She is still _decolletee_," he answered, taking an olive in his long fingers; "and when she is in a very smart gown she looks like an _edition de luxe_ of a bad French novel. She is really wonderful, and full of surprises. Her capacity for family affection is extraordinary. When her third husband died, her hair turned quite gold from grief." "How can you, Harry!" cried Dorian. "It is a most romantic explanation," laughed the hostess. "But her third husband, Lord Henry! You don't mean to say Ferrol is the fourth?" "Certainly, Lady Narborough." "I don't believe a word of it." "Well, ask Mr. Gray. He is one of her most intimate friends." "Is it true, Mr. Gray?" "She assures me so, Lady Narborough," said Dorian. "I asked her whether, like Marguerite de Navarre, she had their hearts embalmed and hung at her girdle. She told me she didn't, because none of them had had any hearts at all." "Four husbands! Upon my word that is _trop de zele_." "_Trop d'audace_, I tell her," said Dorian. "Oh! she is audacious enough for anything, my dear. And what is Ferrol like? I don't know him." "The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes," said Lord Henry, sipping his wine. Lady Narborough hit him with her fan. "Lord Henry, I am not at all surprised that the world says that you are extremely wicked." "But what world says that?" asked Lord Henry, elevating his eyebrows. "It can only be the next world. This world and I are on excellent terms." "Everybody I know says you are very wicked," cried the old lady, shaking her head. Lord Henry looked serious for some moments. "It is perfectly monstrous," he said, at last, "the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true." "Isn't he incorrigible?" cried Dorian, leaning forward in his chair. "I hope so," said his hostess, laughing. "But really, if you all worship Madame de Ferrol in this ridiculous way, I shall have to marry again so as to be in the fashion." "You will never marry again, Lady Narborough," broke in Lord Henry. "You were far too happy. When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs." "Narborough wasn't perfect," cried the old lady. "If he had been, you would not have loved him, my dear lady," was the rejoinder. "Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects. You will never ask me to dinner again after saying this, I am afraid, Lady Narborough, but it is quite true." "Of course it is true, Lord Henry. If we women did not love you for your defects, where would you all be? Not one of you would ever be married. You would be a set of unfortunate bachelors. Not, however, that that would alter you much. Nowadays all the married men live like bachelors, and all the bachelors like married men." "_Fin de siecle_," murmured Lord Henry. "_Fin du globe_," answered his hostess. "I wish it were _fin du globe_," said Dorian with a sigh. "Life is a great disappointment." "Ah, my dear," cried Lady Narborough, putting on her gloves, "don't tell me that you have exhausted life. When a man says that one knows that life has exhausted him. Lord Henry is very wicked, and I sometimes wish that I had been; but you are made to be good--you look so good. I must find you a nice wife. Lord Henry, don't you think that Mr. Gray should get married?" "I am always telling him so, Lady Narborough," said Lord Henry with a bow. "Well, we must look out for a suitable match for him. I shall go through Debrett carefully to-night and draw out a list of all the eligible young ladies." "With their ages, Lady Narborough?" asked Dorian. "Of course, with their ages, slightly edited. But nothing must be done in a hurry. I want it to be what _The Morning Post_ calls a suitable alliance, and I want you both to be happy." "What nonsense people talk about happy marriages!" exclaimed Lord Henry. "A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her." "Ah! what a cynic you are!" cried the old lady, pushing back her chair and nodding to Lady Ruxton. "You must come and dine with me soon again. You are really an admirable tonic, much better than what Sir Andrew prescribes for me. You must tell me what people you would like to meet, though. I want it to be a delightful gathering." "I like men who have a future and women who have a past," he answered. "Or do you think that would make it a petticoat party?" "I fear so," she said, laughing, as she stood up. "A thousand pardons, my dear Lady Ruxton," she added, "I didn't see you hadn't finished your cigarette." "Never mind, Lady Narborough. I smoke a great deal too much. I am going to limit myself, for the future." "Pray don't, Lady Ruxton," said Lord Henry. "Moderation is a fatal thing. Enough is as bad as a meal. More than enough is as good as a feast." Lady Ruxton glanced at him curiously. "You must come and explain that to me some afternoon, Lord Henry. It sounds a fascinating theory," she murmured, as she swept out of the room. "Now, mind you don't stay too long over your politics and scandal," cried Lady Narborough from the door. "If you do, we are sure to squabble upstairs." The men laughed, and Mr. Chapman got up solemnly from the foot of the table and came up to the top. Dorian Gray changed his seat and went and sat by Lord Henry. Mr. Chapman began to talk in a loud voice about the situation in the House of Commons. He guffawed at his adversaries. The word _doctrinaire_--word full of terror to the British mind--reappeared from time to time between his explosions. An alliterative prefix served as an ornament of oratory. He hoisted the Union Jack on the pinnacles of thought. The inherited stupidity of the race--sound English common sense he jovially termed it--was shown to be the proper bulwark for society. A smile curved Lord Henry's lips, and he turned round and looked at Dorian. "Are you better, my dear fellow?" he asked. "You seemed rather out of sorts at dinner." "I am quite well, Harry. I am tired. That is all." "You were charming last night. The little duchess is quite devoted to you. She tells me she is going down to Selby." "She has promised to come on the twentieth." "Is Monmouth to be there, too?" "Oh, yes, Harry." "He bores me dreadfully, almost as much as he bores her. She is very clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness. It is the feet of clay that make the gold of the image precious. Her feet are very pretty, but they are not feet of clay. White porcelain feet, if you like. They have been through the fire, and what fire does not destroy, it hardens. She has had experiences." "How long has she been married?" asked Dorian. "An eternity, she tells me. I believe, according to the peerage, it is ten years, but ten years with Monmouth must have been like eternity, with time thrown in. Who else is coming?" "Oh, the Willoughbys, Lord Rugby and his wife, our hostess, Geoffrey Clouston, the usual set. I have asked Lord Grotrian." "I like him," said Lord Henry. "A great many people don't, but I find him charming. He atones for being occasionally somewhat overdressed by being always absolutely over-educated. He is a very modern type." "I don't know if he will be able to come, Harry. He may have to go to Monte Carlo with his father." "Ah! what a nuisance people's people are! Try and make him come. By the way, Dorian, you ran off very early last night. You left before eleven. What did you do afterwards? Did you go straight home?" Dorian glanced at him hurriedly and frowned. "No, Harry," he said at last, "I did not get home till nearly three." "Did you go to the club?" "Yes," he answered. Then he bit his lip. "No, I don't mean that. I didn't go to the club. I walked about. I forget what I did.... How inquisitive you are, Harry! You always want to know what one has been doing. I always want to forget what I have been doing. I came in at half-past two, if you wish to know the exact time. I had left my latch-key at home, and my servant had to let me in. If you want any corroborative evidence on the subject, you can ask him." Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "My dear fellow, as if I cared! Let us go up to the drawing-room. No sherry, thank you, Mr. Chapman. Something has happened to you, Dorian. Tell me what it is. You are not yourself to-night." "Don't mind me, Harry. I am irritable, and out of temper. I shall come round and see you to-morrow, or next day. Make my excuses to Lady Narborough. I shan't go upstairs. I shall go home. I must go home." "All right, Dorian. I dare say I shall see you to-morrow at tea-time. The duchess is coming." "I will try to be there, Harry," he said, leaving the room. As he drove back to his own house, he was conscious that the sense of terror he thought he had strangled had come back to him. Lord Henry's casual questioning had made him lose his nerve for the moment, and he wanted his nerve still. Things that were dangerous had to be destroyed. He winced. He hated the idea of even touching them. Yet it had to be done. He realized that, and when he had locked the door of his library, he opened the secret press into which he had thrust Basil Hallward's coat and bag. A huge fire was blazing. He piled another log on it. The smell of the singeing clothes and burning leather was horrible. It took him three-quarters of an hour to consume everything. At the end he felt faint and sick, and having lit some Algerian pastilles in a pierced copper brazier, he bathed his hands and forehead with a cool musk-scented vinegar. Suddenly he started. His eyes grew strangely bright, and he gnawed nervously at his underlip. Between two of the windows stood a large Florentine cabinet, made out of ebony and inlaid with ivory and blue lapis. He watched it as though it were a thing that could fascinate and make afraid, as though it held something that he longed for and yet almost loathed. His breath quickened. A mad craving came over him. He lit a cigarette and then threw it away. His eyelids drooped till the long fringed lashes almost touched his cheek. But he still watched the cabinet. At last he got up from the sofa on which he had been lying, went over to it, and having unlocked it, touched some hidden spring. A triangular drawer passed slowly out. His fingers moved instinctively towards it, dipped in, and closed on something. It was a small Chinese box of black and gold-dust lacquer, elaborately wrought, the sides patterned with curved waves, and the silken cords hung with round crystals and tasselled in plaited metal threads. He opened it. Inside was a green paste, waxy in lustre, the odour curiously heavy and persistent. He hesitated for some moments, with a strangely immobile smile upon his face. Then shivering, though the atmosphere of the room was terribly hot, he drew himself up and glanced at the clock. It was twenty minutes to twelve. He put the box back, shutting the cabinet doors as he did so, and went into his bedroom. As midnight was striking bronze blows upon the dusky air, Dorian Gray, dressed commonly, and with a muffler wrapped round his throat, crept quietly out of his house. In Bond Street he found a hansom with a good horse. He hailed it and in a low voice gave the driver an address. The man shook his head. "It is too far for me," he muttered. "Here is a sovereign for you," said Dorian. "You shall have another if you drive fast." "All right, sir," answered the man, "you will be there in an hour," and after his fare had got in he turned his horse round and drove rapidly towards the river.

Chapter 15

https://web.archive.org/web/20210304030722/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/picture-dorian-gray/summary/chapter-15

That night, Dorian attends a very dull dinner party at the home of Lady Narborough, a clever but ugly socialite. She's very fond of Dorian, and she apologizes for how dull her other guests are that evening. Fortunately, Lord Henry arrives, which livens up the party a bit. Still, Dorian's feeling listless; he can't touch a bite of the exquisite dinner, and he drowns his sorrows in champagne. Henry and Lady Narborough rag Dorian a bit for being so low. Lady Narborough assumes he's in love, which directs the conversation to related topic, Dorian's friend, the infamous Madame de Ferrol. This famously beautiful lady is on her fourth husband, and they have a pleasant time gossiping sassily about her for a while. However, Dorian is still feeling down. Lady Narborough tells him he ought to get married; Henry agrees, though it doesn't stop him from sharing his cynical views on marriage. The conversation is interrupted by some of the other guests, who really aren't of interest to us. Lord Henry and Dorian take this opportunity to talk privately. Dorian won't admit that anything's wrong, and just says that he's tired. They discuss plans for an upcoming holiday in the countryside. Henry makes the mistake of asking Dorian what he was up to last night; Dorian has a minor freak out, and reacts defensively. Dorian apologizes to Henry for being so irritable, and heads off home, full of anxiety. At home, Dorian can't shake his feeling of terror. He burns Basil's traveling bag, making sure that there's no evidence that he was ever there, then tries to calm down. Suddenly, he's filled with a craving--he reaches inside a cabinet for a small, ornate box. Inside is a mysterious substance that can only be one thing: opium. Dorian puts the box back, then, disguised as a commoner, sneaks out of his house. He hails a cab and asks to be taken to a mysterious, distant location.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/174-chapters/06.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Picture of Dorian Gray/section_2_part_2.txt

The Picture of Dorian Gray.chapter 6

chapter 6

{"name": "Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210228142327/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/doriangray/section3/", "summary": "That evening over dinner, Lord Henry announces to Basil Dorian's plan to marry Sibyl. Basil expresses concern that Dorian has decided to marry so far beneath his social position. Lord Henry claims that he himself cannot pass such judgment and that he is simply interested in observing the boy and his experiences, regardless of the outcome. Basil doubts that Lord Henry would be so cavalier if Dorian's life was, in fact, \"spoiled,\" but Lord Henry insists that \"no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested. Dorian enters, and he relates the story of his engagement, which was precipitated by his seeing Sibyl play the Shakespearean heroine Rosalind. Dorian, in a state of tremendous excitement, remarks that his love for Sibyl and his desire to live only for her have shown him the falsehood of all of Lord Henry's seductive theories about the virtues of selfishness. Lord Henry, by no means discouraged by Dorian's speech, defends his point of view by claiming that it is nature, not he, who dictates the pursuit of pleasure. The three men make their way to a theater in the slums where Sibyl Vane is to perform that night", "analysis": "Critical reception of The Picture of Dorian Gray was mixed, with many readers condemning the novel as decadent or unmanly. The relationship between Lord Henry and Dorian, as well the one of Basil and Dorian, is clearly homoerotic, and must have shocked readers who valued Victorian respectability. Although Wilde stops short of stating that Basil and Lord Henry have sexual feelings for Dorian, the language he uses to describe their devotion to Dorian is unmistakably the language of deep, romantic intimacy. Wilde's language of irony facilitates dodging direct statements; in one scene, for example, although the ostensible topic of conversation is Dorian as a subject for portraits, the exchange between Basil and Lord Henry betrays the romantic nature of Basil's feelings: \"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 everyday. He is absolutely necessary to me.\" Men do have relationships with women in the novel--Dorian falls in love with Sibyl and Lord Henry himself is married--but the novel's heterosexual relationships prove to be rather superficial and short-lived. If the novel is homoerotic, it is also misogynistic. Victoria Wotton, like most of the women in the novel, is depicted with no real depth: she is briefly introduced, never to be heard from again. The most significant female character in the novel is Sibyl, who seems to fulfill Lord Henry's observation that \"omen are a decorative sex.\" There is precious little substance to Sibyl's character, as becomes clear in following chapters when she so easily gives up her greatest talent in order to pursue a relationship with Dorian. In this section, as she strolls through the park with James, she emerges as a rather foolishly romantic young woman. She is perfectly content to fall in love with a stranger whom she knows only by the fairy-tale name with which she has christened him. Indeed, Sibyl is little more than a placeholder in a prefabricated romance. Dorian says nearly as much when he describes the thrill of seeing her placed \"on a pedestal of gold . . . to see the world worship the woman who is mine.\" This sentiment confirms Lord Henry's ego-driven philosophy of women as ornaments as well as the male-centered focus of Wilde's narrative gaze: men--particularly their relationships and the influence they bring to bear upon one another--matter most in The Picture of Dorian Gray. More important than Lord Henry's philosophy of the role of women, however, is his insistence on the necessity of individualism. As a mode of thinking, individualism took center stage during the nineteenth century. It was first celebrated by the Romantics, who, in the early 1800s, decided that free and spontaneous expression of the self was the true source of art and literature. The Romantics rejected the eighteenth-century sensibility that sought to imitate and reproduce the classical models of ancient Greece and Rome, which were perceived as too stylized to allow for the expression of anything genuine or relevant. Holding the self as the center of creation, Romanticism inevitably emphasized personal freedom, sensory experience, and the special status of the artist. By the time Wilde wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray, however, the romantic belief that man could realize these things in himself by returning to nature had largely faded. Indeed, Wilde's novel marks an interesting shift in the changing philosophy of the times. For although the residue of the Romantic movement can be seen in Dorian's story--Lord Henry advocates that nothing should hinder the freedom of the artistic individual's development--the means by which that development occurs in the story is noticeably different. In the world of The Picture of Dorian Gray, art is to be made by submerging oneself in society rather than escaping from it."}

"I suppose you have heard the news, Basil?" said Lord Henry that evening as Hallward was shown into a little private room at the Bristol where dinner had been laid for three. "No, Harry," answered the artist, giving his hat and coat to the bowing waiter. "What is it? Nothing about politics, I hope! They don't interest me. There is hardly a single person in the House of Commons worth painting, though many of them would be the better for a little whitewashing." "Dorian Gray is engaged to be married," said Lord Henry, watching him as he spoke. Hallward started and then frowned. "Dorian engaged to be married!" he cried. "Impossible!" "It is perfectly true." "To whom?" "To some little actress or other." "I can't believe it. Dorian is far too sensible." "Dorian is far too wise not to do foolish things now and then, my dear Basil." "Marriage is hardly a thing that one can do now and then, Harry." "Except in America," rejoined Lord Henry languidly. "But I didn't say he was married. I said he was engaged to be married. There is a great difference. I have a distinct remembrance of being married, but I have no recollection at all of being engaged. I am inclined to think that I never was engaged." "But think of Dorian's birth, and position, and wealth. It would be absurd for him to marry so much beneath him." "If you want to make him marry this girl, tell him that, Basil. He is sure to do it, then. Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives." "I hope the girl is good, Harry. I don't want to see Dorian tied to some vile creature, who might degrade his nature and ruin his intellect." "Oh, she is better than good--she is beautiful," murmured Lord Henry, sipping a glass of vermouth and orange-bitters. "Dorian says she is beautiful, and he is not often wrong about things of that kind. Your portrait of him has quickened his appreciation of the personal appearance of other people. It has had that excellent effect, amongst others. We are to see her to-night, if that boy doesn't forget his appointment." "Are you serious?" "Quite serious, Basil. I should be miserable if I thought I should ever be more serious than I am at the present moment." "But do you approve of it, Harry?" asked the painter, walking up and down the room and biting his lip. "You can't approve of it, possibly. It is some silly infatuation." "I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do. If a personality fascinates me, whatever mode of expression that personality selects is absolutely delightful to me. Dorian Gray falls in love with a beautiful girl who acts Juliet, and proposes to marry her. Why not? If he wedded Messalina, he would be none the less interesting. You know I am not a champion of marriage. The real drawback to marriage is that it makes one unselfish. And unselfish people are colourless. They lack individuality. Still, there are certain temperaments that marriage makes more complex. They retain their egotism, and add to it many other egos. They are forced to have more than one life. They become more highly organized, and to be highly organized is, I should fancy, the object of man's existence. Besides, every experience is of value, and whatever one may say against marriage, it is certainly an experience. I hope that Dorian Gray will make this girl his wife, passionately adore her for six months, and then suddenly become fascinated by some one else. He would be a wonderful study." "You don't mean a single word of all that, Harry; you know you don't. If Dorian Gray's life were spoiled, no one would be sorrier than yourself. You are much better than you pretend to be." Lord Henry laughed. "The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror. We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbour with the possession of those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us. We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets. I mean everything that I have said. I have the greatest contempt for optimism. As for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested. If you want to mar a nature, you have merely to reform it. As for marriage, of course that would be silly, but there are other and more interesting bonds between men and women. I will certainly encourage them. They have the charm of being fashionable. But here is Dorian himself. He will tell you more than I can." "My dear Harry, my dear Basil, you must both congratulate me!" said the lad, throwing off his evening cape with its satin-lined wings and shaking each of his friends by the hand in turn. "I have never been so happy. Of course, it is sudden--all really delightful things are. And yet it seems to me to be the one thing I have been looking for all my life." He was flushed with excitement and pleasure, and looked extraordinarily handsome. "I hope you will always be very happy, Dorian," said Hallward, "but I don't quite forgive you for not having let me know of your engagement. You let Harry know." "And I don't forgive you for being late for dinner," broke in Lord Henry, putting his hand on the lad's shoulder and smiling as he spoke. "Come, let us sit down and try what the new _chef_ here is like, and then you will tell us how it all came about." "There is really not much to tell," cried Dorian as they took their seats at the small round table. "What happened was simply this. After I left you yesterday evening, Harry, I dressed, had some dinner at that little Italian restaurant in Rupert Street you introduced me to, and went down at eight o'clock to the theatre. Sibyl was playing Rosalind. Of course, the scenery was dreadful and the Orlando absurd. But Sibyl! You should have seen her! When she came on in her boy's clothes, she was perfectly wonderful. She wore a moss-coloured velvet jerkin with cinnamon sleeves, slim, brown, cross-gartered hose, a dainty little green cap with a hawk's feather caught in a jewel, and a hooded cloak lined with dull red. She had never seemed to me more exquisite. She had all the delicate grace of that Tanagra figurine that you have in your studio, Basil. Her hair clustered round her face like dark leaves round a pale rose. As for her acting--well, you shall see her to-night. She is simply a born artist. I sat in the dingy box absolutely enthralled. I forgot that I was in London and in the nineteenth century. I was away with my love in a forest that no man had ever seen. After the performance was over, I went behind and spoke to her. As we were sitting together, suddenly there came into her eyes a look that I had never seen there before. My lips moved towards hers. We kissed each other. I can't describe to you what I felt at that moment. It seemed to me that all my life had been narrowed to one perfect point of rose-coloured joy. She trembled all over and shook like a white narcissus. Then she flung herself on her knees and kissed my hands. I feel that I should not tell you all this, but I can't help it. Of course, our engagement is a dead secret. She has not even told her own mother. I don't know what my guardians will say. Lord Radley is sure to be furious. I don't care. I shall be of age in less than a year, and then I can do what I like. I have been right, Basil, haven't I, to take my love out of poetry and to find my wife in Shakespeare's plays? Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth." "Yes, Dorian, I suppose you were right," said Hallward slowly. "Have you seen her to-day?" asked Lord Henry. Dorian Gray shook his head. "I left her in the forest of Arden; I shall find her in an orchard in Verona." Lord Henry sipped his champagne in a meditative manner. "At what particular point did you mention the word marriage, Dorian? And what did she say in answer? Perhaps you forgot all about it." "My dear Harry, I did not treat it as a business transaction, and I did not make any formal proposal. I told her that I loved her, and she said she was not worthy to be my wife. Not worthy! Why, the whole world is nothing to me compared with her." "Women are wonderfully practical," murmured Lord Henry, "much more practical than we are. In situations of that kind we often forget to say anything about marriage, and they always remind us." Hallward laid his hand upon his arm. "Don't, Harry. You have annoyed Dorian. He is not like other men. He would never bring misery upon any one. His nature is too fine for that." Lord Henry looked across the table. "Dorian is never annoyed with me," he answered. "I asked the question for the best reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses one for asking any question--simple curiosity. I have a theory that it is always the women who propose to us, and not we who propose to the women. Except, of course, in middle-class life. But then the middle classes are not modern." Dorian Gray laughed, and tossed his head. "You are quite incorrigible, Harry; but I don't mind. It is impossible to be angry with you. When you see Sibyl Vane, you will feel that the man who could wrong her would be a beast, a beast without a heart. I cannot understand how any one can wish to shame the thing he loves. I love Sibyl Vane. I want to place her on a pedestal of gold and to see the world worship the woman who is mine. What is marriage? An irrevocable vow. You mock at it for that. Ah! don't mock. It is an irrevocable vow that I want to take. Her trust makes me faithful, her belief makes me good. When I am with her, I regret all that you have taught me. I become different from what you have known me to be. I am changed, and the mere touch of Sibyl Vane's hand makes me forget you and all your wrong, fascinating, poisonous, delightful theories." "And those are ...?" asked Lord Henry, helping himself to some salad. "Oh, your theories about life, your theories about love, your theories about pleasure. All your theories, in fact, Harry." "Pleasure is the only thing worth having a theory about," he answered in his slow melodious voice. "But I am afraid I cannot claim my theory as my own. It belongs to Nature, not to me. Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy." "Ah! but what do you mean by good?" cried Basil Hallward. "Yes," echoed Dorian, leaning back in his chair and looking at Lord Henry over the heavy clusters of purple-lipped irises that stood in the centre of the table, "what do you mean by good, Harry?" "To be good is to be in harmony with one's self," he replied, touching the thin stem of his glass with his pale, fine-pointed fingers. "Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others. One's own life--that is the important thing. As for the lives of one's neighbours, if one wishes to be a prig or a Puritan, one can flaunt one's moral views about them, but they are not one's concern. Besides, individualism has really the higher aim. Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality." "But, surely, if one lives merely for one's self, Harry, one pays a terrible price for doing so?" suggested the painter. "Yes, we are overcharged for everything nowadays. I should fancy that the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial. Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the rich." "One has to pay in other ways but money." "What sort of ways, Basil?" "Oh! I should fancy in remorse, in suffering, in ... well, in the consciousness of degradation." Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "My dear fellow, mediaeval art is charming, but mediaeval emotions are out of date. One can use them in fiction, of course. But then the only things that one can use in fiction are the things that one has ceased to use in fact. Believe me, no civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized man ever knows what a pleasure is." "I know what pleasure is," cried Dorian Gray. "It is to adore some one." "That is certainly better than being adored," he answered, toying with some fruits. "Being adored is a nuisance. Women treat us just as humanity treats its gods. They worship us, and are always bothering us to do something for them." "I should have said that whatever they ask for they had first given to us," murmured the lad gravely. "They create love in our natures. They have a right to demand it back." "That is quite true, Dorian," cried Hallward. "Nothing is ever quite true," said Lord Henry. "This is," interrupted Dorian. "You must admit, Harry, that women give to men the very gold of their lives." "Possibly," he sighed, "but they invariably want it back in such very small change. That is the worry. Women, as some witty Frenchman once put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out." "Harry, you are dreadful! I don't know why I like you so much." "You will always like me, Dorian," he replied. "Will you have some coffee, you fellows? Waiter, bring coffee, and _fine-champagne_, and some cigarettes. No, don't mind the cigarettes--I have some. Basil, I can't allow you to smoke cigars. You must have a cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want? Yes, Dorian, you will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit." "What nonsense you talk, Harry!" cried the lad, taking a light from a fire-breathing silver dragon that the waiter had placed on the table. "Let us go down to the theatre. When Sibyl comes on the stage you will have a new ideal of life. She will represent something to you that you have never known." "I have known everything," said Lord Henry, with a tired look in his eyes, "but I am always ready for a new emotion. I am afraid, however, that, for me at any rate, there is no such thing. Still, your wonderful girl may thrill me. I love acting. It is so much more real than life. Let us go. Dorian, you will come with me. I am so sorry, Basil, but there is only room for two in the brougham. You must follow us in a hansom." They got up and put on their coats, sipping their coffee standing. The painter was silent and preoccupied. There was a gloom over him. He could not bear this marriage, and yet it seemed to him to be better than many other things that might have happened. After a few minutes, they all passed downstairs. He drove off by himself, as had been arranged, and watched the flashing lights of the little brougham in front of him. A strange sense of loss came over him. He felt that Dorian Gray would never again be to him all that he had been in the past. Life had come between them.... His eyes darkened, and the crowded flaring streets became blurred to his eyes. When the cab drew up at the theatre, it seemed to him that he had grown years older.

Chapter 6

https://web.archive.org/web/20210228142327/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/doriangray/section3/

That evening over dinner, Lord Henry announces to Basil Dorian's plan to marry Sibyl. Basil expresses concern that Dorian has decided to marry so far beneath his social position. Lord Henry claims that he himself cannot pass such judgment and that he is simply interested in observing the boy and his experiences, regardless of the outcome. Basil doubts that Lord Henry would be so cavalier if Dorian's life was, in fact, "spoiled," but Lord Henry insists that "no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested. Dorian enters, and he relates the story of his engagement, which was precipitated by his seeing Sibyl play the Shakespearean heroine Rosalind. Dorian, in a state of tremendous excitement, remarks that his love for Sibyl and his desire to live only for her have shown him the falsehood of all of Lord Henry's seductive theories about the virtues of selfishness. Lord Henry, by no means discouraged by Dorian's speech, defends his point of view by claiming that it is nature, not he, who dictates the pursuit of pleasure. The three men make their way to a theater in the slums where Sibyl Vane is to perform that night

Critical reception of The Picture of Dorian Gray was mixed, with many readers condemning the novel as decadent or unmanly. The relationship between Lord Henry and Dorian, as well the one of Basil and Dorian, is clearly homoerotic, and must have shocked readers who valued Victorian respectability. Although Wilde stops short of stating that Basil and Lord Henry have sexual feelings for Dorian, the language he uses to describe their devotion to Dorian is unmistakably the language of deep, romantic intimacy. Wilde's language of irony facilitates dodging direct statements; in one scene, for example, although the ostensible topic of conversation is Dorian as a subject for portraits, the exchange between Basil and Lord Henry betrays the romantic nature of Basil's feelings: "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 everyday. He is absolutely necessary to me." Men do have relationships with women in the novel--Dorian falls in love with Sibyl and Lord Henry himself is married--but the novel's heterosexual relationships prove to be rather superficial and short-lived. If the novel is homoerotic, it is also misogynistic. Victoria Wotton, like most of the women in the novel, is depicted with no real depth: she is briefly introduced, never to be heard from again. The most significant female character in the novel is Sibyl, who seems to fulfill Lord Henry's observation that "omen are a decorative sex." There is precious little substance to Sibyl's character, as becomes clear in following chapters when she so easily gives up her greatest talent in order to pursue a relationship with Dorian. In this section, as she strolls through the park with James, she emerges as a rather foolishly romantic young woman. She is perfectly content to fall in love with a stranger whom she knows only by the fairy-tale name with which she has christened him. Indeed, Sibyl is little more than a placeholder in a prefabricated romance. Dorian says nearly as much when he describes the thrill of seeing her placed "on a pedestal of gold . . . to see the world worship the woman who is mine." This sentiment confirms Lord Henry's ego-driven philosophy of women as ornaments as well as the male-centered focus of Wilde's narrative gaze: men--particularly their relationships and the influence they bring to bear upon one another--matter most in The Picture of Dorian Gray. More important than Lord Henry's philosophy of the role of women, however, is his insistence on the necessity of individualism. As a mode of thinking, individualism took center stage during the nineteenth century. It was first celebrated by the Romantics, who, in the early 1800s, decided that free and spontaneous expression of the self was the true source of art and literature. The Romantics rejected the eighteenth-century sensibility that sought to imitate and reproduce the classical models of ancient Greece and Rome, which were perceived as too stylized to allow for the expression of anything genuine or relevant. Holding the self as the center of creation, Romanticism inevitably emphasized personal freedom, sensory experience, and the special status of the artist. By the time Wilde wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray, however, the romantic belief that man could realize these things in himself by returning to nature had largely faded. Indeed, Wilde's novel marks an interesting shift in the changing philosophy of the times. For although the residue of the Romantic movement can be seen in Dorian's story--Lord Henry advocates that nothing should hinder the freedom of the artistic individual's development--the means by which that development occurs in the story is noticeably different. In the world of The Picture of Dorian Gray, art is to be made by submerging oneself in society rather than escaping from it.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/chapters_5_to_8.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_1_part_0.txt

Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapters 5-8

chapters 5-8

{"name": "Chapters 5-8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219151046/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary-and-analysis/phase-the-first-the-maiden-chapters-58", "summary": "Joan Durbeyfield hatches the plan to send Tess off to wealthy relations to \"claim kin.\" Tess wants no part of the plan, and John Durbeyfield also expresses his doubts about the plan. Feeling a sense of guilt about the death of the family horse, Prince, Tess agrees to visit the Stoke-d'Urbervilles. Tess takes a van, or common carrier of the time, to visit. She notices that the home called The Slopes is not old and established as she had expected. Instead, the house is a recently built. Tess meets Alec d'Urberville, the young son of Mrs. d'Urberville. Alec is immediately taken by the young, beautiful maid, and he agrees to find a place for her at The Slopes. A few days later, a new horse is sent to the Durbeyfields along with an invitation for Tess to assume a post as caretaker for a flock of Mrs. d'Urbervilles chickens. Tess' departure is a great sorrow for her family, but she agrees to go to Trantridge to help boost her family's fortunes. Upon her return to The Slopes, Alec takes Tess on a wild carriage ride in order to scare her and prove himself master over her. She does not give into his demands and walks the greater portion of the distance to her new home.", "analysis": "Joan Durbeyfield is the instigator of the plan to send her eldest daughter to another family. Joan takes advantage of Tess, because she is Tess' mother, and of her husband, John, because he is easily manipulated, a drunk and a fool. Joan, like a hopeless romantic, intends for Tess to be married into the d'Urberville clan. She shows her blissful ignorance when she hatches the plan to send Tess away: \"e must take the ups wi' the downs, Tess, and never could your high blood have been found out at a more called-for moment.\" Tess, however, wants no part of Joan Durbeyfield's plan saying, \"I'd rather try to get work.\" However, she is convinced by Joan and by her guilt for the death of the family horse, Prince. After being talked into the proposition, Tess remarks, \"Well, as I killed the horse, mother. I suppose I ought to do something.\" Thus Tess' fate is sealed. What Tess and her family do not know is that the Stoke-d'Urbervilles are not relatives at all. Simon Stoke had made a small fortune as a merchant in North England and assumed the name d'Urberville and attached it to his own as a way to demonstrate his close relationship to the people of South England and to give the impression of an old, established aristocratic family. Eventually, the name Stoke was dropped, leaving only the name d'Urberville. Tess and her family never learn this fact, partially because they are rather uneducated and partially because they rely on what others tell them of their family history and do not research this history for themselves. In Chapter 6, when Tess is nearing the end of a successful trip to the d'Urbervilles, Hardy notes, \"Thus the thing began.\" It should be noted that Hardy gives subtle hints that a \"play\" has commenced. This technique dates back to the ancient Greek period when plays were written about the sport that the Greek gods took with mortal men. Sometimes it was said that the Greek gods enjoyed using mankind as toys or for sport. Hardy knows this and uses this device as a springboard for his own work, making Tess an unwitting -- and unwilling -- participant. When Tess is called upon to return to The Slopes, she does so out of a sense of duty: \"I hope it is a chance for earning money. It is no other kind of chance.\" Joan floats the possibility that Tess could take advantage of the situation and become a married, proper lady. Later Tess remarks, \"Very well; I suppose you know best. Do what you like with me mother.\" Joan has set up her daughter much like the Greek gods of old set up the human players in their little \"dramas.\" Later, when Tess leaves home to work at The Slopes, Joan insists that Tess spruce herself for the occasion. Joan has Tess put on her finest dress, ribbons in her hair and stockings. Here Hardy comments that Tess' mother is \"developing figure an amplitude which belied her age, and might cause her to be estimated as a woman when she was not much more than a child.\" Joan has indeed created an image of Tess as a woman-child. For Tess, this is a dangerous situation. John Durbeyfield is oblivious to the situation into which his daughter has been sent. His redeeming quality is that he is reluctant to send Tess away; nevertheless, he later gives in. He objects several times to the proposal but warms to the idea once his wife applies her charms. He even agrees, in a rambling mumbled monologue that he will \"sell him the title -- yes sell it -- and at no onreasonable figure.\" John begins at PS1,000 for the title and ends up at PS20 for a title, the most money John had seen in a while. Because of his simplemindedness, his grand history can be bought for a very small sum of money and his daughter given away for a song. When Tess is about to leave, John asks Joan \"What's her trump card? Her d'Urberville blood, you mean?\" Joan answers rather sarcastically, \"No, stupid; her face -- as @'twas mine.\" This comparison is telling: Joan Durbeyfield's \"trump card\" had been her face -- that is, her beauty -- but it did not stand her in good stead. Instead of winning a respectable, responsible husband or having a life that beautiful people may seem to be heir to, she is instead married to a drunk who, despite his good intentions, cannot provide for his family, and she lives a life of hardship and uncertainty. Nevertheless, in her naivete , she believes that Tess' beauty will win them all a measure of security and happiness -- if Tess marries, as her mother wants her to, into a family of wealth and position, a marriage that can only happen, Joan thinks, by Tess' association with the d'Urbervilles. This link between the mother's fortunes and Tess' foreshadows later events. Unfortunately, for Tess, the outcome will be even more dire. We clearly recognize the dangerous position Tess is in when she encounters someone like Alec d'Urberville, a man who will take full advantage of his position as the son of a wealthy family and his position of authority in the d'Urberville household to put Tess into a compromising position. Her beauty attracts him, but in her innocence and naivete, she cannot see the danger clearly or combat Alec successfully. Tess does her best to fight Alec's unwelcome advances, but he thinks she is headstrong and a force to be reckoned with. Even though Tess spurns his advances, Alec is determined to have her or have his way with her on his own terms, \"Let me put one little kiss on those holmberry lips, Tess, or even on that warmed cheek, and I'll stop -- on my honour, I will!\" Tess' desires are to be ignored. Alec is \"god-like\" in how he wields his power over the servants in his home. To Alec, Tess is another conquest to be mastered, like an unbroken horse. Hardy uses third person narrative throughout the novel. This narrative point of view allows the writer to inject his thoughts into the narrative or to provide editorial comment on the evolution of the plot, scene, or character. Third person narrative is a common technique used by authors when they want to communicate personally with the reader. In this section, for example, Hardy uses it as he discusses Tess' mother, Joan, and her simplemindedness: \"Being mentally older than her mother did not regard Mrs. Durbeyfield's matrimonial hopes for her in a serious aspect for a moment. The light-minded woman had been discovering good matches for her daughter almost from the year of her birth.\" This wry comment does two things. First it speaks to the universal hope of mothers -- that their daughters make good matches . Second, it highlights the irony of Joan's plans for Tess: Her desire for Tess to make a good match leads to Tess' ruin. Glossary penury lack of money, property, or necessities; extreme poverty; destitution. quagmire a difficult or inextricable position; here, referring to the difficulties caused by the loss of Prince, the Durbeyfield horse. deferential very respectful. van common carrier, usually a cart pulled by horses, which travels from town to town. Malthusian of Malthus and his theory that the world population tends to increase faster than the food supply with inevitable disastrous results unless natural restrictions, such as war, famine, and disease, reduce the population or the increase is checked by moral restraint. Druidical mistletoe to the Druids, mistletoe was sacred. pollarded for bows had their boughs severed to make bows. Chapels-of-Ease chapels for parishioners who lived far from the church. crumby an attractive girl. mistarshers mustache. dand a bit more. dolorifuge painful, full or sorrow. Holmberry a holly bush."}

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!" Tess went down the hill to Trantridge Cross, and inattentively waited to take her seat in the van returning from Chaseborough to Shaston. She did not know what the other occupants said to her as she entered, though she answered them; and when they had started anew she rode along with an inward and not an outward eye. One among her fellow-travellers addressed her more pointedly than any had spoken before: "Why, you be quite a posy! And such roses in early June!" Then she became aware of the spectacle she presented to their surprised vision: roses at her breasts; roses in her hat; roses and strawberries in her basket to the brim. She blushed, and said confusedly that the flowers had been given to her. When the passengers were not looking she stealthily removed the more prominent blooms from her hat and placed them in the basket, where she covered them with her handkerchief. Then she fell to reflecting again, and in looking downwards a thorn of the rose remaining in her breast accidentally pricked her chin. Like all the cottagers in Blackmoor Vale, Tess was steeped in fancies and prefigurative superstitions; she thought this an ill omen--the first she had noticed that day. The van travelled only so far as Shaston, and there were several miles of pedestrian descent from that mountain-town into the vale to Marlott. Her mother had advised her to stay here for the night, at the house of a cottage-woman they knew, if she should feel too tired to come on; and this Tess did, not descending to her home till the following afternoon. When she entered the house she perceived in a moment from her mother's triumphant manner that something had occurred in the interim. "Oh yes; I know all about it! I told 'ee it would be all right, and now 'tis proved!" "Since I've been away? What has?" said Tess rather wearily. Her mother surveyed the girl up and down with arch approval, and went on banteringly: "So you've brought 'em round!" "How do you know, mother?" "I've had a letter." Tess then remembered that there would have been time for this. "They say--Mrs d'Urberville says--that she wants you to look after a little fowl-farm which is her hobby. But this is only her artful way of getting 'ee there without raising your hopes. She's going to own 'ee as kin--that's the meaning o't." "But I didn't see her." "You zid somebody, I suppose?" "I saw her son." "And did he own 'ee?" "Well--he called me Coz." "An' I knew it! Jacky--he called her Coz!" cried Joan to her husband. "Well, he spoke to his mother, of course, and she do want 'ee there." "But I don't know that I am apt at tending fowls," said the dubious Tess. "Then I don't know who is apt. You've be'n born in the business, and brought up in it. They that be born in a business always know more about it than any 'prentice. Besides, that's only just a show of something for you to do, that you midn't feel beholden." "I don't altogether think I ought to go," said Tess thoughtfully. "Who wrote the letter? Will you let me look at it?" "Mrs d'Urberville wrote it. Here it is." The letter was in the third person, and briefly informed Mrs Durbeyfield that her daughter's services would be useful to that lady in the management of her poultry-farm, that a comfortable room would be provided for her if she could come, and that the wages would be on a liberal scale if they liked her. "Oh--that's all!" said Tess. "You couldn't expect her to throw her arms round 'ee, an' to kiss and to coll 'ee all at once." Tess looked out of the window. "I would rather stay here with father and you," she said. "But why?" "I'd rather not tell you why, mother; indeed, I don't quite know why." A week afterwards she came in one evening from an unavailing search for some light occupation in the immediate neighbourhood. Her idea had been to get together sufficient money during the summer to purchase another horse. Hardly had she crossed the threshold before one of the children danced across the room, saying, "The gentleman's been here!" Her mother hastened to explain, smiles breaking from every inch of her person. Mrs d'Urberville's son had called on horseback, having been riding by chance in the direction of Marlott. He had wished to know, finally, in the name of his mother, if Tess could really come to manage the old lady's fowl-farm or not; the lad who had hitherto superintended the birds having proved untrustworthy. "Mr d'Urberville says you must be a good girl if you are at all as you appear; he knows you must be worth your weight in gold. He is very much interested in 'ee--truth to tell." Tess seemed for the moment really pleased to hear that she had won such high opinion from a stranger when, in her own esteem, she had sunk so low. "It is very good of him to think that," she murmured; "and if I was quite sure how it would be living there, I would go any-when." "He is a mighty handsome man!" "I don't think so," said Tess coldly. "Well, there's your chance, whether or no; and I'm sure he wears a beautiful diamond ring!" "Yes," said little Abraham, brightly, from the window-bench; "and I seed it! and it did twinkle when he put his hand up to his mistarshers. Mother, why did our grand relation keep on putting his hand up to his mistarshers?" "Hark at that child!" cried Mrs Durbeyfield, with parenthetic admiration. "Perhaps to show his diamond ring," murmured Sir John, dreamily, from his chair. "I'll think it over," said Tess, leaving the room. "Well, she's made a conquest o' the younger branch of us, straight off," continued the matron to her husband, "and she's a fool if she don't follow it up." "I don't quite like my children going away from home," said the haggler. "As the head of the family, the rest ought to come to me." "But do let her go, Jacky," coaxed his poor witless wife. "He's struck wi' her--you can see that. He called her Coz! He'll marry her, most likely, and make a lady of her; and then she'll be what her forefathers was." John Durbeyfield had more conceit than energy or health, and this supposition was pleasant to him. "Well, perhaps that's what young Mr d'Urberville means," he admitted; "and sure enough he mid have serious thoughts about improving his blood by linking on to the old line. Tess, the little rogue! And have she really paid 'em a visit to such an end as this?" Meanwhile Tess was walking thoughtfully among the gooseberry-bushes in the garden, and over Prince's grave. When she came in her mother pursued her advantage. "Well, what be you going to do?" she asked. "I wish I had seen Mrs d'Urberville," said Tess. "I think you mid as well settle it. Then you'll see her soon enough." Her father coughed in his chair. "I don't know what to say!" answered the girl restlessly. "It is for you to decide. I killed the old horse, and I suppose I ought to do something to get ye a new one. But--but--I don't quite like Mr d'Urberville being there!" The children, who had made use of this idea of Tess being taken up by their wealthy kinsfolk (which they imagined the other family to be) as a species of dolorifuge after the death of the horse, began to cry at Tess's reluctance, and teased and reproached her for hesitating. "Tess won't go-o-o and be made a la-a-dy of!--no, she says she wo-o-on't!" they wailed, with square mouths. "And we shan't have a nice new horse, and lots o' golden money to buy fairlings! And Tess won't look pretty in her best cloze no mo-o-ore!" Her mother chimed in to the same tune: a certain way she had of making her labours in the house seem heavier than they were by prolonging them indefinitely, also weighed in the argument. Her father alone preserved an attitude of neutrality. "I will go," said Tess at last. Her mother could not repress her consciousness of the nuptial vision conjured up by the girl's consent. "That's right! For such a pretty maid as 'tis, this is a fine chance!" Tess smiled crossly. "I hope it is a chance for earning money. It is no other kind of chance. You had better say nothing of that silly sort about parish." Mrs Durbeyfield did not promise. She was not quite sure that she did not feel proud enough, after the visitor's remarks, to say a good deal. Thus it was arranged; and the young girl wrote, agreeing to be ready to set out on any day on which she might be required. She was duly informed that Mrs d'Urberville was glad of her decision, and that a spring-cart should be sent to meet her and her luggage at the top of the Vale on the day after the morrow, when she must hold herself prepared to start. Mrs d'Urberville's handwriting seemed rather masculine. "A cart?" murmured Joan Durbeyfield doubtingly. "It might have been a carriage for her own kin!" Having at last taken her course Tess was less restless and abstracted, going about her business with some self-assurance in the thought of acquiring another horse for her father by an occupation which would not be onerous. She had hoped to be a teacher at the school, but the fates seemed to decide otherwise. Being mentally older than her mother she did not regard Mrs Durbeyfield's matrimonial hopes for her in a serious aspect for a moment. The light-minded woman had been discovering good matches for her daughter almost from the year of her birth. On the morning appointed for her departure Tess was awake before dawn--at the marginal minute of the dark when the grove is still mute, save for one prophetic bird who sings with a clear-voiced conviction that he at least knows the correct time of day, the rest preserving silence as if equally convinced that he is mistaken. She remained upstairs packing till breakfast-time, and then came down in her ordinary week-day clothes, her Sunday apparel being carefully folded in her box. Her mother expostulated. "You will never set out to see your folks without dressing up more the dand than that?" "But I am going to work!" said Tess. "Well, yes," said Mrs Durbeyfield; and in a private tone, "at first there mid be a little pretence o't ... But I think it will be wiser of 'ee to put your best side outward," she added. "Very well; I suppose you know best," replied Tess with calm abandonment. And to please her parent the girl put herself quite in Joan's hands, saying serenely--"Do what you like with me, mother." Mrs Durbeyfield was only too delighted at this tractability. First she fetched a great basin, and washed Tess's hair with such thoroughness that when dried and brushed it looked twice as much as at other times. She tied it with a broader pink ribbon than usual. Then she put upon her the white frock that Tess had worn at the club-walking, the airy fulness of which, supplementing her enlarged _coiffure_, imparted to her developing figure an amplitude which belied her age, and might cause her to be estimated as a woman when she was not much more than a child. "I declare there's a hole in my stocking-heel!" said Tess. "Never mind holes in your stockings--they don't speak! When I was a maid, so long as I had a pretty bonnet the devil might ha' found me in heels." Her mother's pride in the girl's appearance led her to step back, like a painter from his easel, and survey her work as a whole. "You must zee yourself!" she cried. "It is much better than you was t'other day." As the looking-glass was only large enough to reflect a very small portion of Tess's person at one time, Mrs Durbeyfield hung a black cloak outside the casement, and so made a large reflector of the panes, as it is the wont of bedecking cottagers to do. After this she went downstairs to her husband, who was sitting in the lower room. "I'll tell 'ee what 'tis, Durbeyfield," said she exultingly; "he'll never have the heart not to love her. But whatever you do, don't zay too much to Tess of his fancy for her, and this chance she has got. She is such an odd maid that it mid zet her against him, or against going there, even now. If all goes well, I shall certainly be for making some return to pa'son at Stagfoot Lane for telling us--dear, good man!" However, as the moment for the girl's setting out drew nigh, when the first excitement of the dressing had passed off, a slight misgiving found place in Joan Durbeyfield's mind. It prompted the matron to say that she would walk a little way--as far as to the point where the acclivity from the valley began its first steep ascent to the outer world. At the top Tess was going to be met with the spring-cart sent by the Stoke-d'Urbervilles, and her box had already been wheeled ahead towards this summit by a lad with trucks, to be in readiness. Seeing their mother put on her bonnet, the younger children clamoured to go with her. "I do want to walk a little-ways wi' Sissy, now she's going to marry our gentleman-cousin, and wear fine cloze!" "Now," said Tess, flushing and turning quickly, "I'll hear no more o' that! Mother, how could you ever put such stuff into their heads?" "Going to work, my dears, for our rich relation, and help get enough money for a new horse," said Mrs Durbeyfield pacifically. "Goodbye, father," said Tess, with a lumpy throat. "Goodbye, my maid," said Sir John, raising his head from his breast as he suspended his nap, induced by a slight excess this morning in honour of the occasion. "Well, I hope my young friend will like such a comely sample of his own blood. And tell'n, Tess, that being sunk, quite, from our former grandeur, I'll sell him the title--yes, sell it--and at no onreasonable figure." "Not for less than a thousand pound!" cried Lady Durbeyfield. "Tell'n--I'll take a thousand pound. Well, I'll take less, when I come to think o't. He'll adorn it better than a poor lammicken feller like myself can. Tell'n he shall hae it for a hundred. But I won't stand upon trifles--tell'n he shall hae it for fifty--for twenty pound! Yes, twenty pound--that's the lowest. Dammy, family honour is family honour, and I won't take a penny less!" Tess's eyes were too full and her voice too choked to utter the sentiments that were in her. She turned quickly, and went out. So the girls and their mother all walked together, a child on each side of Tess, holding her hand and looking at her meditatively from time to time, as at one who was about to do great things; her mother just behind with the smallest; the group forming a picture of honest beauty flanked by innocence, and backed by simple-souled vanity. They followed the way till they reached the beginning of the ascent, on the crest of which the vehicle from Trantridge was to receive her, this limit having been fixed to save the horse the labour of the last slope. Far away behind the first hills the cliff-like dwellings of Shaston broke the line of the ridge. Nobody was visible in the elevated road which skirted the ascent save the lad whom they had sent on before them, sitting on the handle of the barrow that contained all Tess's worldly possessions. "Bide here a bit, and the cart will soon come, no doubt," said Mrs Durbeyfield. "Yes, I see it yonder!" It had come--appearing suddenly from behind the forehead of the nearest upland, and stopping beside the boy with the barrow. Her mother and the children thereupon decided to go no farther, and bidding them a hasty goodbye, Tess bent her steps up the hill. They saw her white shape draw near to the spring-cart, on which her box was already placed. But before she had quite reached it another vehicle shot out from a clump of trees on the summit, came round the bend of the road there, passed the luggage-cart, and halted beside Tess, who looked up as if in great surprise. Her mother perceived, for the first time, that the second vehicle was not a humble conveyance like the first, but a spick-and-span gig or dog-cart, highly varnished and equipped. The driver was a young man of three- or four-and-twenty, with a cigar between his teeth; wearing a dandy cap, drab jacket, breeches of the same hue, white neckcloth, stick-up collar, and brown driving-gloves--in short, he was the handsome, horsey young buck who had visited Joan a week or two before to get her answer about Tess. Mrs Durbeyfield clapped her hands like a child. Then she looked down, then stared again. Could she be deceived as to the meaning of this? "Is dat the gentleman-kinsman who'll make Sissy a lady?" asked the youngest child. Meanwhile the muslined form of Tess could be seen standing still, undecided, beside this turn-out, whose owner was talking to her. Her seeming indecision was, in fact, more than indecision: it was misgiving. She would have preferred the humble cart. The young man dismounted, and appeared to urge her to ascend. She turned her face down the hill to her relatives, and regarded the little group. Something seemed to quicken her to a determination; possibly the thought that she had killed Prince. She suddenly stepped up; he mounted beside her, and immediately whipped on the horse. In a moment they had passed the slow cart with the box, and disappeared behind the shoulder of the hill. Directly Tess was out of sight, and the interest of the matter as a drama was at an end, the little ones' eyes filled with tears. The youngest child said, "I wish poor, poor Tess wasn't gone away to be a lady!" and, lowering the corners of his lips, burst out crying. The new point of view was infectious, and the next child did likewise, and then the next, till the whole three of them wailed loud. There were tears also in Joan Durbeyfield's eyes as she turned to go home. But by the time she had got back to the village she was passively trusting to the favour of accident. However, in bed that night she sighed, and her husband asked her what was the matter. "Oh, I don't know exactly," she said. "I was thinking that perhaps it would ha' been better if Tess had not gone." "Oughtn't ye to have thought of that before?" "Well, 'tis a chance for the maid--Still, if 'twere the doing again, I wouldn't let her go till I had found out whether the gentleman is really a good-hearted young man and choice over her as his kinswoman." "Yes, you ought, perhaps, to ha' done that," snored Sir John. Joan Durbeyfield always managed to find consolation somewhere: "Well, as one of the genuine stock, she ought to make her way with 'en, if she plays her trump card aright. And if he don't marry her afore he will after. For that he's all afire wi' love for her any eye can see." "What's her trump card? Her d'Urberville blood, you mean?" "No, stupid; her face--as 'twas mine." Having mounted beside her, Alec d'Urberville drove rapidly along the crest of the first hill, chatting compliments to Tess as they went, the cart with her box being left far behind. Rising still, an immense landscape stretched around them on every side; behind, the green valley of her birth, before, a gray country of which she knew nothing except from her first brief visit to Trantridge. Thus they reached the verge of an incline down which the road stretched in a long straight descent of nearly a mile. Ever since the accident with her father's horse Tess Durbeyfield, courageous as she naturally was, had been exceedingly timid on wheels; the least irregularity of motion startled her. She began to get uneasy at a certain recklessness in her conductor's driving. "You will go down slow, sir, I suppose?" she said with attempted unconcern. D'Urberville looked round upon her, nipped his cigar with the tips of his large white centre-teeth, and allowed his lips to smile slowly of themselves. "Why, Tess," he answered, after another whiff or two, "it isn't a brave bouncing girl like you who asks that? Why, I always go down at full gallop. There's nothing like it for raising your spirits." "But perhaps you need not now?" "Ah," he said, shaking his head, "there are two to be reckoned with. It is not me alone. Tib has to be considered, and she has a very queer temper." "Who?" "Why, this mare. I fancy she looked round at me in a very grim way just then. Didn't you notice it?" "Don't try to frighten me, sir," said Tess stiffly. "Well, I don't. If any living man can manage this horse I can: I won't say any living man can do it--but if such has the power, I am he." "Why do you have such a horse?" "Ah, well may you ask it! It was my fate, I suppose. Tib has killed one chap; and just after I bought her she nearly killed me. And then, take my word for it, I nearly killed her. But she's touchy still, very touchy; and one's life is hardly safe behind her sometimes." They were just beginning to descend; and it was evident that the horse, whether of her own will or of his (the latter being the more likely), knew so well the reckless performance expected of her that she hardly required a hint from behind. Down, down, they sped, the wheels humming like a top, the dog-cart rocking right and left, its axis acquiring a slightly oblique set in relation to the line of progress; the figure of the horse rising and falling in undulations before them. Sometimes a wheel was off the ground, it seemed, for many yards; sometimes a stone was sent spinning over the hedge, and flinty sparks from the horse's hoofs outshone the daylight. The aspect of the straight road enlarged with their advance, the two banks dividing like a splitting stick; one rushing past at each shoulder. The wind blew through Tess's white muslin to her very skin, and her washed hair flew out behind. She was determined to show no open fear, but she clutched d'Urberville's rein-arm. "Don't touch my arm! We shall be thrown out if you do! Hold on round my waist!" She grasped his waist, and so they reached the bottom. "Safe, thank God, in spite of your fooling!" said she, her face on fire. "Tess--fie! that's temper!" said d'Urberville. "'Tis truth." "Well, you need not let go your hold of me so thanklessly the moment you feel yourself our of danger." She had not considered what she had been doing; whether he were man or woman, stick or stone, in her involuntary hold on him. Recovering her reserve, she sat without replying, and thus they reached the summit of another declivity. "Now then, again!" said d'Urberville. "No, no!" said Tess. "Show more sense, do, please." "But when people find themselves on one of the highest points in the county, they must get down again," he retorted. He loosened rein, and away they went a second time. D'Urberville turned his face to her as they rocked, and said, in playful raillery: "Now then, put your arms round my waist again, as you did before, my Beauty." "Never!" said Tess independently, holding on as well as she could without touching him. "Let me put one little kiss on those holmberry lips, Tess, or even on that warmed cheek, and I'll stop--on my honour, I will!" Tess, surprised beyond measure, slid farther back still on her seat, at which he urged the horse anew, and rocked her the more. "Will nothing else do?" she cried at length, in desperation, her large eyes staring at him like those of a wild animal. This dressing her up so prettily by her mother had apparently been to lamentable purpose. "Nothing, dear Tess," he replied. "Oh, I don't know--very well; I don't mind!" she panted miserably. He drew rein, and as they slowed he was on the point of imprinting the desired salute, when, as if hardly yet aware of her own modesty, she dodged aside. His arms being occupied with the reins there was left him no power to prevent her manoeuvre. "Now, damn it--I'll break both our necks!" swore her capriciously passionate companion. "So you can go from your word like that, you young witch, can you?" "Very well," said Tess, "I'll not move since you be so determined! But I--thought you would be kind to me, and protect me, as my kinsman!" "Kinsman be hanged! Now!" "But I don't want anybody to kiss me, sir!" she implored, a big tear beginning to roll down her face, and the corners of her mouth trembling in her attempts not to cry. "And I wouldn't ha' come if I had known!" He was inexorable, and she sat still, and d'Urberville gave her the kiss of mastery. No sooner had he done so than she flushed with shame, took out her handkerchief, and wiped the spot on her cheek that had been touched by his lips. His ardour was nettled at the sight, for the act on her part had been unconsciously done. "You are mighty sensitive for a cottage girl!" said the young man. Tess made no reply to this remark, of which, indeed, she did not quite comprehend the drift, unheeding the snub she had administered by her instinctive rub upon her cheek. She had, in fact, undone the kiss, as far as such a thing was physically possible. With a dim sense that he was vexed she looked steadily ahead as they trotted on near Melbury Down and Wingreen, till she saw, to her consternation, that there was yet another descent to be undergone. "You shall be made sorry for that!" he resumed, his injured tone still remaining, as he flourished the whip anew. "Unless, that is, you agree willingly to let me do it again, and no handkerchief." She sighed. "Very well, sir!" she said. "Oh--let me get my hat!" At the moment of speaking her hat had blown off into the road, their present speed on the upland being by no means slow. D'Urberville pulled up, and said he would get it for her, but Tess was down on the other side. She turned back and picked up the article. "You look prettier with it off, upon my soul, if that's possible," he said, contemplating her over the back of the vehicle. "Now then, up again! What's the matter?" The hat was in place and tied, but Tess had not stepped forward. "No, sir," she said, revealing the red and ivory of her mouth as her eye lit in defiant triumph; "not again, if I know it!" "What--you won't get up beside me?" "No; I shall walk." "'Tis five or six miles yet to Trantridge." "I don't care if 'tis dozens. Besides, the cart is behind." "You artful hussy! Now, tell me--didn't you make that hat blow off on purpose? I'll swear you did!" Her strategic silence confirmed his suspicion. Then d'Urberville cursed and swore at her, and called her everything he could think of for the trick. Turning the horse suddenly he tried to drive back upon her, and so hem her in between the gig and the hedge. But he could not do this short of injuring her. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself for using such wicked words!" cried Tess with spirit, from the top of the hedge into which she had scrambled. "I don't like 'ee at all! I hate and detest you! I'll go back to mother, I will!" D'Urberville's bad temper cleared up at sight of hers; and he laughed heartily. "Well, I like you all the better," he said. "Come, let there be peace. I'll never do it any more against your will. My life upon it now!" Still Tess could not be induced to remount. She did not, however, object to his keeping his gig alongside her; and in this manner, at a slow pace, they advanced towards the village of Trantridge. From time to time d'Urberville exhibited a sort of fierce distress at the sight of the tramping he had driven her to undertake by his misdemeanour. She might in truth have safely trusted him now; but he had forfeited her confidence for the time, and she kept on the ground progressing thoughtfully, as if wondering whether it would be wiser to return home. Her resolve, however, had been taken, and it seemed vacillating even to childishness to abandon it now, unless for graver reasons. How could she face her parents, get back her box, and disconcert the whole scheme for the rehabilitation of her family on such sentimental grounds? A few minutes later the chimneys of The Slopes appeared in view, and in a snug nook to the right the poultry-farm and cottage of Tess' destination.

Chapters 5-8

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Joan Durbeyfield hatches the plan to send Tess off to wealthy relations to "claim kin." Tess wants no part of the plan, and John Durbeyfield also expresses his doubts about the plan. Feeling a sense of guilt about the death of the family horse, Prince, Tess agrees to visit the Stoke-d'Urbervilles. Tess takes a van, or common carrier of the time, to visit. She notices that the home called The Slopes is not old and established as she had expected. Instead, the house is a recently built. Tess meets Alec d'Urberville, the young son of Mrs. d'Urberville. Alec is immediately taken by the young, beautiful maid, and he agrees to find a place for her at The Slopes. A few days later, a new horse is sent to the Durbeyfields along with an invitation for Tess to assume a post as caretaker for a flock of Mrs. d'Urbervilles chickens. Tess' departure is a great sorrow for her family, but she agrees to go to Trantridge to help boost her family's fortunes. Upon her return to The Slopes, Alec takes Tess on a wild carriage ride in order to scare her and prove himself master over her. She does not give into his demands and walks the greater portion of the distance to her new home.

Joan Durbeyfield is the instigator of the plan to send her eldest daughter to another family. Joan takes advantage of Tess, because she is Tess' mother, and of her husband, John, because he is easily manipulated, a drunk and a fool. Joan, like a hopeless romantic, intends for Tess to be married into the d'Urberville clan. She shows her blissful ignorance when she hatches the plan to send Tess away: "e must take the ups wi' the downs, Tess, and never could your high blood have been found out at a more called-for moment." Tess, however, wants no part of Joan Durbeyfield's plan saying, "I'd rather try to get work." However, she is convinced by Joan and by her guilt for the death of the family horse, Prince. After being talked into the proposition, Tess remarks, "Well, as I killed the horse, mother. I suppose I ought to do something." Thus Tess' fate is sealed. What Tess and her family do not know is that the Stoke-d'Urbervilles are not relatives at all. Simon Stoke had made a small fortune as a merchant in North England and assumed the name d'Urberville and attached it to his own as a way to demonstrate his close relationship to the people of South England and to give the impression of an old, established aristocratic family. Eventually, the name Stoke was dropped, leaving only the name d'Urberville. Tess and her family never learn this fact, partially because they are rather uneducated and partially because they rely on what others tell them of their family history and do not research this history for themselves. In Chapter 6, when Tess is nearing the end of a successful trip to the d'Urbervilles, Hardy notes, "Thus the thing began." It should be noted that Hardy gives subtle hints that a "play" has commenced. This technique dates back to the ancient Greek period when plays were written about the sport that the Greek gods took with mortal men. Sometimes it was said that the Greek gods enjoyed using mankind as toys or for sport. Hardy knows this and uses this device as a springboard for his own work, making Tess an unwitting -- and unwilling -- participant. When Tess is called upon to return to The Slopes, she does so out of a sense of duty: "I hope it is a chance for earning money. It is no other kind of chance." Joan floats the possibility that Tess could take advantage of the situation and become a married, proper lady. Later Tess remarks, "Very well; I suppose you know best. Do what you like with me mother." Joan has set up her daughter much like the Greek gods of old set up the human players in their little "dramas." Later, when Tess leaves home to work at The Slopes, Joan insists that Tess spruce herself for the occasion. Joan has Tess put on her finest dress, ribbons in her hair and stockings. Here Hardy comments that Tess' mother is "developing figure an amplitude which belied her age, and might cause her to be estimated as a woman when she was not much more than a child." Joan has indeed created an image of Tess as a woman-child. For Tess, this is a dangerous situation. John Durbeyfield is oblivious to the situation into which his daughter has been sent. His redeeming quality is that he is reluctant to send Tess away; nevertheless, he later gives in. He objects several times to the proposal but warms to the idea once his wife applies her charms. He even agrees, in a rambling mumbled monologue that he will "sell him the title -- yes sell it -- and at no onreasonable figure." John begins at PS1,000 for the title and ends up at PS20 for a title, the most money John had seen in a while. Because of his simplemindedness, his grand history can be bought for a very small sum of money and his daughter given away for a song. When Tess is about to leave, John asks Joan "What's her trump card? Her d'Urberville blood, you mean?" Joan answers rather sarcastically, "No, stupid; her face -- as @'twas mine." This comparison is telling: Joan Durbeyfield's "trump card" had been her face -- that is, her beauty -- but it did not stand her in good stead. Instead of winning a respectable, responsible husband or having a life that beautiful people may seem to be heir to, she is instead married to a drunk who, despite his good intentions, cannot provide for his family, and she lives a life of hardship and uncertainty. Nevertheless, in her naivete , she believes that Tess' beauty will win them all a measure of security and happiness -- if Tess marries, as her mother wants her to, into a family of wealth and position, a marriage that can only happen, Joan thinks, by Tess' association with the d'Urbervilles. This link between the mother's fortunes and Tess' foreshadows later events. Unfortunately, for Tess, the outcome will be even more dire. We clearly recognize the dangerous position Tess is in when she encounters someone like Alec d'Urberville, a man who will take full advantage of his position as the son of a wealthy family and his position of authority in the d'Urberville household to put Tess into a compromising position. Her beauty attracts him, but in her innocence and naivete, she cannot see the danger clearly or combat Alec successfully. Tess does her best to fight Alec's unwelcome advances, but he thinks she is headstrong and a force to be reckoned with. Even though Tess spurns his advances, Alec is determined to have her or have his way with her on his own terms, "Let me put one little kiss on those holmberry lips, Tess, or even on that warmed cheek, and I'll stop -- on my honour, I will!" Tess' desires are to be ignored. Alec is "god-like" in how he wields his power over the servants in his home. To Alec, Tess is another conquest to be mastered, like an unbroken horse. Hardy uses third person narrative throughout the novel. This narrative point of view allows the writer to inject his thoughts into the narrative or to provide editorial comment on the evolution of the plot, scene, or character. Third person narrative is a common technique used by authors when they want to communicate personally with the reader. In this section, for example, Hardy uses it as he discusses Tess' mother, Joan, and her simplemindedness: "Being mentally older than her mother did not regard Mrs. Durbeyfield's matrimonial hopes for her in a serious aspect for a moment. The light-minded woman had been discovering good matches for her daughter almost from the year of her birth." This wry comment does two things. First it speaks to the universal hope of mothers -- that their daughters make good matches . Second, it highlights the irony of Joan's plans for Tess: Her desire for Tess to make a good match leads to Tess' ruin. Glossary penury lack of money, property, or necessities; extreme poverty; destitution. quagmire a difficult or inextricable position; here, referring to the difficulties caused by the loss of Prince, the Durbeyfield horse. deferential very respectful. van common carrier, usually a cart pulled by horses, which travels from town to town. Malthusian of Malthus and his theory that the world population tends to increase faster than the food supply with inevitable disastrous results unless natural restrictions, such as war, famine, and disease, reduce the population or the increase is checked by moral restraint. Druidical mistletoe to the Druids, mistletoe was sacred. pollarded for bows had their boughs severed to make bows. Chapels-of-Ease chapels for parishioners who lived far from the church. crumby an attractive girl. mistarshers mustache. dand a bit more. dolorifuge painful, full or sorrow. Holmberry a holly bush.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/2166-chapters/chapters_11_to_12.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/King Solomon's Mines/section_6_part_0.txt

King Solomon's Mines.chapters 11-12

chapters 11-12

{"name": "Chapters 11 and 12", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200804024551/https://www.gradesaver.com/king-solomons-mines/study-guide/summary-chapters-11-and-12", "summary": "After nearly two hours' waiting, Infadoos at last arrives with the potentially friendly tribal leaders. He asks Ignosi to show them the serpent tattoo, and Ignosi acquiesces. The leaders inspect the mark with no visible reaction. Ignosi then recounts his history to the men. Infadoos asks the men to judge and make a decision about whom they will support. The eldest of the leaders agrees with Infadoos that Twala's reign has brought great sorrow, but they are not yet ready to accept the legitimacy of Umbopa's claim to royal heritage. He asks that the white men who support Ignosi give them a sign with their \"magic\" to prove his legitimacy and the efficacy of their support. Captain Good consults his almanac and comes up with a plan--the next night is a lunar eclipse, so that is the sign they should offer. Sir Henry agrees, but Quatermain has some doubts about trusting into an almanac and the reliability of the schedule. Nonetheless, the men tell the leaders that they will blot out the moon on the next night. This will work well for a sign, they say, for the next night is the dance ceremony in which Twala chooses the fairest woman from among the young maidens and has her sacrificed. The leaders agree to accept this as proof of the white men's power and Ignosi's royalty. The white men then retire to rest. Before going to bed, Sir Henry takes Ignosi aside and asks that he promise to end the senseless murder of men and the deaths without trial he has seen under Twala's reign. Ignosi agrees that, insofar as it is in his power, he will do so. The men spend the next day receiving ceremonial visits and dining as they await the fateful night. When the sun sets, an emissary comes to bring the men to the \"dance of girls.\" The men sit and watch the lovely young women dance before the gathered Kukuanas. Twala offers the white men their choice of the girls as brides, but Quatermain insists that whites only marry whites. Twala agrees that this is good, and then finds a way to insult Ignosi. Ignosi retorts that he could kill Twala before Twala made a move against him, a statement which annoys Twala but does not draw him out. Then Twala asks Quatermain which of the girls he things is fairest. Without thinking, Quatermain indicates one particular girl, who is immediately seized upon to be the sacrifice. Quatermain tries to undo his blunder, but Twala insists that the annual sacrifices are necessary to appease the stone images who reside in the Three Witches. Gagool approaches the girl and demands her name. Speechless with fear, the girl attempts to flee but is restrained by Scragga. He threatens her with his spear, and she gives in. She says her name is Foulata and asks Gagool why she must die so young. Gagool reminds her that she is to be sacrificed to the spirits of the three distant peaks. Foulata then beseeches Captain Good to free her from this fate. As she grips his knees in petition, Sir Henry urges Quatermain to make his move. Unfortunately, Quatermain has seen no change in the moon and fears the sign will prove false. Realizing that Foulata will be killed before them if he does nothing, Quatermain demands of Twala that she be set free. Twala resents Quatermain's tone and calls his guards to seize the men. Good, Sir Henry, and Ignosi raise their rifles in readiness to defend themselves. Quatermain declares that if any Kukuana takes a single step toward the white men, he will put out the moon. Gagool mocks his claim, but Quatermain has seen a shadow begin to blur the edges of the moon and presses forward. He stretches out his hand and quotes some lines from The Ingoldsby Legends in a somber tone. Sir Henry and Captain Good follow suit; the former quotes passages from the Old Testament while the latter uses the oldest swear words he can muster. As the men chant, the shadow extends further over the moon. The Kukuanas respond in fear. Gagool attempts to play the vent off as a natural occurrence, but no one listens to her. The men keep up their improvised ritual, convincing the Kakuanas that they are responsible for the darkening of the moon. Scragga cries out that they are killing the moon and makes a desperate attack on Sir Henry. Scragga's spear bounces off of Sir Henry's mail shirt, and before Scragga can recover his balance with the weapon Sir Henry grabs it and runs the princeling through with his own weapon. Terror seizes the rest as the darkness increases, sending them all fleeing to their homes. Only Quatermain's companions and the friendly chiefs remain. They agree to rendezvous at a safe place to discuss their upcoming strategy against Twala. Following their escape under cover of the darkened moon, Ignosi, Quatermain, and the others journey far away from Loo to a pre-arranged meeting site. After an hour and a half the eclipse begins to pass, allowing the reflected light to illuminate the landscape. They surmount a large, flat-topped hill which serves as their base camp. Usually garrisoned by three thousand men, the camp is now populated by many more soldiers willing to cast their lot with Ignosi. When they reach the center of the campground, the white men are presented with their belongings; Good is at long last given his trousers and, despite Infadoos' protests, immediately puts them on. That morning, the soldiers are mustered to hear the tale of Ignosi. Infadoos recounts the story already told to him, reminding the Kukuanas also of the evil Twala has brought to the land. Infadoos elaborates on the events, casting Sir Henry, Captain Good, and Quatermain in the role of magical men from the stars who saw the suffering of Kukuanaland and brought Ignosi out of exile for the purpose of ending that suffering. Then Ignosi takes the center and exhorts the assembly to join him in deposing Twala--he urges them to be men and stand with him, and he himself will willingly give his own life for them if necessary. He promises them oxen and wives in exchange for their loyalty, then goes on to guarantee that under his reign, random bloodshed will cease in the land. The assembled chiefs give their assent, so Ignosi concludes by drawing their attention to the preparations Twala is making in the distance. He says the day of battle will be their test of loyalty, and that any man who fights will not be forgotten when the spoils are divided. At his pause, the chiefs salute Ignosi with their word of reverence, \"koom,\" to demonstrate their acceptance of his leadership. The men then prepare for the upcoming battle. They learn that Twala is massing a great army, which will only get larger as time passes. They do not expect an attack until at least the next day, in order both to prepare for war and to diffuse the sense of awe Twala's men would feel about the white men and their moon-darkening magic. Ignosi's camp sets about making defensive improvements, including amassing boulders to be rolled or thrown down the hill at the enemy. Before sunset, a messenger arrives from Twala to offer Ignosi and his people an opportunity to surrender. Quatermain asks Twala's terms, and is told that Twala will be \"merciful\" and only kill one-tenth of the disloyal soldiers; however, he demands the lives of Sir Henry, who murdered Scragga, and Ignosi, the \"pretender\" to his throne, as a certain price. Quatermain consults with the others, then answers the messenger that they refuse his terms, and that Twala himself will be dead within two days. He threatens the messenger with harm if he does not depart immediately, but the messenger appears to be unmoved by these harsh words. The messenger leaves just as the sun sets. Quatermain takes Sir Henry aside to confide in him his fears. Sir Henry agrees that things look hopeless, but he is determined to rise to the challenge. Quatermain gets the impression that Sir Henry actually enjoys combat. The next morning, everyone arises and prepares for battle. Sir Henry goes so far as to dress in full warrior regalia and chooses the battle-axe as his weapon. Infadoos, Ignosi, and Quatermain look toward Loo to evaluate Twala's forces. Thousands of warriors stream forth from the city and arrange themselves in three regiments, indicating that they plan to attack Ignosi on three fronts. Ignosi gives orders to prepare the defense.", "analysis": "Of interest is Quatermain's insistence that \"we white men wed only with white women like ourselves\" . Ostensibly a segregationist mentality, Quatermain uses it as a pretext to keep the men from choosing Kukuana maidens for wives. Quatermain notes that Good himself is most susceptible, \"like most sailors,\" and that in any event \"women bring trouble as surely as the night follows the day\" . Ironically, Quatermain uses a racist pretext in order to address a sexist mentality. The sacrifice of the young women highlights both the differences between the white \"civilized\" culture and the Kukuanas \"savage\" culture and the Old Crone archetype filled by Gagool. The \"witch hunt\" has already demonstrated the bloodthirsty cruelty in which Twala will engage to hold onto his power; now the sacrifice of innocent young maidens shows the reader how anti-life their culture has become under Twala's rule. Falouta calls upon the mercy of the white men--particularly Good--to save her from the evil of her own people. It is only through the device of the eclipse that the white men are able to oppose this tribal tradition and remain alive. Gagool is demonstrably and agent of destruction: particularly the destruction of youth and beauty. She acts as the wicked step-mother in many fairy tales, jealously holding on to her own influence over the patriarch while urging the death of youth, virility, and beauty . As Virginia Brackett notes, \"The book's blood-curdling villain is a hideous old wise-woman, religious-leader miscreant named Gagoo, a name that suggests 'gargoyle,' a mythical monster, which in various hideous faces and shapes decorated Europe's houses of worship and wisdom\" . Falouta is introduced here as a contrast to Gagool, and as will be shown later she is Gagool's foil--whereas Gagool seeks to destroy the white men and keep her secret knowledge, Falouta offers them aid and brings information. The device of the almanac and the eclipse is not new to Haggard, although it was not commonly used so much before his time as after. The superiority of European science over savage superstition is again reinforced, this time on a more cosmic level. Firearms are one thing; being able to \"command\" the sun and moon place the white men firmly in the position of gods. Not only is European post-industrial revolution science superior to the savages of Africa; it is also capable of giving the white men mastery over the cosmos. Perhaps the most heroically-toned of all the chapters, Chapter 12 sets the scene for the upcoming battle and early climax for the novel. Both sides are described in admiring terms, with even Twala in his cruelty able to amass a great army of superior numbers to Ignosi's. The terms offered suggest that a peaceful resolution might be sought by both sides, but Twala's price is too high--not only ten percent of the \"rebellious\" soldiers, but also the lives of Sir Henry and Ignosi. Twala demonstrates craftiness in his delay to enter into combat so soon after the white men have demonstrated their apparent power over the moon. For all his evil, Twala is a clever leader and a man unswayed by white men's knowledge. The demand for Sir Henry to be delivered over to Twala for his murder of the false king's son also lends some pathos to Twala's character. Although it is certainly a plan to avenge himself on the man who has cut short his line, Twala's demand also forces the reader to see Twala as a father--a father wronged in much the same way as Twala wronged Ignosi's father and his own brother, but a paternal figure nonetheless. This positive characterization further contrasts Twala with his advisor , Gagool; by extension, it shows Haggard's more forgiving attitude toward men of any color than to women. Sir Henry Curtis, the most heroic of all the characters in the novel, seems to \"go native.\" As Quatermain relates, \"Sir Henry wen the whole length about the matter...Round his throat he fastened a leopardskin cloak of a commanding officer, on his brows he bound the plume of black ostrich feathers, worn only by generals of high rank, and round his centre a magnificent moocha of white ox-tails. A pair of sandals, a leglet of goats' hair, a heavy battle-axe, with a rhinoceros-horn handle, a round iron shield, covered with white ox-hide, and the regulation number of tollas, or throwing knives, made up his equipment...The dress was, no doubt, a savage one, but I am bound to say I never saw a finer sight than Sir Henry Curtis presented in this guise\" . Note that Quatermain's admiration if Sir Henry is in spite of his \"savage\" attire, and that to Quatermain, a white man in Kukuana war-garb is a finer sight than the Kukuanas themselves similarly attired. The overall tone of the chapter echoes that of The Iliad and similar epics involving the confrontation of two great armies. As in The Iliad, the reader is encouraged to see the nobility, bravery, and strength of the antagonist and some of the flaws of those on the side of the protagonist. Quatermain--like the reluctant draftee Odysseus--is frustrated that he will die in battle, but nonetheless dedicates himself to the strategy."}

For a long while--two hours, I should think--we sat there in silence, being too much overwhelmed by the recollection of the horrors we had seen to talk. At last, just as we were thinking of turning in--for the night drew nigh to dawn--we heard a sound of steps. Then came the challenge of a sentry posted at the kraal gate, which apparently was answered, though not in an audible tone, for the steps still advanced; and in another second Infadoos had entered the hut, followed by some half-dozen stately-looking chiefs. "My lords," he said, "I have come according to my word. My lords and Ignosi, rightful king of the Kukuanas, I have brought with me these men," pointing to the row of chiefs, "who are great men among us, having each one of them the command of three thousand soldiers, that live but to do their bidding, under the king's. I have told them of what I have seen, and what my ears have heard. Now let them also behold the sacred snake around thee, and hear thy story, Ignosi, that they may say whether or no they will make cause with thee against Twala the king." By way of answer Ignosi again stripped off his girdle, and exhibited the snake tattooed about him. Each chief in turn drew near and examined the sign by the dim light of the lamp, and without saying a word passed on to the other side. Then Ignosi resumed his moocha, and addressing them, repeated the history he had detailed in the morning. "Now ye have heard, chiefs," said Infadoos, when he had done, "what say ye: will ye stand by this man and help him to his father's throne, or will ye not? The land cries out against Twala, and the blood of the people flows like the waters in spring. Ye have seen to-night. Two other chiefs there were with whom I had it in my mind to speak, and where are they now? The hyaenas howl over their corpses. Soon shall ye be as they are if ye strike not. Choose then, my brothers." The eldest of the six men, a short, thick-set warrior, with white hair, stepped forward a pace and answered-- "Thy words are true, Infadoos; the land cries out. My own brother is among those who died to-night; but this is a great matter, and the thing is hard to believe. How know we that if we lift our spears it may not be for a thief and a liar? It is a great matter, I say, of which none can see the end. For of this be sure, blood will flow in rivers before the deed is done; many will still cleave to the king, for men worship the sun that still shines bright in the heavens, rather than that which has not risen. These white men from the Stars, their magic is great, and Ignosi is under the cover of their wing. If he be indeed the rightful king, let them give us a sign, and let the people have a sign, that all may see. So shall men cleave to us, knowing of a truth that the white man's magic is with them." "Ye have the sign of the snake," I answered. "My lord, it is not enough. The snake may have been placed there since the man's childhood. Show us a sign, and it will suffice. But we will not move without a sign." The others gave a decided assent, and I turned in perplexity to Sir Henry and Good, and explained the situation. "I think that I have it," said Good exultingly; "ask them to give us a moment to think." I did so, and the chiefs withdrew. So soon as they had gone Good went to the little box where he kept his medicines, unlocked it, and took out a note-book, in the fly-leaves of which was an almanack. "Now look here, you fellows, isn't to-morrow the 4th of June?" he said. We had kept a careful note of the days, so were able to answer that it was. "Very good; then here we have it--'4 June, total eclipse of the moon commences at 8.15 Greenwich time, visible in Teneriffe--_South Africa_, &c.' There's a sign for you. Tell them we will darken the moon to-morrow night." The idea was a splendid one; indeed, the only weak spot about it was a fear lest Good's almanack might be incorrect. If we made a false prophecy on such a subject, our prestige would be gone for ever, and so would Ignosi's chance of the throne of the Kukuanas. "Suppose that the almanack is wrong," suggested Sir Henry to Good, who was busily employed in working out something on a blank page of the book. "I see no reason to suppose anything of the sort," was his answer. "Eclipses always come up to time; at least that is my experience of them, and it especially states that this one will be visible in South Africa. I have worked out the reckonings as well as I can, without knowing our exact position; and I make out that the eclipse should begin here about ten o'clock tomorrow night, and last till half-past twelve. For an hour and a half or so there should be almost total darkness." "Well," said Sir Henry, "I suppose we had better risk it." I acquiesced, though doubtfully, for eclipses are queer cattle to deal with--it might be a cloudy night, for instance, or our dates might be wrong--and sent Umbopa to summon the chiefs back. Presently they came, and I addressed them thus-- "Great men of the Kukuanas, and thou, Infadoos, listen. We love not to show our powers, for to do so is to interfere with the course of nature, and to plunge the world into fear and confusion. But since this matter is a great one, and as we are angered against the king because of the slaughter we have seen, and because of the act of the _Isanusi_ Gagool, who would have put our friend Ignosi to death, we have determined to break a rule, and to give such a sign as all men may see. Come hither"; and I led them to the door of the hut and pointed to the red ball of the moon. "What see ye there?" "We see the sinking moon," answered the spokesman of the party. "It is so. Now tell me, can any mortal man put out that moon before her hour of setting, and bring the curtain of black night down upon the land?" The chief laughed a little at the question. "No, my lord, that no man can do. The moon is stronger than man who looks on her, nor can she vary in her courses." "Ye say so. Yet I tell you that to-morrow night, about two hours before midnight, we will cause the moon to be eaten up for a space of an hour and half an hour. Yes, deep darkness shall cover the earth, and it shall be for a sign that Ignosi is indeed king of the Kukuanas. If we do this thing, will ye be satisfied?" "Yea, my lords," answered the old chief with a smile, which was reflected on the faces of his companions; "_if_ ye do this thing, we will be satisfied indeed." "It shall be done; we three, Incubu, Bougwan, and Macumazahn, have said it, and it shall be done. Dost thou hear, Infadoos?" "I hear, my lord, but it is a wonderful thing that ye promise, to put out the moon, the mother of the world, when she is at her full." "Yet shall we do it, Infadoos." "It is well, my lords. To-day, two hours after sunset, Twala will send for my lords to witness the girls dance, and one hour after the dance begins the girl whom Twala thinks the fairest shall be killed by Scragga, the king's son, as a sacrifice to the Silent Ones, who sit and keep watch by the mountains yonder," and he pointed towards the three strange-looking peaks where Solomon's road was supposed to end. "Then let my lords darken the moon, and save the maiden's life, and the people will believe indeed." "Ay," said the old chief, still smiling a little, "the people will believe indeed." "Two miles from Loo," went on Infadoos, "there is a hill curved like a new moon, a stronghold, where my regiment, and three other regiments which these chiefs command, are stationed. This morning we will make a plan whereby two or three other regiments may be moved there also. Then, if in truth my lords can darken the moon, in the darkness I will take my lords by the hand and lead them out of Loo to this place, where they shall be safe, and thence we can make war upon Twala the king." "It is good," said I. "Let leave us to sleep awhile and to make ready our magic." Infadoos rose, and, having saluted us, departed with the chiefs. "My friends," said Ignosi, so soon as they were gone, "can ye do this wonderful thing, or were ye speaking empty words to the captains?" "We believe that we can do it, Umbopa--Ignosi, I mean." "It is strange," he answered, "and had ye not been Englishmen I would not have believed it; but I have learned that English 'gentlemen' tell no lies. If we live through the matter, be sure that I will repay you." "Ignosi," said Sir Henry, "promise me one thing." "I will promise, Incubu, my friend, even before I hear it," answered the big man with a smile. "What is it?" "This: that if ever you come to be king of this people you will do away with the smelling out of wizards such as we saw last night; and that the killing of men without trial shall no longer take place in the land." Ignosi thought for a moment after I had translated this request, and then answered-- "The ways of black people are not as the ways of white men, Incubu, nor do we value life so highly. Yet I will promise. If it be in my power to hold them back, the witch-finders shall hunt no more, nor shall any man die the death without trial or judgment." "That's a bargain, then," said Sir Henry; "and now let us get a little rest." Thoroughly wearied out, we were soon sound asleep, and slept till Ignosi woke us about eleven o'clock. Then we rose, washed, and ate a hearty breakfast. After that we went outside the hut and walked about, amusing ourselves with examining the structure of the Kukuana huts and observing the customs of the women. "I hope that eclipse will come off," said Sir Henry presently. "If it does not it will soon be all up with us," I answered mournfully; "for so sure as we are living men some of those chiefs will tell the whole story to the king, and then there will be another sort of eclipse, and one that we shall certainly not like." Returning to the hut we ate some dinner, and passed the rest of the day in receiving visits of ceremony and curiosity. At length the sun set, and we enjoyed a couple of hours of such quiet as our melancholy forebodings would allow to us. Finally, about half-past eight, a messenger came from Twala to bid us to the great annual "dance of girls" which was about to be celebrated. Hastily we put on the chain shirts that the king had sent us, and taking our rifles and ammunition with us, so as to have them handy in case we had to fly, as suggested by Infadoos, we started boldly enough, though with inward fear and trembling. The great space in front of the king's kraal bore a very different appearance from that which it had presented on the previous evening. In place of the grim ranks of serried warriors were company after company of Kukuana girls, not over-dressed, so far as clothing went, but each crowned with a wreath of flowers, and holding a palm leaf in one hand and a white arum lily in the other. In the centre of the open moonlit space sat Twala the king, with old Gagool at his feet, attended by Infadoos, the boy Scragga, and twelve guards. There were also present about a score of chiefs, amongst whom I recognised most of our friends of the night before. Twala greeted us with much apparent cordiality, though I saw him fix his one eye viciously on Umbopa. "Welcome, white men from the Stars," he said; "this is another sight from that which your eyes gazed on by the light of last night's moon, but it is not so good a sight. Girls are pleasant, and were it not for such as these," and he pointed round him, "we should none of us be here this day; but men are better. Kisses and the tender words of women are sweet, but the sound of the clashing of the spears of warriors, and the smell of men's blood, are sweeter far! Would ye have wives from among our people, white men? If so, choose the fairest here, and ye shall have them, as many as ye will," and he paused for an answer. As the prospect did not seem to be without attractions for Good, who, like most sailors, is of a susceptible nature,--being elderly and wise, foreseeing the endless complications that anything of the sort would involve, for women bring trouble so surely as the night follows the day, I put in a hasty answer-- "Thanks to thee, O king, but we white men wed only with white women like ourselves. Your maidens are fair, but they are not for us!" The king laughed. "It is well. In our land there is a proverb which runs, 'Women's eyes are always bright, whatever the colour,' and another that says, 'Love her who is present, for be sure she who is absent is false to thee;' but perhaps these things are not so in the Stars. In a land where men are white all things are possible. So be it, white men; the girls will not go begging! Welcome again; and welcome, too, thou black one; if Gagool here had won her way, thou wouldst have been stiff and cold by now. It is lucky for thee that thou too camest from the Stars; ha! ha!" "I can kill thee before thou killest me, O king," was Ignosi's calm answer, "and thou shalt be stiff before my limbs cease to bend." Twala started. "Thou speakest boldly, boy," he replied angrily; "presume not too far." "He may well be bold in whose lips are truth. The truth is a sharp spear which flies home and misses not. It is a message from 'the Stars,' O king." Twala scowled, and his one eye gleamed fiercely, but he said nothing more. "Let the dance begin," he cried, and then the flower-crowned girls sprang forward in companies, singing a sweet song and waving the delicate palms and white lilies. On they danced, looking faint and spiritual in the soft, sad light of the risen moon; now whirling round and round, now meeting in mimic warfare, swaying, eddying here and there, coming forward, falling back in an ordered confusion delightful to witness. At last they paused, and a beautiful young woman sprang out of the ranks and began to pirouette in front of us with a grace and vigour which would have put most ballet girls to shame. At length she retired exhausted, and another took her place, then another and another, but none of them, either in grace, skill, or personal attractions, came up to the first. When the chosen girls had all danced, the king lifted his hand. "Which deem ye the fairest, white men?" he asked. "The first," said I unthinkingly. Next second I regretted it, for I remembered that Infadoos had told us that the fairest woman must be offered up as a sacrifice. "Then is my mind as your minds, and my eyes as your eyes. She is the fairest! and a sorry thing it is for her, for she must die!" "_Ay, must die!_" piped out Gagool, casting a glance of her quick eyes in the direction of the poor girl, who, as yet ignorant of the awful fate in store for her, was standing some ten yards off in front of a company of maidens, engaged in nervously picking a flower from her wreath to pieces, petal by petal. "Why, O king?" said I, restraining my indignation with difficulty; "the girl has danced well, and pleased us; she is fair too; it would be hard to reward her with death." Twala laughed as he answered-- "It is our custom, and the figures who sit in stone yonder," and he pointed towards the three distant peaks, "must have their due. Did I fail to put the fairest girl to death to-day, misfortune would fall upon me and my house. Thus runs the prophecy of my people: 'If the king offer not a sacrifice of a fair girl, on the day of the dance of maidens, to the Old Ones who sit and watch on the mountains, then shall he fall, and his house.' Look ye, white men, my brother who reigned before me offered not the sacrifice, because of the tears of the woman, and he fell, and his house, and I reign in his stead. It is finished; she must die!" Then turning to the guards--"Bring her hither; Scragga, make sharp thy spear." Two of the men stepped forward, and as they advanced, the girl, for the first time realising her impending fate, screamed aloud and turned to fly. But the strong hands caught her fast, and brought her, struggling and weeping, before us. "What is thy name, girl?" piped Gagool. "What! wilt thou not answer? Shall the king's son do his work at once?" At this hint, Scragga, looking more evil than ever, advanced a step and lifted his great spear, and at that moment I saw Good's hand creep to his revolver. The poor girl caught the faint glint of steel through her tears, and it sobered her anguish. She ceased struggling, and clasping her hands convulsively, stood shuddering from head to foot. "See," cried Scragga in high glee, "she shrinks from the sight of my little plaything even before she has tasted it," and he tapped the broad blade of his spear. "If ever I get the chance you shall pay for that, you young hound!" I heard Good mutter beneath his breath. "Now that thou art quiet, give us thy name, my dear. Come, speak out, and fear not," said Gagool in mockery. "Oh, mother," answered the girl, in trembling accents, "my name is Foulata, of the house of Suko. Oh, mother, why must I die? I have done no wrong!" "Be comforted," went on the old woman in her hateful tone of mockery. "Thou must die, indeed, as a sacrifice to the Old Ones who sit yonder," and she pointed to the peaks; "but it is better to sleep in the night than to toil in the daytime; it is better to die than to live, and thou shalt die by the royal hand of the king's own son." The girl Foulata wrung her hands in anguish, and cried out aloud, "Oh, cruel! and I so young! What have I done that I should never again see the sun rise out of the night, or the stars come following on his track in the evening, that I may no more gather the flowers when the dew is heavy, or listen to the laughing of the waters? Woe is me, that I shall never see my father's hut again, nor feel my mother's kiss, nor tend the lamb that is sick! Woe is me, that no lover shall put his arm around me and look into my eyes, nor shall men children be born of me! Oh, cruel, cruel!" And again she wrung her hands and turned her tear-stained flower-crowned face to Heaven, looking so lovely in her despair--for she was indeed a beautiful woman--that assuredly the sight of her would have melted the hearts of any less cruel than were the three fiends before us. Prince Arthur's appeal to the ruffians who came to blind him was not more touching than that of this savage girl. But it did not move Gagool or Gagool's master, though I saw signs of pity among the guards behind, and on the faces of the chiefs; and as for Good, he gave a fierce snort of indignation, and made a motion as though to go to her assistance. With all a woman's quickness, the doomed girl interpreted what was passing in his mind, and by a sudden movement flung herself before him, and clasped his "beautiful white legs" with her hands. "Oh, white father from the Stars!" she cried, "throw over me the mantle of thy protection; let me creep into the shadow of thy strength, that I may be saved. Oh, keep me from these cruel men and from the mercies of Gagool!" "All right, my hearty, I'll look after you," sang out Good in nervous Saxon. "Come, get up, there's a good girl," and he stooped and caught her hand. Twala turned and motioned to his son, who advanced with his spear lifted. "Now's your time," whispered Sir Henry to me; "what are you waiting for?" "I am waiting for that eclipse," I answered; "I have had my eye on the moon for the last half-hour, and I never saw it look healthier." "Well, you must risk it now, or the girl will be killed. Twala is losing patience." Recognising the force of the argument, and having cast one more despairing look at the bright face of the moon, for never did the most ardent astronomer with a theory to prove await a celestial event with such anxiety, I stepped with all the dignity that I could command between the prostrate girl and the advancing spear of Scragga. "King," I said, "it shall not be; we will not endure this thing; let the girl go in safety." Twala rose from his seat in wrath and astonishment, and from the chiefs and serried ranks of maidens who had closed in slowly upon us in anticipation of the tragedy came a murmur of amazement. "_Shall not be!_ thou white dog, that yappest at the lion in his cave; _shall not be!_ art thou mad? Be careful, lest this chicken's fate overtake thee, and those with thee. How canst thou save her or thyself? Who art thou that thou settest thyself between me and my will? Back, I say. Scragga, kill her! Ho, guards! seize these men." At his cry armed men ran swiftly from behind the hut, where they had evidently been placed beforehand. Sir Henry, Good, and Umbopa ranged themselves alongside of me, and lifted their rifles. "Stop!" I shouted boldly, though at the moment my heart was in my boots. "Stop! we, the white men from the Stars, say that it shall not be. Come but one pace nearer, and we will put out the moon like a wind-blown lamp, as we who dwell in her House can do, and plunge the land in darkness. Dare to disobey, and ye shall taste of our magic." My threat produced an effect; the men halted, and Scragga stood still before us, his spear lifted. "Hear him! hear him!" piped Gagool; "hear the liar who says that he will put out the moon like a lamp. Let him do it, and the girl shall be speared. Yes, let him do it, or die by the girl, he and those with him." I glanced up at the moon despairingly, and now to my intense joy and relief saw that we--or rather the almanack--had made no mistake. On the edge of the great orb lay a faint rim of shadow, while a smoky hue grew and gathered upon its bright surface. Never shall I forget that supreme, that superb moment of relief. Then I lifted my hand solemnly towards the sky, an example which Sir Henry and Good followed, and quoted a line or two from the "Ingoldsby Legends" at it in the most impressive tones that I could command. Sir Henry followed suit with a verse out of the Old Testament, and something about Balbus building a wall, in Latin, whilst Good addressed the Queen of Night in a volume of the most classical bad language which he could think of. Slowly the penumbra, the shadow of a shadow, crept on over the bright surface, and as it crept I heard deep gasps of fear rising from the multitude around. "Look, O king!" I cried; "look, Gagool! Look, chiefs and people and women, and see if the white men from the Stars keep their word, or if they be but empty liars! "The moon grows black before your eyes; soon there will be darkness--ay, darkness in the hour of the full moon. Ye have asked for a sign; it is given to you. Grow dark, O Moon! withdraw thy light, thou pure and holy One; bring the proud heart of usurping murderers to the dust, and eat up the world with shadows." A groan of terror burst from the onlookers. Some stood petrified with dread, others threw themselves upon their knees and cried aloud. As for the king, he sat still and turned pale beneath his dusky skin. Only Gagool kept her courage. "It will pass," she cried; "I have often seen the like before; no man can put out the moon; lose not heart; sit still--the shadow will pass." "Wait, and ye shall see," I replied, hopping with excitement. "O Moon! Moon! Moon! wherefore art thou so cold and fickle?" This appropriate quotation was from the pages of a popular romance that I chanced to have read recently, though now I come to think of it, it was ungrateful of me to abuse the Lady of the Heavens, who was showing herself to be the truest of friends to us, however she may have behaved to the impassioned lover in the novel. Then I added: "Keep it up, Good, I can't remember any more poetry. Curse away, there's a good fellow." Good responded nobly to this tax upon his inventive faculties. Never before had I the faintest conception of the breadth and depth and height of a naval officer's objurgatory powers. For ten minutes he went on in several languages without stopping, and he scarcely ever repeated himself. Meanwhile the dark ring crept on, while all that great assembly fixed their eyes upon the sky and stared and stared in fascinated silence. Strange and unholy shadows encroached upon the moonlight, an ominous quiet filled the place. Everything grew still as death. Slowly and in the midst of this most solemn silence the minutes sped away, and while they sped the full moon passed deeper and deeper into the shadow of the earth, as the inky segment of its circle slid in awful majesty across the lunar craters. The great pale orb seemed to draw near and to grow in size. She turned a coppery hue, then that portion of her surface which was unobscured as yet grew grey and ashen, and at length, as totality approached, her mountains and her plains were to be seen glowing luridly through a crimson gloom. On, yet on, crept the ring of darkness; it was now more than half across the blood-red orb. The air grew thick, and still more deeply tinged with dusky crimson. On, yet on, till we could scarcely see the fierce faces of the group before us. No sound rose now from the spectators, and at last Good stopped swearing. "The moon is dying--the white wizards have killed the moon," yelled the prince Scragga at last. "We shall all perish in the dark," and animated by fear or fury, or by both, he lifted his spear and drove it with all his force at Sir Henry's breast. But he forgot the mail shirts that the king had given us, and which we wore beneath our clothing. The steel rebounded harmless, and before he could repeat the blow Curtis had snatched the spear from his hand and sent it straight through him. Scragga dropped dead. At the sight, and driven mad with fear of the gathering darkness, and of the unholy shadow which, as they believed, was swallowing the moon, the companies of girls broke up in wild confusion, and ran screeching for the gateways. Nor did the panic stop there. The king himself, followed by his guards, some of the chiefs, and Gagool, who hobbled away after them with marvellous alacrity, fled for the huts, so that in another minute we ourselves, the would-be victim Foulata, Infadoos, and most of the chiefs who had interviewed us on the previous night, were left alone upon the scene, together with the dead body of Scragga, Twala's son. "Chiefs," I said, "we have given you the sign. If ye are satisfied, let us fly swiftly to the place of which ye spoke. The charm cannot now be stopped. It will work for an hour and the half of an hour. Let us cover ourselves in the darkness." "Come," said Infadoos, turning to go, an example which was followed by the awed captains, ourselves, and the girl Foulata, whom Good took by the arm. Before we reached the gate of the kraal the moon went out utterly, and from every quarter of the firmament the stars rushed forth into the inky sky. Holding each other by the hand we stumbled on through the darkness. Luckily for us, Infadoos and the chiefs knew all the paths of the great town perfectly, so that we passed by side-ways unmolested, and notwithstanding the gloom we made fair progress. For an hour or more we journeyed on, till at length the eclipse began to pass, and that edge of the moon which had disappeared the first became again visible. Suddenly, as we watched, there burst from it a silver streak of light, accompanied by a wondrous ruddy glow, which hung upon the blackness of the sky like a celestial lamp, and a wild and lovely sight it was. In another five minutes the stars began to fade, and there was sufficient light to see our whereabouts. We then discovered that we were clear of the town of Loo, and approaching a large flat-topped hill, measuring some two miles in circumference. This hill, which is of a formation common in South Africa, is not very high; indeed, its greatest elevation is scarcely more than 200 feet, but it is shaped like a horseshoe, and its sides are rather precipitous and strewn with boulders. On the grass table-land at its summit is ample camping-ground, which had been utilised as a military cantonment of no mean strength. Its ordinary garrison was one regiment of three thousand men, but as we toiled up the steep side of the mountain in the returning moonlight we perceived that there were several of such regiments encamped there. Reaching the table-land at last, we found crowds of men roused from their sleep, shivering with fear and huddled up together in the utmost consternation at the natural phenomenon which they were witnessing. Passing through these without a word, we gained a hut in the centre of the ground, where we were astonished to find two men waiting, laden with our few goods and chattels, which of course we had been obliged to leave behind in our hasty flight. "I sent for them," explained Infadoos; "and also for these," and he lifted up Good's long-lost trousers. With an exclamation of rapturous delight Good sprang at them, and instantly proceeded to put them on. "Surely my lord will not hide his beautiful white legs!" exclaimed Infadoos regretfully. But Good persisted, and once only did the Kukuana people get the chance of seeing his beautiful legs again. Good is a very modest man. Henceforward they had to satisfy their aesthetic longings with his one whisker, his transparent eye, and his movable teeth. Still gazing with fond remembrance at Good's trousers, Infadoos next informed us that he had commanded the regiments to muster so soon as the day broke, in order to explain to them fully the origin and circumstances of the rebellion which was decided on by the chiefs, and to introduce to them the rightful heir to the throne, Ignosi. Accordingly, when the sun was up, the troops--in all some twenty thousand men, and the flower of the Kukuana army--were mustered on a large open space, to which we went. The men were drawn up in three sides of a dense square, and presented a magnificent spectacle. We took our station on the open side of the square, and were speedily surrounded by all the principal chiefs and officers. These, after silence had been proclaimed, Infadoos proceeded to address. He narrated to them in vigorous and graceful language--for, like most Kukuanas of high rank, he was a born orator--the history of Ignosi's father, and of how he had been basely murdered by Twala the king, and his wife and child driven out to starve. Then he pointed out that the people suffered and groaned under Twala's cruel rule, instancing the proceedings of the previous night, when, under pretence of their being evil-doers, many of the noblest in the land had been dragged forth and wickedly done to death. Next he went on to say that the white lords from the Stars, looking down upon their country, had perceived its trouble, and determined, at great personal inconvenience, to alleviate its lot: That they had accordingly taken the real king of the Kukuanas, Ignosi, who was languishing in exile, by the hand, and led him over the mountains: That they had seen the wickedness of Twala's doings, and for a sign to the wavering, and to save the life of the girl Foulata, actually, by the exercise of their high magic, had put out the moon and slain the young fiend Scragga; and that they were prepared to stand by them, and assist them to overthrow Twala, and set up the rightful king, Ignosi, in his place. He finished his discourse amidst a murmur of approbation. Then Ignosi stepped forward and began to speak. Having reiterated all that Infadoos his uncle had said, he concluded a powerful speech in these words:-- "O chiefs, captains, soldiers, and people, ye have heard my words. Now must ye make choice between me and him who sits upon my throne, the uncle who killed his brother, and hunted his brother's child forth to die in the cold and the night. That I am indeed the king these"--pointing to the chiefs--"can tell you, for they have seen the snake about my middle. If I were not the king, would these white men be on my side with all their magic? Tremble, chiefs, captains, soldiers, and people! Is not the darkness they have brought upon the land to confound Twala and cover our flight, darkness even in the hour of the full moon, yet before your eyes?" "It is," answered the soldiers. "I am the king; I say to you, I am the king," went on Ignosi, drawing up his great stature to its full, and lifting his broad-bladed battle-axe above his head. "If there be any man among you who says that it is not so, let him stand forth and I will fight him now, and his blood shall be a red token that I tell you true. Let him stand forth, I say;" and he shook the great axe till it flashed in the sunlight. As nobody seemed inclined to respond to this heroic version of "Dilly, Dilly, come and be killed," our late henchman proceeded with his address. "I am indeed the king, and should ye stand by my side in the battle, if I win the day ye shall go with me to victory and honour. I will give you oxen and wives, and ye shall take place of all the regiments; and if ye fall, I will fall with you. "And behold, I give you this promise, that when I sit upon the seat of my fathers, bloodshed shall cease in the land. No longer shall ye cry for justice to find slaughter, no longer shall the witch-finder hunt you out so that ye may be slain without a cause. No man shall die save he who offends against the laws. The 'eating up' of your kraals shall cease; each one of you shall sleep secure in his own hut and fear naught, and justice shall walk blindfold throughout the land. Have ye chosen, chiefs, captains, soldiers, and people?" "We have chosen, O king," came back the answer. "It is well. Turn your heads and see how Twala's messengers go forth from the great town, east and west, and north and south, to gather a mighty army to slay me and you, and these my friends and protectors. To-morrow, or perchance the next day, he will come against us with all who are faithful to him. Then I shall see the man who is indeed my man, the man who fears not to die for his cause; and I tell you that he shall not be forgotten in the time of spoil. I have spoken, O chiefs, captains, soldiers, and people. Now go to your huts and make you ready for war." There was a pause, till presently one of the chiefs lifted his hand, and out rolled the royal salute, "_Koom._" It was a sign that the soldiers accepted Ignosi as their king. Then they marched off in battalions. Half an hour afterwards we held a council of war, at which all the commanders of regiments were present. It was evident to us that before very long we should be attacked in overwhelming force. Indeed, from our point of vantage on the hill we could see troops mustering, and runners going forth from Loo in every direction, doubtless to summon soldiers to the king's assistance. We had on our side about twenty thousand men, composed of seven of the best regiments in the country. Twala, so Infadoos and the chiefs calculated, had at least thirty to thirty-five thousand on whom he could rely at present assembled in Loo, and they thought that by midday on the morrow he would be able to gather another five thousand or more to his aid. It was, of course, possible that some of his troops would desert and come over to us, but it was not a contingency which could be reckoned on. Meanwhile, it was clear that active preparations were being made by Twala to subdue us. Already strong bodies of armed men were patrolling round and round the foot of the hill, and there were other signs also of coming assault. Infadoos and the chiefs, however, were of opinion that no attack would take place that day, which would be devoted to preparation and to the removal of every available means of the moral effect produced upon the minds of the soldiery by the supposed magical darkening of the moon. The onslaught would be on the morrow, they said, and they proved to be right. Meanwhile, we set to work to strengthen the position in all ways possible. Almost every man was turned out, and in the course of the day, which seemed far too short, much was done. The paths up the hill--that was rather a sanatorium than a fortress, being used generally as the camping place of regiments suffering from recent service in unhealthy portions of the country--were carefully blocked with masses of stones, and every other approach was made as impregnable as time would allow. Piles of boulders were collected at various spots to be rolled down upon an advancing enemy, stations were appointed to the different regiments, and all preparation was made which our joint ingenuity could suggest. Just before sundown, as we rested after our toil, we perceived a small company of men advancing towards us from the direction of Loo, one of whom bore a palm leaf in his hand for a sign that he came as a herald. As he drew near, Ignosi, Infadoos, one or two chiefs and ourselves, went down to the foot of the mountain to meet him. He was a gallant-looking fellow, wearing the regulation leopard-skin cloak. "Greeting!" he cried, as he came; "the king's greeting to those who make unholy war against the king; the lion's greeting to the jackals that snarl around his heels." "Speak," I said. "These are the king's words. Surrender to the king's mercy ere a worse thing befall you. Already the shoulder has been torn from the black bull, and the king drives him bleeding about the camp."[1] "What are Twala's terms?" I asked from curiosity. "His terms are merciful, worthy of a great king. These are the words of Twala, the one-eyed, the mighty, the husband of a thousand wives, lord of the Kukuanas, keeper of the Great Road (Solomon's Road), beloved of the Strange Ones who sit in silence at the mountains yonder (the Three Witches), Calf of the Black Cow, Elephant whose tread shakes the earth, Terror of the evil-doer, Ostrich whose feet devour the desert, huge One, black One, wise One, king from generation to generation! these are the words of Twala: 'I will have mercy and be satisfied with a little blood. One in every ten shall die, the rest shall go free; but the white man Incubu, who slew Scragga my son, and the black man his servant, who pretends to my throne, and Infadoos my brother, who brews rebellion against me, these shall die by torture as an offering to the Silent Ones.' Such are the merciful words of Twala." After consulting with the others a little, I answered him in a loud voice, so that the soldiers might hear, thus-- "Go back, thou dog, to Twala, who sent thee, and say that we, Ignosi, veritable king of the Kukuanas, Incubu, Bougwan, and Macumazahn, the wise ones from the Stars, who make dark the moon, Infadoos, of the royal house, and the chiefs, captains, and people here gathered, make answer and say, 'That we will not surrender; that before the sun has gone down twice, Twala's corpse shall stiffen at Twala's gate, and Ignosi, whose father Twala slew, shall reign in his stead.' Now go, ere we whip thee away, and beware how thou dost lift a hand against such as we are." The herald laughed loudly. "Ye frighten not men with such swelling words," he cried out. "Show yourselves as bold to-morrow, O ye who darken the moon. Be bold, fight, and be merry, before the crows pick your bones till they are whiter than your faces. Farewell; perhaps we may meet in the fight; fly not to the Stars, but wait for me, I pray, white men." With this shaft of sarcasm he retired, and almost immediately the sun sank. That night was a busy one, for weary as we were, so far as was possible by the moonlight all preparations for the morrow's fight were continued, and messengers were constantly coming and going from the place where we sat in council. At last, about an hour after midnight, everything that could be done was done, and the camp, save for the occasional challenge of a sentry, sank into silence. Sir Henry and I, accompanied by Ignosi and one of the chiefs, descended the hill and made a round of the pickets. As we went, suddenly, from all sorts of unexpected places, spears gleamed out in the moonlight, only to vanish again when we uttered the password. It was clear to us that none were sleeping at their posts. Then we returned, picking our way warily through thousands of sleeping warriors, many of whom were taking their last earthly rest. The moonlight flickering along their spears, played upon their features and made them ghastly; the chilly night wind tossed their tall and hearse-like plumes. There they lay in wild confusion, with arms outstretched and twisted limbs; their stern, stalwart forms looking weird and unhuman in the moonlight. "How many of these do you suppose will be alive at this time to-morrow?" asked Sir Henry. I shook my head and looked again at the sleeping men, and to my tired and yet excited imagination it seemed as though Death had already touched them. My mind's eye singled out those who were sealed to slaughter, and there rushed in upon my heart a great sense of the mystery of human life, and an overwhelming sorrow at its futility and sadness. To-night these thousands slept their healthy sleep, to-morrow they, and many others with them, ourselves perhaps among them, would be stiffening in the cold; their wives would be widows, their children fatherless, and their place know them no more for ever. Only the old moon would shine on serenely, the night wind would stir the grasses, and the wide earth would take its rest, even as it did aeons before we were, and will do aeons after we have been forgotten. Yet man dies not whilst the world, at once his mother and his monument, remains. His name is lost, indeed, but the breath he breathed still stirs the pine-tops on the mountains, the sound of the words he spoke yet echoes on through space; the thoughts his brain gave birth to we have inherited to-day; his passions are our cause of life; the joys and sorrows that he knew are our familiar friends--the end from which he fled aghast will surely overtake us also! Truly the universe is full of ghosts, not sheeted churchyard spectres, but the inextinguishable elements of individual life, which having once been, can never _die_, though they blend and change, and change again for ever. All sorts of reflections of this nature passed through my mind--for as I grow older I regret to say that a detestable habit of thinking seems to be getting a hold of me--while I stood and stared at those grim yet fantastic lines of warriors, sleeping, as their saying goes, "upon their spears." "Curtis," I said, "I am in a condition of pitiable fear." Sir Henry stroked his yellow beard and laughed, as he answered-- "I have heard you make that sort of remark before, Quatermain." "Well, I mean it now. Do you know, I very much doubt if one of us will be alive to-morrow night. We shall be attacked in overwhelming force, and it is quite a chance if we can hold this place." "We'll give a good account of some of them, at any rate. Look here, Quatermain, this business is nasty, and one with which, properly speaking, we ought not to be mixed up, but we are in for it, so we must make the best of our job. Speaking personally, I had rather be killed fighting than any other way, and now that there seems little chance of our finding my poor brother, it makes the idea easier to me. But fortune favours the brave, and we may succeed. Anyway, the battle will be awful, and having a reputation to keep up, we shall need to be in the thick of the thing." He made this last remark in a mournful voice, but there was a gleam in his eye which belied its melancholy. I have an idea Sir Henry Curtis actually likes fighting. After this we went to sleep for a couple of hours or so. Just about dawn we were awakened by Infadoos, who came to say that great activity was to be observed in Loo, and that parties of the king's skirmishers were driving in our outposts. We rose and dressed ourselves for the fray, each putting on his chain armour shirt, for which garments at the present juncture we felt exceedingly thankful. Sir Henry went the whole length about the matter, and dressed himself like a native warrior. "When you are in Kukuanaland, do as the Kukuanas do," he remarked, as he drew the shining steel over his broad breast, which it fitted like a glove. Nor did he stop there. At his request Infadoos had provided him with a complete set of native war uniform. Round his throat he fastened the leopard-skin cloak of a commanding officer, on his brows he bound the plume of black ostrich feathers worn only by generals of high rank, and about his middle a magnificent moocha of white ox-tails. A pair of sandals, a leglet of goat's hair, a heavy battle-axe with a rhinoceros-horn handle, a round iron shield covered with white ox-hide, and the regulation number of _tollas_, or throwing-knives, made up his equipment, to which, however, he added his revolver. The dress was, no doubt, a savage one, but I am bound to say that I seldom saw a finer sight than Sir Henry Curtis presented in this guise. It showed off his magnificent physique to the greatest advantage, and when Ignosi arrived presently, arrayed in a similar costume, I thought to myself that I had never before seen two such splendid men. As for Good and myself, the armour did not suit us nearly so well. To begin with, Good insisted upon keeping on his new-found trousers, and a stout, short gentleman with an eye-glass, and one half of his face shaved, arrayed in a mail shirt, carefully tucked into a very seedy pair of corduroys, looks more remarkable than imposing. In my case, the chain shirt being too big for me, I put it on over all my clothes, which caused it to bulge in a somewhat ungainly fashion. I discarded my trousers, however, retaining only my veldtschoons, having determined to go into battle with bare legs, in order to be the lighter for running, in case it became necessary to retire quickly. The mail coat, a spear, a shield, that I did not know how to use, a couple of _tollas_, a revolver, and a huge plume, which I pinned into the top of my shooting hat, in order to give a bloodthirsty finish to my appearance, completed my modest equipment. In addition to all these articles, of course we had our rifles, but as ammunition was scarce, and as they would be useless in case of a charge, we arranged that they should be carried behind us by bearers. When at length we had equipped ourselves, we swallowed some food hastily, and then started out to see how things were going on. At one point in the table-land of the mountain, there was a little koppie of brown stone, which served the double purpose of head-quarters and of a conning tower. Here we found Infadoos surrounded by his own regiment, the Greys, which was undoubtedly the finest in the Kukuana army, and the same that we had first seen at the outlying kraal. This regiment, now three thousand five hundred strong, was being held in reserve, and the men were lying down on the grass in companies, and watching the king's forces creep out of Loo in long ant-like columns. There seemed to be no end to the length of these columns--three in all, and each of them numbering, as we judged, at least eleven or twelve thousand men. As soon as they were clear of the town the regiments formed up. Then one body marched off to the right, one to the left, and the third came on slowly towards us. "Ah," said Infadoos, "they are going to attack us on three sides at once." This seemed rather serious news, for our position on the top of the mountain, which measured a mile and a half in circumference, being an extended one, it was important to us to concentrate our comparatively small defending force as much as possible. But since it was impossible for us to dictate in what way we should be assailed, we had to make the best of it, and accordingly sent orders to the various regiments to prepare to receive the separate onslaughts. [1] This cruel custom is not confined to the Kukuanas, but is by no means uncommon amongst African tribes on the occasion of the outbreak of war or any other important public event.--A.Q.

Chapters 11 and 12

https://web.archive.org/web/20200804024551/https://www.gradesaver.com/king-solomons-mines/study-guide/summary-chapters-11-and-12

After nearly two hours' waiting, Infadoos at last arrives with the potentially friendly tribal leaders. He asks Ignosi to show them the serpent tattoo, and Ignosi acquiesces. The leaders inspect the mark with no visible reaction. Ignosi then recounts his history to the men. Infadoos asks the men to judge and make a decision about whom they will support. The eldest of the leaders agrees with Infadoos that Twala's reign has brought great sorrow, but they are not yet ready to accept the legitimacy of Umbopa's claim to royal heritage. He asks that the white men who support Ignosi give them a sign with their "magic" to prove his legitimacy and the efficacy of their support. Captain Good consults his almanac and comes up with a plan--the next night is a lunar eclipse, so that is the sign they should offer. Sir Henry agrees, but Quatermain has some doubts about trusting into an almanac and the reliability of the schedule. Nonetheless, the men tell the leaders that they will blot out the moon on the next night. This will work well for a sign, they say, for the next night is the dance ceremony in which Twala chooses the fairest woman from among the young maidens and has her sacrificed. The leaders agree to accept this as proof of the white men's power and Ignosi's royalty. The white men then retire to rest. Before going to bed, Sir Henry takes Ignosi aside and asks that he promise to end the senseless murder of men and the deaths without trial he has seen under Twala's reign. Ignosi agrees that, insofar as it is in his power, he will do so. The men spend the next day receiving ceremonial visits and dining as they await the fateful night. When the sun sets, an emissary comes to bring the men to the "dance of girls." The men sit and watch the lovely young women dance before the gathered Kukuanas. Twala offers the white men their choice of the girls as brides, but Quatermain insists that whites only marry whites. Twala agrees that this is good, and then finds a way to insult Ignosi. Ignosi retorts that he could kill Twala before Twala made a move against him, a statement which annoys Twala but does not draw him out. Then Twala asks Quatermain which of the girls he things is fairest. Without thinking, Quatermain indicates one particular girl, who is immediately seized upon to be the sacrifice. Quatermain tries to undo his blunder, but Twala insists that the annual sacrifices are necessary to appease the stone images who reside in the Three Witches. Gagool approaches the girl and demands her name. Speechless with fear, the girl attempts to flee but is restrained by Scragga. He threatens her with his spear, and she gives in. She says her name is Foulata and asks Gagool why she must die so young. Gagool reminds her that she is to be sacrificed to the spirits of the three distant peaks. Foulata then beseeches Captain Good to free her from this fate. As she grips his knees in petition, Sir Henry urges Quatermain to make his move. Unfortunately, Quatermain has seen no change in the moon and fears the sign will prove false. Realizing that Foulata will be killed before them if he does nothing, Quatermain demands of Twala that she be set free. Twala resents Quatermain's tone and calls his guards to seize the men. Good, Sir Henry, and Ignosi raise their rifles in readiness to defend themselves. Quatermain declares that if any Kukuana takes a single step toward the white men, he will put out the moon. Gagool mocks his claim, but Quatermain has seen a shadow begin to blur the edges of the moon and presses forward. He stretches out his hand and quotes some lines from The Ingoldsby Legends in a somber tone. Sir Henry and Captain Good follow suit; the former quotes passages from the Old Testament while the latter uses the oldest swear words he can muster. As the men chant, the shadow extends further over the moon. The Kukuanas respond in fear. Gagool attempts to play the vent off as a natural occurrence, but no one listens to her. The men keep up their improvised ritual, convincing the Kakuanas that they are responsible for the darkening of the moon. Scragga cries out that they are killing the moon and makes a desperate attack on Sir Henry. Scragga's spear bounces off of Sir Henry's mail shirt, and before Scragga can recover his balance with the weapon Sir Henry grabs it and runs the princeling through with his own weapon. Terror seizes the rest as the darkness increases, sending them all fleeing to their homes. Only Quatermain's companions and the friendly chiefs remain. They agree to rendezvous at a safe place to discuss their upcoming strategy against Twala. Following their escape under cover of the darkened moon, Ignosi, Quatermain, and the others journey far away from Loo to a pre-arranged meeting site. After an hour and a half the eclipse begins to pass, allowing the reflected light to illuminate the landscape. They surmount a large, flat-topped hill which serves as their base camp. Usually garrisoned by three thousand men, the camp is now populated by many more soldiers willing to cast their lot with Ignosi. When they reach the center of the campground, the white men are presented with their belongings; Good is at long last given his trousers and, despite Infadoos' protests, immediately puts them on. That morning, the soldiers are mustered to hear the tale of Ignosi. Infadoos recounts the story already told to him, reminding the Kukuanas also of the evil Twala has brought to the land. Infadoos elaborates on the events, casting Sir Henry, Captain Good, and Quatermain in the role of magical men from the stars who saw the suffering of Kukuanaland and brought Ignosi out of exile for the purpose of ending that suffering. Then Ignosi takes the center and exhorts the assembly to join him in deposing Twala--he urges them to be men and stand with him, and he himself will willingly give his own life for them if necessary. He promises them oxen and wives in exchange for their loyalty, then goes on to guarantee that under his reign, random bloodshed will cease in the land. The assembled chiefs give their assent, so Ignosi concludes by drawing their attention to the preparations Twala is making in the distance. He says the day of battle will be their test of loyalty, and that any man who fights will not be forgotten when the spoils are divided. At his pause, the chiefs salute Ignosi with their word of reverence, "koom," to demonstrate their acceptance of his leadership. The men then prepare for the upcoming battle. They learn that Twala is massing a great army, which will only get larger as time passes. They do not expect an attack until at least the next day, in order both to prepare for war and to diffuse the sense of awe Twala's men would feel about the white men and their moon-darkening magic. Ignosi's camp sets about making defensive improvements, including amassing boulders to be rolled or thrown down the hill at the enemy. Before sunset, a messenger arrives from Twala to offer Ignosi and his people an opportunity to surrender. Quatermain asks Twala's terms, and is told that Twala will be "merciful" and only kill one-tenth of the disloyal soldiers; however, he demands the lives of Sir Henry, who murdered Scragga, and Ignosi, the "pretender" to his throne, as a certain price. Quatermain consults with the others, then answers the messenger that they refuse his terms, and that Twala himself will be dead within two days. He threatens the messenger with harm if he does not depart immediately, but the messenger appears to be unmoved by these harsh words. The messenger leaves just as the sun sets. Quatermain takes Sir Henry aside to confide in him his fears. Sir Henry agrees that things look hopeless, but he is determined to rise to the challenge. Quatermain gets the impression that Sir Henry actually enjoys combat. The next morning, everyone arises and prepares for battle. Sir Henry goes so far as to dress in full warrior regalia and chooses the battle-axe as his weapon. Infadoos, Ignosi, and Quatermain look toward Loo to evaluate Twala's forces. Thousands of warriors stream forth from the city and arrange themselves in three regiments, indicating that they plan to attack Ignosi on three fronts. Ignosi gives orders to prepare the defense.

Of interest is Quatermain's insistence that "we white men wed only with white women like ourselves" . Ostensibly a segregationist mentality, Quatermain uses it as a pretext to keep the men from choosing Kukuana maidens for wives. Quatermain notes that Good himself is most susceptible, "like most sailors," and that in any event "women bring trouble as surely as the night follows the day" . Ironically, Quatermain uses a racist pretext in order to address a sexist mentality. The sacrifice of the young women highlights both the differences between the white "civilized" culture and the Kukuanas "savage" culture and the Old Crone archetype filled by Gagool. The "witch hunt" has already demonstrated the bloodthirsty cruelty in which Twala will engage to hold onto his power; now the sacrifice of innocent young maidens shows the reader how anti-life their culture has become under Twala's rule. Falouta calls upon the mercy of the white men--particularly Good--to save her from the evil of her own people. It is only through the device of the eclipse that the white men are able to oppose this tribal tradition and remain alive. Gagool is demonstrably and agent of destruction: particularly the destruction of youth and beauty. She acts as the wicked step-mother in many fairy tales, jealously holding on to her own influence over the patriarch while urging the death of youth, virility, and beauty . As Virginia Brackett notes, "The book's blood-curdling villain is a hideous old wise-woman, religious-leader miscreant named Gagoo, a name that suggests 'gargoyle,' a mythical monster, which in various hideous faces and shapes decorated Europe's houses of worship and wisdom" . Falouta is introduced here as a contrast to Gagool, and as will be shown later she is Gagool's foil--whereas Gagool seeks to destroy the white men and keep her secret knowledge, Falouta offers them aid and brings information. The device of the almanac and the eclipse is not new to Haggard, although it was not commonly used so much before his time as after. The superiority of European science over savage superstition is again reinforced, this time on a more cosmic level. Firearms are one thing; being able to "command" the sun and moon place the white men firmly in the position of gods. Not only is European post-industrial revolution science superior to the savages of Africa; it is also capable of giving the white men mastery over the cosmos. Perhaps the most heroically-toned of all the chapters, Chapter 12 sets the scene for the upcoming battle and early climax for the novel. Both sides are described in admiring terms, with even Twala in his cruelty able to amass a great army of superior numbers to Ignosi's. The terms offered suggest that a peaceful resolution might be sought by both sides, but Twala's price is too high--not only ten percent of the "rebellious" soldiers, but also the lives of Sir Henry and Ignosi. Twala demonstrates craftiness in his delay to enter into combat so soon after the white men have demonstrated their apparent power over the moon. For all his evil, Twala is a clever leader and a man unswayed by white men's knowledge. The demand for Sir Henry to be delivered over to Twala for his murder of the false king's son also lends some pathos to Twala's character. Although it is certainly a plan to avenge himself on the man who has cut short his line, Twala's demand also forces the reader to see Twala as a father--a father wronged in much the same way as Twala wronged Ignosi's father and his own brother, but a paternal figure nonetheless. This positive characterization further contrasts Twala with his advisor , Gagool; by extension, it shows Haggard's more forgiving attitude toward men of any color than to women. Sir Henry Curtis, the most heroic of all the characters in the novel, seems to "go native." As Quatermain relates, "Sir Henry wen the whole length about the matter...Round his throat he fastened a leopardskin cloak of a commanding officer, on his brows he bound the plume of black ostrich feathers, worn only by generals of high rank, and round his centre a magnificent moocha of white ox-tails. A pair of sandals, a leglet of goats' hair, a heavy battle-axe, with a rhinoceros-horn handle, a round iron shield, covered with white ox-hide, and the regulation number of tollas, or throwing knives, made up his equipment...The dress was, no doubt, a savage one, but I am bound to say I never saw a finer sight than Sir Henry Curtis presented in this guise" . Note that Quatermain's admiration if Sir Henry is in spite of his "savage" attire, and that to Quatermain, a white man in Kukuana war-garb is a finer sight than the Kukuanas themselves similarly attired. The overall tone of the chapter echoes that of The Iliad and similar epics involving the confrontation of two great armies. As in The Iliad, the reader is encouraged to see the nobility, bravery, and strength of the antagonist and some of the flaws of those on the side of the protagonist. Quatermain--like the reluctant draftee Odysseus--is frustrated that he will die in battle, but nonetheless dedicates himself to the strategy.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/03.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Lord Jim/section_2_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapter 3

chapter 3

{"name": "Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-3", "summary": "One still night, Jim is on watch aboard the Patna, his mind wandering as usual, when the ship's fat German captain waddles up on deck and chats with the second engineer, who is drunk. The two start to argue. Shmoop smells trouble. Sure enough, while the captain is busy yelling the ship hits something and shudders. Everyone is confused, since no one recalled ordering up anything ominous with a side of doom: \"They could not understand; and suddenly the calm sea, the sky without a cloud, appeared formidably insecure in their immobility, as if poised on the brow of destruction.\" This is totally Titanic in the tropics.", "analysis": ""}

A marvellous stillness pervaded the world, and the stars, together with the serenity of their rays, seemed to shed upon the earth the assurance of everlasting security. The young moon recurved, and shining low in the west, was like a slender shaving thrown up from a bar of gold, and the Arabian Sea, smooth and cool to the eye like a sheet of ice, extended its perfect level to the perfect circle of a dark horizon. The propeller turned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the scheme of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting in a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that, left behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the moving hull remaining everlastingly in its centre. Jim on the bridge was penetrated by the great certitude of unbounded safety and peace that could be read on the silent aspect of nature like the certitude of fostering love upon the placid tenderness of a mother's face. Below the roof of awnings, surrendered to the wisdom of white men and to their courage, trusting the power of their unbelief and the iron shell of their fire-ship, the pilgrims of an exacting faith slept on mats, on blankets, on bare planks, on every deck, in all the dark corners, wrapped in dyed cloths, muffled in soiled rags, with their heads resting on small bundles, with their faces pressed to bent forearms: the men, the women, the children; the old with the young, the decrepit with the lusty--all equal before sleep, death's brother. A draught of air, fanned from forward by the speed of the ship, passed steadily through the long gloom between the high bulwarks, swept over the rows of prone bodies; a few dim flames in globe-lamps were hung short here and there under the ridge-poles, and in the blurred circles of light thrown down and trembling slightly to the unceasing vibration of the ship appeared a chin upturned, two closed eyelids, a dark hand with silver rings, a meagre limb draped in a torn covering, a head bent back, a naked foot, a throat bared and stretched as if offering itself to the knife. The well-to-do had made for their families shelters with heavy boxes and dusty mats; the poor reposed side by side with all they had on earth tied up in a rag under their heads; the lone old men slept, with drawn-up legs, upon their prayer-carpets, with their hands over their ears and one elbow on each side of the face; a father, his shoulders up and his knees under his forehead, dozed dejectedly by a boy who slept on his back with tousled hair and one arm commandingly extended; a woman covered from head to foot, like a corpse, with a piece of white sheeting, had a naked child in the hollow of each arm; the Arab's belongings, piled right aft, made a heavy mound of broken outlines, with a cargo-lamp swung above, and a great confusion of vague forms behind: gleams of paunchy brass pots, the foot-rest of a deck-chair, blades of spears, the straight scabbard of an old sword leaning against a heap of pillows, the spout of a tin coffee-pot. The patent log on the taffrail periodically rang a single tinkling stroke for every mile traversed on an errand of faith. Above the mass of sleepers a faint and patient sigh at times floated, the exhalation of a troubled dream; and short metallic clangs bursting out suddenly in the depths of the ship, the harsh scrape of a shovel, the violent slam of a furnace-door, exploded brutally, as if the men handling the mysterious things below had their breasts full of fierce anger: while the slim high hull of the steamer went on evenly ahead, without a sway of her bare masts, cleaving continuously the great calm of the waters under the inaccessible serenity of the sky. Jim paced athwart, and his footsteps in the vast silence were loud to his own ears, as if echoed by the watchful stars: his eyes, roaming about the line of the horizon, seemed to gaze hungrily into the unattainable, and did not see the shadow of the coming event. The only shadow on the sea was the shadow of the black smoke pouring heavily from the funnel its immense streamer, whose end was constantly dissolving in the air. Two Malays, silent and almost motionless, steered, one on each side of the wheel, whose brass rim shone fragmentarily in the oval of light thrown out by the binnacle. Now and then a hand, with black fingers alternately letting go and catching hold of revolving spokes, appeared in the illumined part; the links of wheel-chains ground heavily in the grooves of the barrel. Jim would glance at the compass, would glance around the unattainable horizon, would stretch himself till his joints cracked, with a leisurely twist of the body, in the very excess of well-being; and, as if made audacious by the invincible aspect of the peace, he felt he cared for nothing that could happen to him to the end of his days. From time to time he glanced idly at a chart pegged out with four drawing-pins on a low three-legged table abaft the steering-gear case. The sheet of paper portraying the depths of the sea presented a shiny surface under the light of a bull's-eye lamp lashed to a stanchion, a surface as level and smooth as the glimmering surface of the waters. Parallel rulers with a pair of dividers reposed on it; the ship's position at last noon was marked with a small black cross, and the straight pencil-line drawn firmly as far as Perim figured the course of the ship--the path of souls towards the holy place, the promise of salvation, the reward of eternal life--while the pencil with its sharp end touching the Somali coast lay round and still like a naked ship's spar floating in the pool of a sheltered dock. 'How steady she goes,' thought Jim with wonder, with something like gratitude for this high peace of sea and sky. At such times his thoughts would be full of valorous deeds: he loved these dreams and the success of his imaginary achievements. They were the best parts of life, its secret truth, its hidden reality. They had a gorgeous virility, the charm of vagueness, they passed before him with an heroic tread; they carried his soul away with them and made it drunk with the divine philtre of an unbounded confidence in itself. There was nothing he could not face. He was so pleased with the idea that he smiled, keeping perfunctorily his eyes ahead; and when he happened to glance back he saw the white streak of the wake drawn as straight by the ship's keel upon the sea as the black line drawn by the pencil upon the chart. The ash-buckets racketed, clanking up and down the stoke-hold ventilators, and this tin-pot clatter warned him the end of his watch was near. He sighed with content, with regret as well at having to part from that serenity which fostered the adventurous freedom of his thoughts. He was a little sleepy too, and felt a pleasurable languor running through every limb as though all the blood in his body had turned to warm milk. His skipper had come up noiselessly, in pyjamas and with his sleeping-jacket flung wide open. Red of face, only half awake, the left eye partly closed, the right staring stupid and glassy, he hung his big head over the chart and scratched his ribs sleepily. There was something obscene in the sight of his naked flesh. His bared breast glistened soft and greasy as though he had sweated out his fat in his sleep. He pronounced a professional remark in a voice harsh and dead, resembling the rasping sound of a wood-file on the edge of a plank; the fold of his double chin hung like a bag triced up close under the hinge of his jaw. Jim started, and his answer was full of deference; but the odious and fleshy figure, as though seen for the first time in a revealing moment, fixed itself in his memory for ever as the incarnation of everything vile and base that lurks in the world we love: in our own hearts we trust for our salvation, in the men that surround us, in the sights that fill our eyes, in the sounds that fill our ears, and in the air that fills our lungs. The thin gold shaving of the moon floating slowly downwards had lost itself on the darkened surface of the waters, and the eternity beyond the sky seemed to come down nearer to the earth, with the augmented glitter of the stars, with the more profound sombreness in the lustre of the half-transparent dome covering the flat disc of an opaque sea. The ship moved so smoothly that her onward motion was imperceptible to the senses of men, as though she had been a crowded planet speeding through the dark spaces of ether behind the swarm of suns, in the appalling and calm solitudes awaiting the breath of future creations. 'Hot is no name for it down below,' said a voice. Jim smiled without looking round. The skipper presented an unmoved breadth of back: it was the renegade's trick to appear pointedly unaware of your existence unless it suited his purpose to turn at you with a devouring glare before he let loose a torrent of foamy, abusive jargon that came like a gush from a sewer. Now he emitted only a sulky grunt; the second engineer at the head of the bridge-ladder, kneading with damp palms a dirty sweat-rag, unabashed, continued the tale of his complaints. The sailors had a good time of it up here, and what was the use of them in the world he would be blowed if he could see. The poor devils of engineers had to get the ship along anyhow, and they could very well do the rest too; by gosh they--'Shut up!' growled the German stolidly. 'Oh yes! Shut up--and when anything goes wrong you fly to us, don't you?' went on the other. He was more than half cooked, he expected; but anyway, now, he did not mind how much he sinned, because these last three days he had passed through a fine course of training for the place where the bad boys go when they die--b'gosh, he had--besides being made jolly well deaf by the blasted racket below. The durned, compound, surface-condensing, rotten scrap-heap rattled and banged down there like an old deck-winch, only more so; and what made him risk his life every night and day that God made amongst the refuse of a breaking-up yard flying round at fifty-seven revolutions, was more than _he_ could tell. He must have been born reckless, b'gosh. He . . . 'Where did you get drink?' inquired the German, very savage; but motionless in the light of the binnacle, like a clumsy effigy of a man cut out of a block of fat. Jim went on smiling at the retreating horizon; his heart was full of generous impulses, and his thought was contemplating his own superiority. 'Drink!' repeated the engineer with amiable scorn: he was hanging on with both hands to the rail, a shadowy figure with flexible legs. 'Not from you, captain. You're far too mean, b'gosh. You would let a good man die sooner than give him a drop of schnapps. That's what you Germans call economy. Penny wise, pound foolish.' He became sentimental. The chief had given him a four-finger nip about ten o'clock--'only one, s'elp me!'--good old chief; but as to getting the old fraud out of his bunk--a five-ton crane couldn't do it. Not it. Not to-night anyhow. He was sleeping sweetly like a little child, with a bottle of prime brandy under his pillow. From the thick throat of the commander of the Patna came a low rumble, on which the sound of the word schwein fluttered high and low like a capricious feather in a faint stir of air. He and the chief engineer had been cronies for a good few years--serving the same jovial, crafty, old Chinaman, with horn-rimmed goggles and strings of red silk plaited into the venerable grey hairs of his pigtail. The quay-side opinion in the Patna's home-port was that these two in the way of brazen peculation 'had done together pretty well everything you can think of.' Outwardly they were badly matched: one dull-eyed, malevolent, and of soft fleshy curves; the other lean, all hollows, with a head long and bony like the head of an old horse, with sunken cheeks, with sunken temples, with an indifferent glazed glance of sunken eyes. He had been stranded out East somewhere--in Canton, in Shanghai, or perhaps in Yokohama; he probably did not care to remember himself the exact locality, nor yet the cause of his shipwreck. He had been, in mercy to his youth, kicked quietly out of his ship twenty years ago or more, and it might have been so much worse for him that the memory of the episode had in it hardly a trace of misfortune. Then, steam navigation expanding in these seas and men of his craft being scarce at first, he had 'got on' after a sort. He was eager to let strangers know in a dismal mumble that he was 'an old stager out here.' When he moved, a skeleton seemed to sway loose in his clothes; his walk was mere wandering, and he was given to wander thus around the engine-room skylight, smoking, without relish, doctored tobacco in a brass bowl at the end of a cherrywood stem four feet long, with the imbecile gravity of a thinker evolving a system of philosophy from the hazy glimpse of a truth. He was usually anything but free with his private store of liquor; but on that night he had departed from his principles, so that his second, a weak-headed child of Wapping, what with the unexpectedness of the treat and the strength of the stuff, had become very happy, cheeky, and talkative. The fury of the New South Wales German was extreme; he puffed like an exhaust-pipe, and Jim, faintly amused by the scene, was impatient for the time when he could get below: the last ten minutes of the watch were irritating like a gun that hangs fire; those men did not belong to the world of heroic adventure; they weren't bad chaps though. Even the skipper himself . . . His gorge rose at the mass of panting flesh from which issued gurgling mutters, a cloudy trickle of filthy expressions; but he was too pleasurably languid to dislike actively this or any other thing. The quality of these men did not matter; he rubbed shoulders with them, but they could not touch him; he shared the air they breathed, but he was different. . . . Would the skipper go for the engineer? . . . The life was easy and he was too sure of himself--too sure of himself to . . . The line dividing his meditation from a surreptitious doze on his feet was thinner than a thread in a spider's web. The second engineer was coming by easy transitions to the consideration of his finances and of his courage. 'Who's drunk? I? No, no, captain! That won't do. You ought to know by this time the chief ain't free-hearted enough to make a sparrow drunk, b'gosh. I've never been the worse for liquor in my life; the stuff ain't made yet that would make _me_ drunk. I could drink liquid fire against your whisky peg for peg, b'gosh, and keep as cool as a cucumber. If I thought I was drunk I would jump overboard--do away with myself, b'gosh. I would! Straight! And I won't go off the bridge. Where do you expect me to take the air on a night like this, eh? On deck amongst that vermin down there? Likely--ain't it! And I am not afraid of anything you can do.' The German lifted two heavy fists to heaven and shook them a little without a word. 'I don't know what fear is,' pursued the engineer, with the enthusiasm of sincere conviction. 'I am not afraid of doing all the bloomin' work in this rotten hooker, b'gosh! And a jolly good thing for you that there are some of us about the world that aren't afraid of their lives, or where would you be--you and this old thing here with her plates like brown paper--brown paper, s'elp me? It's all very fine for you--you get a power of pieces out of her one way and another; but what about me--what do I get? A measly hundred and fifty dollars a month and find yourself. I wish to ask you respectfully--respectfully, mind--who wouldn't chuck a dratted job like this? 'Tain't safe, s'elp me, it ain't! Only I am one of them fearless fellows . . .' He let go the rail and made ample gestures as if demonstrating in the air the shape and extent of his valour; his thin voice darted in prolonged squeaks upon the sea, he tiptoed back and forth for the better emphasis of utterance, and suddenly pitched down head-first as though he had been clubbed from behind. He said 'Damn!' as he tumbled; an instant of silence followed upon his screeching: Jim and the skipper staggered forward by common accord, and catching themselves up, stood very stiff and still gazing, amazed, at the undisturbed level of the sea. Then they looked upwards at the stars. What had happened? The wheezy thump of the engines went on. Had the earth been checked in her course? They could not understand; and suddenly the calm sea, the sky without a cloud, appeared formidably insecure in their immobility, as if poised on the brow of yawning destruction. The engineer rebounded vertically full length and collapsed again into a vague heap. This heap said 'What's that?' in the muffled accents of profound grief. A faint noise as of thunder, of thunder infinitely remote, less than a sound, hardly more than a vibration, passed slowly, and the ship quivered in response, as if the thunder had growled deep down in the water. The eyes of the two Malays at the wheel glittered towards the white men, but their dark hands remained closed on the spokes. The sharp hull driving on its way seemed to rise a few inches in succession through its whole length, as though it had become pliable, and settled down again rigidly to its work of cleaving the smooth surface of the sea. Its quivering stopped, and the faint noise of thunder ceased all at once, as though the ship had steamed across a narrow belt of vibrating water and of humming air.

Chapter 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-3

One still night, Jim is on watch aboard the Patna, his mind wandering as usual, when the ship's fat German captain waddles up on deck and chats with the second engineer, who is drunk. The two start to argue. Shmoop smells trouble. Sure enough, while the captain is busy yelling the ship hits something and shudders. Everyone is confused, since no one recalled ordering up anything ominous with a side of doom: "They could not understand; and suddenly the calm sea, the sky without a cloud, appeared formidably insecure in their immobility, as if poised on the brow of destruction." This is totally Titanic in the tropics.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/chapters_40_to_41.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Lord Jim/section_23_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapters 40-41

chapters 40-41

{"name": "Chapters 40-41", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219145744/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/l/lord-jim/summary-and-analysis/chapters-4041", "summary": "Brown pretended to be interested in Kassim's and Cornelius' proposals, but, in actuality, he was waiting for Jim to return. He was intrigued by the idea of a weak man ruling Patusan. He was also more than a little interested in the reality of \"a fort,\" readymade and waiting for him. He felt sure that he and Jim could work out some kind of arrangement, some kind of plan in which they could \"work like brothers.\" Then, at the proper time, Brown would put an end to Jim, and the land would be his \"to tear to pieces, squeeze and throw away.\" Marlow tells us that Brown had an \"undisguised ruthlessness of purpose.\" For an example of Brown's loathsome nature, note that he ordered one of his men to shoot a Malay native in cold blood. He wanted the man shot for no other reason than wanting to \"strike terror . . . terror, terror, I tell you.\" That night, Brown's spirits fell; escape seemed impossible. He knew that his men were outnumbered two hundred to one, and they too were growing restless and fearful. One of them asked permission to get some tobacco. Brown told him to go. But just as the man cried out in delight that he had found some tobacco, a shot rang out and the night air was filled, again and again, with the groans of the wounded man. Six hours later, the incoming tide silenced the moans of the wounded man. That night, in the stillness, a sonorous voice proclaimed that \"between the men of the Bugis nation living in Patusan and the white men on the hill . . . there would be no faith, no compassion, no speech, no peace.\" At dawn, a cannon barked briefly. Jim was coming back, Cornelius told Brown. Lord Jim was returning; the cannon was a salute to welcome him. Brown was anxious to talk to Jim, and Cornelius assured him that it would be no problem. Jim, he said, was not afraid of anything. He was like a child; he was a fool. Jim would simply tell Brown to leave \"his people\" alone, and Brown could easily kill Jim. Then Brown could do \"anything you like.\" Brown spotted Jim almost immediately. Jim was dressed all in white and was surrounded by \"a knot of coloured figures.\" A contempt, a wish to \"try for one more chance -- for some other grave\" pulsed within Brown when he saw Jim. He waved wildly, and the two men began advancing toward one another until they stood facing each other across the creek. Then Brown jumped the creek. With steady eyes, each man tried to understand the other one before either one spoke. Marlow is sure that Brown detested Jim at that moment. He is certain that Brown inwardly cursed Jim for his youth, his assurance, his clear eyes, and his untroubled bearing. Jim was the antithesis of Brown's sunken, sun-blackened body and soul. Moreover, Jim had a sense of possession, security, and power. He was not hungry, and he was not desperate; his clothing was pressed and his shoes were whitened. But Brown knew that Jim must have something in his past which caused him to come here, and so when he asked Jim why he came to Patusan, he was elated to see Jim tremble slightly. He had tapped Jim's weakness. Thus, he told Jim that they both probably had shady pasts, that they both were no doubt running away from something, and that they both shared a common guilt. In effect, he slapped Jim in the face with his taunts, challenging Jim to let him go free and starve, or else to shoot him immediately. This moment, Brown recalled to Marlow, was wondrous; Brown had cornered Jim psychologically. The memory of that moment was sufficient to warm Brown's dying moments. He remembered feeling intensely joyous. He had discovered that he could rattle the \"twopenny soul\" of Jim, that \"confounded, immaculate, don't-you-touch-me sort of fellow.\"", "analysis": "Chapter 40 continues to blacken the picture of Brown, showing him as one of the most detestable characters in fiction, possessing absolutely no redeeming traits. He uses everyone in order to achieve his evil purposes merely for the sake of evil. Like Shakespeare's Iago, he seems to dwell upon evil merely for the sake of evil. For example, he is delighted that there is a fort already built so that he will be able to crush the people of Patusan more efficiently. At the end of Chapter 40, he is told by Cornelius that Jim is like a child -- that he has no fear of anything and that it will be very easy to take anything from him. Not surprisingly, in Chapter 41, Jim goes to see Brown. From the very first meeting, Brown despises Jim because Jim is clearly loved and trusted by the people of Patusan and because Jim's looks and assurance and youth are in total contrast to Brown's blackened body and his dark, evil soul. Furthermore, Jim displays no sense of fear; he seems entirely self-possessed and confident. However, as the two men talk, Brown, who is evil but no fool, is soon able to worm his way into the inner nature of Jim. Brown reminds Jim that they are both here because of some guilty thing that happened to them in the past, and that they both must have done things in the past of which they are ashamed. As Brown says, \"I am here because I was afraid once in my life.\" This, of course, is a terrifying parallel to why Jim is here -- that is, once in his life, Jim, possibly out of fear, jumped. And ever since, to the public and to himself, Jim has been convinced that he is indelibly branded as a \"coward.\" Note that Brown uses the same imagery associated with Jim's jump from the Patna -- \"I am sick of my infernal luck. . . . There are men in the same boat -- and by God, I am not the sort to jump out of trouble and leave them in a d -- d lurch.\" These words and illusions serve to remind Jim that a man should not be judged by a single act performed under stress and duress. These comments, as we will see, will lead Jim astray in his judgment of Brown's basically evil nature and will render Jim incapable of acting as a free agent. Jim's inability to see through Brown's evil nature and treachery simply because Brown makes such a parallel analogy to their mutual pasts causes Jim to feel a compassion for Brown which will, in turn, bring about the tragic deaths of Dain Waris and others, including Jim himself."}

'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.' 'To the very last moment, till the full day came upon them with a spring, the fires on the west bank blazed bright and clear; and then Brown saw in a knot of coloured figures motionless between the advanced houses a man in European clothes, in a helmet, all white. "That's him; look! look!" Cornelius said excitedly. All Brown's men had sprung up and crowded at his back with lustreless eyes. The group of vivid colours and dark faces with the white figure in their midst were observing the knoll. Brown could see naked arms being raised to shade the eyes and other brown arms pointing. What should he do? He looked around, and the forests that faced him on all sides walled the cock-pit of an unequal contest. He looked once more at his men. A contempt, a weariness, the desire of life, the wish to try for one more chance--for some other grave--struggled in his breast. From the outline the figure presented it seemed to him that the white man there, backed up by all the power of the land, was examining his position through binoculars. Brown jumped up on the log, throwing his arms up, the palms outwards. The coloured group closed round the white man, and fell back twice before he got clear of them, walking slowly alone. Brown remained standing on the log till Jim, appearing and disappearing between the patches of thorny scrub, had nearly reached the creek; then Brown jumped off and went down to meet him on his side. 'They met, I should think, not very far from the place, perhaps on the very spot, where Jim took the second desperate leap of his life--the leap that landed him into the life of Patusan, into the trust, the love, the confidence of the people. They faced each other across the creek, and with steady eyes tried to understand each other before they opened their lips. Their antagonism must have been expressed in their glances; I know that Brown hated Jim at first sight. Whatever hopes he might have had vanished at once. This was not the man he had expected to see. He hated him for this--and in a checked flannel shirt with sleeves cut off at the elbows, grey bearded, with a sunken, sun-blackened face--he cursed in his heart the other's youth and assurance, his clear eyes and his untroubled bearing. That fellow had got in a long way before him! He did not look like a man who would be willing to give anything for assistance. He had all the advantages on his side--possession, security, power; he was on the side of an overwhelming force! He was not hungry and desperate, and he did not seem in the least afraid. And there was something in the very neatness of Jim's clothes, from the white helmet to the canvas leggings and the pipeclayed shoes, which in Brown's sombre irritated eyes seemed to belong to things he had in the very shaping of his life condemned and flouted. '"Who are you?" asked Jim at last, speaking in his usual voice. "My name's Brown," answered the other loudly; "Captain Brown. What's yours?" and Jim after a little pause went on quietly, as If he had not heard: "What made you come here?" "You want to know," said Brown bitterly. "It's easy to tell. Hunger. And what made you?" '"The fellow started at this," said Brown, relating to me the opening of this strange conversation between those two men, separated only by the muddy bed of a creek, but standing on the opposite poles of that conception of life which includes all mankind--"The fellow started at this and got very red in the face. Too big to be questioned, I suppose. I told him that if he looked upon me as a dead man with whom you may take liberties, he himself was not a whit better off really. I had a fellow up there who had a bead drawn on him all the time, and only waited for a sign from me. There was nothing to be shocked at in this. He had come down of his own free will. 'Let us agree,' said I, 'that we are both dead men, and let us talk on that basis, as equals. We are all equal before death,' I said. I admitted I was there like a rat in a trap, but we had been driven to it, and even a trapped rat can give a bite. He caught me up in a moment. 'Not if you don't go near the trap till the rat is dead.' I told him that sort of game was good enough for these native friends of his, but I would have thought him too white to serve even a rat so. Yes, I had wanted to talk with him. Not to beg for my life, though. My fellows were--well--what they were--men like himself, anyhow. All we wanted from him was to come on in the devil's name and have it out. 'God d--n it,' said I, while he stood there as still as a wooden post, 'you don't want to come out here every day with your glasses to count how many of us are left on our feet. Come. Either bring your infernal crowd along or let us go out and starve in the open sea, by God! You have been white once, for all your tall talk of this being your own people and you being one with them. Are you? And what the devil do you get for it; what is it you've found here that is so d--d precious? Hey? You don't want us to come down here perhaps--do you? You are two hundred to one. You don't want us to come down into the open. Ah! I promise you we shall give you some sport before you've done. You talk about me making a cowardly set upon unoffending people. What's that to me that they are unoffending, when I am starving for next to no offence? But I am not a coward. Don't you be one. Bring them along or, by all the fiends, we shall yet manage to send half your unoffending town to heaven with us in smoke!'" 'He was terrible--relating this to me--this tortured skeleton of a man drawn up together with his face over his knees, upon a miserable bed in that wretched hovel, and lifting his head to look at me with malignant triumph. '"That's what I told him--I knew what to say," he began again, feebly at first, but working himself up with incredible speed into a fiery utterance of his scorn. "We aren't going into the forest to wander like a string of living skeletons dropping one after another for ants to go to work upon us before we are fairly dead. Oh no! . . . 'You don't deserve a better fate,' he said. 'And what do you deserve,' I shouted at him, 'you that I find skulking here with your mouth full of your responsibility, of innocent lives, of your infernal duty? What do you know more of me than I know of you? I came here for food. D'ye hear?--food to fill our bellies. And what did _you_ come for? What did you ask for when you came here? We don't ask you for anything but to give us a fight or a clear road to go back whence we came. . . .' 'I would fight with you now,' says he, pulling at his little moustache. 'And I would let you shoot me, and welcome,' I said. 'This is as good a jumping-off place for me as another. I am sick of my infernal luck. But it would be too easy. There are my men in the same boat--and, by God, I am not the sort to jump out of trouble and leave them in a d--d lurch,' I said. He stood thinking for a while and then wanted to know what I had done ('out there' he says, tossing his head down-stream) to be hazed about so. 'Have we met to tell each other the story of our lives?' I asked him. 'Suppose you begin. No? Well, I am sure I don't want to hear. Keep it to yourself. I know it is no better than mine. I've lived--and so did you, though you talk as if you were one of those people that should have wings so as to go about without touching the dirty earth. Well--it is dirty. I haven't got any wings. I am here because I was afraid once in my life. Want to know what of? Of a prison. That scares me, and you may know it--if it's any good to you. I won't ask you what scared you into this infernal hole, where you seem to have found pretty pickings. That's your luck and this is mine--the privilege to beg for the favour of being shot quickly, or else kicked out to go free and starve in my own way.' . . ." 'His debilitated body shook with an exultation so vehement, so assured, and so malicious that it seemed to have driven off the death waiting for him in that hut. The corpse of his mad self-love uprose from rags and destitution as from the dark horrors of a tomb. It is impossible to say how much he lied to Jim then, how much he lied to me now--and to himself always. Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live. Standing at the gate of the other world in the guise of a beggar, he had slapped this world's face, he had spat on it, he had thrown upon it an immensity of scorn and revolt at the bottom of his misdeeds. He had overcome them all--men, women, savages, traders, ruffians, missionaries--and Jim--"that beefy-faced beggar." I did not begrudge him this triumph in articulo mortis, this almost posthumous illusion of having trampled all the earth under his feet. While he was boasting to me, in his sordid and repulsive agony, I couldn't help thinking of the chuckling talk relating to the time of his greatest splendour when, during a year or more, Gentleman Brown's ship was to be seen, for many days on end, hovering off an islet befringed with green upon azure, with the dark dot of the mission-house on a white beach; while Gentleman Brown, ashore, was casting his spells over a romantic girl for whom Melanesia had been too much, and giving hopes of a remarkable conversion to her husband. The poor man, some time or other, had been heard to express the intention of winning "Captain Brown to a better way of life." . . . "Bag Gentleman Brown for Glory"--as a leery-eyed loafer expressed it once--"just to let them see up above what a Western Pacific trading skipper looks like." And this was the man, too, who had run off with a dying woman, and had shed tears over her body. "Carried on like a big baby," his then mate was never tired of telling, "and where the fun came in may I be kicked to death by diseased Kanakas if _I_ know. Why, gents! she was too far gone when he brought her aboard to know him; she just lay there on her back in his bunk staring at the beam with awful shining eyes--and then she died. Dam' bad sort of fever, I guess. . . ." I remembered all these stories while, wiping his matted lump of a beard with a livid hand, he was telling me from his noisome couch how he got round, got in, got home, on that confounded, immaculate, don't-you-touch-me sort of fellow. He admitted that he couldn't be scared, but there was a way, "as broad as a turnpike, to get in and shake his twopenny soul around and inside out and upside down--by God!"'

Chapters 40-41

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219145744/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/l/lord-jim/summary-and-analysis/chapters-4041

Brown pretended to be interested in Kassim's and Cornelius' proposals, but, in actuality, he was waiting for Jim to return. He was intrigued by the idea of a weak man ruling Patusan. He was also more than a little interested in the reality of "a fort," readymade and waiting for him. He felt sure that he and Jim could work out some kind of arrangement, some kind of plan in which they could "work like brothers." Then, at the proper time, Brown would put an end to Jim, and the land would be his "to tear to pieces, squeeze and throw away." Marlow tells us that Brown had an "undisguised ruthlessness of purpose." For an example of Brown's loathsome nature, note that he ordered one of his men to shoot a Malay native in cold blood. He wanted the man shot for no other reason than wanting to "strike terror . . . terror, terror, I tell you." That night, Brown's spirits fell; escape seemed impossible. He knew that his men were outnumbered two hundred to one, and they too were growing restless and fearful. One of them asked permission to get some tobacco. Brown told him to go. But just as the man cried out in delight that he had found some tobacco, a shot rang out and the night air was filled, again and again, with the groans of the wounded man. Six hours later, the incoming tide silenced the moans of the wounded man. That night, in the stillness, a sonorous voice proclaimed that "between the men of the Bugis nation living in Patusan and the white men on the hill . . . there would be no faith, no compassion, no speech, no peace." At dawn, a cannon barked briefly. Jim was coming back, Cornelius told Brown. Lord Jim was returning; the cannon was a salute to welcome him. Brown was anxious to talk to Jim, and Cornelius assured him that it would be no problem. Jim, he said, was not afraid of anything. He was like a child; he was a fool. Jim would simply tell Brown to leave "his people" alone, and Brown could easily kill Jim. Then Brown could do "anything you like." Brown spotted Jim almost immediately. Jim was dressed all in white and was surrounded by "a knot of coloured figures." A contempt, a wish to "try for one more chance -- for some other grave" pulsed within Brown when he saw Jim. He waved wildly, and the two men began advancing toward one another until they stood facing each other across the creek. Then Brown jumped the creek. With steady eyes, each man tried to understand the other one before either one spoke. Marlow is sure that Brown detested Jim at that moment. He is certain that Brown inwardly cursed Jim for his youth, his assurance, his clear eyes, and his untroubled bearing. Jim was the antithesis of Brown's sunken, sun-blackened body and soul. Moreover, Jim had a sense of possession, security, and power. He was not hungry, and he was not desperate; his clothing was pressed and his shoes were whitened. But Brown knew that Jim must have something in his past which caused him to come here, and so when he asked Jim why he came to Patusan, he was elated to see Jim tremble slightly. He had tapped Jim's weakness. Thus, he told Jim that they both probably had shady pasts, that they both were no doubt running away from something, and that they both shared a common guilt. In effect, he slapped Jim in the face with his taunts, challenging Jim to let him go free and starve, or else to shoot him immediately. This moment, Brown recalled to Marlow, was wondrous; Brown had cornered Jim psychologically. The memory of that moment was sufficient to warm Brown's dying moments. He remembered feeling intensely joyous. He had discovered that he could rattle the "twopenny soul" of Jim, that "confounded, immaculate, don't-you-touch-me sort of fellow."

Chapter 40 continues to blacken the picture of Brown, showing him as one of the most detestable characters in fiction, possessing absolutely no redeeming traits. He uses everyone in order to achieve his evil purposes merely for the sake of evil. Like Shakespeare's Iago, he seems to dwell upon evil merely for the sake of evil. For example, he is delighted that there is a fort already built so that he will be able to crush the people of Patusan more efficiently. At the end of Chapter 40, he is told by Cornelius that Jim is like a child -- that he has no fear of anything and that it will be very easy to take anything from him. Not surprisingly, in Chapter 41, Jim goes to see Brown. From the very first meeting, Brown despises Jim because Jim is clearly loved and trusted by the people of Patusan and because Jim's looks and assurance and youth are in total contrast to Brown's blackened body and his dark, evil soul. Furthermore, Jim displays no sense of fear; he seems entirely self-possessed and confident. However, as the two men talk, Brown, who is evil but no fool, is soon able to worm his way into the inner nature of Jim. Brown reminds Jim that they are both here because of some guilty thing that happened to them in the past, and that they both must have done things in the past of which they are ashamed. As Brown says, "I am here because I was afraid once in my life." This, of course, is a terrifying parallel to why Jim is here -- that is, once in his life, Jim, possibly out of fear, jumped. And ever since, to the public and to himself, Jim has been convinced that he is indelibly branded as a "coward." Note that Brown uses the same imagery associated with Jim's jump from the Patna -- "I am sick of my infernal luck. . . . There are men in the same boat -- and by God, I am not the sort to jump out of trouble and leave them in a d -- d lurch." These words and illusions serve to remind Jim that a man should not be judged by a single act performed under stress and duress. These comments, as we will see, will lead Jim astray in his judgment of Brown's basically evil nature and will render Jim incapable of acting as a free agent. Jim's inability to see through Brown's evil nature and treachery simply because Brown makes such a parallel analogy to their mutual pasts causes Jim to feel a compassion for Brown which will, in turn, bring about the tragic deaths of Dain Waris and others, including Jim himself.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/9.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_1_part_4.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 2.chapter 4

book 2, chapter 4

{"name": "book 2, Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section2/", "summary": "A Lady of Little Faith Zosima then speaks to Madame Khokhlakov, a wealthy landowner who has met him before, and her daughter Lise, a girl with a mischievous look on her face. Madame Khokhlakov tells Zosima that his prayers have healed her daughter, who has been ill and unable to walk, but Zosima suspects that Lise's recovery is incomplete. Madame Khokhlakov says that she is beset with religious doubt--she not only has trouble believing in the immortality of the soul, she finds it impossible to perform charitable works without expecting praise and admiration in return. Zosima tells her not to worry, but to practice active, committed love for mankind, and God will forgive her flaws simply by virtue of the fact that she is aware of them. In the meantime, Lise teases the self-conscious Alyosha: Lise says that Alyosha was her childhood friend, but since he came to the monastery he never visits her anymore. Zosima warmly promises her that Alyosha will visit her soon.", "analysis": "Book II: An Inappropriate Gathering, Chapters 1-4 Through the character of Zosima, Dostoevsky establishes a relationship between love and truth. As displayed in these chapters, the two qualities Zosima values above all others are love and honesty, particularly honesty with oneself. He connects these two ideas intimately: he tells both Fyodor Pavlovich and Madame Khokhlakov that they must be honest with themselves because a dishonest person loses the ability to distinguish truth from falsehood, and thus loses the ability to respect and love other people. In Zosima's view, the ability to love is based on the ability to recognize truth. He explains that if a person cannot believe in himself, he will quickly become suspicious of everyone around him, assuming that the world is full of lies. Because he cannot believe in his own perceptions, he will become unable to tell lies from truth, and because he is corrupted by his own dishonesty, he will suspect that everything is a lie. By becoming suspicious, he loses his respect for others and thus his ability to love them. This mode of reasoning represents a philosophy of doubt that opposes Alyosha's loving faith. The process described by Zosima here is an incredibly incisive description of Fyodor Pavlovich's personality and the road he has taken to arrive at it, but to a greater or lesser extent, it becomes relevant to nearly every character in the novel, including Ivan and Dmitri. Ivan's speculation--if the soul is not immortal, then there is no morality at all, and people might as well live simply to satisfy their own selfish appetites--links the personality differences between the major characters to broad questions of philosophy and religious faith. Ivan's troubling hypothesis prompts us to consider the difference between Alyosha's selfless goodness and Fyodor Pavlovich's selfish evil. Zosima is thus a central character in the early part of the novel, even though his role in the larger narrative is comparatively small, because he draws the connections between faith and goodness for us, helping us to understand the main characters. He is the first character in the novel to articulate some of Dostoevsky's great themes. He is also important because of the role he plays in the mind of Alyosha, who venerates him absolutely. A great part of Alyosha's moral feeling--his kindness, his desire to help others, his modesty--has been influenced by Zosima, and through Alyosha, Zosima's example influences some of the most important actions in the novel. Zosima's goodness causes us to see the flaws in the other characters. All of the other characters are troubled by some irritation or concern, some earthly flaw that makes them seem fallible and even petty in comparison to the saintly Zosima. Even Alyosha, who is relatively saintly himself, is made mortal in these chapters by his embarrassment over his family's behavior in front of Zosima, and later by his awkwardness around Lise. Miusov's flaw is his hatred of Fyodor Pavlovich, which fills him with an uncontrollable anger nearly every time Fyodor Pavlovich speaks. For his part, Fyodor Pavlovich is almost entirely fallible and flawed--he is obnoxious, disrespectful, vulgar, and dishonest, and he delights in intentionally irritating the other characters with his brutish humor and his buffoonery. The only person who is not made uncomfortable by Fyodor Pavlovich's brazen behavior is Zosima, which illustrates Zosima's own high level of spirituality. Only Zosima possesses the inner serenity and the unshakable love of mankind necessary to overlook Fyodor Pavlovich's ugly personality and tolerate his boorish behavior. Fyodor Pavlovich's children, as represented by Alyosha in this section, find him much harder to take"}

Chapter IV. A Lady Of Little Faith A visitor looking on the scene of his conversation with the peasants and his blessing them shed silent tears and wiped them away with her handkerchief. She was a sentimental society lady of genuinely good disposition in many respects. When the elder went up to her at last she met him enthusiastically. "Ah, what I have been feeling, looking on at this touching scene!..." She could not go on for emotion. "Oh, I understand the people's love for you. I love the people myself. I want to love them. And who could help loving them, our splendid Russian people, so simple in their greatness!" "How is your daughter's health? You wanted to talk to me again?" "Oh, I have been urgently begging for it, I have prayed for it! I was ready to fall on my knees and kneel for three days at your windows until you let me in. We have come, great healer, to express our ardent gratitude. You have healed my Lise, healed her completely, merely by praying over her last Thursday and laying your hands upon her. We have hastened here to kiss those hands, to pour out our feelings and our homage." "What do you mean by healed? But she is still lying down in her chair." "But her night fevers have entirely ceased ever since Thursday," said the lady with nervous haste. "And that's not all. Her legs are stronger. This morning she got up well; she had slept all night. Look at her rosy cheeks, her bright eyes! She used to be always crying, but now she laughs and is gay and happy. This morning she insisted on my letting her stand up, and she stood up for a whole minute without any support. She wagers that in a fortnight she'll be dancing a quadrille. I've called in Doctor Herzenstube. He shrugged his shoulders and said, 'I am amazed; I can make nothing of it.' And would you have us not come here to disturb you, not fly here to thank you? Lise, thank him--thank him!" Lise's pretty little laughing face became suddenly serious. She rose in her chair as far as she could and, looking at the elder, clasped her hands before him, but could not restrain herself and broke into laughter. "It's at him," she said, pointing to Alyosha, with childish vexation at herself for not being able to repress her mirth. If any one had looked at Alyosha standing a step behind the elder, he would have caught a quick flush crimsoning his cheeks in an instant. His eyes shone and he looked down. "She has a message for you, Alexey Fyodorovitch. How are you?" the mother went on, holding out her exquisitely gloved hand to Alyosha. The elder turned round and all at once looked attentively at Alyosha. The latter went nearer to Lise and, smiling in a strangely awkward way, held out his hand to her too. Lise assumed an important air. "Katerina Ivanovna has sent you this through me." She handed him a little note. "She particularly begs you to go and see her as soon as possible; that you will not fail her, but will be sure to come." "She asks me to go and see her? Me? What for?" Alyosha muttered in great astonishment. His face at once looked anxious. "Oh, it's all to do with Dmitri Fyodorovitch and--what has happened lately," the mother explained hurriedly. "Katerina Ivanovna has made up her mind, but she must see you about it.... Why, of course, I can't say. But she wants to see you at once. And you will go to her, of course. It is a Christian duty." "I have only seen her once," Alyosha protested with the same perplexity. "Oh, she is such a lofty, incomparable creature! If only for her suffering.... Think what she has gone through, what she is enduring now! Think what awaits her! It's all terrible, terrible!" "Very well, I will come," Alyosha decided, after rapidly scanning the brief, enigmatic note, which consisted of an urgent entreaty that he would come, without any sort of explanation. "Oh, how sweet and generous that would be of you!" cried Lise with sudden animation. "I told mamma you'd be sure not to go. I said you were saving your soul. How splendid you are! I've always thought you were splendid. How glad I am to tell you so!" "Lise!" said her mother impressively, though she smiled after she had said it. "You have quite forgotten us, Alexey Fyodorovitch," she said; "you never come to see us. Yet Lise has told me twice that she is never happy except with you." Alyosha raised his downcast eyes and again flushed, and again smiled without knowing why. But the elder was no longer watching him. He had begun talking to a monk who, as mentioned before, had been awaiting his entrance by Lise's chair. He was evidently a monk of the humblest, that is of the peasant, class, of a narrow outlook, but a true believer, and, in his own way, a stubborn one. He announced that he had come from the far north, from Obdorsk, from Saint Sylvester, and was a member of a poor monastery, consisting of only ten monks. The elder gave him his blessing and invited him to come to his cell whenever he liked. "How can you presume to do such deeds?" the monk asked suddenly, pointing solemnly and significantly at Lise. He was referring to her "healing." "It's too early, of course, to speak of that. Relief is not complete cure, and may proceed from different causes. But if there has been any healing, it is by no power but God's will. It's all from God. Visit me, Father," he added to the monk. "It's not often I can see visitors. I am ill, and I know that my days are numbered." "Oh, no, no! God will not take you from us. You will live a long, long time yet," cried the lady. "And in what way are you ill? You look so well, so gay and happy." "I am extraordinarily better to-day. But I know that it's only for a moment. I understand my disease now thoroughly. If I seem so happy to you, you could never say anything that would please me so much. For men are made for happiness, and any one who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.' All the righteous, all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy." "Oh, how you speak! What bold and lofty words!" cried the lady. "You seem to pierce with your words. And yet--happiness, happiness--where is it? Who can say of himself that he is happy? Oh, since you have been so good as to let us see you once more to-day, let me tell you what I could not utter last time, what I dared not say, all I am suffering and have been for so long! I am suffering! Forgive me! I am suffering!" And in a rush of fervent feeling she clasped her hands before him. "From what specially?" "I suffer ... from lack of faith." "Lack of faith in God?" "Oh, no, no! I dare not even think of that. But the future life--it is such an enigma! And no one, no one can solve it. Listen! You are a healer, you are deeply versed in the human soul, and of course I dare not expect you to believe me entirely, but I assure you on my word of honor that I am not speaking lightly now. The thought of the life beyond the grave distracts me to anguish, to terror. And I don't know to whom to appeal, and have not dared to all my life. And now I am so bold as to ask you. Oh, God! What will you think of me now?" She clasped her hands. "Don't distress yourself about my opinion of you," said the elder. "I quite believe in the sincerity of your suffering." "Oh, how thankful I am to you! You see, I shut my eyes and ask myself if every one has faith, where did it come from? And then they do say that it all comes from terror at the menacing phenomena of nature, and that none of it's real. And I say to myself, 'What if I've been believing all my life, and when I come to die there's nothing but the burdocks growing on my grave?' as I read in some author. It's awful! How--how can I get back my faith? But I only believed when I was a little child, mechanically, without thinking of anything. How, how is one to prove it? I have come now to lay my soul before you and to ask you about it. If I let this chance slip, no one all my life will answer me. How can I prove it? How can I convince myself? Oh, how unhappy I am! I stand and look about me and see that scarcely any one else cares; no one troubles his head about it, and I'm the only one who can't stand it. It's deadly--deadly!" "No doubt. But there's no proving it, though you can be convinced of it." "How?" "By the experience of active love. Strive to love your neighbor actively and indefatigably. In as far as you advance in love you will grow surer of the reality of God and of the immortality of your soul. If you attain to perfect self-forgetfulness in the love of your neighbor, then you will believe without doubt, and no doubt can possibly enter your soul. This has been tried. This is certain." "In active love? There's another question--and such a question! You see, I so love humanity that--would you believe it?--I often dream of forsaking all that I have, leaving Lise, and becoming a sister of mercy. I close my eyes and think and dream, and at that moment I feel full of strength to overcome all obstacles. No wounds, no festering sores could at that moment frighten me. I would bind them up and wash them with my own hands. I would nurse the afflicted. I would be ready to kiss such wounds." "It is much, and well that your mind is full of such dreams and not others. Sometime, unawares, you may do a good deed in reality." "Yes. But could I endure such a life for long?" the lady went on fervently, almost frantically. "That's the chief question--that's my most agonizing question. I shut my eyes and ask myself, 'Would you persevere long on that path? And if the patient whose wounds you are washing did not meet you with gratitude, but worried you with his whims, without valuing or remarking your charitable services, began abusing you and rudely commanding you, and complaining to the superior authorities of you (which often happens when people are in great suffering)--what then? Would you persevere in your love, or not?' And do you know, I came with horror to the conclusion that, if anything could dissipate my love to humanity, it would be ingratitude. In short, I am a hired servant, I expect my payment at once--that is, praise, and the repayment of love with love. Otherwise I am incapable of loving any one." She was in a very paroxysm of self-castigation, and, concluding, she looked with defiant resolution at the elder. "It's just the same story as a doctor once told me," observed the elder. "He was a man getting on in years, and undoubtedly clever. He spoke as frankly as you, though in jest, in bitter jest. 'I love humanity,' he said, 'but I wonder at myself. The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular. In my dreams,' he said, 'I have often come to making enthusiastic schemes for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually have faced crucifixion if it had been suddenly necessary; and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with any one for two days together, as I know by experience. As soon as any one is near me, his personality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he's too long over his dinner; another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.' " "But what's to be done? What can one do in such a case? Must one despair?" "No. It is enough that you are distressed at it. Do what you can, and it will be reckoned unto you. Much is done already in you since you can so deeply and sincerely know yourself. If you have been talking to me so sincerely, simply to gain approbation for your frankness, as you did from me just now, then of course you will not attain to anything in the achievement of real love; it will all get no further than dreams, and your whole life will slip away like a phantom. In that case you will naturally cease to think of the future life too, and will of yourself grow calmer after a fashion in the end." "You have crushed me! Only now, as you speak, I understand that I was really only seeking your approbation for my sincerity when I told you I could not endure ingratitude. You have revealed me to myself. You have seen through me and explained me to myself!" "Are you speaking the truth? Well, now, after such a confession, I believe that you are sincere and good at heart. If you do not attain happiness, always remember that you are on the right road, and try not to leave it. Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute. Avoid being scornful, both to others and to yourself. What seems to you bad within you will grow purer from the very fact of your observing it in yourself. Avoid fear, too, though fear is only the consequence of every sort of falsehood. Never be frightened at your own faint-heartedness in attaining love. Don't be frightened overmuch even at your evil actions. I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labor and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science. But I predict that just when you see with horror that in spite of all your efforts you are getting farther from your goal instead of nearer to it--at that very moment I predict that you will reach it and behold clearly the miraculous power of the Lord who has been all the time loving and mysteriously guiding you. Forgive me for not being able to stay longer with you. They are waiting for me. Good-by." The lady was weeping. "Lise, Lise! Bless her--bless her!" she cried, starting up suddenly. "She does not deserve to be loved. I have seen her naughtiness all along," the elder said jestingly. "Why have you been laughing at Alexey?" Lise had in fact been occupied in mocking at him all the time. She had noticed before that Alyosha was shy and tried not to look at her, and she found this extremely amusing. She waited intently to catch his eye. Alyosha, unable to endure her persistent stare, was irresistibly and suddenly drawn to glance at her, and at once she smiled triumphantly in his face. Alyosha was even more disconcerted and vexed. At last he turned away from her altogether and hid behind the elder's back. After a few minutes, drawn by the same irresistible force, he turned again to see whether he was being looked at or not, and found Lise almost hanging out of her chair to peep sideways at him, eagerly waiting for him to look. Catching his eye, she laughed so that the elder could not help saying, "Why do you make fun of him like that, naughty girl?" Lise suddenly and quite unexpectedly blushed. Her eyes flashed and her face became quite serious. She began speaking quickly and nervously in a warm and resentful voice: "Why has he forgotten everything, then? He used to carry me about when I was little. We used to play together. He used to come to teach me to read, do you know. Two years ago, when he went away, he said that he would never forget me, that we were friends for ever, for ever, for ever! And now he's afraid of me all at once. Am I going to eat him? Why doesn't he want to come near me? Why doesn't he talk? Why won't he come and see us? It's not that you won't let him. We know that he goes everywhere. It's not good manners for me to invite him. He ought to have thought of it first, if he hasn't forgotten me. No, now he's saving his soul! Why have you put that long gown on him? If he runs he'll fall." And suddenly she hid her face in her hand and went off into irresistible, prolonged, nervous, inaudible laughter. The elder listened to her with a smile, and blessed her tenderly. As she kissed his hand she suddenly pressed it to her eyes and began crying. "Don't be angry with me. I'm silly and good for nothing ... and perhaps Alyosha's right, quite right, in not wanting to come and see such a ridiculous girl." "I will certainly send him," said the elder.

book 2, Chapter 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section2/

A Lady of Little Faith Zosima then speaks to Madame Khokhlakov, a wealthy landowner who has met him before, and her daughter Lise, a girl with a mischievous look on her face. Madame Khokhlakov tells Zosima that his prayers have healed her daughter, who has been ill and unable to walk, but Zosima suspects that Lise's recovery is incomplete. Madame Khokhlakov says that she is beset with religious doubt--she not only has trouble believing in the immortality of the soul, she finds it impossible to perform charitable works without expecting praise and admiration in return. Zosima tells her not to worry, but to practice active, committed love for mankind, and God will forgive her flaws simply by virtue of the fact that she is aware of them. In the meantime, Lise teases the self-conscious Alyosha: Lise says that Alyosha was her childhood friend, but since he came to the monastery he never visits her anymore. Zosima warmly promises her that Alyosha will visit her soon.

Book II: An Inappropriate Gathering, Chapters 1-4 Through the character of Zosima, Dostoevsky establishes a relationship between love and truth. As displayed in these chapters, the two qualities Zosima values above all others are love and honesty, particularly honesty with oneself. He connects these two ideas intimately: he tells both Fyodor Pavlovich and Madame Khokhlakov that they must be honest with themselves because a dishonest person loses the ability to distinguish truth from falsehood, and thus loses the ability to respect and love other people. In Zosima's view, the ability to love is based on the ability to recognize truth. He explains that if a person cannot believe in himself, he will quickly become suspicious of everyone around him, assuming that the world is full of lies. Because he cannot believe in his own perceptions, he will become unable to tell lies from truth, and because he is corrupted by his own dishonesty, he will suspect that everything is a lie. By becoming suspicious, he loses his respect for others and thus his ability to love them. This mode of reasoning represents a philosophy of doubt that opposes Alyosha's loving faith. The process described by Zosima here is an incredibly incisive description of Fyodor Pavlovich's personality and the road he has taken to arrive at it, but to a greater or lesser extent, it becomes relevant to nearly every character in the novel, including Ivan and Dmitri. Ivan's speculation--if the soul is not immortal, then there is no morality at all, and people might as well live simply to satisfy their own selfish appetites--links the personality differences between the major characters to broad questions of philosophy and religious faith. Ivan's troubling hypothesis prompts us to consider the difference between Alyosha's selfless goodness and Fyodor Pavlovich's selfish evil. Zosima is thus a central character in the early part of the novel, even though his role in the larger narrative is comparatively small, because he draws the connections between faith and goodness for us, helping us to understand the main characters. He is the first character in the novel to articulate some of Dostoevsky's great themes. He is also important because of the role he plays in the mind of Alyosha, who venerates him absolutely. A great part of Alyosha's moral feeling--his kindness, his desire to help others, his modesty--has been influenced by Zosima, and through Alyosha, Zosima's example influences some of the most important actions in the novel. Zosima's goodness causes us to see the flaws in the other characters. All of the other characters are troubled by some irritation or concern, some earthly flaw that makes them seem fallible and even petty in comparison to the saintly Zosima. Even Alyosha, who is relatively saintly himself, is made mortal in these chapters by his embarrassment over his family's behavior in front of Zosima, and later by his awkwardness around Lise. Miusov's flaw is his hatred of Fyodor Pavlovich, which fills him with an uncontrollable anger nearly every time Fyodor Pavlovich speaks. For his part, Fyodor Pavlovich is almost entirely fallible and flawed--he is obnoxious, disrespectful, vulgar, and dishonest, and he delights in intentionally irritating the other characters with his brutish humor and his buffoonery. The only person who is not made uncomfortable by Fyodor Pavlovich's brazen behavior is Zosima, which illustrates Zosima's own high level of spirituality. Only Zosima possesses the inner serenity and the unshakable love of mankind necessary to overlook Fyodor Pavlovich's ugly personality and tolerate his boorish behavior. Fyodor Pavlovich's children, as represented by Alyosha in this section, find him much harder to take

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/chapters_42_to_43.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Sense and Sensibility/section_29_part_0.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapters 42-43

chapters 42-43

{"name": "Chapters 42-43", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapters-4243", "summary": "A few days after their arrival at Cleveland, Marianne took ill with a violent cold. As she did not improve, Mrs. Jennings sent for the apothecary, who pronounced her disorder to be of an infectious variety. Mrs. Palmer, fearing for her baby, departed with him to a relative's home in the neighborhood, but Mrs. Jennings insisted on staying to help nurse Marianne. After a few days, Marianne seemed to get better, but suddenly she had a relapse, and Elinor decided to send for their mother. Colonel Brandon offered to go for her \"with a readiness that seemed to speak the occasion and the service pre-arranged in his mind.\" Things seemed very bad and Mrs. Jennings was convinced Marianne would not survive. But as suddenly as she was stricken, Marianne began to get better and was declared out of danger. On that day, Elinor heard a carriage approaching and hurried down, thinking it must be Colonel Brandon and her mother. To her surprise, it was Willoughby.", "analysis": "The gentry of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were keenly interested in planning their gardens. Ruins of Grecian temples were often placed in the grounds to add a romantic touch to the landscape. The apothecary was the man who prepared drugs, as opposed to the doctor who prescribed them. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, however, the apothecary had the skill and power to care for patients in the same way as the doctor. Note that Mrs. Palmer's baby was treated by a doctor in London but only an apothecary was available in the country. Much to our surprise, Mr. Palmer, in his own habitat, is almost as warm as his wife. Mrs. Jennings has truly become one of the heroines of the story, where, as a mother, she is a striking contrast to the cold, barren Mrs. Ferrars. Marianne is paying for her folly with a very tangible illness. She cannot go out in the damp, wild grass -- symbolic of her own excesses of emotion -- without being punished."}

One other short call in Harley Street, in which Elinor received her brother's congratulations on their travelling so far towards Barton without any expense, and on Colonel Brandon's being to follow them to Cleveland in a day or two, completed the intercourse of the brother and sisters in town;--and a faint invitation from Fanny, to come to Norland whenever it should happen to be in their way, which of all things was the most unlikely to occur, with a more warm, though less public, assurance, from John to Elinor, of the promptitude with which he should come to see her at Delaford, was all that foretold any meeting in the country. It amused her to observe that all her friends seemed determined to send her to Delaford;--a place, in which, of all others, she would now least chuse to visit, or wish to reside; for not only was it considered as her future home by her brother and Mrs. Jennings, but even Lucy, when they parted, gave her a pressing invitation to visit her there. Very early in April, and tolerably early in the day, the two parties from Hanover Square and Berkeley Street set out from their respective homes, to meet, by appointment, on the road. For the convenience of Charlotte and her child, they were to be more than two days on their journey, and Mr. Palmer, travelling more expeditiously with Colonel Brandon, was to join them at Cleveland soon after their arrival. Marianne, few as had been her hours of comfort in London, and eager as she had long been to quit it, could not, when it came to the point, bid adieu to the house in which she had for the last time enjoyed those hopes, and that confidence, in Willoughby, which were now extinguished for ever, without great pain. Nor could she leave the place in which Willoughby remained, busy in new engagements, and new schemes, in which SHE could have no share, without shedding many tears. Elinor's satisfaction, at the moment of removal, was more positive. She had no such object for her lingering thoughts to fix on, she left no creature behind, from whom it would give her a moment's regret to be divided for ever, she was pleased to be free herself from the persecution of Lucy's friendship, she was grateful for bringing her sister away unseen by Willoughby since his marriage, and she looked forward with hope to what a few months of tranquility at Barton might do towards restoring Marianne's peace of mind, and confirming her own. Their journey was safely performed. The second day brought them into the cherished, or the prohibited, county of Somerset, for as such was it dwelt on by turns in Marianne's imagination; and in the forenoon of the third they drove up to Cleveland. Cleveland was a spacious, modern-built house, situated on a sloping lawn. It had no park, but the pleasure-grounds were tolerably extensive; and like every other place of the same degree of importance, it had its open shrubbery, and closer wood walk, a road of smooth gravel winding round a plantation, led to the front, the lawn was dotted over with timber, the house itself was under the guardianship of the fir, the mountain-ash, and the acacia, and a thick screen of them altogether, interspersed with tall Lombardy poplars, shut out the offices. Marianne entered the house with a heart swelling with emotion from the consciousness of being only eighty miles from Barton, and not thirty from Combe Magna; and before she had been five minutes within its walls, while the others were busily helping Charlotte to show her child to the housekeeper, she quitted it again, stealing away through the winding shrubberies, now just beginning to be in beauty, to gain a distant eminence; where, from its Grecian temple, her eye, wandering over a wide tract of country to the south-east, could fondly rest on the farthest ridge of hills in the horizon, and fancy that from their summits Combe Magna might be seen. In such moments of precious, invaluable misery, she rejoiced in tears of agony to be at Cleveland; and as she returned by a different circuit to the house, feeling all the happy privilege of country liberty, of wandering from place to place in free and luxurious solitude, she resolved to spend almost every hour of every day while she remained with the Palmers, in the indulgence of such solitary rambles. She returned just in time to join the others as they quitted the house, on an excursion through its more immediate premises; and the rest of the morning was easily whiled away, in lounging round the kitchen garden, examining the bloom upon its walls, and listening to the gardener's lamentations upon blights, in dawdling through the green-house, where the loss of her favourite plants, unwarily exposed, and nipped by the lingering frost, raised the laughter of Charlotte,--and in visiting her poultry-yard, where, in the disappointed hopes of her dairy-maid, by hens forsaking their nests, or being stolen by a fox, or in the rapid decrease of a promising young brood, she found fresh sources of merriment. The morning was fine and dry, and Marianne, in her plan of employment abroad, had not calculated for any change of weather during their stay at Cleveland. With great surprise therefore, did she find herself prevented by a settled rain from going out again after dinner. She had depended on a twilight walk to the Grecian temple, and perhaps all over the grounds, and an evening merely cold or damp would not have deterred her from it; but a heavy and settled rain even SHE could not fancy dry or pleasant weather for walking. Their party was small, and the hours passed quietly away. Mrs. Palmer had her child, and Mrs. Jennings her carpet-work; they talked of the friends they had left behind, arranged Lady Middleton's engagements, and wondered whether Mr. Palmer and Colonel Brandon would get farther than Reading that night. Elinor, however little concerned in it, joined in their discourse; and Marianne, who had the knack of finding her way in every house to the library, however it might be avoided by the family in general, soon procured herself a book. Nothing was wanting on Mrs. Palmer's side that constant and friendly good humour could do, to make them feel themselves welcome. The openness and heartiness of her manner more than atoned for that want of recollection and elegance which made her often deficient in the forms of politeness; her kindness, recommended by so pretty a face, was engaging; her folly, though evident was not disgusting, because it was not conceited; and Elinor could have forgiven every thing but her laugh. The two gentlemen arrived the next day to a very late dinner, affording a pleasant enlargement of the party, and a very welcome variety to their conversation, which a long morning of the same continued rain had reduced very low. Elinor had seen so little of Mr. Palmer, and in that little had seen so much variety in his address to her sister and herself, that she knew not what to expect to find him in his own family. She found him, however, perfectly the gentleman in his behaviour to all his visitors, and only occasionally rude to his wife and her mother; she found him very capable of being a pleasant companion, and only prevented from being so always, by too great an aptitude to fancy himself as much superior to people in general, as he must feel himself to be to Mrs. Jennings and Charlotte. For the rest of his character and habits, they were marked, as far as Elinor could perceive, with no traits at all unusual in his sex and time of life. He was nice in his eating, uncertain in his hours; fond of his child, though affecting to slight it; and idled away the mornings at billiards, which ought to have been devoted to business. She liked him, however, upon the whole, much better than she had expected, and in her heart was not sorry that she could like him no more;--not sorry to be driven by the observation of his Epicurism, his selfishness, and his conceit, to rest with complacency on the remembrance of Edward's generous temper, simple taste, and diffident feelings. Of Edward, or at least of some of his concerns, she now received intelligence from Colonel Brandon, who had been into Dorsetshire lately; and who, treating her at once as the disinterested friend of Mr. Ferrars, and the kind confidante of himself, talked to her a great deal of the parsonage at Delaford, described its deficiencies, and told her what he meant to do himself towards removing them.--His behaviour to her in this, as well as in every other particular, his open pleasure in meeting her after an absence of only ten days, his readiness to converse with her, and his deference for her opinion, might very well justify Mrs. Jennings's persuasion of his attachment, and would have been enough, perhaps, had not Elinor still, as from the first, believed Marianne his real favourite, to make her suspect it herself. But as it was, such a notion had scarcely ever entered her head, except by Mrs. Jennings's suggestion; and she could not help believing herself the nicest observer of the two;--she watched his eyes, while Mrs. Jennings thought only of his behaviour;--and while his looks of anxious solicitude on Marianne's feeling, in her head and throat, the beginning of a heavy cold, because unexpressed by words, entirely escaped the latter lady's observation;--SHE could discover in them the quick feelings, and needless alarm of a lover. Two delightful twilight walks on the third and fourth evenings of her being there, not merely on the dry gravel of the shrubbery, but all over the grounds, and especially in the most distant parts of them, where there was something more of wildness than in the rest, where the trees were the oldest, and the grass was the longest and wettest, had--assisted by the still greater imprudence of sitting in her wet shoes and stockings--given Marianne a cold so violent as, though for a day or two trifled with or denied, would force itself by increasing ailments on the concern of every body, and the notice of herself. Prescriptions poured in from all quarters, and as usual, were all declined. Though heavy and feverish, with a pain in her limbs, and a cough, and a sore throat, a good night's rest was to cure her entirely; and it was with difficulty that Elinor prevailed on her, when she went to bed, to try one or two of the simplest of the remedies. Marianne got up the next morning at her usual time; to every inquiry replied that she was better, and tried to prove herself so, by engaging in her accustomary employments. But a day spent in sitting shivering over the fire with a book in her hand, which she was unable to read, or in lying, weary and languid, on a sofa, did not speak much in favour of her amendment; and when, at last, she went early to bed, more and more indisposed, Colonel Brandon was only astonished at her sister's composure, who, though attending and nursing her the whole day, against Marianne's inclination, and forcing proper medicines on her at night, trusted, like Marianne, to the certainty and efficacy of sleep, and felt no real alarm. A very restless and feverish night, however, disappointed the expectation of both; and when Marianne, after persisting in rising, confessed herself unable to sit up, and returned voluntarily to her bed, Elinor was very ready to adopt Mrs. Jennings's advice, of sending for the Palmers' apothecary. He came, examined his patient, and though encouraging Miss Dashwood to expect that a very few days would restore her sister to health, yet, by pronouncing her disorder to have a putrid tendency, and allowing the word "infection" to pass his lips, gave instant alarm to Mrs. Palmer, on her baby's account. Mrs. Jennings, who had been inclined from the first to think Marianne's complaint more serious than Elinor, now looked very grave on Mr. Harris's report, and confirming Charlotte's fears and caution, urged the necessity of her immediate removal with her infant; and Mr. Palmer, though treating their apprehensions as idle, found the anxiety and importunity of his wife too great to be withstood. Her departure, therefore, was fixed on; and within an hour after Mr. Harris's arrival, she set off, with her little boy and his nurse, for the house of a near relation of Mr. Palmer's, who lived a few miles on the other side of Bath; whither her husband promised, at her earnest entreaty, to join her in a day or two; and whither she was almost equally urgent with her mother to accompany her. Mrs. Jennings, however, with a kindness of heart which made Elinor really love her, declared her resolution of not stirring from Cleveland as long as Marianne remained ill, and of endeavouring, by her own attentive care, to supply to her the place of the mother she had taken her from; and Elinor found her on every occasion a most willing and active helpmate, desirous to share in all her fatigues, and often by her better experience in nursing, of material use. Poor Marianne, languid and low from the nature of her malady, and feeling herself universally ill, could no longer hope that tomorrow would find her recovered; and the idea of what tomorrow would have produced, but for this unlucky illness, made every ailment severe; for on that day they were to have begun their journey home; and, attended the whole way by a servant of Mrs. Jennings, were to have taken their mother by surprise on the following forenoon. The little she said was all in lamentation of this inevitable delay; though Elinor tried to raise her spirits, and make her believe, as she THEN really believed herself, that it would be a very short one. The next day produced little or no alteration in the state of the patient; she certainly was not better, and, except that there was no amendment, did not appear worse. Their party was now farther reduced; for Mr. Palmer, though very unwilling to go as well from real humanity and good-nature, as from a dislike of appearing to be frightened away by his wife, was persuaded at last by Colonel Brandon to perform his promise of following her; and while he was preparing to go, Colonel Brandon himself, with a much greater exertion, began to talk of going likewise.--Here, however, the kindness of Mrs. Jennings interposed most acceptably; for to send the Colonel away while his love was in so much uneasiness on her sister's account, would be to deprive them both, she thought, of every comfort; and therefore telling him at once that his stay at Cleveland was necessary to herself, that she should want him to play at piquet of an evening, while Miss Dashwood was above with her sister, &c. she urged him so strongly to remain, that he, who was gratifying the first wish of his own heart by a compliance, could not long even affect to demur; especially as Mrs. Jennings's entreaty was warmly seconded by Mr. Palmer, who seemed to feel a relief to himself, in leaving behind him a person so well able to assist or advise Miss Dashwood in any emergence. Marianne was, of course, kept in ignorance of all these arrangements. She knew not that she had been the means of sending the owners of Cleveland away, in about seven days from the time of their arrival. It gave her no surprise that she saw nothing of Mrs. Palmer; and as it gave her likewise no concern, she never mentioned her name. Two days passed away from the time of Mr. Palmer's departure, and her situation continued, with little variation, the same. Mr. Harris, who attended her every day, still talked boldly of a speedy recovery, and Miss Dashwood was equally sanguine; but the expectation of the others was by no means so cheerful. Mrs. Jennings had determined very early in the seizure that Marianne would never get over it, and Colonel Brandon, who was chiefly of use in listening to Mrs. Jennings's forebodings, was not in a state of mind to resist their influence. He tried to reason himself out of fears, which the different judgment of the apothecary seemed to render absurd; but the many hours of each day in which he was left entirely alone, were but too favourable for the admission of every melancholy idea, and he could not expel from his mind the persuasion that he should see Marianne no more. On the morning of the third day however, the gloomy anticipations of both were almost done away; for when Mr. Harris arrived, he declared his patient materially better. Her pulse was much stronger, and every symptom more favourable than on the preceding visit. Elinor, confirmed in every pleasant hope, was all cheerfulness; rejoicing that in her letters to her mother, she had pursued her own judgment rather than her friend's, in making very light of the indisposition which delayed them at Cleveland; and almost fixing on the time when Marianne would be able to travel. But the day did not close so auspiciously as it began.-- Towards the evening Marianne became ill again, growing more heavy, restless, and uncomfortable than before. Her sister, however, still sanguine, was willing to attribute the change to nothing more than the fatigue of having sat up to have her bed made; and carefully administering the cordials prescribed, saw her, with satisfaction, sink at last into a slumber, from which she expected the most beneficial effects. Her sleep, though not so quiet as Elinor wished to see it, lasted a considerable time; and anxious to observe the result of it herself, she resolved to sit with her during the whole of it. Mrs. Jennings, knowing nothing of any change in the patient, went unusually early to bed; her maid, who was one of the principal nurses, was recreating herself in the housekeeper's room, and Elinor remained alone with Marianne. The repose of the latter became more and more disturbed; and her sister, who watched, with unremitting attention her continual change of posture, and heard the frequent but inarticulate sounds of complaint which passed her lips, was almost wishing to rouse her from so painful a slumber, when Marianne, suddenly awakened by some accidental noise in the house, started hastily up, and, with feverish wildness, cried out,-- "Is mama coming?--" "Not yet," cried the other, concealing her terror, and assisting Marianne to lie down again, "but she will be here, I hope, before it is long. It is a great way, you know, from hence to Barton." "But she must not go round by London," cried Marianne, in the same hurried manner. "I shall never see her, if she goes by London." Elinor perceived with alarm that she was not quite herself, and, while attempting to soothe her, eagerly felt her pulse. It was lower and quicker than ever! and Marianne, still talking wildly of mama, her alarm increased so rapidly, as to determine her on sending instantly for Mr. Harris, and despatching a messenger to Barton for her mother. To consult with Colonel Brandon on the best means of effecting the latter, was a thought which immediately followed the resolution of its performance; and as soon she had rung up the maid to take her place by her sister, she hastened down to the drawing-room, where she knew he was generally to be found at a much later hour than the present. It was no time for hesitation. Her fears and her difficulties were immediately before him. Her fears, he had no courage, no confidence to attempt the removal of:--he listened to them in silent despondence;--but her difficulties were instantly obviated, for with a readiness that seemed to speak the occasion, and the service pre-arranged in his mind, he offered himself as the messenger who should fetch Mrs. Dashwood. Elinor made no resistance that was not easily overcome. She thanked him with brief, though fervent gratitude, and while he went to hurry off his servant with a message to Mr. Harris, and an order for post-horses directly, she wrote a few lines to her mother. The comfort of such a friend at that moment as Colonel Brandon--or such a companion for her mother,--how gratefully was it felt!--a companion whose judgment would guide, whose attendance must relieve, and whose friendship might soothe her!--as far as the shock of such a summons COULD be lessened to her, his presence, his manners, his assistance, would lessen it. HE, meanwhile, whatever he might feel, acted with all the firmness of a collected mind, made every necessary arrangement with the utmost despatch, and calculated with exactness the time in which she might look for his return. Not a moment was lost in delay of any kind. The horses arrived, even before they were expected, and Colonel Brandon only pressing her hand with a look of solemnity, and a few words spoken too low to reach her ear, hurried into the carriage. It was then about twelve o'clock, and she returned to her sister's apartment to wait for the arrival of the apothecary, and to watch by her the rest of the night. It was a night of almost equal suffering to both. Hour after hour passed away in sleepless pain and delirium on Marianne's side, and in the most cruel anxiety on Elinor's, before Mr. Harris appeared. Her apprehensions once raised, paid by their excess for all her former security; and the servant who sat up with her, for she would not allow Mrs. Jennings to be called, only tortured her more, by hints of what her mistress had always thought. Marianne's ideas were still, at intervals, fixed incoherently on her mother, and whenever she mentioned her name, it gave a pang to the heart of poor Elinor, who, reproaching herself for having trifled with so many days of illness, and wretched for some immediate relief, fancied that all relief might soon be in vain, that every thing had been delayed too long, and pictured to herself her suffering mother arriving too late to see this darling child, or to see her rational. She was on the point of sending again for Mr. Harris, or if HE could not come, for some other advice, when the former--but not till after five o'clock--arrived. His opinion, however, made some little amends for his delay, for though acknowledging a very unexpected and unpleasant alteration in his patient, he would not allow the danger to be material, and talked of the relief which a fresh mode of treatment must procure, with a confidence which, in a lesser degree, was communicated to Elinor. He promised to call again in the course of three or four hours, and left both the patient and her anxious attendant more composed than he had found them. With strong concern, and with many reproaches for not being called to their aid, did Mrs. Jennings hear in the morning of what had passed. Her former apprehensions, now with greater reason restored, left her no doubt of the event; and though trying to speak comfort to Elinor, her conviction of her sister's danger would not allow her to offer the comfort of hope. Her heart was really grieved. The rapid decay, the early death of a girl so young, so lovely as Marianne, must have struck a less interested person with concern. On Mrs. Jennings's compassion she had other claims. She had been for three months her companion, was still under her care, and she was known to have been greatly injured, and long unhappy. The distress of her sister too, particularly a favourite, was before her;--and as for their mother, when Mrs. Jennings considered that Marianne might probably be to HER what Charlotte was to herself, her sympathy in HER sufferings was very sincere. Mr. Harris was punctual in his second visit;--but he came to be disappointed in his hopes of what the last would produce. His medicines had failed;--the fever was unabated; and Marianne only more quiet--not more herself--remained in a heavy stupor. Elinor, catching all, and more than all, his fears in a moment, proposed to call in further advice. But he judged it unnecessary: he had still something more to try, some more fresh application, of whose success he was as confident as the last, and his visit concluded with encouraging assurances which reached the ear, but could not enter the heart of Miss Dashwood. She was calm, except when she thought of her mother; but she was almost hopeless; and in this state she continued till noon, scarcely stirring from her sister's bed, her thoughts wandering from one image of grief, one suffering friend to another, and her spirits oppressed to the utmost by the conversation of Mrs. Jennings, who scrupled not to attribute the severity and danger of this attack to the many weeks of previous indisposition which Marianne's disappointment had brought on. Elinor felt all the reasonableness of the idea, and it gave fresh misery to her reflections. About noon, however, she began--but with a caution--a dread of disappointment which for some time kept her silent, even to her friend--to fancy, to hope she could perceive a slight amendment in her sister's pulse;--she waited, watched, and examined it again and again;--and at last, with an agitation more difficult to bury under exterior calmness, than all her foregoing distress, ventured to communicate her hopes. Mrs. Jennings, though forced, on examination, to acknowledge a temporary revival, tried to keep her young friend from indulging a thought of its continuance;--and Elinor, conning over every injunction of distrust, told herself likewise not to hope. But it was too late. Hope had already entered; and feeling all its anxious flutter, she bent over her sister to watch--she hardly knew for what. Half an hour passed away, and the favourable symptom yet blessed her. Others even arose to confirm it. Her breath, her skin, her lips, all flattered Elinor with signs of amendment; and Marianne fixed her eyes on her with a rational, though languid, gaze. Anxiety and hope now oppressed her in equal degrees, and left her no moment of tranquillity till the arrival of Mr. Harris at four o'clock;--when his assurances, his felicitations on a recovery in her sister even surpassing his expectation, gave her confidence, comfort, and tears of joy. Marianne was in every respect materially better, and he declared her entirely out of danger. Mrs. Jennings, perhaps satisfied with the partial justification of her forebodings which had been found in their late alarm, allowed herself to trust in his judgment, and admitted, with unfeigned joy, and soon with unequivocal cheerfulness, the probability of an entire recovery. Elinor could not be cheerful. Her joy was of a different kind, and led to any thing rather than to gaiety. Marianne restored to life, health, friends, and to her doting mother, was an idea to fill her heart with sensations of exquisite comfort, and expand it in fervent gratitude;--but it led to no outward demonstrations of joy, no words, no smiles. All within Elinor's breast was satisfaction, silent and strong. She continued by the side of her sister, with little intermission the whole afternoon, calming every fear, satisfying every inquiry of her enfeebled spirits, supplying every succour, and watching almost every look and every breath. The possibility of a relapse would of course, in some moments, occur to remind her of what anxiety was--but when she saw, on her frequent and minute examination, that every symptom of recovery continued, and saw Marianne at six o'clock sink into a quiet, steady, and to all appearance comfortable, sleep, she silenced every doubt. The time was now drawing on, when Colonel Brandon might be expected back. At ten o'clock, she trusted, or at least not much later her mother would be relieved from the dreadful suspense in which she must now be travelling towards them. The Colonel, too!--perhaps scarcely less an object of pity!--Oh!--how slow was the progress of time which yet kept them in ignorance! At seven o'clock, leaving Marianne still sweetly asleep, she joined Mrs. Jennings in the drawing-room to tea. Of breakfast she had been kept by her fears, and of dinner by their sudden reverse, from eating much;--and the present refreshment, therefore, with such feelings of content as she brought to it, was particularly welcome. Mrs. Jennings would have persuaded her, at its conclusion, to take some rest before her mother's arrival, and allow HER to take her place by Marianne; but Elinor had no sense of fatigue, no capability of sleep at that moment about her, and she was not to be kept away from her sister an unnecessary instant. Mrs. Jennings therefore attending her up stairs into the sick chamber, to satisfy herself that all continued right, left her there again to her charge and her thoughts, and retired to her own room to write letters and sleep. The night was cold and stormy. The wind roared round the house, and the rain beat against the windows; but Elinor, all happiness within, regarded it not. Marianne slept through every blast; and the travellers--they had a rich reward in store, for every present inconvenience. The clock struck eight. Had it been ten, Elinor would have been convinced that at that moment she heard a carriage driving up to the house; and so strong was the persuasion that she DID, in spite of the ALMOST impossibility of their being already come, that she moved into the adjoining dressing-closet and opened a window shutter, to be satisfied of the truth. She instantly saw that her ears had not deceived her. The flaring lamps of a carriage were immediately in view. By their uncertain light she thought she could discern it to be drawn by four horses; and this, while it told the excess of her poor mother's alarm, gave some explanation to such unexpected rapidity. Never in her life had Elinor found it so difficult to be calm, as at that moment. The knowledge of what her mother must be feeling as the carriage stopt at the door--of her doubt--her dread--perhaps her despair!--and of what SHE had to tell!--with such knowledge it was impossible to be calm. All that remained to be done was to be speedy; and, therefore staying only till she could leave Mrs. Jennings's maid with her sister, she hurried down stairs. The bustle in the vestibule, as she passed along an inner lobby, assured her that they were already in the house. She rushed to the drawing-room,--she entered it,--and saw only Willoughby.

Chapters 42-43

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapters-4243

A few days after their arrival at Cleveland, Marianne took ill with a violent cold. As she did not improve, Mrs. Jennings sent for the apothecary, who pronounced her disorder to be of an infectious variety. Mrs. Palmer, fearing for her baby, departed with him to a relative's home in the neighborhood, but Mrs. Jennings insisted on staying to help nurse Marianne. After a few days, Marianne seemed to get better, but suddenly she had a relapse, and Elinor decided to send for their mother. Colonel Brandon offered to go for her "with a readiness that seemed to speak the occasion and the service pre-arranged in his mind." Things seemed very bad and Mrs. Jennings was convinced Marianne would not survive. But as suddenly as she was stricken, Marianne began to get better and was declared out of danger. On that day, Elinor heard a carriage approaching and hurried down, thinking it must be Colonel Brandon and her mother. To her surprise, it was Willoughby.

The gentry of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were keenly interested in planning their gardens. Ruins of Grecian temples were often placed in the grounds to add a romantic touch to the landscape. The apothecary was the man who prepared drugs, as opposed to the doctor who prescribed them. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, however, the apothecary had the skill and power to care for patients in the same way as the doctor. Note that Mrs. Palmer's baby was treated by a doctor in London but only an apothecary was available in the country. Much to our surprise, Mr. Palmer, in his own habitat, is almost as warm as his wife. Mrs. Jennings has truly become one of the heroines of the story, where, as a mother, she is a striking contrast to the cold, barren Mrs. Ferrars. Marianne is paying for her folly with a very tangible illness. She cannot go out in the damp, wild grass -- symbolic of her own excesses of emotion -- without being punished.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/23042-chapters/act_iv.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Tempest/section_3_part_0.txt

The Tempest.act iv.scene i

act iv

{"name": "Act IV", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210309152602/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-tempest/study-guide/summary-act-iv", "summary": "Prospero stops Ferdinand's punishment, and decides to finally give Miranda to him, since he has proven his love for her through his service. Prospero accepts the union, but issues them a warning; if Ferdinand takes Miranda's virginity before a ceremony can be performed, then their union will be cursed. Ferdinand swears to Prospero that they shall wait until the ceremony to consummate their marriage, and then Prospero calls upon Ariel to perform one of his last acts of magic. A betrothal masque is performed for the party by some of Prospero's magical spirits; Juno, Ceres, and Iris are the goddesses who are represented within the masque, and the play speaks about the bounties of a good marriage, and blesses the happy couple. This act of magic so captivates Prospero that he forgets Caliban's plot to kill him; for a moment, he almost loses control, but manages to pull himself out of his reverie and take action. Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo come looking for Prospero, and swipe a few garments of Prospero's on their way. Caliban still wants very much to kill Prospero, and carry out this plot; however, Trinculo and Stephano are very drunk, as usual, and prove completely incapable of anything but petty theft. Prospero catches themnot difficult, since they are making a huge amount of noise--and sends Ariel after them as they flee.", "analysis": "Prospero tries to dismiss his tyrannical demands for Ferdinand's service as \"trials of thy love\"but also makes mention in this first scene that he has \"punished\" Ferdinand, which implies a need for retribution for a wrongdoing . The word \"punished\" that he uses recalls the fabricated charges Prospero raises against Ferdinand in the first act, of Ferdinand being a spy or a potential usurper; and the irony is that Prospero heaps his suspicion on Ferdinand, who has no such designs, while forgetting the very real plots of Caliban and his brothers. Prospero's actions, however, were unfair and ungrounded; he uses the couple's love to try to excuse himself in this instance, but Prospero is not the just judge he would have himself appear to be. Ironically, Prospero's decision to let Miranda and Ferdinand marry was made even before Ferdinand came to the island, and was made because the marriage would secure Prospero's position back home, and would make his daughter queen as well. The work Prospero made Ferdinand do, coupled with the enchantment that he put his daughter and Ferdinand under so they would fall in love, merely assured that Prospero's plan would succeed, as it finally does. But, be wary of the difference between the way Prospero's character appears, and the machinations and plans lying beneath the appearance he would like to project, especially in instances such as this one. However, just as Prospero begins to promise a blessing upon their union, his tone again becomes threatening. It is so important to Prospero that they not consummate their marriage before \"full and holy rite be ministered,\" that he would wish them \"barren hate\" if they do, and continues with enough bitter, harsh-toned rhetoric to hopefully drive his point home . Prospero conjures up a frightful image of disdain, personified as being \"sour-eyed\"; and, in meaningful contrast with the traditional flower-strewn marriage bed, an image of hateful weeds symbolizing the downfall and pollution of the marriage. Prospero's language, heavy with unpleasant images and symbols, does yield some result; Ferdinand, in earnest, forswears his \"worser genius,\" or any possible influence of lust and dishonor within him. Prospero seems preoccupied with Miranda's virginity because it is inextricably bound up with Prospero's own power. Her virginity is their prime bargaining chip in winning an advantageous marriage that will secure both of their positions; and if she does marry Ferdinand, their power back in Italy is secured for both of them. Virginity was often an important bargaining pointmost notably, for Queen Elizabeth, who used her eligibility to gain a great deal of power throughout her reign. If Miranda's virginity is thrown away, then Prospero's greatest hope for regaining his estate and position is gone too; so Prospero tries his best to keep Miranda well-informed of her importance, and keep Ferdinand warned as to the potential consequences of his actions. Prospero's great concern foreshadows the importance of this theme in the betrothal masque; in the masque, Iris makes mention that the couple cannot be together \"till Hymen's torch be lighted,\" her language parallel to that in Prospero's earlier entreaty to the lovers. Prospero reduces his daughter, who is intelligent and worthy, to a mere object, wrapping her with the language of exchange when speaking of her to Ferdinand. Prospero refers to his daughter, not by her name, but as a \"rich gift,\" \"compensation\" for Ferdinand's pains; he says his daughter has been \"worthily purchased\" as an \"acquisition,\" further building up his metaphor of his daughter as a thing of exchange. Prospero's metaphors, and overstatement of his daughter's perfection could be meant to distract Ferdinand from what Prospero and Miranda are getting in the bargain. Indeed, Prospero never makes mention of the power and position that he and his daughter are regaining because of this \"rich gift,\" or the true purchase price of his daughter's hand. It is strange to think of the \"liver,\" as Ferdinand mentions it, as having anything to do with love; but, in Shakespeare's time, the organ was a symbol of lust and passion, just as these emotions are associated with the heart today. The heart was also related to love, but was thought to be more pure and honorable in the feelings originating there. We know now, of course, that feelings originate in the brain, and that these relations of organs and emotions are quaint in their backwardness; but, the heart remains a symbol related to love, and despite our modern medical knowledge, this ancient literary device continues to be used. Though the marriage rites to be performed are Christian, allusions to ancient pagan mythology abound. Prospero invokes Hymen, god of marriageand a figure uniquely opposed to his wish for \"holy rites\" for his daughter. Ferdinand mentions \"Phoebus' steeds,\" as symbols of day-time and the sun, and the characters in Prospero's masque originate in classical myths as well. Allusions to Greek and Roman myth were common in Elizabethan literature, but especially common in the first few court masques that were performed, which often featured the same goddesses as characters that appear in this masque. Prospero calls upon Iris, the messenger of the gods and also the goddess of the rainbow, to perform a betrothal masque for Ferdinand and Miranda. A betrothal masque also appears in As You Like It that is presided over by Hymen; but otherwise, the spectacle was mostly reserved for weddings of state and almost exclusively for court functions. In this respect, the masque does confirm that the wedding is an important oneeleven were actually performed at the court of King James, and some of these for occasions of the marriage of rich and important people. Masques were special ritual-type plays in which the monarch was always the protagonist, and the subject was how royalty made things harmonious and resolved tensions between people. Although Shakespeare's masque took some inspiration from earlier ones, thematically it is entirely innovative. Royal power is displayed as power over nature, and the idea of the masque as the projection of a royal vision first appeared in this masque in The Tempest, and were to appear again in Jonson's court masques of later years. Within the masque are a few parallels to events within the play. Ceres presides over the play, because she symbolizes order and plenty; Ceres is credited with teaching men agriculture, thus civilizing them and stopping their wild hunter-gatherer ways. Prospero's mission parallels this, as Prospero also sought to civilize and bring order to the island, and to the wild Caliban, though he did not manage to succeed. Also, Ceres mentions \"dusky Dis,\" meaning Pluto, the god who abducted Ceres' daughter Proserpine, inspired by Cupid and Venus. Caliban is reminiscent of the dark figure of Pluto, in his attempts to abduct and rape Miranda; and the story also recalls the plot Caliban later fosters, to get Miranda for Stephano. The parallels might be faint, but it is, after all, Prospero who has \"called to enact present fancies\"; the inclusion of the Pluto/ Proserpine story is so tangential to the concerns of the masque, that it must have been included by Prospero on purpose, as some sort of reminder to himself . Once again, Prospero almost loses control because he is absorbed by his art; but here, he is able to shake himself from his reverie, and becomes conscious of time again. The moment is important because Prospero is in real danger of losing control, and almost gives up his chance to act because of the pull of his magic. The moment is a humanizing one for Prospero, as he realizes his mortality and his forgetfulness, as well as the limits of his magic. The masque, which he created from his own power, disappears in an instant; and finally, Prospero realizes that his works of magic are all in vain, as they are made of \"baseless fabric\" and will not last. He sees that \"we are such stuff as dreams are made on,\" and at last realizes that his mind has aged and his powers are fragile and faltering . It is a sobering moment for Prospero, to admit his \"weakness\" and \"infirmity\"; and this marks the beginning of his surrender of his magic. It is not Caliban and his drunken friends, whom Ariel describes in a simile as being \"like unbacked colts,\" that Prospero has to worry about . Indeed, the thought of Caliban upsets Prospero more than the plot, as Prospero again curses the one \"on whose nature nurture can never stick\" . Prospero thinks that Caliban is bad because he has not adopted the \"civilized\" ways of thinking that Prospero has, and must be bad natured because of this; but Prospero fails to realize that Caliban's relative goodness has been more spoiled by the way Prospero treats him than by any refusal to adopt foreign ways of thinking. Prospero, for all his learning, still espouses a haughty, colonial point of view when it comes to Caliban, and lets this prejudiced treatment corrupt a potentially good man's nature."}

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.

Act IV

https://web.archive.org/web/20210309152602/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-tempest/study-guide/summary-act-iv

Prospero stops Ferdinand's punishment, and decides to finally give Miranda to him, since he has proven his love for her through his service. Prospero accepts the union, but issues them a warning; if Ferdinand takes Miranda's virginity before a ceremony can be performed, then their union will be cursed. Ferdinand swears to Prospero that they shall wait until the ceremony to consummate their marriage, and then Prospero calls upon Ariel to perform one of his last acts of magic. A betrothal masque is performed for the party by some of Prospero's magical spirits; Juno, Ceres, and Iris are the goddesses who are represented within the masque, and the play speaks about the bounties of a good marriage, and blesses the happy couple. This act of magic so captivates Prospero that he forgets Caliban's plot to kill him; for a moment, he almost loses control, but manages to pull himself out of his reverie and take action. Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo come looking for Prospero, and swipe a few garments of Prospero's on their way. Caliban still wants very much to kill Prospero, and carry out this plot; however, Trinculo and Stephano are very drunk, as usual, and prove completely incapable of anything but petty theft. Prospero catches themnot difficult, since they are making a huge amount of noise--and sends Ariel after them as they flee.

Prospero tries to dismiss his tyrannical demands for Ferdinand's service as "trials of thy love"but also makes mention in this first scene that he has "punished" Ferdinand, which implies a need for retribution for a wrongdoing . The word "punished" that he uses recalls the fabricated charges Prospero raises against Ferdinand in the first act, of Ferdinand being a spy or a potential usurper; and the irony is that Prospero heaps his suspicion on Ferdinand, who has no such designs, while forgetting the very real plots of Caliban and his brothers. Prospero's actions, however, were unfair and ungrounded; he uses the couple's love to try to excuse himself in this instance, but Prospero is not the just judge he would have himself appear to be. Ironically, Prospero's decision to let Miranda and Ferdinand marry was made even before Ferdinand came to the island, and was made because the marriage would secure Prospero's position back home, and would make his daughter queen as well. The work Prospero made Ferdinand do, coupled with the enchantment that he put his daughter and Ferdinand under so they would fall in love, merely assured that Prospero's plan would succeed, as it finally does. But, be wary of the difference between the way Prospero's character appears, and the machinations and plans lying beneath the appearance he would like to project, especially in instances such as this one. However, just as Prospero begins to promise a blessing upon their union, his tone again becomes threatening. It is so important to Prospero that they not consummate their marriage before "full and holy rite be ministered," that he would wish them "barren hate" if they do, and continues with enough bitter, harsh-toned rhetoric to hopefully drive his point home . Prospero conjures up a frightful image of disdain, personified as being "sour-eyed"; and, in meaningful contrast with the traditional flower-strewn marriage bed, an image of hateful weeds symbolizing the downfall and pollution of the marriage. Prospero's language, heavy with unpleasant images and symbols, does yield some result; Ferdinand, in earnest, forswears his "worser genius," or any possible influence of lust and dishonor within him. Prospero seems preoccupied with Miranda's virginity because it is inextricably bound up with Prospero's own power. Her virginity is their prime bargaining chip in winning an advantageous marriage that will secure both of their positions; and if she does marry Ferdinand, their power back in Italy is secured for both of them. Virginity was often an important bargaining pointmost notably, for Queen Elizabeth, who used her eligibility to gain a great deal of power throughout her reign. If Miranda's virginity is thrown away, then Prospero's greatest hope for regaining his estate and position is gone too; so Prospero tries his best to keep Miranda well-informed of her importance, and keep Ferdinand warned as to the potential consequences of his actions. Prospero's great concern foreshadows the importance of this theme in the betrothal masque; in the masque, Iris makes mention that the couple cannot be together "till Hymen's torch be lighted," her language parallel to that in Prospero's earlier entreaty to the lovers. Prospero reduces his daughter, who is intelligent and worthy, to a mere object, wrapping her with the language of exchange when speaking of her to Ferdinand. Prospero refers to his daughter, not by her name, but as a "rich gift," "compensation" for Ferdinand's pains; he says his daughter has been "worthily purchased" as an "acquisition," further building up his metaphor of his daughter as a thing of exchange. Prospero's metaphors, and overstatement of his daughter's perfection could be meant to distract Ferdinand from what Prospero and Miranda are getting in the bargain. Indeed, Prospero never makes mention of the power and position that he and his daughter are regaining because of this "rich gift," or the true purchase price of his daughter's hand. It is strange to think of the "liver," as Ferdinand mentions it, as having anything to do with love; but, in Shakespeare's time, the organ was a symbol of lust and passion, just as these emotions are associated with the heart today. The heart was also related to love, but was thought to be more pure and honorable in the feelings originating there. We know now, of course, that feelings originate in the brain, and that these relations of organs and emotions are quaint in their backwardness; but, the heart remains a symbol related to love, and despite our modern medical knowledge, this ancient literary device continues to be used. Though the marriage rites to be performed are Christian, allusions to ancient pagan mythology abound. Prospero invokes Hymen, god of marriageand a figure uniquely opposed to his wish for "holy rites" for his daughter. Ferdinand mentions "Phoebus' steeds," as symbols of day-time and the sun, and the characters in Prospero's masque originate in classical myths as well. Allusions to Greek and Roman myth were common in Elizabethan literature, but especially common in the first few court masques that were performed, which often featured the same goddesses as characters that appear in this masque. Prospero calls upon Iris, the messenger of the gods and also the goddess of the rainbow, to perform a betrothal masque for Ferdinand and Miranda. A betrothal masque also appears in As You Like It that is presided over by Hymen; but otherwise, the spectacle was mostly reserved for weddings of state and almost exclusively for court functions. In this respect, the masque does confirm that the wedding is an important oneeleven were actually performed at the court of King James, and some of these for occasions of the marriage of rich and important people. Masques were special ritual-type plays in which the monarch was always the protagonist, and the subject was how royalty made things harmonious and resolved tensions between people. Although Shakespeare's masque took some inspiration from earlier ones, thematically it is entirely innovative. Royal power is displayed as power over nature, and the idea of the masque as the projection of a royal vision first appeared in this masque in The Tempest, and were to appear again in Jonson's court masques of later years. Within the masque are a few parallels to events within the play. Ceres presides over the play, because she symbolizes order and plenty; Ceres is credited with teaching men agriculture, thus civilizing them and stopping their wild hunter-gatherer ways. Prospero's mission parallels this, as Prospero also sought to civilize and bring order to the island, and to the wild Caliban, though he did not manage to succeed. Also, Ceres mentions "dusky Dis," meaning Pluto, the god who abducted Ceres' daughter Proserpine, inspired by Cupid and Venus. Caliban is reminiscent of the dark figure of Pluto, in his attempts to abduct and rape Miranda; and the story also recalls the plot Caliban later fosters, to get Miranda for Stephano. The parallels might be faint, but it is, after all, Prospero who has "called to enact present fancies"; the inclusion of the Pluto/ Proserpine story is so tangential to the concerns of the masque, that it must have been included by Prospero on purpose, as some sort of reminder to himself . Once again, Prospero almost loses control because he is absorbed by his art; but here, he is able to shake himself from his reverie, and becomes conscious of time again. The moment is important because Prospero is in real danger of losing control, and almost gives up his chance to act because of the pull of his magic. The moment is a humanizing one for Prospero, as he realizes his mortality and his forgetfulness, as well as the limits of his magic. The masque, which he created from his own power, disappears in an instant; and finally, Prospero realizes that his works of magic are all in vain, as they are made of "baseless fabric" and will not last. He sees that "we are such stuff as dreams are made on," and at last realizes that his mind has aged and his powers are fragile and faltering . It is a sobering moment for Prospero, to admit his "weakness" and "infirmity"; and this marks the beginning of his surrender of his magic. It is not Caliban and his drunken friends, whom Ariel describes in a simile as being "like unbacked colts," that Prospero has to worry about . Indeed, the thought of Caliban upsets Prospero more than the plot, as Prospero again curses the one "on whose nature nurture can never stick" . Prospero thinks that Caliban is bad because he has not adopted the "civilized" ways of thinking that Prospero has, and must be bad natured because of this; but Prospero fails to realize that Caliban's relative goodness has been more spoiled by the way Prospero treats him than by any refusal to adopt foreign ways of thinking. Prospero, for all his learning, still espouses a haughty, colonial point of view when it comes to Caliban, and lets this prejudiced treatment corrupt a potentially good man's nature.

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/12.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_4_part_1.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 12

chapter 12

{"name": "CHAPTER 12", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820050202/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmTessD22.asp", "summary": "Tess remains with Alec at Trantridge for a few weeks and then packs her things and leaves for her home at Marlott. Alec follows her and questions her about her sudden decision of leaving. She refuses to go back and to take his material help, and he sees no point in coaxing her. Although her contempt for Alec remains, Tess no longer fears him and accepts a ride with him for a few miles. When they part, Alex tells Tess to call him if she ever needs him. At home, Tess's parents, though sad at her misfortune, take her into their fold. Joan, however, is terribly disappointed that Tess has lost a golden opportunity of marrying into the rich D'Urberville family. Tess is unsuccessful in explaining to her mother that marriage was never on Alec's mind. Tess also accuses her mother of hiding the dangers of life from her, making her ill prepared to cope with the likes of Alec.", "analysis": "Notes Although this chapter does not describe the last few weeks of Tess's life, it is assumed that she has been with Alec, tolerating his passionate advances. She soon has enough and leaves for home, filled with shame and remorse for her behavior. She knows she does not love Alec, and he has made no offer of marriage. When Alec realizes she has left, however, he does catch up to her and asks her to return. When she refuses, he offers material help, which she also refuses. Although she is a changed woman in many ways at this point in the novel, she is still proud and in control. Alec is impressed with her lofty thinking, and Hardy foreshadows that Alec will again be attracted to it in the future. On her way home, Tess by chance, meets a sign painter, who reappears several times in the novel. He is a symbol of morality, and his signs are warnings to sinners. He has just finished painting a sign that says, \"THY DAMNATION, SLUMBERETH NOT\". When Tess sees these words, standing out in vermilion paint against the pale background of the landscape, she feels even guiltier about what has happened to her. Her consolation that her sin was not of her own seeking serves as a weak defense against the accusation on the sign. At home, the honest Tess explains all of the events at Trantridge to her mother. Joan's reaction to Tess's calamity is surprising. In a truly rustic way of thinking, her mother considers what has happened to be Tess's destiny and believes that there was God's will in it. She is also disappointed that Tess has missed out on the opportunity to marry a wealthy man. It is important to notice that the Tess who arrives home in Marlott is very different from the Tess who left there four months earlier. Because of her stay in Trantridge, she is no longer a pure and simple country girl. She knows much more about life; as a result, her views have totally changed. Although she blames herself for what has happened with Alec, she also blames her mother, accusing her of withholding information about the dangers of life from her daughter. Hardy, however, still makes it clear that Tess was really an innocent who was misled by a sinister force; he also makes it clear that Tess's current troubles are caused by the shame and guilt she feels"}

The basket was heavy and the bundle was large, but she lugged them along like a person who did not find her especial burden in material things. Occasionally she stopped to rest in a mechanical way by some gate or post; and then, giving the baggage another hitch upon her full round arm, went steadily on again. It was a Sunday morning in late October, about four months after Tess Durbeyfield's arrival at Trantridge, and some few weeks subsequent to the night ride in The Chase. The time was not long past daybreak, and the yellow luminosity upon the horizon behind her back lighted the ridge towards which her face was set--the barrier of the vale wherein she had of late been a stranger--which she would have to climb over to reach her birthplace. The ascent was gradual on this side, and the soil and scenery differed much from those within Blakemore Vale. Even the character and accent of the two peoples had shades of difference, despite the amalgamating effects of a roundabout railway; so that, though less than twenty miles from the place of her sojourn at Trantridge, her native village had seemed a far-away spot. The field-folk shut in there traded northward and westward, travelled, courted, and married northward and westward, thought northward and westward; those on this side mainly directed their energies and attention to the east and south. The incline was the same down which d'Urberville had driven her so wildly on that day in June. Tess went up the remainder of its length without stopping, and on reaching the edge of the escarpment gazed over the familiar green world beyond, now half-veiled in mist. It was always beautiful from here; it was terribly beautiful to Tess to-day, for since her eyes last fell upon it she had learnt that the serpent hisses where the sweet birds sing, and her views of life had been totally changed for her by the lesson. Verily another girl than the simple one she had been at home was she who, bowed by thought, stood still here, and turned to look behind her. She could not bear to look forward into the Vale. Ascending by the long white road that Tess herself had just laboured up, she saw a two-wheeled vehicle, beside which walked a man, who held up his hand to attract her attention. She obeyed the signal to wait for him with unspeculative repose, and in a few minutes man and horse stopped beside her. "Why did you slip away by stealth like this?" said d'Urberville, with upbraiding breathlessness; "on a Sunday morning, too, when people were all in bed! I only discovered it by accident, and I have been driving like the deuce to overtake you. Just look at the mare. Why go off like this? You know that nobody wished to hinder your going. And how unnecessary it has been for you to toil along on foot, and encumber yourself with this heavy load! I have followed like a madman, simply to drive you the rest of the distance, if you won't come back." "I shan't come back," said she. "I thought you wouldn't--I said so! Well, then, put up your basket, and let me help you on." She listlessly placed her basket and bundle within the dog-cart, and stepped up, and they sat side by side. She had no fear of him now, and in the cause of her confidence her sorrow lay. D'Urberville mechanically lit a cigar, and the journey was continued with broken unemotional conversation on the commonplace objects by the wayside. He had quite forgotten his struggle to kiss her when, in the early summer, they had driven in the opposite direction along the same road. But she had not, and she sat now, like a puppet, replying to his remarks in monosyllables. After some miles they came in view of the clump of trees beyond which the village of Marlott stood. It was only then that her still face showed the least emotion, a tear or two beginning to trickle down. "What are you crying for?" he coldly asked. "I was only thinking that I was born over there," murmured Tess. "Well--we must all be born somewhere." "I wish I had never been born--there or anywhere else!" "Pooh! Well, if you didn't wish to come to Trantridge why did you come?" She did not reply. "You didn't come for love of me, that I'll swear." "'Tis quite true. If I had gone for love o' you, if I had ever sincerely loved you, if I loved you still, I should not so loathe and hate myself for my weakness as I do now! ... My eyes were dazed by you for a little, and that was all." He shrugged his shoulders. She resumed-- "I didn't understand your meaning till it was too late." "That's what every woman says." "How can you dare to use such words!" she cried, turning impetuously upon him, her eyes flashing as the latent spirit (of which he was to see more some day) awoke in her. "My God! I could knock you out of the gig! Did it never strike your mind that what every woman says some women may feel?" "Very well," he said, laughing; "I am sorry to wound you. I did wrong--I admit it." He dropped into some little bitterness as he continued: "Only you needn't be so everlastingly flinging it in my face. I am ready to pay to the uttermost farthing. You know you need not work in the fields or the dairies again. You know you may clothe yourself with the best, instead of in the bald plain way you have lately affected, as if you couldn't get a ribbon more than you earn." Her lip lifted slightly, though there was little scorn, as a rule, in her large and impulsive nature. "I have said I will not take anything more from you, and I will not--I cannot! I SHOULD be your creature to go on doing that, and I won't!" "One would think you were a princess from your manner, in addition to a true and original d'Urberville--ha! ha! Well, Tess, dear, I can say no more. I suppose I am a bad fellow--a damn bad fellow. I was born bad, and I have lived bad, and I shall die bad in all probability. But, upon my lost soul, I won't be bad towards you again, Tess. And if certain circumstances should arise--you understand--in which you are in the least need, the least difficulty, send me one line, and you shall have by return whatever you require. I may not be at Trantridge--I am going to London for a time--I can't stand the old woman. But all letters will be forwarded." She said that she did not wish him to drive her further, and they stopped just under the clump of trees. D'Urberville alighted, and lifted her down bodily in his arms, afterwards placing her articles on the ground beside her. She bowed to him slightly, her eye just lingering in his; and then she turned to take the parcels for departure. Alec d'Urberville removed his cigar, bent towards her, and said-- "You are not going to turn away like that, dear! Come!" "If you wish," she answered indifferently. "See how you've mastered me!" She thereupon turned round and lifted her face to his, and remained like a marble term while he imprinted a kiss upon her cheek--half perfunctorily, half as if zest had not yet quite died out. Her eyes vaguely rested upon the remotest trees in the lane while the kiss was given, as though she were nearly unconscious of what he did. "Now the other side, for old acquaintance' sake." She turned her head in the same passive way, as one might turn at the request of a sketcher or hairdresser, and he kissed the other side, his lips touching cheeks that were damp and smoothly chill as the skin of the mushrooms in the fields around. "You don't give me your mouth and kiss me back. You never willingly do that--you'll never love me, I fear." "I have said so, often. It is true. I have never really and truly loved you, and I think I never can." She added mournfully, "Perhaps, of all things, a lie on this thing would do the most good to me now; but I have honour enough left, little as 'tis, not to tell that lie. If I did love you, I may have the best o' causes for letting you know it. But I don't." He emitted a laboured breath, as if the scene were getting rather oppressive to his heart, or to his conscience, or to his gentility. "Well, you are absurdly melancholy, Tess. I have no reason for flattering you now, and I can say plainly that you need not be so sad. You can hold your own for beauty against any woman of these parts, gentle or simple; I say it to you as a practical man and well-wisher. If you are wise you will show it to the world more than you do before it fades... And yet, Tess, will you come back to me! Upon my soul, I don't like to let you go like this!" "Never, never! I made up my mind as soon as I saw--what I ought to have seen sooner; and I won't come." "Then good morning, my four months' cousin--good-bye!" He leapt up lightly, arranged the reins, and was gone between the tall red-berried hedges. Tess did not look after him, but slowly wound along the crooked lane. It was still early, and though the sun's lower limb was just free of the hill, his rays, ungenial and peering, addressed the eye rather than the touch as yet. There was not a human soul near. Sad October and her sadder self seemed the only two existences haunting that lane. As she walked, however, some footsteps approached behind her, the footsteps of a man; and owing to the briskness of his advance he was close at her heels and had said "Good morning" before she had been long aware of his propinquity. He appeared to be an artisan of some sort, and carried a tin pot of red paint in his hand. He asked in a business-like manner if he should take her basket, which she permitted him to do, walking beside him. "It is early to be astir this Sabbath morn!" he said cheerfully. "Yes," said Tess. "When most people are at rest from their week's work." She also assented to this. "Though I do more real work to-day than all the week besides." "Do you?" "All the week I work for the glory of man, and on Sunday for the glory of God. That's more real than the other--hey? I have a little to do here at this stile." The man turned, as he spoke, to an opening at the roadside leading into a pasture. "If you'll wait a moment," he added, "I shall not be long." As he had her basket she could not well do otherwise; and she waited, observing him. He set down her basket and the tin pot, and stirring the paint with the brush that was in it began painting large square letters on the middle board of the three composing the stile, placing a comma after each word, as if to give pause while that word was driven well home to the reader's heart-- THY, DAMNATION, SLUMBERETH, NOT. 2 Pet. ii. 3. Against the peaceful landscape, the pale, decaying tints of the copses, the blue air of the horizon, and the lichened stile-boards, these staring vermilion words shone forth. They seemed to shout themselves out and make the atmosphere ring. Some people might have cried "Alas, poor Theology!" at the hideous defacement--the last grotesque phase of a creed which had served mankind well in its time. But the words entered Tess with accusatory horror. It was as if this man had known her recent history; yet he was a total stranger. Having finished his text he picked up her basket, and she mechanically resumed her walk beside him. "Do you believe what you paint?" she asked in low tones. "Believe that tex? Do I believe in my own existence!" "But," said she tremulously, "suppose your sin was not of your own seeking?" He shook his head. "I cannot split hairs on that burning query," he said. "I have walked hundreds of miles this past summer, painting these texes on every wall, gate, and stile the length and breadth of this district. I leave their application to the hearts of the people who read 'em." "I think they are horrible," said Tess. "Crushing! Killing!" "That's what they are meant to be!" he replied in a trade voice. "But you should read my hottest ones--them I kips for slums and seaports. They'd make ye wriggle! Not but what this is a very good tex for rural districts. ... Ah--there's a nice bit of blank wall up by that barn standing to waste. I must put one there--one that it will be good for dangerous young females like yerself to heed. Will ye wait, missy?" "No," said she; and taking her basket Tess trudged on. A little way forward she turned her head. The old gray wall began to advertise a similar fiery lettering to the first, with a strange and unwonted mien, as if distressed at duties it had never before been called upon to perform. It was with a sudden flush that she read and realized what was to be the inscription he was now halfway through-- THOU, SHALT, NOT, COMMIT-- Her cheerful friend saw her looking, stopped his brush, and shouted-- "If you want to ask for edification on these things of moment, there's a very earnest good man going to preach a charity-sermon to-day in the parish you are going to--Mr Clare of Emminster. I'm not of his persuasion now, but he's a good man, and he'll expound as well as any parson I know. 'Twas he began the work in me." But Tess did not answer; she throbbingly resumed her walk, her eyes fixed on the ground. "Pooh--I don't believe God said such things!" she murmured contemptuously when her flush had died away. A plume of smoke soared up suddenly from her father's chimney, the sight of which made her heart ache. The aspect of the interior, when she reached it, made her heart ache more. Her mother, who had just come down stairs, turned to greet her from the fireplace, where she was kindling barked-oak twigs under the breakfast kettle. The young children were still above, as was also her father, it being Sunday morning, when he felt justified in lying an additional half-hour. "Well!--my dear Tess!" exclaimed her surprised mother, jumping up and kissing the girl. "How be ye? I didn't see you till you was in upon me! Have you come home to be married?" "No, I have not come for that, mother." "Then for a holiday?" "Yes--for a holiday; for a long holiday," said Tess. "What, isn't your cousin going to do the handsome thing?" "He's not my cousin, and he's not going to marry me." Her mother eyed her narrowly. "Come, you have not told me all," she said. Then Tess went up to her mother, put her face upon Joan's neck, and told. "And yet th'st not got him to marry 'ee!" reiterated her mother. "Any woman would have done it but you, after that!" "Perhaps any woman would except me." "It would have been something like a story to come back with, if you had!" continued Mrs Durbeyfield, ready to burst into tears of vexation. "After all the talk about you and him which has reached us here, who would have expected it to end like this! Why didn't ye think of doing some good for your family instead o' thinking only of yourself? See how I've got to teave and slave, and your poor weak father with his heart clogged like a dripping-pan. I did hope for something to come out o' this! To see what a pretty pair you and he made that day when you drove away together four months ago! See what he has given us--all, as we thought, because we were his kin. But if he's not, it must have been done because of his love for 'ee. And yet you've not got him to marry!" Get Alec d'Urberville in the mind to marry her! He marry HER! On matrimony he had never once said a word. And what if he had? How a convulsive snatching at social salvation might have impelled her to answer him she could not say. But her poor foolish mother little knew her present feeling towards this man. Perhaps it was unusual in the circumstances, unlucky, unaccountable; but there it was; and this, as she had said, was what made her detest herself. She had never wholly cared for him; she did not at all care for him now. She had dreaded him, winced before him, succumbed to adroit advantages he took of her helplessness; then, temporarily blinded by his ardent manners, had been stirred to confused surrender awhile: had suddenly despised and disliked him, and had run away. That was all. Hate him she did not quite; but he was dust and ashes to her, and even for her name's sake she scarcely wished to marry him. "You ought to have been more careful if you didn't mean to get him to make you his wife!" "O mother, my mother!" cried the agonized girl, turning passionately upon her parent as if her poor heart would break. "How could I be expected to know? I was a child when I left this house four months ago. Why didn't you tell me there was danger in men-folk? Why didn't you warn me? Ladies know what to fend hands against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks; but I never had the chance o' learning in that way, and you did not help me!" Her mother was subdued. "I thought if I spoke of his fond feelings and what they might lead to, you would be hontish wi' him and lose your chance," she murmured, wiping her eyes with her apron. "Well, we must make the best of it, I suppose. 'Tis nater, after all, and what do please God!"

CHAPTER 12

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820050202/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmTessD22.asp

Tess remains with Alec at Trantridge for a few weeks and then packs her things and leaves for her home at Marlott. Alec follows her and questions her about her sudden decision of leaving. She refuses to go back and to take his material help, and he sees no point in coaxing her. Although her contempt for Alec remains, Tess no longer fears him and accepts a ride with him for a few miles. When they part, Alex tells Tess to call him if she ever needs him. At home, Tess's parents, though sad at her misfortune, take her into their fold. Joan, however, is terribly disappointed that Tess has lost a golden opportunity of marrying into the rich D'Urberville family. Tess is unsuccessful in explaining to her mother that marriage was never on Alec's mind. Tess also accuses her mother of hiding the dangers of life from her, making her ill prepared to cope with the likes of Alec.

Notes Although this chapter does not describe the last few weeks of Tess's life, it is assumed that she has been with Alec, tolerating his passionate advances. She soon has enough and leaves for home, filled with shame and remorse for her behavior. She knows she does not love Alec, and he has made no offer of marriage. When Alec realizes she has left, however, he does catch up to her and asks her to return. When she refuses, he offers material help, which she also refuses. Although she is a changed woman in many ways at this point in the novel, she is still proud and in control. Alec is impressed with her lofty thinking, and Hardy foreshadows that Alec will again be attracted to it in the future. On her way home, Tess by chance, meets a sign painter, who reappears several times in the novel. He is a symbol of morality, and his signs are warnings to sinners. He has just finished painting a sign that says, "THY DAMNATION, SLUMBERETH NOT". When Tess sees these words, standing out in vermilion paint against the pale background of the landscape, she feels even guiltier about what has happened to her. Her consolation that her sin was not of her own seeking serves as a weak defense against the accusation on the sign. At home, the honest Tess explains all of the events at Trantridge to her mother. Joan's reaction to Tess's calamity is surprising. In a truly rustic way of thinking, her mother considers what has happened to be Tess's destiny and believes that there was God's will in it. She is also disappointed that Tess has missed out on the opportunity to marry a wealthy man. It is important to notice that the Tess who arrives home in Marlott is very different from the Tess who left there four months earlier. Because of her stay in Trantridge, she is no longer a pure and simple country girl. She knows much more about life; as a result, her views have totally changed. Although she blames herself for what has happened with Alec, she also blames her mother, accusing her of withholding information about the dangers of life from her daughter. Hardy, however, still makes it clear that Tess was really an innocent who was misled by a sinister force; he also makes it clear that Tess's current troubles are caused by the shame and guilt she feels

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/25.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_4_part_1.txt

Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter xxv

chapter xxv

{"name": "Chapter XXV", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase4-chapter25-34", "summary": "Angel visits his family at the parsonage in Emminster to think and to tell his parents about his plans to marry Tess. He finds them at breakfast with his brothers Felix, a village curate, and Cuthbert, a Cambridge dean. They notice that Angel has taken on the crude mannerisms of the farm, and he realizes that they have become frozen intellectually. Angel's mother gives away the meat puddings Mrs. Crick prepared as a gift and puts the mead in the medicine cabinet because it is too strong to drink", "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.

Chapter XXV

https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase4-chapter25-34

Angel visits his family at the parsonage in Emminster to think and to tell his parents about his plans to marry Tess. He finds them at breakfast with his brothers Felix, a village curate, and Cuthbert, a Cambridge dean. They notice that Angel has taken on the crude mannerisms of the farm, and he realizes that they have become frozen intellectually. Angel's mother gives away the meat puddings Mrs. Crick prepared as a gift and puts the mead in the medicine cabinet because it is too strong to drink

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/03.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Sense and Sensibility/section_2_part_0.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 3

chapter 3

{"name": "Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapter-3", "summary": "The Dashwoods remained at Norland Park for several months. In that time, Mrs. Dashwood got to know Fanny better, and her former impression, reasonably negative, was confirmed. She was anxious to establish her own household, and having been informed of John's deathbed promise, was quite cheerful in her search for a house. Only Elinor's good sense prevented her mother from taking one which was too large for their means. Mrs. Dashwood became reconciled to a longer stay at Norland Park after it became evident that Edward Ferrars, Fanny's brother, was very attracted to Elinor. She returned his affection, finding him a \"gentlemanlike and pleasing young man.\" Recommending him to her mother, Elinor noted that part of his worth was that he was so different from his sister. The eldest son of a man who died very rich, Edward was dependent upon the favor of his mother. She and Fanny \"wanted him to make a fine figure in the world.\" But \"all his wishes centre in domestic comfort and the quiet of private life.\" Marianne could not understand how Elinor could be attracted to Edward, who was not handsome or outstanding. \"Edward is very amiable,\" she said, \"But . . . there is a 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.\" The man she herself would marry \"must have all Edward's virtues, and his person and manners must ornament his goodness with every possible charm.\" Their tastes must perfectly coincide if any hope of domestic bliss was to be expected.", "analysis": "In this chapter, the difference between Elinor's \"sense\" and the exaggerated \"sensibility\" of her mother and Marianne is pointed up with Jane Austen's characteristic humor. Note the caution with which Elinor merely tells her mother, \"I think you will like him, when you know more of him.\" And compare it with Mrs. Dashwood's gushing reply: \"Like him! I can feel no sentiment of approbation inferior to love.\" Mrs. Dashwood's devotion to her daughter is noted in the effort she makes, ultimately successful, to love and respect Edward. Marianne's excessive sensibility is shown in the formidable list of what she requires in a suitor: \"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.\" Austen's youthful writings were often parodies of the sentimental novels in vogue in her day. In her presentation of Marianne, she seems to be parodying the romantic heroine of such novels, although later in the novel she treats Marianne's character more seriously. Marianne's preference for the writings of Cowper reflect the author's own tastes; Crabbe, Cowper, and Scott were Austen's favorite poets. Note the contrast, which will be developed later, between the two widows, Mrs. Ferrars and Mrs. Dashwood. The latter thinks only of her daughters and their happiness, while the former seems to care nothing for her son's desires and thinks mainly of his appearance in the world."}

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!"

Chapter 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101060302/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/sense-and-sensibility/summary-and-analysis/chapter-3

The Dashwoods remained at Norland Park for several months. In that time, Mrs. Dashwood got to know Fanny better, and her former impression, reasonably negative, was confirmed. She was anxious to establish her own household, and having been informed of John's deathbed promise, was quite cheerful in her search for a house. Only Elinor's good sense prevented her mother from taking one which was too large for their means. Mrs. Dashwood became reconciled to a longer stay at Norland Park after it became evident that Edward Ferrars, Fanny's brother, was very attracted to Elinor. She returned his affection, finding him a "gentlemanlike and pleasing young man." Recommending him to her mother, Elinor noted that part of his worth was that he was so different from his sister. The eldest son of a man who died very rich, Edward was dependent upon the favor of his mother. She and Fanny "wanted him to make a fine figure in the world." But "all his wishes centre in domestic comfort and the quiet of private life." Marianne could not understand how Elinor could be attracted to Edward, who was not handsome or outstanding. "Edward is very amiable," she said, "But . . . there is a 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." The man she herself would marry "must have all Edward's virtues, and his person and manners must ornament his goodness with every possible charm." Their tastes must perfectly coincide if any hope of domestic bliss was to be expected.

In this chapter, the difference between Elinor's "sense" and the exaggerated "sensibility" of her mother and Marianne is pointed up with Jane Austen's characteristic humor. Note the caution with which Elinor merely tells her mother, "I think you will like him, when you know more of him." And compare it with Mrs. Dashwood's gushing reply: "Like him! I can feel no sentiment of approbation inferior to love." Mrs. Dashwood's devotion to her daughter is noted in the effort she makes, ultimately successful, to love and respect Edward. Marianne's excessive sensibility is shown in the formidable list of what she requires in a suitor: "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." Austen's youthful writings were often parodies of the sentimental novels in vogue in her day. In her presentation of Marianne, she seems to be parodying the romantic heroine of such novels, although later in the novel she treats Marianne's character more seriously. Marianne's preference for the writings of Cowper reflect the author's own tastes; Crabbe, Cowper, and Scott were Austen's favorite poets. Note the contrast, which will be developed later, between the two widows, Mrs. Ferrars and Mrs. Dashwood. The latter thinks only of her daughters and their happiness, while the former seems to care nothing for her son's desires and thinks mainly of his appearance in the world.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/33.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_32_part_0.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 5.chapter 2

book 5, chapter 2

{"name": "Book 5, Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-5-chapter-2", "summary": "Alyosha decides he'll try to catch Dmitri at the gazebo by his father's house again, so he plants himself there in the hope that Dmitri will show up eventually. He's surprised to hear the sound of guitar playing and a man's voice singing. A woman replies, and Alyosha realizes it's Smerdyakov playing the guitar to one of the neighbor girls, Maria Kondatrievna. All of a sudden, Alyosha sneezes. He can't eavesdrop on the two any longer, so he goes up to them and inquires after Dmitri. Smerdyakov tells Alyosha that he isn't Dmitri's \"keeper,\" that Dmitri is constantly threatening him. Maria adds that the other day she heard Dmitri telling Smerdyakov that he would grind his head in a mortar. Smerdyakov tells Alyosha that Dmitri was invited to meet up with Ivan at a local tavern, so Alyosha takes leave of them and heads to the tavern. When Alyosha arrives at the tavern, Ivan invites him up to his private room, where he's dining alone.", "analysis": ""}

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.

Book 5, Chapter 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-5-chapter-2

Alyosha decides he'll try to catch Dmitri at the gazebo by his father's house again, so he plants himself there in the hope that Dmitri will show up eventually. He's surprised to hear the sound of guitar playing and a man's voice singing. A woman replies, and Alyosha realizes it's Smerdyakov playing the guitar to one of the neighbor girls, Maria Kondatrievna. All of a sudden, Alyosha sneezes. He can't eavesdrop on the two any longer, so he goes up to them and inquires after Dmitri. Smerdyakov tells Alyosha that he isn't Dmitri's "keeper," that Dmitri is constantly threatening him. Maria adds that the other day she heard Dmitri telling Smerdyakov that he would grind his head in a mortar. Smerdyakov tells Alyosha that Dmitri was invited to meet up with Ivan at a local tavern, so Alyosha takes leave of them and heads to the tavern. When Alyosha arrives at the tavern, Ivan invites him up to his private room, where he's dining alone.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/151-chapters/7.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Rime of the Ancient Mariner/section_6_part_0.txt

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.part 7

part 7

{"name": "Part 7", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422155712/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner/study-guide/summary-part-7", "summary": "The Ancient Mariner was cheered by the Hermit's singing. He admired the way the Hermit lived and prayed alone in the woods, but also \"love to talk with mariners.\" As they neared the ship, the Pilot and the Hermit wondered where the angels - which they had thought were merely beacon lights - had gone. The Hermit remarked on how strange the ship looked with its misshapen boards and flimsy sails. The Pilot was afraid, but the Hermit encouraged him to steer the boat closer. Just as the boat reached the ship, a terrible noise came from under the water, and the ship sank straightaway. The men saved the Ancient Mariner even though they thought he was dead; after all, he appeared \"like one that hath been seven days drowned.\" The boat spun in the whirlpool created by the ship's sinking, and all was quiet save the loud sound echoing off of a hill. The Ancient Mariner moved his lips and began to row the boat, terrifying the other men; the Pilot had a conniption, the Hermit began to pray, and the Pilot's Boy laughed crazily, thinking the Ancient Mariner was the devil. When they reached the shore, the Ancient Mariner begged the Hermit to absolve him of his sins. The Hermit crossed himself and asked the Ancient Mariner what sort of man he was. The Ancient Mariner was instantly compelled to share his story with the Hermit. His need to share it was so strong that it wracked his body with pain. Once he shared it, however, he felt restored. The Ancient Mariner tells the Wedding Guest that ever since then, the urge to tell his tale has returned at unpredictable times, and he is in agony until he tells it to someone. He wanders from place to place, and has the strange power to single out the person in each location who must hear his tale. As he puts it: \"I have strange power of speech; / That moment that his face I see, / I know the man that must hear me: / To him my tale I teach.\" The Ancient Mariner explains that while the wedding celebration sounds uproariously entertaining, he prefers to spend his time with others in prayer. After all, he was so lonely on the ocean that he doubted even God's companionship. He bids the Wedding Guest farewell with one final piece of advice: \"He prayeth well, who loveth well / Both man and bird and beast.\" In other words, one becomes closer to God by respecting all living things, because God loves all of his creations \"both great and small.\" Then the Ancient Mariner vanishes. Instead of entering the wedding reception, the Wedding Guest walks away mesmerized. We are told that he learned something from the Ancient Mariner's tale, and was also saddened by it: \"A sadder and a wiser man, / He rose the morrow morn.\"", "analysis": "As expected, things again go awry for the Ancient Mariner despite his momentary relief. Though safely in the harbor, the ship is pulled under by a forceful undertow, but the Ancient Mariner cannot drown since he is doomed to a living death. Just as he is compelled to tell the Wedding Guest his story, he is compelled to tell it to the Hermit. The Hermit does not ask him where he came from or how he got to the harbor, but rather asks, \"What manner of man art thou?\" as if to discern whether or not he is human. After all, the Ancient Mariner appears dead when the rescuers pull him into the boat, and suddenly comes to life to row the boat to shore. Instead of answering the Hermit's question directly, the Ancient Mariner is forced for the first time to tell his tale, or be consumed by agony. As he tells the Wedding Guest, he does not seek out certain people to whom to relate his tale, but rather knows them when he sees them. Since both the Hermit and the Wedding Guest are forced to listen to the tale, it is implied that there must be some similarity between the two men even though they appear to come from entirely opposite worlds. The Hermit, a type of character often valorized by the Romantics, is pious and keeps to himself except to converse with transient sailors. He has divorced himself from worldly pleasures, preferring to live in harmony with nature. Meanwhile the Wedding Guest yearns to join his friends in a social and merry setting, full of decadent pleasures such as fine food, wine, song, and dance. The Ancient Mariner's final message is that by respecting all creatures, one can become closer to God. This advice is certainly not new to the Hermit, who devotes his whole life to living in unity with nature and praying three times a day. If the Wedding Guest must be reminded of this because he is on his way to indulge in earthly pleasures separated from nature, why doesn't the Ancient Mariner stop either of the Wedding Guest's two companions? As in the rest of the poem, we cannot know more than the Ancient Mariner himself; by maintaining this device, Coleridge reminds us that we are subject to the same moral laws and consequences as his characters. He also maintains a position of authorial power, as though to remind us that while we inhabit his story, we are in his hands. Just as the Ancient Mariner can compel men to listen to his tale, Coleridge can compel us to read \"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner\" from first line to last, and communicate his message to us so that we become \"sadder and...wiser.\" Coleridge famously claimed that he did not intend for \"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner\" to have a moral, although he seems to phrase one neatly in the lines: \"He prayeth best, who loveth best / All things both great and small; / For the dear God who loveth us, / He made and loveth all.\" Put differently, one becomes closer to God by respecting all his creations. Coleridge uses the word \"teach\" to describe the Ancient Mariner's storytelling technique, and says that he has \"strange power of speech.\" In this way, he compares the protagonist to himself; both are gifted storytellers who impart their wisdom unto others. By associating himself with the Ancient Mariner, Coleridge implies that he - and by extension all writers - are tormented by their gift for storytelling; it is in fact a curse. Just as the Ancient Mariner is forced to balance in a painful limbo, the writer is compelled to balance in the liminal space of the imagination \"until tale is told.\" Both are like addicts, and storytelling is their drug; it provides only momentary relief until the urge returns. Coleridge paints an equally powerful and pathetic image of the writer. He is able to hold an audience's attention so completely that he can force a man to miss his next of kin's wedding reception. He is capable of forever changing his listeners, but is also the constant victim of his own talent - a skill that torments, but never destroys."}

PART THE SEVENTH. This Hermit good lives in that wood Which slopes down to the sea. How loudly his sweet voice he rears! He loves to talk with marineres That come from a far countree. He kneels at morn and noon and eve-- He hath a cushion plump: It is the moss that wholly hides The rotted old oak-stump. The skiff-boat neared: I heard them talk, "Why this is strange, I trow! Where are those lights so many and fair, That signal made but now?" "Strange, by my faith!" the Hermit said-- "And they answered not our cheer! The planks looked warped! and see those sails, How thin they are and sere! I never saw aught like to them, Unless perchance it were "Brown skeletons of leaves that lag My forest-brook along; When the ivy-tod is heavy with snow, And the owlet whoops to the wolf below, That eats the she-wolf's young." "Dear Lord! it hath a fiendish look-- (The Pilot made reply) I am a-feared"--"Push on, push on!" Said the Hermit cheerily. The boat came closer to the ship, But I nor spake nor stirred; The boat came close beneath the ship, And straight a sound was heard. Under the water it rumbled on, Still louder and more dread: It reached the ship, it split the bay; The ship went down like lead. Stunned by that loud and dreadful sound, Which sky and ocean smote, Like one that hath been seven days drowned My body lay afloat; But swift as dreams, myself I found Within the Pilot's boat. Upon the whirl, where sank the ship, The boat spun round and round; And all was still, save that the hill Was telling of the sound. I moved my lips--the Pilot shrieked And fell down in a fit; The holy Hermit raised his eyes, And prayed where he did sit. I took the oars: the Pilot's boy, Who now doth crazy go, Laughed loud and long, and all the while His eyes went to and fro. "Ha! ha!" quoth he, "full plain I see, The Devil knows how to row." And now, all in my own countree, I stood on the firm land! The Hermit stepped forth from the boat, And scarcely he could stand. "O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man!" The Hermit crossed his brow. "Say quick," quoth he, "I bid thee say-- What manner of man art thou?" Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched With a woeful agony, Which forced me to begin my tale; And then it left me free. Since then, at an uncertain hour, That agony returns; And till my ghastly tale is told, This heart within me burns. I pass, like night, from land to land; I have strange power of speech; That moment that his face I see, I know the man that must hear me: To him my tale I teach. What loud uproar bursts from that door! The wedding-guests are there: But in the garden-bower the bride And bride-maids singing are: And hark the little vesper bell, Which biddeth me to prayer! O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been Alone on a wide wide sea: So lonely 'twas, that God himself Scarce seemed there to be. O sweeter than the marriage-feast, 'Tis sweeter far to me, To walk together to the kirk With a goodly company!-- To walk together to the kirk, And all together pray, While each to his great Father bends, Old men, and babes, and loving friends, And youths and maidens gay! Farewell, farewell! but this I tell To thee, thou Wedding-Guest! He prayeth well, who loveth well Both man and bird and beast. He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us He made and loveth all. The Mariner, whose eye is bright, Whose beard with age is hoar, Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest Turned from the bridegroom's door. He went like one that hath been stunned, And is of sense forlorn: A sadder and a wiser man, He rose the morrow morn.

Part 7

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422155712/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner/study-guide/summary-part-7

The Ancient Mariner was cheered by the Hermit's singing. He admired the way the Hermit lived and prayed alone in the woods, but also "love to talk with mariners." As they neared the ship, the Pilot and the Hermit wondered where the angels - which they had thought were merely beacon lights - had gone. The Hermit remarked on how strange the ship looked with its misshapen boards and flimsy sails. The Pilot was afraid, but the Hermit encouraged him to steer the boat closer. Just as the boat reached the ship, a terrible noise came from under the water, and the ship sank straightaway. The men saved the Ancient Mariner even though they thought he was dead; after all, he appeared "like one that hath been seven days drowned." The boat spun in the whirlpool created by the ship's sinking, and all was quiet save the loud sound echoing off of a hill. The Ancient Mariner moved his lips and began to row the boat, terrifying the other men; the Pilot had a conniption, the Hermit began to pray, and the Pilot's Boy laughed crazily, thinking the Ancient Mariner was the devil. When they reached the shore, the Ancient Mariner begged the Hermit to absolve him of his sins. The Hermit crossed himself and asked the Ancient Mariner what sort of man he was. The Ancient Mariner was instantly compelled to share his story with the Hermit. His need to share it was so strong that it wracked his body with pain. Once he shared it, however, he felt restored. The Ancient Mariner tells the Wedding Guest that ever since then, the urge to tell his tale has returned at unpredictable times, and he is in agony until he tells it to someone. He wanders from place to place, and has the strange power to single out the person in each location who must hear his tale. As he puts it: "I have strange power of speech; / That moment that his face I see, / I know the man that must hear me: / To him my tale I teach." The Ancient Mariner explains that while the wedding celebration sounds uproariously entertaining, he prefers to spend his time with others in prayer. After all, he was so lonely on the ocean that he doubted even God's companionship. He bids the Wedding Guest farewell with one final piece of advice: "He prayeth well, who loveth well / Both man and bird and beast." In other words, one becomes closer to God by respecting all living things, because God loves all of his creations "both great and small." Then the Ancient Mariner vanishes. Instead of entering the wedding reception, the Wedding Guest walks away mesmerized. We are told that he learned something from the Ancient Mariner's tale, and was also saddened by it: "A sadder and a wiser man, / He rose the morrow morn."

As expected, things again go awry for the Ancient Mariner despite his momentary relief. Though safely in the harbor, the ship is pulled under by a forceful undertow, but the Ancient Mariner cannot drown since he is doomed to a living death. Just as he is compelled to tell the Wedding Guest his story, he is compelled to tell it to the Hermit. The Hermit does not ask him where he came from or how he got to the harbor, but rather asks, "What manner of man art thou?" as if to discern whether or not he is human. After all, the Ancient Mariner appears dead when the rescuers pull him into the boat, and suddenly comes to life to row the boat to shore. Instead of answering the Hermit's question directly, the Ancient Mariner is forced for the first time to tell his tale, or be consumed by agony. As he tells the Wedding Guest, he does not seek out certain people to whom to relate his tale, but rather knows them when he sees them. Since both the Hermit and the Wedding Guest are forced to listen to the tale, it is implied that there must be some similarity between the two men even though they appear to come from entirely opposite worlds. The Hermit, a type of character often valorized by the Romantics, is pious and keeps to himself except to converse with transient sailors. He has divorced himself from worldly pleasures, preferring to live in harmony with nature. Meanwhile the Wedding Guest yearns to join his friends in a social and merry setting, full of decadent pleasures such as fine food, wine, song, and dance. The Ancient Mariner's final message is that by respecting all creatures, one can become closer to God. This advice is certainly not new to the Hermit, who devotes his whole life to living in unity with nature and praying three times a day. If the Wedding Guest must be reminded of this because he is on his way to indulge in earthly pleasures separated from nature, why doesn't the Ancient Mariner stop either of the Wedding Guest's two companions? As in the rest of the poem, we cannot know more than the Ancient Mariner himself; by maintaining this device, Coleridge reminds us that we are subject to the same moral laws and consequences as his characters. He also maintains a position of authorial power, as though to remind us that while we inhabit his story, we are in his hands. Just as the Ancient Mariner can compel men to listen to his tale, Coleridge can compel us to read "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" from first line to last, and communicate his message to us so that we become "sadder and...wiser." Coleridge famously claimed that he did not intend for "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" to have a moral, although he seems to phrase one neatly in the lines: "He prayeth best, who loveth best / All things both great and small; / For the dear God who loveth us, / He made and loveth all." Put differently, one becomes closer to God by respecting all his creations. Coleridge uses the word "teach" to describe the Ancient Mariner's storytelling technique, and says that he has "strange power of speech." In this way, he compares the protagonist to himself; both are gifted storytellers who impart their wisdom unto others. By associating himself with the Ancient Mariner, Coleridge implies that he - and by extension all writers - are tormented by their gift for storytelling; it is in fact a curse. Just as the Ancient Mariner is forced to balance in a painful limbo, the writer is compelled to balance in the liminal space of the imagination "until tale is told." Both are like addicts, and storytelling is their drug; it provides only momentary relief until the urge returns. Coleridge paints an equally powerful and pathetic image of the writer. He is able to hold an audience's attention so completely that he can force a man to miss his next of kin's wedding reception. He is capable of forever changing his listeners, but is also the constant victim of his own talent - a skill that torments, but never destroys.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/174-chapters/01.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Picture of Dorian Gray/section_0_part_1.txt

The Picture of Dorian Gray.chapter 1

chapter 1

{"name": "Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210228142327/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/doriangray/section1/", "summary": "The novel begins in the elegantly appointed London home of Basil Hallward, a well-known artist. Basil discusses his latest portrait with his friend, the clever and scandalously amoral Lord Henry Wotton. Lord Henry admires the painting, the subject of which is a gorgeous, golden-haired young man. Believing it to be Basil's finest work, he insists that the painter exhibit it. Basil, however, refuses, claiming that he cannot show the work in public because he has put too much of himself into it. When Lord Henry presses him for a more satisfying reason, Basil reluctantly describes how he met his young subject, whose name is Dorian Gray, at a party. He admits that, upon seeing Dorian for the first time, he was terrified; indeed, he was overcome by the feeling that his life was \"on the verge of a terrible crisis. Dorian has become, however, an object of fascination and obsession for Basil, who sees the young man every day and declares him to be his sole inspiration. Basil admits that he cannot bring himself to exhibit the portrait because the piece betrays the \"curious artistic idolatry\" that Dorian inspires in him. Lord Henry, astonished by this declaration, remembers where he heard the name Dorian Gray before: his aunt, Lady Agatha, mentioned that the young man promised to help her with charity work in the slums of London. At that moment, the butler announces that Dorian Gray has arrived, and Lord Henry insists on meeting him. Basil reluctantly agrees but begs his friend not to try to influence the young man. According to Basil, Dorian has a \"simple and a beautiful nature\" that could easily be spoiled by Lord Henry's cynicism", "analysis": "The Preface-Chapter Two The Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray is a collection of epigrams that aptly sums up the philosophical tenets of the artistic and philosophical movement known as aestheticism. Aestheticism, which found its footing in Europe in the early nineteenth century, proposed that art need not serve moral, political, or otherwise didactic ends. Whereas the romantic movement of the early and mid-nineteenth century viewed art as a product of the human creative impulse that could be used to learn more about humankind and the world, the aesthetic movement denied that art must necessarily be an instructive force in order to be valuable. Instead, the aestheticists believed, art should be valuable in and of itself--art for art's sake. Near the end of the nineteenth century, Walter Pater, an English essayist and critic, suggested that life itself should be lived in the spirit of art. His views, especially those presented in a collection of essays called The Renaissance, had a profound impact on the English poets of the 1890s, most notably Oscar Wilde. Aestheticism flourished partly as a reaction against the materialism of the burgeoning middle class, assumed to be composed of philistines who responded to art in a generally unrefined manner. In this climate, the artist could assert him- or herself as a remarkable and rarefied being, one leading the search for beauty in an age marked by shameful class inequality, social hypocrisy, and bourgeois complacency. No one latched onto this attitude more boldly, or with more flair, than Oscar Wilde. His determination to live a life of beauty and to mold his life into a work of art is reflected in the beliefs and actions of several characters in Wilde's only novel. The Picture of Dorian Gray has often been compared to the famous German legend of Faust, immortalized in Christopher Marlowe's sixteenth-century play Doctor Faustus and in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's nineteenth-century poem Faust. The legend tells of a learned doctor who sells his soul to the devil in return for knowledge and magical abilities. Although Dorian Gray never contracts with the devil, his sacrifice is similar: he trades his soul for the luxury of eternal youth. For its overtones of supernaturalism, its refusal to satisfy popular morality, and its portrayal of homoerotic culture, The Picture of Dorian Gray was met with harsh criticism. Many considered the novel dangerously subversive, one offended critic calling it \"a poisonous book, the atmosphere of which is heavy with the mephitic odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction.\" The fear of a bad--or good--influence is, in fact, one of the novel's primary concerns. As a work that sets forth a philosophy of aestheticism, the novel questions the degree and kind of influence a work of art can have over an individual. Furthermore, since the novel conceives of art as including a well-lived life, it is also interested in the kind of influence one person can have over another. After all, the artful Lord Henry himself has as profound an effect upon Dorian's life as Basil's painting does. While Lord Henry exercises influence over other characters primarily through his skillful use of language, it is Dorian's beauty that seduces the characters with whom he associates. Basil, a serious artist and rather dull moralist, admits that Dorian has had \"ome subtle influence\" over him; it is this influence that Basil is certain that his painting reveals. As he confides to Lord Henry, \"I have put into it some expression of all this curious artistic idolatry.\" Ultimately, however, Lord Henry's brilliant speech is a much more influential force than aesthetic beauty. His witty and biting epigrams threaten to seduce not only the impressionable young Dorian but the reader as well. Lord Henry's ironic speech cuts through social convention and hypocrisy to reveal unexpected, unpleasant truths. The characters whose lifestyles Lord Henry criticizes resist his extreme theories. Basil's resistance to Lord Henry's argument that scandal is a function of class typifies the reactions of the characters whom Lord Henry criticizes; after all, their position and comfort depend upon the hypocrisies he tends to expose. To some degree, every character in the novel is seduced by Lord Henry's philosophies, Dorian Gray more so than anyone else. In these opening chapters, Dorian emerges as an incredibly impressionable young man, someone who Basil fears is open to the \"influence\" of Lord Henry, which will \"spoil\" him. Basil's fear is well founded, as before the end of his first conversation with Lord Henry, Dorian is \"dimly conscious that entirely fresh influences were at work within him.\""}

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.

Chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20210228142327/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/doriangray/section1/

The novel begins in the elegantly appointed London home of Basil Hallward, a well-known artist. Basil discusses his latest portrait with his friend, the clever and scandalously amoral Lord Henry Wotton. Lord Henry admires the painting, the subject of which is a gorgeous, golden-haired young man. Believing it to be Basil's finest work, he insists that the painter exhibit it. Basil, however, refuses, claiming that he cannot show the work in public because he has put too much of himself into it. When Lord Henry presses him for a more satisfying reason, Basil reluctantly describes how he met his young subject, whose name is Dorian Gray, at a party. He admits that, upon seeing Dorian for the first time, he was terrified; indeed, he was overcome by the feeling that his life was "on the verge of a terrible crisis. Dorian has become, however, an object of fascination and obsession for Basil, who sees the young man every day and declares him to be his sole inspiration. Basil admits that he cannot bring himself to exhibit the portrait because the piece betrays the "curious artistic idolatry" that Dorian inspires in him. Lord Henry, astonished by this declaration, remembers where he heard the name Dorian Gray before: his aunt, Lady Agatha, mentioned that the young man promised to help her with charity work in the slums of London. At that moment, the butler announces that Dorian Gray has arrived, and Lord Henry insists on meeting him. Basil reluctantly agrees but begs his friend not to try to influence the young man. According to Basil, Dorian has a "simple and a beautiful nature" that could easily be spoiled by Lord Henry's cynicism

The Preface-Chapter Two The Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray is a collection of epigrams that aptly sums up the philosophical tenets of the artistic and philosophical movement known as aestheticism. Aestheticism, which found its footing in Europe in the early nineteenth century, proposed that art need not serve moral, political, or otherwise didactic ends. Whereas the romantic movement of the early and mid-nineteenth century viewed art as a product of the human creative impulse that could be used to learn more about humankind and the world, the aesthetic movement denied that art must necessarily be an instructive force in order to be valuable. Instead, the aestheticists believed, art should be valuable in and of itself--art for art's sake. Near the end of the nineteenth century, Walter Pater, an English essayist and critic, suggested that life itself should be lived in the spirit of art. His views, especially those presented in a collection of essays called The Renaissance, had a profound impact on the English poets of the 1890s, most notably Oscar Wilde. Aestheticism flourished partly as a reaction against the materialism of the burgeoning middle class, assumed to be composed of philistines who responded to art in a generally unrefined manner. In this climate, the artist could assert him- or herself as a remarkable and rarefied being, one leading the search for beauty in an age marked by shameful class inequality, social hypocrisy, and bourgeois complacency. No one latched onto this attitude more boldly, or with more flair, than Oscar Wilde. His determination to live a life of beauty and to mold his life into a work of art is reflected in the beliefs and actions of several characters in Wilde's only novel. The Picture of Dorian Gray has often been compared to the famous German legend of Faust, immortalized in Christopher Marlowe's sixteenth-century play Doctor Faustus and in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's nineteenth-century poem Faust. The legend tells of a learned doctor who sells his soul to the devil in return for knowledge and magical abilities. Although Dorian Gray never contracts with the devil, his sacrifice is similar: he trades his soul for the luxury of eternal youth. For its overtones of supernaturalism, its refusal to satisfy popular morality, and its portrayal of homoerotic culture, The Picture of Dorian Gray was met with harsh criticism. Many considered the novel dangerously subversive, one offended critic calling it "a poisonous book, the atmosphere of which is heavy with the mephitic odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction." The fear of a bad--or good--influence is, in fact, one of the novel's primary concerns. As a work that sets forth a philosophy of aestheticism, the novel questions the degree and kind of influence a work of art can have over an individual. Furthermore, since the novel conceives of art as including a well-lived life, it is also interested in the kind of influence one person can have over another. After all, the artful Lord Henry himself has as profound an effect upon Dorian's life as Basil's painting does. While Lord Henry exercises influence over other characters primarily through his skillful use of language, it is Dorian's beauty that seduces the characters with whom he associates. Basil, a serious artist and rather dull moralist, admits that Dorian has had "ome subtle influence" over him; it is this influence that Basil is certain that his painting reveals. As he confides to Lord Henry, "I have put into it some expression of all this curious artistic idolatry." Ultimately, however, Lord Henry's brilliant speech is a much more influential force than aesthetic beauty. His witty and biting epigrams threaten to seduce not only the impressionable young Dorian but the reader as well. Lord Henry's ironic speech cuts through social convention and hypocrisy to reveal unexpected, unpleasant truths. The characters whose lifestyles Lord Henry criticizes resist his extreme theories. Basil's resistance to Lord Henry's argument that scandal is a function of class typifies the reactions of the characters whom Lord Henry criticizes; after all, their position and comfort depend upon the hypocrisies he tends to expose. To some degree, every character in the novel is seduced by Lord Henry's philosophies, Dorian Gray more so than anyone else. In these opening chapters, Dorian emerges as an incredibly impressionable young man, someone who Basil fears is open to the "influence" of Lord Henry, which will "spoil" him. Basil's fear is well founded, as before the end of his first conversation with Lord Henry, Dorian is "dimly conscious that entirely fresh influences were at work within him."

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/18.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Far from the Madding Crowd/section_17_part_0.txt

Far from the Madding Crowd.chapter 18

chapter 18

{"name": "Chapter 18", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-18", "summary": "Boldwood gave the impression of being aristocratic. He lived in a home recessed from the road, with stables behind it. It was all overgrown with shrubbery. In the stables were fine, healthy horses; all was warmth, contentment, and plenty. Looking after the horses was almost a sacred ritual for Boldwood. \"This place was his almonry and cloister in one.\" Boldwood's \"square-framed perpendicularity showed more fully now than in . . . the markethouse.\" He paced flatfootedly, his face bent downward. Except for \"a few clear and thread-like horizontal lines,\" his face was smooth. \"That stillness, which struck casual observers . . . may have been the perfect balance of enormous antagonistic forces -- positives and negatives in fine adjustment. His equilibrium disturbed, he was in extremity at once.\" Had Bathsheba known the intensity of his nature, she might have been frightened. It was spring, and one sensed the awakening of the countryside. Bathsheba was across the fields with Oak and Cainy. When Boldwood saw her, his face lit up \"as the moon lights up a great tower.\" He resolved at once to cross the fields to speak to her. Bathsheba blushed at Boldwood's approach. Gabriel, attuned to her moods, remembered that Boldwood had asked him to identify the handwriting on the valentine, and he suspected that Bathsheba might have been up to something. Finally Boldwood decided not to speak. Bathsheba, aware that she had caused a reaction in the farmer, resolved not to do such a thing again. \"But a resolution to avoid an evil is seldom formed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.\"", "analysis": "Two characteristics of Hardy's writing are emphasized here -- the careful sketching of forms, this time of animals, and the sound and olfactory effects as well as the visual ones. Hardy builds up an intensity of feeling. Boldwood is deeply involved with Bathsheba; she recognizes that she has done a foolhardy thing. Gabriel intuitively knows there will be complications."}

BOLDWOOD IN MEDITATION--REGRET Boldwood was tenant of what was called Little Weatherbury Farm, and his person was the nearest approach to aristocracy that this remoter quarter of the parish could boast of. Genteel strangers, whose god was their town, who might happen to be compelled to linger about this nook for a day, heard the sound of light wheels, and prayed to see good society, to the degree of a solitary lord, or squire at the very least, but it was only Mr. Boldwood going out for the day. They heard the sound of wheels yet once more, and were re-animated to expectancy: it was only Mr. Boldwood coming home again. His house stood recessed from the road, and the stables, which are to a farm what a fireplace is to a room, were behind, their lower portions being lost amid bushes of laurel. Inside the blue door, open half-way down, were to be seen at this time the backs and tails of half-a-dozen warm and contented horses standing in their stalls; and as thus viewed, they presented alternations of roan and bay, in shapes like a Moorish arch, the tail being a streak down the midst of each. Over these, and lost to the eye gazing in from the outer light, the mouths of the same animals could be heard busily sustaining the above-named warmth and plumpness by quantities of oats and hay. The restless and shadowy figure of a colt wandered about a loose-box at the end, whilst the steady grind of all the eaters was occasionally diversified by the rattle of a rope or the stamp of a foot. Pacing up and down at the heels of the animals was Farmer Boldwood himself. This place was his almonry and cloister in one: here, after looking to the feeding of his four-footed dependants, the celibate would walk and meditate of an evening till the moon's rays streamed in through the cobwebbed windows, or total darkness enveloped the scene. His square-framed perpendicularity showed more fully now than in the crowd and bustle of the market-house. In this meditative walk his foot met the floor with heel and toe simultaneously, and his fine reddish-fleshed face was bent downwards just enough to render obscure the still mouth and the well-rounded though rather prominent and broad chin. A few clear and thread-like horizontal lines were the only interruption to the otherwise smooth surface of his large forehead. The phases of Boldwood's life were ordinary enough, but his was not an ordinary nature. That stillness, which struck casual observers more than anything else in his character and habit, and seemed so precisely like the rest of inanition, may have been the perfect balance of enormous antagonistic forces--positives and negatives in fine adjustment. His equilibrium disturbed, he was in extremity at once. If an emotion possessed him at all, it ruled him; a feeling not mastering him was entirely latent. Stagnant or rapid, it was never slow. He was always hit mortally, or he was missed. He had no light and careless touches in his constitution, either for good or for evil. Stern in the outlines of action, mild in the details, he was serious throughout all. He saw no absurd sides to the follies of life, and thus, though not quite companionable in the eyes of merry men and scoffers, and those to whom all things show life as a jest, he was not intolerable to the earnest and those acquainted with grief. Being a man who read all the dramas of life seriously, if he failed to please when they were comedies, there was no frivolous treatment to reproach him for when they chanced to end tragically. Bathsheba was far from dreaming that the dark and silent shape upon which she had so carelessly thrown a seed was a hotbed of tropic intensity. Had she known Boldwood's moods, her blame would have been fearful, and the stain upon her heart ineradicable. Moreover, had she known her present power for good or evil over this man, she would have trembled at her responsibility. Luckily for her present, unluckily for her future tranquillity, her understanding had not yet told her what Boldwood was. Nobody knew entirely; for though it was possible to form guesses concerning his wild capabilities from old floodmarks faintly visible, he had never been seen at the high tides which caused them. Farmer Boldwood came to the stable-door and looked forth across the level fields. Beyond the first enclosure was a hedge, and on the other side of this a meadow belonging to Bathsheba's farm. It was now early spring--the time of going to grass with the sheep, when they have the first feed of the meadows, before these are laid up for mowing. The wind, which had been blowing east for several weeks, had veered to the southward, and the middle of spring had come abruptly--almost without a beginning. It was that period in the vernal quarter when we may suppose the Dryads to be waking for the season. The vegetable world begins to move and swell and the saps to rise, till in the completest silence of lone gardens and trackless plantations, where everything seems helpless and still after the bond and slavery of frost, there are bustlings, strainings, united thrusts, and pulls-all-together, in comparison with which the powerful tugs of cranes and pulleys in a noisy city are but pigmy efforts. Boldwood, looking into the distant meadows, saw there three figures. They were those of Miss Everdene, Shepherd Oak, and Cainy Ball. When Bathsheba's figure shone upon the farmer's eyes it lighted him up as the moon lights up a great tower. A man's body is as the shell, or the tablet, of his soul, as he is reserved or ingenuous, overflowing or self-contained. There was a change in Boldwood's exterior from its former impassibleness; and his face showed that he was now living outside his defences for the first time, and with a fearful sense of exposure. It is the usual experience of strong natures when they love. At last he arrived at a conclusion. It was to go across and inquire boldly of her. The insulation of his heart by reserve during these many years, without a channel of any kind for disposable emotion, had worked its effect. It has been observed more than once that the causes of love are chiefly subjective, and Boldwood was a living testimony to the truth of the proposition. No mother existed to absorb his devotion, no sister for his tenderness, no idle ties for sense. He became surcharged with the compound, which was genuine lover's love. He approached the gate of the meadow. Beyond it the ground was melodious with ripples, and the sky with larks; the low bleating of the flock mingling with both. Mistress and man were engaged in the operation of making a lamb "take," which is performed whenever an ewe has lost her own offspring, one of the twins of another ewe being given her as a substitute. Gabriel had skinned the dead lamb, and was tying the skin over the body of the live lamb, in the customary manner, whilst Bathsheba was holding open a little pen of four hurdles, into which the Mother and foisted lamb were driven, where they would remain till the old sheep conceived an affection for the young one. Bathsheba looked up at the completion of the manoeuvre and saw the farmer by the gate, where he was overhung by a willow tree in full bloom. Gabriel, to whom her face was as the uncertain glory of an April day, was ever regardful of its faintest changes, and instantly discerned thereon the mark of some influence from without, in the form of a keenly self-conscious reddening. He also turned and beheld Boldwood. At once connecting these signs with the letter Boldwood had shown him, Gabriel suspected her of some coquettish procedure begun by that means, and carried on since, he knew not how. Farmer Boldwood had read the pantomime denoting that they were aware of his presence, and the perception was as too much light turned upon his new sensibility. He was still in the road, and by moving on he hoped that neither would recognize that he had originally intended to enter the field. He passed by with an utter and overwhelming sensation of ignorance, shyness, and doubt. Perhaps in her manner there were signs that she wished to see him--perhaps not--he could not read a woman. The cabala of this erotic philosophy seemed to consist of the subtlest meanings expressed in misleading ways. Every turn, look, word, and accent contained a mystery quite distinct from its obvious import, and not one had ever been pondered by him until now. As for Bathsheba, she was not deceived into the belief that Farmer Boldwood had walked by on business or in idleness. She collected the probabilities of the case, and concluded that she was herself responsible for Boldwood's appearance there. It troubled her much to see what a great flame a little wildfire was likely to kindle. Bathsheba was no schemer for marriage, nor was she deliberately a trifler with the affections of men, and a censor's experience on seeing an actual flirt after observing her would have been a feeling of surprise that Bathsheba could be so different from such a one, and yet so like what a flirt is supposed to be. She resolved never again, by look or by sign, to interrupt the steady flow of this man's life. But a resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.

Chapter 18

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-18

Boldwood gave the impression of being aristocratic. He lived in a home recessed from the road, with stables behind it. It was all overgrown with shrubbery. In the stables were fine, healthy horses; all was warmth, contentment, and plenty. Looking after the horses was almost a sacred ritual for Boldwood. "This place was his almonry and cloister in one." Boldwood's "square-framed perpendicularity showed more fully now than in . . . the markethouse." He paced flatfootedly, his face bent downward. Except for "a few clear and thread-like horizontal lines," his face was smooth. "That stillness, which struck casual observers . . . may have been the perfect balance of enormous antagonistic forces -- positives and negatives in fine adjustment. His equilibrium disturbed, he was in extremity at once." Had Bathsheba known the intensity of his nature, she might have been frightened. It was spring, and one sensed the awakening of the countryside. Bathsheba was across the fields with Oak and Cainy. When Boldwood saw her, his face lit up "as the moon lights up a great tower." He resolved at once to cross the fields to speak to her. Bathsheba blushed at Boldwood's approach. Gabriel, attuned to her moods, remembered that Boldwood had asked him to identify the handwriting on the valentine, and he suspected that Bathsheba might have been up to something. Finally Boldwood decided not to speak. Bathsheba, aware that she had caused a reaction in the farmer, resolved not to do such a thing again. "But a resolution to avoid an evil is seldom formed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible."

Two characteristics of Hardy's writing are emphasized here -- the careful sketching of forms, this time of animals, and the sound and olfactory effects as well as the visual ones. Hardy builds up an intensity of feeling. Boldwood is deeply involved with Bathsheba; she recognizes that she has done a foolhardy thing. Gabriel intuitively knows there will be complications.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/2166-chapters/01.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/King Solomon's Mines/section_0_part_1.txt

King Solomon's Mines.chapter 1

chapter 1

{"name": "Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200804024551/https://www.gradesaver.com/king-solomons-mines/study-guide/summary-chapters-1-and-2", "summary": "Allan Quatermain opens his account by giving his reasons for recording it: first, because Sir Henry Curtis and Captain John Good have asked him; second, because he is recuperating from a lion attack which has injured his leg, and has nothing else to do; third, to entertain his son Harry, who is studying medicine in London; and fourth, because it is a strange tale and deserves to be told. After some minor digressions, Quatermain explains how he was aboard the Dunkeld and met Sir Henry Curtis and Captain John Good. The two men know of Quatermain from his reputation as an elephant hunter. Sir Henry inquires as to Quatermain's knowledge of the legendary mines of King Solomon and of a man named Neville, whom Sir Henry reveals is his brother", "analysis": "Allan Quatermain presents himself as a man of experience, \"fifty-five last birthday,\" who has only now begun an attempt at writing down his personal history. Haggard thereby establishes Quatermain as the first-person narrator, but one who is uncouth with the pen. In contrast to the prevalent novels of the time, Haggard's narrator is unschooled: \"At an age when other boys are at school, I was earning my living as a trader in the old Colony\" . This fact signals the reader that the tale which follows will not be a drawing-room romance, but the account of a man's own wild adventures. Haggard himself had lived in South Africa, and it is his detail concerning the setting which lends more credence to Quatermain's account. The \"untutored narrator\" is also a convention that allows Haggard to make mistakes in his rush to write while blaming any stylistic errors on the narrator's unlettered past. At times throughout the narrative, and especially here in the first chapter, Quatermain rambles and meanders off-topic briefly in his account, lending a more friendly tone to the narrative than could be found in many of the novels of manners available to readers of the time. In addition, Quatermain mentions the only two literary works he has spent any time reading, the Ingoldsby Legends and the Old Testament, thereby foreshadowing both his frequent allusions to both works, and his own adventures in a world lost to a distant past. Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good are also introduced in this first chapter. Sir Henry at first seems familiar to Quatermain, a fact borne out by Quatermain's earlier acquaintance with Sir Henry's brother. Sir Henry is described in heroic terms by Quatermain as \"one of the biggest-chested and longest-armed men I eve saw\" . He goes on to say that Sir Henry \"reminded me of an ancient Dane\" . Captain Good is also described in glowing terms, but is set up as a foil for Quatermain. Whereas Quatermain is a rough product of the hunting and trading life, Good is a \"gentleman,\" a Royal Navy officer. To Quatermain, Naval officers are of a higher caliber than ordinary men, and Good is a proper officer. Good's fastidiousness, which will play a larger part in their later adventures, is hinted at by Quatermain: \"He was so very neat and so very clean shaved, and he always wore an eye-glass in his right eye\" . In telling the legend of King Solomon's diamond mines, Haggard makes several uses of creative verisimilitude to firmly entrench the reader in the reality of this amazing tale. Quatermain tells the legend of the Mines rather than Good or Sir Henry, thus leading the reader into an automatic acceptance of the tale. Quatermain recounts the tale as he has heard it from others, lending a sense of history to the account, while various editorial details support the reality of the story, such as a Spanish-language \"original\" of Jose da Silvestra's letter and the footnote that \"Suliman\" is Arabic for \"Solomon.\" Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good offer Quatermain the traditional \"call to adventure\" of many heroic quest stories. Curtis draws out of Quatermain his acquaintance with Neville, Curtis' brother, and the desperate plight the older brother must be in. Good evokes Quatermain's sense of honor and adventure in focusing on the need to rescue a fellow man or aid a fellow man , but also by bringing the riches of King Solomon's Mines to the fore. Quatermain, in true heroic tradition, is reluctant to join the quest immediately, but sets some conditions evocative of Odysseus before he will consider the matter."}

It is a curious thing that at my age--fifty-five last birthday--I should find myself taking up a pen to try to write a history. I wonder what sort of a history it will be when I have finished it, if ever I come to the end of the trip! I have done a good many things in my life, which seems a long one to me, owing to my having begun work so young, perhaps. At an age when other boys are at school I was earning my living as a trader in the old Colony. I have been trading, hunting, fighting, or mining ever since. And yet it is only eight months ago that I made my pile. It is a big pile now that I have got it--I don't yet know how big--but I do not think I would go through the last fifteen or sixteen months again for it; no, not if I knew that I should come out safe at the end, pile and all. But then I am a timid man, and dislike violence; moreover, I am almost sick of adventure. I wonder why I am going to write this book: it is not in my line. I am not a literary man, though very devoted to the Old Testament and also to the "Ingoldsby Legends." Let me try to set down my reasons, just to see if I have any. First reason: Because Sir Henry Curtis and Captain John Good asked me. Second reason: Because I am laid up here at Durban with the pain in my left leg. Ever since that confounded lion got hold of me I have been liable to this trouble, and being rather bad just now, it makes me limp more than ever. There must be some poison in a lion's teeth, otherwise how is it that when your wounds are healed they break out again, generally, mark you, at the same time of year that you got your mauling? It is a hard thing when one has shot sixty-five lions or more, as I have in the course of my life, that the sixty-sixth should chew your leg like a quid of tobacco. It breaks the routine of the thing, and putting other considerations aside, I am an orderly man and don't like that. This is by the way. Third reason: Because I want my boy Harry, who is over there at the hospital in London studying to become a doctor, to have something to amuse him and keep him out of mischief for a week or so. Hospital work must sometimes pall and grow rather dull, for even of cutting up dead bodies there may come satiety, and as this history will not be dull, whatever else it may be, it will put a little life into things for a day or two while Harry is reading of our adventures. Fourth reason and last: Because I am going to tell the strangest story that I remember. It may seem a queer thing to say, especially considering that there is no woman in it--except Foulata. Stop, though! there is Gagaoola, if she was a woman, and not a fiend. But she was a hundred at least, and therefore not marriageable, so I don't count her. At any rate, I can safely say that there is not a _petticoat_ in the whole history. Well, I had better come to the yoke. It is a stiff place, and I feel as though I were bogged up to the axle. But, "_sutjes, sutjes_," as the Boers say--I am sure I don't know how they spell it--softly does it. A strong team will come through at last, that is, if they are not too poor. You can never do anything with poor oxen. Now to make a start. I, Allan Quatermain, of Durban, Natal, Gentleman, make oath and say--That's how I headed my deposition before the magistrate about poor Khiva's and Ventvoegel's sad deaths; but somehow it doesn't seem quite the right way to begin a book. And, besides, am I a gentleman? What is a gentleman? I don't quite know, and yet I have had to do with niggers--no, I will scratch out that word "niggers," for I do not like it. I've known natives who _are_, and so you will say, Harry, my boy, before you have done with this tale, and I have known mean whites with lots of money and fresh out from home, too, who _are not_. At any rate, I was born a gentleman, though I have been nothing but a poor travelling trader and hunter all my life. Whether I have remained so I known not, you must judge of that. Heaven knows I've tried. I have killed many men in my time, yet I have never slain wantonly or stained my hand in innocent blood, but only in self-defence. The Almighty gave us our lives, and I suppose He meant us to defend them, at least I have always acted on that, and I hope it will not be brought up against me when my clock strikes. There, there, it is a cruel and a wicked world, and for a timid man I have been mixed up in a great deal of fighting. I cannot tell the rights of it, but at any rate I have never stolen, though once I cheated a Kafir out of a herd of cattle. But then he had done me a dirty turn, and it has troubled me ever since into the bargain. Well, it is eighteen months or so ago since first I met Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good. It was in this way. I had been up elephant hunting beyond Bamangwato, and had met with bad luck. Everything went wrong that trip, and to top up with I got the fever badly. So soon as I was well enough I trekked down to the Diamond Fields, sold such ivory as I had, together with my wagon and oxen, discharged my hunters, and took the post-cart to the Cape. After spending a week in Cape Town, finding that they overcharged me at the hotel, and having seen everything there was to see, including the botanical gardens, which seem to me likely to confer a great benefit on the country, and the new Houses of Parliament, which I expect will do nothing of the sort, I determined to go back to Natal by the _Dunkeld_, then lying at the docks waiting for the _Edinburgh Castle_ due in from England. I took my berth and went aboard, and that afternoon the Natal passengers from the _Edinburgh Castle_ transhipped, and we weighed and put to sea. Among these passengers who came on board were two who excited my curiosity. One, a gentleman of about thirty, was perhaps the biggest-chested and longest-armed man I ever saw. He had yellow hair, a thick yellow beard, clear-cut features, and large grey eyes set deep in his head. I never saw a finer-looking man, and somehow he reminded me of an ancient Dane. Not that I know much of ancient Danes, though I knew a modern Dane who did me out of ten pounds; but I remember once seeing a picture of some of those gentry, who, I take it, were a kind of white Zulus. They were drinking out of big horns, and their long hair hung down their backs. As I looked at my friend standing there by the companion-ladder, I thought that if he only let his grow a little, put one of those chain shirts on to his great shoulders, and took hold of a battle-axe and a horn mug, he might have sat as a model for that picture. And by the way it is a curious thing, and just shows how the blood will out, I discovered afterwards that Sir Henry Curtis, for that was the big man's name, is of Danish blood.[1] He also reminded me strongly of somebody else, but at the time I could not remember who it was. The other man, who stood talking to Sir Henry, was stout and dark, and of quite a different cut. I suspected at once that he was a naval officer; I don't know why, but it is difficult to mistake a navy man. I have gone shooting trips with several of them in the course of my life, and they have always proved themselves the best and bravest and nicest fellows I ever met, though sadly given, some of them, to the use of profane language. I asked a page or two back, what is a gentleman? I'll answer the question now: A Royal Naval officer is, in a general sort of way, though of course there may be a black sheep among them here and there. I fancy it is just the wide seas and the breath of God's winds that wash their hearts and blow the bitterness out of their minds and make them what men ought to be. Well, to return, I proved right again; I ascertained that the dark man _was_ a naval officer, a lieutenant of thirty-one, who, after seventeen years' service, had been turned out of her Majesty's employ with the barren honour of a commander's rank, because it was impossible that he should be promoted. This is what people who serve the Queen have to expect: to be shot out into the cold world to find a living just when they are beginning really to understand their work, and to reach the prime of life. I suppose they don't mind it, but for my own part I had rather earn my bread as a hunter. One's halfpence are as scarce perhaps, but you do not get so many kicks. The officer's name I found out--by referring to the passengers' lists--was Good--Captain John Good. He was broad, of medium height, dark, stout, and rather a curious man to look at. He was so very neat and so very clean-shaved, and he always wore an eye-glass in his right eye. It seemed to grow there, for it had no string, and he never took it out except to wipe it. At first I thought he used to sleep in it, but afterwards I found that this was a mistake. He put it in his trousers pocket when he went to bed, together with his false teeth, of which he had two beautiful sets that, my own being none of the best, have often caused me to break the tenth commandment. But I am anticipating. Soon after we had got under way evening closed in, and brought with it very dirty weather. A keen breeze sprung up off land, and a kind of aggravated Scotch mist soon drove everybody from the deck. As for the _Dunkeld_, she is a flat-bottomed punt, and going up light as she was, she rolled very heavily. It almost seemed as though she would go right over, but she never did. It was quite impossible to walk about, so I stood near the engines where it was warm, and amused myself with watching the pendulum, which was fixed opposite to me, swinging slowly backwards and forwards as the vessel rolled, and marking the angle she touched at each lurch. "That pendulum's wrong; it is not properly weighted," suddenly said a somewhat testy voice at my shoulder. Looking round I saw the naval officer whom I had noticed when the passengers came aboard. "Indeed, now what makes you think so?" I asked. "Think so. I don't think at all. Why there"--as she righted herself after a roll--"if the ship had really rolled to the degree that thing pointed to, then she would never have rolled again, that's all. But it is just like these merchant skippers, they are always so confoundedly careless." Just then the dinner-bell rang, and I was not sorry, for it is a dreadful thing to have to listen to an officer of the Royal Navy when he gets on to that subject. I only know one worse thing, and that is to hear a merchant skipper express his candid opinion of officers of the Royal Navy. Captain Good and I went down to dinner together, and there we found Sir Henry Curtis already seated. He and Captain Good were placed together, and I sat opposite to them. The captain and I soon fell into talk about shooting and what not; he asking me many questions, for he is very inquisitive about all sorts of things, and I answering them as well as I could. Presently he got on to elephants. "Ah, sir," called out somebody who was sitting near me, "you've reached the right man for that; Hunter Quatermain should be able to tell you about elephants if anybody can." Sir Henry, who had been sitting quite quiet listening to our talk, started visibly. "Excuse me, sir," he said, leaning forward across the table, and speaking in a low deep voice, a very suitable voice, it seemed to me, to come out of those great lungs. "Excuse me, sir, but is your name Allan Quatermain?" I said that it was. The big man made no further remark, but I heard him mutter "fortunate" into his beard. Presently dinner came to an end, and as we were leaving the saloon Sir Henry strolled up and asked me if I would come into his cabin to smoke a pipe. I accepted, and he led the way to the _Dunkeld_ deck cabin, and a very good cabin it is. It had been two cabins, but when Sir Garnet Wolseley or one of those big swells went down the coast in the _Dunkeld_, they knocked away the partition and have never put it up again. There was a sofa in the cabin, and a little table in front of it. Sir Henry sent the steward for a bottle of whisky, and the three of us sat down and lit our pipes. "Mr. Quatermain," said Sir Henry Curtis, when the man had brought the whisky and lit the lamp, "the year before last about this time, you were, I believe, at a place called Bamangwato, to the north of the Transvaal." "I was," I answered, rather surprised that this gentleman should be so well acquainted with my movements, which were not, so far as I was aware, considered of general interest. "You were trading there, were you not?" put in Captain Good, in his quick way. "I was. I took up a wagon-load of goods, made a camp outside the settlement, and stopped till I had sold them." Sir Henry was sitting opposite to me in a Madeira chair, his arms leaning on the table. He now looked up, fixing his large grey eyes full upon my face. There was a curious anxiety in them, I thought. "Did you happen to meet a man called Neville there?" "Oh, yes; he outspanned alongside of me for a fortnight to rest his oxen before going on to the interior. I had a letter from a lawyer a few months back, asking me if I knew what had become of him, which I answered to the best of my ability at the time." "Yes," said Sir Henry, "your letter was forwarded to me. You said in it that the gentleman called Neville left Bamangwato at the beginning of May in a wagon with a driver, a voorlooper, and a Kafir hunter called Jim, announcing his intention of trekking if possible as far as Inyati, the extreme trading post in the Matabele country, where he would sell his wagon and proceed on foot. You also said that he did sell his wagon, for six months afterwards you saw the wagon in the possession of a Portuguese trader, who told you that he had bought it at Inyati from a white man whose name he had forgotten, and that he believed the white man with the native servant had started off for the interior on a shooting trip." "Yes." Then came a pause. "Mr. Quatermain," said Sir Henry suddenly, "I suppose you know or can guess nothing more of the reasons of my--of Mr. Neville's journey to the northward, or as to what point that journey was directed?" "I heard something," I answered, and stopped. The subject was one which I did not care to discuss. Sir Henry and Captain Good looked at each other, and Captain Good nodded. "Mr. Quatermain," went on the former, "I am going to tell you a story, and ask your advice, and perhaps your assistance. The agent who forwarded me your letter told me that I might rely on it implicitly, as you were," he said, "well known and universally respected in Natal, and especially noted for your discretion." I bowed and drank some whisky and water to hide my confusion, for I am a modest man--and Sir Henry went on. "Mr. Neville was my brother." "Oh," I said, starting, for now I knew of whom Sir Henry had reminded me when first I saw him. His brother was a much smaller man and had a dark beard, but now that I thought of it, he possessed eyes of the same shade of grey and with the same keen look in them: the features too were not unlike. "He was," went on Sir Henry, "my only and younger brother, and till five years ago I do not suppose that we were ever a month away from each other. But just about five years ago a misfortune befell us, as sometimes does happen in families. We quarrelled bitterly, and I behaved unjustly to my brother in my anger." Here Captain Good nodded his head vigorously to himself. The ship gave a big roll just then, so that the looking-glass, which was fixed opposite us to starboard, was for a moment nearly over our heads, and as I was sitting with my hands in my pockets and staring upwards, I could see him nodding like anything. "As I daresay you know," went on Sir Henry, "if a man dies intestate, and has no property but land, real property it is called in England, it all descends to his eldest son. It so happened that just at the time when we quarrelled our father died intestate. He had put off making his will until it was too late. The result was that my brother, who had not been brought up to any profession, was left without a penny. Of course it would have been my duty to provide for him, but at the time the quarrel between us was so bitter that I did not--to my shame I say it (and he sighed deeply)--offer to do anything. It was not that I grudged him justice, but I waited for him to make advances, and he made none. I am sorry to trouble you with all this, Mr. Quatermain, but I must to make things clear, eh, Good?" "Quite so, quite so," said the captain. "Mr. Quatermain will, I am sure, keep this history to himself." "Of course," said I, for I rather pride myself on my discretion, for which, as Sir Henry had heard, I have some repute. "Well," went on Sir Henry, "my brother had a few hundred pounds to his account at the time. Without saying anything to me he drew out this paltry sum, and, having adopted the name of Neville, started off for South Africa in the wild hope of making a fortune. This I learned afterwards. Some three years passed, and I heard nothing of my brother, though I wrote several times. Doubtless the letters never reached him. But as time went on I grew more and more troubled about him. I found out, Mr. Quatermain, that blood is thicker than water." "That's true," said I, thinking of my boy Harry. "I found out, Mr. Quatermain, that I would have given half my fortune to know that my brother George, the only relation I possess, was safe and well, and that I should see him again." "But you never did, Curtis," jerked out Captain Good, glancing at the big man's face. "Well, Mr. Quatermain, as time went on I became more and more anxious to find out if my brother was alive or dead, and if alive to get him home again. I set enquiries on foot, and your letter was one of the results. So far as it went it was satisfactory, for it showed that till lately George was alive, but it did not go far enough. So, to cut a long story short, I made up my mind to come out and look for him myself, and Captain Good was so kind as to come with me." "Yes," said the captain; "nothing else to do, you see. Turned out by my Lords of the Admiralty to starve on half pay. And now perhaps, sir, you will tell us what you know or have heard of the gentleman called Neville." [1] Mr. Quatermain's ideas about ancient Danes seem to be rather confused; we have always understood that they were dark-haired people. Probably he was thinking of Saxons.--Editor.

Chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20200804024551/https://www.gradesaver.com/king-solomons-mines/study-guide/summary-chapters-1-and-2

Allan Quatermain opens his account by giving his reasons for recording it: first, because Sir Henry Curtis and Captain John Good have asked him; second, because he is recuperating from a lion attack which has injured his leg, and has nothing else to do; third, to entertain his son Harry, who is studying medicine in London; and fourth, because it is a strange tale and deserves to be told. After some minor digressions, Quatermain explains how he was aboard the Dunkeld and met Sir Henry Curtis and Captain John Good. The two men know of Quatermain from his reputation as an elephant hunter. Sir Henry inquires as to Quatermain's knowledge of the legendary mines of King Solomon and of a man named Neville, whom Sir Henry reveals is his brother

Allan Quatermain presents himself as a man of experience, "fifty-five last birthday," who has only now begun an attempt at writing down his personal history. Haggard thereby establishes Quatermain as the first-person narrator, but one who is uncouth with the pen. In contrast to the prevalent novels of the time, Haggard's narrator is unschooled: "At an age when other boys are at school, I was earning my living as a trader in the old Colony" . This fact signals the reader that the tale which follows will not be a drawing-room romance, but the account of a man's own wild adventures. Haggard himself had lived in South Africa, and it is his detail concerning the setting which lends more credence to Quatermain's account. The "untutored narrator" is also a convention that allows Haggard to make mistakes in his rush to write while blaming any stylistic errors on the narrator's unlettered past. At times throughout the narrative, and especially here in the first chapter, Quatermain rambles and meanders off-topic briefly in his account, lending a more friendly tone to the narrative than could be found in many of the novels of manners available to readers of the time. In addition, Quatermain mentions the only two literary works he has spent any time reading, the Ingoldsby Legends and the Old Testament, thereby foreshadowing both his frequent allusions to both works, and his own adventures in a world lost to a distant past. Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good are also introduced in this first chapter. Sir Henry at first seems familiar to Quatermain, a fact borne out by Quatermain's earlier acquaintance with Sir Henry's brother. Sir Henry is described in heroic terms by Quatermain as "one of the biggest-chested and longest-armed men I eve saw" . He goes on to say that Sir Henry "reminded me of an ancient Dane" . Captain Good is also described in glowing terms, but is set up as a foil for Quatermain. Whereas Quatermain is a rough product of the hunting and trading life, Good is a "gentleman," a Royal Navy officer. To Quatermain, Naval officers are of a higher caliber than ordinary men, and Good is a proper officer. Good's fastidiousness, which will play a larger part in their later adventures, is hinted at by Quatermain: "He was so very neat and so very clean shaved, and he always wore an eye-glass in his right eye" . In telling the legend of King Solomon's diamond mines, Haggard makes several uses of creative verisimilitude to firmly entrench the reader in the reality of this amazing tale. Quatermain tells the legend of the Mines rather than Good or Sir Henry, thus leading the reader into an automatic acceptance of the tale. Quatermain recounts the tale as he has heard it from others, lending a sense of history to the account, while various editorial details support the reality of the story, such as a Spanish-language "original" of Jose da Silvestra's letter and the footnote that "Suliman" is Arabic for "Solomon." Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good offer Quatermain the traditional "call to adventure" of many heroic quest stories. Curtis draws out of Quatermain his acquaintance with Neville, Curtis' brother, and the desperate plight the older brother must be in. Good evokes Quatermain's sense of honor and adventure in focusing on the need to rescue a fellow man or aid a fellow man , but also by bringing the riches of King Solomon's Mines to the fore. Quatermain, in true heroic tradition, is reluctant to join the quest immediately, but sets some conditions evocative of Odysseus before he will consider the matter.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/24.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Far from the Madding Crowd/section_23_part_0.txt

Far from the Madding Crowd.chapter 24

chapter 24

{"name": "Chapter 24", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-24", "summary": "Bathsheba was in the habit of inspecting the homestead before retiring. Almost always, Gabriel preceded her on this tour, \"watching her affairs as carefully as any specially appointed officer of surveillance could have done; but this tender devotion was to a great extent unknown to his mistress, and as much as was known was somewhat thanklessly received. Women are never tired of bewailing man's fickleness in love, but they only seem to snub his constancy.\" Bathsheba carried a dark lantern, lighting it to peer in corners. She heard the contented munching of animals as she made her return through a pitch-dark fir plantation. Suddenly she heard footsteps and almost immediately stumbled, for her skirt was caught. Recovering her balance, she was aware of the figure of a man seeking to pass her. He asked her to turn on her lantern. The light revealed a scarlet military jacket and also the fact that the soldier's spur had caught the braid trimming of Bathsheba's skirt. His attempts to free her were not very earnest, and finally Bathsheba herself completed the disentanglement. Gallantly, the handsome soldier, who identified himself as Sergeant Troy, thanked her for the opportunity of seeing how lovely she was. His lavish compliments included the remark, \"I wish it had been the knot of knots, which there's no untying!\" Flattered and confused, Bathsheba ran to the house, where Liddy told her something of Troy's reputation as a dandy. Bathsheba now regretted having been rude when Troy had probably meant only to be kind. Boldwood suffered by comparison with the sergeant: \"It was a fatal omission of Boldwood's that he had never once told her she was beautiful.\"", "analysis": "Hardy has complicated the design in his pastoral tapestry once again. Bathsheba appears to have won a new admirer. In addition to the faithful, stable Gabriel, who has been dismissed as not good enough for her, and the enamored, troubled Boldwood, a man of property who is still under consideration although Bathsheba does not love him, is the charming Sergeant Troy, who has literally -- and perhaps symbolically -- snared her."}

THE SAME NIGHT--THE FIR PLANTATION Among the multifarious duties which Bathsheba had voluntarily imposed upon herself by dispensing with the services of a bailiff, was the particular one of looking round the homestead before going to bed, to see that all was right and safe for the night. Gabriel had almost constantly preceded her in this tour every evening, watching her affairs as carefully as any specially appointed officer of surveillance could have done; but this tender devotion was to a great extent unknown to his mistress, and as much as was known was somewhat thanklessly received. Women are never tired of bewailing man's fickleness in love, but they only seem to snub his constancy. As watching is best done invisibly, she usually carried a dark lantern in her hand, and every now and then turned on the light to examine nooks and corners with the coolness of a metropolitan policeman. This coolness may have owed its existence not so much to her fearlessness of expected danger as to her freedom from the suspicion of any; her worst anticipated discovery being that a horse might not be well bedded, the fowls not all in, or a door not closed. This night the buildings were inspected as usual, and she went round to the farm paddock. Here the only sounds disturbing the stillness were steady munchings of many mouths, and stentorian breathings from all but invisible noses, ending in snores and puffs like the blowing of bellows slowly. Then the munching would recommence, when the lively imagination might assist the eye to discern a group of pink-white nostrils, shaped as caverns, and very clammy and humid on their surfaces, not exactly pleasant to the touch until one got used to them; the mouths beneath having a great partiality for closing upon any loose end of Bathsheba's apparel which came within reach of their tongues. Above each of these a still keener vision suggested a brown forehead and two staring though not unfriendly eyes, and above all a pair of whitish crescent-shaped horns like two particularly new moons, an occasional stolid "moo!" proclaiming beyond the shade of a doubt that these phenomena were the features and persons of Daisy, Whitefoot, Bonny-lass, Jolly-O, Spot, Twinkle-eye, etc., etc.--the respectable dairy of Devon cows belonging to Bathsheba aforesaid. Her way back to the house was by a path through a young plantation of tapering firs, which had been planted some years earlier to shelter the premises from the north wind. By reason of the density of the interwoven foliage overhead, it was gloomy there at cloudless noontide, twilight in the evening, dark as midnight at dusk, and black as the ninth plague of Egypt at midnight. To describe the spot is to call it a vast, low, naturally formed hall, the plumy ceiling of which was supported by slender pillars of living wood, the floor being covered with a soft dun carpet of dead spikelets and mildewed cones, with a tuft of grass-blades here and there. This bit of the path was always the crux of the night's ramble, though, before starting, her apprehensions of danger were not vivid enough to lead her to take a companion. Slipping along here covertly as Time, Bathsheba fancied she could hear footsteps entering the track at the opposite end. It was certainly a rustle of footsteps. Her own instantly fell as gently as snowflakes. She reassured herself by a remembrance that the path was public, and that the traveller was probably some villager returning home; regretting, at the same time, that the meeting should be about to occur in the darkest point of her route, even though only just outside her own door. The noise approached, came close, and a figure was apparently on the point of gliding past her when something tugged at her skirt and pinned it forcibly to the ground. The instantaneous check nearly threw Bathsheba off her balance. In recovering she struck against warm clothes and buttons. "A rum start, upon my soul!" said a masculine voice, a foot or so above her head. "Have I hurt you, mate?" "No," said Bathsheba, attempting to shrink away. "We have got hitched together somehow, I think." "Yes." "Are you a woman?" "Yes." "A lady, I should have said." "It doesn't matter." "I am a man." "Oh!" Bathsheba softly tugged again, but to no purpose. "Is that a dark lantern you have? I fancy so," said the man. "Yes." "If you'll allow me I'll open it, and set you free." A hand seized the lantern, the door was opened, the rays burst out from their prison, and Bathsheba beheld her position with astonishment. The man to whom she was hooked was brilliant in brass and scarlet. He was a soldier. His sudden appearance was to darkness what the sound of a trumpet is to silence. Gloom, the _genius loci_ at all times hitherto, was now totally overthrown, less by the lantern-light than by what the lantern lighted. The contrast of this revelation with her anticipations of some sinister figure in sombre garb was so great that it had upon her the effect of a fairy transformation. It was immediately apparent that the military man's spur had become entangled in the gimp which decorated the skirt of her dress. He caught a view of her face. "I'll unfasten you in one moment, miss," he said, with new-born gallantry. "Oh no--I can do it, thank you," she hastily replied, and stooped for the performance. The unfastening was not such a trifling affair. The rowel of the spur had so wound itself among the gimp cords in those few moments, that separation was likely to be a matter of time. He too stooped, and the lantern standing on the ground betwixt them threw the gleam from its open side among the fir-tree needles and the blades of long damp grass with the effect of a large glowworm. It radiated upwards into their faces, and sent over half the plantation gigantic shadows of both man and woman, each dusky shape becoming distorted and mangled upon the tree-trunks till it wasted to nothing. He looked hard into her eyes when she raised them for a moment; Bathsheba looked down again, for his gaze was too strong to be received point-blank with her own. But she had obliquely noticed that he was young and slim, and that he wore three chevrons upon his sleeve. Bathsheba pulled again. "You are a prisoner, miss; it is no use blinking the matter," said the soldier, drily. "I must cut your dress if you are in such a hurry." "Yes--please do!" she exclaimed, helplessly. "It wouldn't be necessary if you could wait a moment," and he unwound a cord from the little wheel. She withdrew her own hand, but, whether by accident or design, he touched it. Bathsheba was vexed; she hardly knew why. His unravelling went on, but it nevertheless seemed coming to no end. She looked at him again. "Thank you for the sight of such a beautiful face!" said the young sergeant, without ceremony. She coloured with embarrassment. "'Twas unwillingly shown," she replied, stiffly, and with as much dignity--which was very little--as she could infuse into a position of captivity. "I like you the better for that incivility, miss," he said. "I should have liked--I wish--you had never shown yourself to me by intruding here!" She pulled again, and the gathers of her dress began to give way like liliputian musketry. "I deserve the chastisement your words give me. But why should such a fair and dutiful girl have such an aversion to her father's sex?" "Go on your way, please." "What, Beauty, and drag you after me? Do but look; I never saw such a tangle!" "Oh, 'tis shameful of you; you have been making it worse on purpose to keep me here--you have!" "Indeed, I don't think so," said the sergeant, with a merry twinkle. "I tell you you have!" she exclaimed, in high temper. "I insist upon undoing it. Now, allow me!" "Certainly, miss; I am not of steel." He added a sigh which had as much archness in it as a sigh could possess without losing its nature altogether. "I am thankful for beauty, even when 'tis thrown to me like a bone to a dog. These moments will be over too soon!" She closed her lips in a determined silence. Bathsheba was revolving in her mind whether by a bold and desperate rush she could free herself at the risk of leaving her skirt bodily behind her. The thought was too dreadful. The dress--which she had put on to appear stately at the supper--was the head and front of her wardrobe; not another in her stock became her so well. What woman in Bathsheba's position, not naturally timid, and within call of her retainers, would have bought escape from a dashing soldier at so dear a price? "All in good time; it will soon be done, I perceive," said her cool friend. "This trifling provokes, and--and--" "Not too cruel!" "--Insults me!" "It is done in order that I may have the pleasure of apologizing to so charming a woman, which I straightway do most humbly, madam," he said, bowing low. Bathsheba really knew not what to say. "I've seen a good many women in my time," continued the young man in a murmur, and more thoughtfully than hitherto, critically regarding her bent head at the same time; "but I've never seen a woman so beautiful as you. Take it or leave it--be offended or like it--I don't care." "Who are you, then, who can so well afford to despise opinion?" "No stranger. Sergeant Troy. I am staying in this place.--There! it is undone at last, you see. Your light fingers were more eager than mine. I wish it had been the knot of knots, which there's no untying!" This was worse and worse. She started up, and so did he. How to decently get away from him--that was her difficulty now. She sidled off inch by inch, the lantern in her hand, till she could see the redness of his coat no longer. "Ah, Beauty; good-bye!" he said. She made no reply, and, reaching a distance of twenty or thirty yards, turned about, and ran indoors. Liddy had just retired to rest. In ascending to her own chamber, Bathsheba opened the girl's door an inch or two, and, panting, said-- "Liddy, is any soldier staying in the village--sergeant somebody-- rather gentlemanly for a sergeant, and good looking--a red coat with blue facings?" "No, miss ... No, I say; but really it might be Sergeant Troy home on furlough, though I have not seen him. He was here once in that way when the regiment was at Casterbridge." "Yes; that's the name. Had he a moustache--no whiskers or beard?" "He had." "What kind of a person is he?" "Oh! miss--I blush to name it--a gay man! But I know him to be very quick and trim, who might have made his thousands, like a squire. Such a clever young dandy as he is! He's a doctor's son by name, which is a great deal; and he's an earl's son by nature!" "Which is a great deal more. Fancy! Is it true?" "Yes. And, he was brought up so well, and sent to Casterbridge Grammar School for years and years. Learnt all languages while he was there; and it was said he got on so far that he could take down Chinese in shorthand; but that I don't answer for, as it was only reported. However, he wasted his gifted lot, and listed a soldier; but even then he rose to be a sergeant without trying at all. Ah! such a blessing it is to be high-born; nobility of blood will shine out even in the ranks and files. And is he really come home, miss?" "I believe so. Good-night, Liddy." After all, how could a cheerful wearer of skirts be permanently offended with the man? There are occasions when girls like Bathsheba will put up with a great deal of unconventional behaviour. When they want to be praised, which is often, when they want to be mastered, which is sometimes; and when they want no nonsense, which is seldom. Just now the first feeling was in the ascendant with Bathsheba, with a dash of the second. Moreover, by chance or by devilry, the ministrant was antecedently made interesting by being a handsome stranger who had evidently seen better days. So she could not clearly decide whether it was her opinion that he had insulted her or not. "Was ever anything so odd!" she at last exclaimed to herself, in her own room. "And was ever anything so meanly done as what I did--to skulk away like that from a man who was only civil and kind!" Clearly she did not think his barefaced praise of her person an insult now. It was a fatal omission of Boldwood's that he had never once told her she was beautiful.

Chapter 24

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-24

Bathsheba was in the habit of inspecting the homestead before retiring. Almost always, Gabriel preceded her on this tour, "watching her affairs as carefully as any specially appointed officer of surveillance could have done; but this tender devotion was to a great extent unknown to his mistress, and as much as was known was somewhat thanklessly received. Women are never tired of bewailing man's fickleness in love, but they only seem to snub his constancy." Bathsheba carried a dark lantern, lighting it to peer in corners. She heard the contented munching of animals as she made her return through a pitch-dark fir plantation. Suddenly she heard footsteps and almost immediately stumbled, for her skirt was caught. Recovering her balance, she was aware of the figure of a man seeking to pass her. He asked her to turn on her lantern. The light revealed a scarlet military jacket and also the fact that the soldier's spur had caught the braid trimming of Bathsheba's skirt. His attempts to free her were not very earnest, and finally Bathsheba herself completed the disentanglement. Gallantly, the handsome soldier, who identified himself as Sergeant Troy, thanked her for the opportunity of seeing how lovely she was. His lavish compliments included the remark, "I wish it had been the knot of knots, which there's no untying!" Flattered and confused, Bathsheba ran to the house, where Liddy told her something of Troy's reputation as a dandy. Bathsheba now regretted having been rude when Troy had probably meant only to be kind. Boldwood suffered by comparison with the sergeant: "It was a fatal omission of Boldwood's that he had never once told her she was beautiful."

Hardy has complicated the design in his pastoral tapestry once again. Bathsheba appears to have won a new admirer. In addition to the faithful, stable Gabriel, who has been dismissed as not good enough for her, and the enamored, troubled Boldwood, a man of property who is still under consideration although Bathsheba does not love him, is the charming Sergeant Troy, who has literally -- and perhaps symbolically -- snared her.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/part_1_chapters_12_to_18.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Red and the Black/section_2_part_0.txt

The Red and the Black.part 1.chapters 12-18

book 1, chapters 12-18

{"name": "", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210301223854/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/redblack/section3/", "summary": "Julien obtains a leave of absence and visits his friend Fouque, who lives in the mountains surrounding Verrieres. Fouque offers Julien a job in the lumber trade, which promises to be quite lucrative in the coming years, but Julien refuses him. Fouque's tempting proposition gives Julien a renewed energy and vigor to climb the social ladder just like his hero Napoleon. When he returns to Verrieres, Julien realizes that Mme. de Renal's constant blushing and new wardrobe mean that she is in love with him. He decides to take their flirtation to its logical conclusion, feeling that it is his duty to become her lover. Like a Napoleonic soldier, he draws up a battle plan, thinking of Mme. de Renal more as an enemy than a lover. One night he sneaks into her bedroom and convinces Mme. de Renal to let him stay the night. Julien's love is still only a form of ambition. Mme. de Renal becomes his mistress and thus makes him feel like he belongs to a higher social class. But Julien soon reminds himself that, although she loves him, Mme. de Renal is, militaristically speaking, part of the enemy camp. He overhears M. de Renal and other Conservatives selecting a new town deputy without any liberal's knowledge and realizes that he cannot trust anyone. Julien's wavering between wanting success in the Church and success in the army climaxes with the visit of a king at Verrieres. Mme. de Renal secures Julien a position in the honor guard that welcomes the king. However, Julien must quickly change out of his military uniform and into his priestly attire in order to assist M. Chelan with the king's services at the church. Although dressing up like a soldier is a dream come true for Julien, he is also inspired by the Bishop of Agde. The bishop's youth convinces Julien that his path to power lies with the Church.", "analysis": "Commentary Fouque's proposal is a defining moment in Julien's life. Fouque offers Julien certain prosperity but little societal glory. Julien is convinced that he can achieve both financial success and political glory at a young age just as Napoleon did. Julien's rejection of Fouque's offer is also a rejection of the bourgeoisie: he believes that true success in French society cannot be bought, it must be won. Julien is immediately confronted with this alternative road to success when he realizes that Mme. de Renal is in love with him. With so few ways to achieve glory under the Restoration, Julien sees his military-like seduction of Mme. de Renal as the only thing left for a soldier to do. Stendhal describes Julien's behavior with bitter irony in this section. Julien really has no idea what he is doing: when Mme. de Renal asks him if he has a nickname, Julien is unable to respond because that question had not been anticipated in his battle plan. Although Julien is a romantic hero, Stendhal's seventeenth-century influences lead him to also describe Julien as \"stupid\" and \"awkward.\" But Julien does succeed in becoming Mme. de Renal's lover, and forgets that it was his tears and not his bravery that compelled Mme. de Renal to let him spend the night with her. Julien's \"victory\" makes him think that power can still be attained in French society by following Napoleon's example. Stendhal's reference to the scheming of M. de Renal and other aristocrats proves that Julien is right to think of the Renals as his enemy. However, the king's visit makes Julien reconsider his need to fight battles in order to conquer French society. Wearing the military uniform of an honor guard brings him closer to the glory of Napoleon, but as the day continues he realizes that the Church has become a more powerful institution than the army. This section best illustrates the tension in the title of the novel. Julien must choose between the red uniforms of the army and the black dress of the Church. His indecision is shown at the Verrieres church, where his priestly cassock barely covers the army boots he did not have time to change. Yet, when Julien meets the Bishop of Agde, he decides that the Church is where he can become most powerful. The bishop is only eight years older than Julien, and thus about the same age as Napoleon when he became a famous general. Julien understands that the young Napoleons of his day seek power and glory in the Church. Mme. de Renal realizes this as well, hoping that Julien will become a powerful Church figure with strong ties to the monarchy."}

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." 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." CHAPTER XIV THE ENGLISH SCISSORS A young girl of sixteen had a pink complexion, and yet used red rouge.--_Polidori_. Fouque's offer had, as a matter of fact, taken away all Julien's happiness; he could not make up his mind to any definite course. "Alas! perhaps I am lacking in character. I should have been a bad soldier of Napoleon. At least," he added, "my little intrigue with the mistress of the house will distract me a little." Happily for him, even in this little subordinate incident, his inner emotions quite failed to correspond with his flippant words. He was frightened of Madame de Renal because of her pretty dress. In his eyes, that dress was a vanguard of Paris. His pride refused to leave anything to chance and the inspiration of the moment. He made himself a very minute plan of campaign, moulded on the confidences of Fouque, and a little that he had read about love in the Bible. As he was very nervous, though he did not admit it to himself, he wrote down this plan. Madame de Renal was alone with him for a moment in the drawing-room on the following morning. "Have you no other name except Julien," she said. Our hero was at a loss to answer so nattering a question. This circumstance had not been anticipated in his plan. If he had not been stupid enough to have made a plan, Julien's quick wit would have served him well, and the surprise would only have intensified the quickness of his perception. He was clumsy, and exaggerated his clumsiness, Madame de Renal quickly forgave him. She attributed it to a charming frankness. And an air of frankness was the very thing which in her view was just lacking in this man who was acknowledged to have so much genius. "That little tutor of yours inspires me with a great deal of suspicion," said Madame Derville to her sometimes. "I think he looks as if he were always thinking, and he never acts without calculation. He is a sly fox." Julien remained profoundly humiliated by the misfortune of not having known what answer to make to Madame de Renal. "A man like I am ought to make up for this check!" and seizing the moment when they were passing from one room to another, he thought it was his duty to give Madame de Renal a kiss. Nothing could have been less tactful, nothing less agreeable, and nothing more imprudent both for him and for her. They were within an inch of being noticed. Madame de Renal thought him mad. She was frightened, and above all, shocked. This stupidity reminded her of M. Valenod. "What would happen to me," she said to herself, "if I were alone with him?" All her virtue returned, because her love was waning. She so arranged it that one of her children always remained with her. Julien found the day very tedious, and passed it entirely in clumsily putting into operation his plan of seduction. He did not look at Madame de Renal on a single occasion without that look having a reason, but nevertheless he was not sufficiently stupid to fail to see that he was not succeeding at all in being amiable, and was succeeding even less in being fascinating. Madame de Renal did not recover from her astonishment at finding him so awkward and at the same time so bold. "It is the timidity of love in men of intellect," she said to herself with an inexpressible joy. "Could it be possible that he had never been loved by my rival?" After breakfast Madame de Renal went back to the drawing-room to receive the visit of M. Charcot de Maugiron, the sub-prefect of Bray. She was working at a little frame of fancy-work some distance from the ground. Madame Derville was at her side; that was how she was placed when our hero thought it suitable to advance his boot in the full light and press the pretty foot of Madame de Renal, whose open-work stockings, and pretty Paris shoe were evidently attracting the looks of the gallant sub-prefect. Madame de Renal was very much afraid, and let fall her scissors, her ball of wool and her needles, so that Julien's movement could be passed for a clumsy effort, intended to prevent the fall of the scissors, which presumably he had seen slide. Fortunately, these little scissors of English steel were broken, and Madame de Renal did not spare her regrets that Julien had not succeeded in getting nearer to her. "You noticed them falling before I did--you could have prevented it, instead, all your zealousness only succeeding in giving me a very big kick." All this took in the sub-perfect, but not Madame Derville. "That pretty boy has very silly manners," she thought. The social code of a provincial capital never forgives this kind of lapse. Madame de Renal found an opportunity of saying to Julien, "Be prudent, I order you." Julien appreciated his own clumsiness. He was upset. He deliberated with himself for a long time, in order to ascertain whether or not he ought to be angry at the expression "I order you." He was silly enough to think she might have said "I order you," if it were some question concerning the children's education, but in answering my love she puts me on an equality. It is impossible to love without equality ... and all his mind ran riot in making common-places on equality. He angrily repeated to himself that verse of Corneille which Madame Derville had taught him some days before. "L'amour les egalites, et ne les cherche pas." Julien who had never had a mistress in his whole life, but yet insisted on playing the role of a Don Juan, made a shocking fool of himself all day. He had only one sensible idea. Bored with himself and Madame de Renal, he viewed with apprehension the advance of the evening when he would have to sit by her side in the darkness of the garden. He told M. de Renal that he was going to Verrieres to see the cure. He left after dinner, and only came back in the night. At Verrieres Julien found M. Chelan occupied in moving. He had just been deprived of his living; the curate Maslon was replacing him. Julien helped the good cure, and it occurred to him to write to Fouque that the irresistible mission which he felt for the holy ministry had previously prevented him from accepting his kind offer, but that he had just seen an instance of injustice, and that perhaps it would be safer not to enter into Holy Orders. Julien congratulated himself on his subtlety in exploiting the dismissal of the cure of Verrieres so as to leave himself a loop-hole for returning to commerce in the event of a gloomy prudence routing the spirit of heroism from his mind. CHAPTER XV THE COCK'S SONG Amour en latin faict amour; Or done provient d'amour la mart, Et, par avant, souley qui moreq, Deuil, plours, pieges, forfailz, remord. BLASON D'AMOUR. If Julien had possessed a little of that adroitness on which he so gratuitously plumed himself, he could have congratulated himself the following day on the effect produced by his journey to Verrieres. His absence had caused his clumsiness to be forgotten. But on that day also he was rather sulky. He had a ludicrous idea in the evening, and with singular courage he communicated it to Madame de Renal. They had scarcely sat down in the garden before Julien brought his mouth near Madame de Renal's ear without waiting till it was sufficiently dark and at the risk of compromising her terribly, said to her, "Madame, to-night, at two o'clock, I shall go into your room, I must tell you something." Julien trembled lest his request should be granted. His rakish pose weighed him down so terribly that if he could have followed his own inclination he would have returned to his room for several days and refrained from seeing the ladies any more. He realised that he had spoiled by his clever conduct of last evening all the bright prospects of the day that had just passed, and was at his wits' end what to do. Madame de Renal answered the impertinent declaration which Julien had dared to make to her with indignation which was real and in no way exaggerated. He thought he could see contempt in her curt reply. The expression "for shame," had certainly occurred in that whispered answer. Julien went to the children's room under the pretext of having something to say to them, and on his return he placed himself beside Madame Derville and very far from Madame de Renal. He thus deprived himself of all possibility of taking her hand. The conversation was serious, and Julien acquitted himself very well, apart from a few moments of silence during which he was cudgelling his brains. "Why can't I invent some pretty manoeuvre," he said to himself which will force Madame de Renal to vouchsafe to me those unambiguous signs of tenderness which a few days ago made me think that she was mine. Julien was extremely disconcerted by the almost desperate plight to which he had brought his affairs. Nothing, however, would have embarrassed him more than success. When they separated at midnight, his pessimism made him think that he enjoyed Madame Derville's contempt, and that probably he stood no better with Madame de Renal. Feeling in a very bad temper and very humiliated, Julien did not sleep. He was leagues away from the idea of giving up all intriguing and planning, and of living from day to day with Madame de Renal, and of being contented like a child with the happiness brought by every day. He racked his brains inventing clever manoeuvres, which an instant afterwards he found absurd, and, to put it shortly, was very unhappy when two o'clock rang from the castle clock. The noise woke him up like the cock's crow woke up St. Peter. The most painful episode was now timed to begin--he had not given a thought to his impertinent proposition, since the moment when he had made it and it had been so badly received. "I have told her that I will go to her at two o'clock," he said to himself as he got up, "I may be inexperienced and coarse, as the son of a peasant naturally would be. Madame Derville has given me to understand as much, but at any rate, I will not be weak." Julien had reason to congratulate himself on his courage, for he had never put his self-control to so painful a test. As he opened his door, he was trembling to such an extent that his knees gave way under him, and he was forced to lean against the wall. He was without shoes; he went and listened at M. de Renal's door, and could hear his snoring. He was disconsolate, he had no longer any excuse for not going to her room. But, Great Heaven! What was he to do there? He had no plan, and even if he had had one, he felt himself so nervous that he would have been incapable of carrying it out. Eventually, suffering a thousand times more than if he had been walking to his death, he entered the little corridor that led to Madame de Renal's room. He opened the door with a trembling hand and made a frightful noise. There was light; a night light was burning on the mantelpiece. He had not expected this new misfortune. As she saw him enter, Madame de Renal got quickly out of bed. "Wretch," she cried. There was a little confusion. Julien forgot his useless plans, and turned to his natural role. To fail to please so charming a woman appeared to him the greatest of misfortunes. His only answer to her reproaches was to throw himself at her feet while he kissed her knees. As she was speaking to him with extreme harshness, he burst into tears. When Julien came out of Madame de Renal's room some hours afterwards, one could have said, adopting the conventional language of the novel, that there was nothing left to be desired. In fact, he owed to the love he had inspired, and to the unexpected impression which her alluring charms had produced upon him, a victory to which his own clumsy tactics would never have led him. But victim that he was of a distorted pride, he pretended even in the sweetest moments to play the role of a man accustomed to the subjugation of women: he made incredible but deliberate efforts to spoil his natural charm. Instead of watching the transports which he was bringing into existence, and those pangs of remorse which only set their keenness into fuller relief, the idea of duty was continually before his eyes. He feared a frightful remorse, and eternal ridicule, if he departed from the ideal model he proposed to follow. In a word, the very quality which made Julien into a superior being was precisely that which prevented him from savouring the happiness which was placed within his grasp. It's like the case of a young girl of sixteen with a charming complexion who is mad enough to put on rouge before going to a ball. Mortally terrified by the apparition of Julien, Madame de Renal was soon a prey to the most cruel alarm. The prayers and despair of Julien troubled her keenly. Even when there was nothing left for her to refuse him she pushed Julien away from her with a genuine indignation, and straightway threw herself into his arms. There was no plan apparent in all this conduct. She thought herself eternally damned, and tried to hide from herself the sight of hell by loading Julien with the wildest caresses. In a word, nothing would have been lacking in our hero's happiness, not even an ardent sensibility in the woman whom he had just captured, if he had only known how to enjoy it. Julien's departure did not in any way bring to an end those ecstacies which thrilled her in spite of herself, and those troubles of remorse which lacerated her. "My God! being happy--being loved, is that all it comes to?" This was Julien's first thought as he entered his room. He was a prey to the astonishment and nervous anxiety of the man who has just obtained what he has long desired. He has been accustomed to desire, and has no longer anything to desire, and nevertheless has no memories. Like a soldier coming back from parade. Julien was absorbed in rehearsing the details of his conduct. "Have I failed in nothing which I owe to myself? Have I played my part well?" And what a part! the part of a man accustomed to be brilliant with women. CHAPTER XVI THE DAY AFTER He turned his lips to hers and with his hand Called back the tangles of her wandering hair. _Don Juan,_ c. I, st. 170. Happily for Julien's fame, Madame de Renal had been too agitated and too astonished to appreciate the stupidity of the man who had in a single moment become the whole to world her. "Oh, my God!" she said to herself, as she pressed him to retire when she saw the dawn break, "if my husband has heard the noise, I am lost." Julien, who had had the time to make up some phrases, remembered this one, "Would you regret your life?" "Oh, very much at a moment like this, but I should not regret having known you." Julien thought it incumbent on his dignity to go back to his room in broad daylight and with deliberate imprudence. The continuous attention with which he kept on studying his slightest actions with the absurd idea of appearing a man of experience had only one advantage. When he saw Madame de Renal again at breakfast his conduct was a masterpiece of prudence. As for her, she could not look at him without blushing up to the eyes, and could not live a moment without looking at him. She realised her own nervousness, and her efforts to hide it redoubled. Julien only lifted his eyes towards her once. At first Madame de Renal admired his prudence: soon seeing that this single look was not repealed, she became alarmed. "Could it be that he does not love me?" she said to herself. "Alas! I am quite old for him. I am ten years older than he is." As she passed from the dining-room to the garden, she pressed Julien's hand. In the surprise caused by so singular a mark of love, he regarded her with passion, for he had thought her very pretty over breakfast, and while keeping his eyes downcast he had passed his time in thinking of the details of her charms. This look consoled Madame de Renal. It did not take away all her anxiety, but her anxiety tended to take away nearly completely all her remorse towards her husband. The husband had noticed nothing at breakfast. It was not so with Madame Derville. She thought she saw Madame de Renal on the point of succumbing. During the whole day her bold and incisive friendship regaled her cousin with those innuendoes which were intended to paint in hideous colours the dangers she was running. Madame de Renal was burning to find herself alone with Julien. She wished to ask him if he still loved her. In spite of the unalterable sweetness of her character, she was several times on the point of notifying her friend how officious she was. Madame Derville arranged things so adroitly that evening in the garden, that she found herself placed between Madame de Renal and Julien. Madame de Renal, who had thought in her imagination how delicious it would be to press Julien's hand and carry it to her lips, was not able to address a single word to him. This hitch increased her agitation. She was devoured by one pang of remorse. She had so scolded Julien for his imprudence in coming to her room on the preceding night, that she trembled lest he should not come to-night. She left the garden early and went and ensconced herself in her room, but not being able to control her impatience, she went and glued her ear to Julien's door. In spite of the uncertainty and passion which devoured her, she did not dare to enter. This action seemed to her the greatest possible meanness, for it forms the basis of a provincial proverb. The servants had not yet all gone to bed. Prudence at last compelled her to return to her room. Two hours of waiting were two centuries of torture. Julien was too faithful to what he called his duty to fail to accomplish stage by stage what he had mapped out for himself. As one o'clock struck, he escaped softly from his room, assured himself that the master of the house was soundly asleep, and appeared in Madame de Renal's room. To-night he experienced more happiness by the side of his love, for he thought less constantly about the part he had to play. He had eyes to see, and ears to hear. What Madame de Renal said to him about his age contributed to give him some assurance. "Alas! I am ten years older than you. How can you love me?" she repeated vaguely, because the idea oppressed her. Julien could not realise her happiness, but he saw that it was genuine and he forgot almost entirely his own fear of being ridiculous. The foolish thought that he was regarded as an inferior, by reason of his obscure birth, disappeared also. As Julien's transports reassured his timid mistress, she regained a little of her happiness, and of her power to judge her lover. Happily, he had not, on this occasion, that artificial air which had made the assignation of the previous night a triumph rather than a pleasure. If she had realised his concentration on playing a part that melancholy discovery would have taken away all her happiness for ever. She could only have seen in it the result of the difference in their ages. Although Madame de Renal had never thought of the theories of love, difference in age is next to difference in fortune, one of the great commonplaces of provincial witticisms, whenever love is the topic of conversation. In a few days Julien surrendered himself with all the ardour of his age, and was desperately in love. "One must own," he said to himself, "that she has an angelic kindness of soul, and no one in the world is prettier." He had almost completely given up playing a part. In a moment of abandon, he even confessed to her all his nervousness. This confidence raised the passion which he was inspiring to its zenith. "And I have no lucky rival after all," said Madame de Renal to herself with delight. She ventured to question him on the portrait in which he used to be so interested. Julien swore to her that it was that of a man. When Madame de Renal had enough presence of mind left to reflect, she did not recover from her astonishment that so great a happiness could exist; and that she had never had anything of. "Oh," she said to herself, "if I had only known Julien ten years ago when I was still considered pretty." Julien was far from having thoughts like these. His love was still akin to ambition. It was the joy of possessing, poor, unfortunate and despised as he was, so beautiful a woman. His acts of devotion, and his ecstacies at the sight of his mistress's charms finished by reassuring her a little with regard to the difference of age. If she had possessed a little of that knowledge of life which the woman of thirty has enjoyed in the more civilised of countries for quite a long time, she would have trembled for the duration of a love, which only seemed to thrive on novelty and the intoxication of a young man's vanity. In those moments when he forgot his ambition, Julien admired ecstatically even the hats and even the dresses of Madame de Renal. He could not sate himself with the pleasure of smelling their perfume. He would open her mirrored cupboard, and remain hours on end admiring the beauty and the order of everything that he found there. His love leaned on him and looked at him. He was looking at those jewels and those dresses which had had been her wedding presents. "I might have married a man like that," thought Madame de Renal sometimes. "What a fiery soul! What a delightful life one would have with him?" As for Julien, he had never been so near to those terrible instruments of feminine artillery. "It is impossible," he said to himself "for there to be anything more beautiful in Paris." He could find no flaw in his happiness. The sincere admiration and ecstacies of his mistress would frequently make him forget that silly pose which had rendered him so stiff and almost ridiculous during the first moments of the intrigue. There were moments where, in spite of his habitual hypocrisy, he found an extreme delight in confessing to this great lady who admired him, his ignorance of a crowd of little usages. His mistress's rank seemed to lift him above himself. Madame de Renal, on her side, would find the sweetest thrill of intellectual voluptuousness in thus instructing in a number of little things this young man who was so full of genius, and who was looked upon by everyone as destined one day to go so far. Even the sub-prefect and M. Valenod could not help admiring him. She thought it made them less foolish. As for Madame Derville, she was very far from being in a position to express the same sentiments. Rendered desperate by what she thought she divined, and seeing that her good advice was becoming offensive to a woman who had literally lost her head, she left Vergy without giving the explanation, which her friend carefully refrained from asking. Madame de Renal shed a few tears for her, and soon found her happiness greater than ever. As a result of her departure, she found herself alone with her lover nearly the whole day. Julien abandoned himself all the more to the delightful society of his sweetheart, since, whenever he was alone, Fouque's fatal proposition still continued to agitate him. During the first days of his novel life there were moments when the man who had never loved, who had never been loved by anyone, would find so delicious a pleasure in being sincere, that he was on the point of confessing to Madame de Renal that ambition which up to then had been the very essence of his existence. He would have liked to have been able to consult her on the strange temptation which Fouque's offer held out to him, but a little episode rendered any frankness impossible. CHAPTER XVII THE FIRST DEPUTY Oh, how this spring of love resembleth The uncertain glory of an April day, Which now shows all the beauty of the sun, And by and by a cloud takes all away. _Two Gentlemen of Verona._ One evening when the sun was setting, and he was sitting near his love, at the bottom of the orchard, far from all intruders, he meditated deeply. "Will such sweet moments" he said to himself "last for ever?" His soul was engrossed in the difficulty of deciding on a calling. He lamented that great attack of unhappiness which comes at the end of childhood and spoils the first years of youth in those who are not rich. "Ah!" he exclaimed, "was not Napoleon the heaven-sent saviour for young Frenchmen? Who is to replace him? What will those unfortunate youths do without him, who, even though they are richer than I am, have only just the few crowns necessary to procure an education for themselves, but have not at the age of twenty enough money to buy a man and advance themselves in their career." "Whatever one does," he added, with a deep sigh, "this fatal memory will always prevent our being happy." He suddenly saw Madame de Renal frown. She assumed a cold and disdainful air. She thought his way of looking at things typical of a servant. Brought up as she was with the idea that she was very rich, she took it for granted that Julien was so also. She loved him a thousand times more than life and set no store by money. Julien was far from guessing these ideas, but that frown brought him back to earth. He had sufficient presence of mind to manipulate his phrases, and to give the noble lady who was sitting so near him on the grass seat to understand that the words he had just repeated had been heard by him during his journey to his friend the wood merchant. It was the logic of infidels. "Well, have nothing to do with those people," said Madame de Renal, still keeping a little of that icy air which had suddenly succeeded an expression of the warmest tenderness. This frown, or rather his remorse for his own imprudence, was the first check to the illusion which was transporting Julien. He said to himself, "She is good and sweet, she has a great fancy for me, but she has been brought up in the enemy's camp. They must be particularly afraid of that class of men of spirit who, after a good education, have not enough money to take up a career. What would become of those nobles if we had an opportunity of fighting them with equal arms. Suppose me, for example, mayor of Verrieres, and as well meaning and honest as M. de Renal is at bottom. What short shrift I should make of the vicaire, M. Valenod and all their jobberies! How justice would triumph in Verrieres. It is not their talents which would stop me. They are always fumbling about." That day Julien's happiness almost became permanent. Our hero lacked the power of daring to be sincere. He ought to have had the courage to have given battle, and on the spot; Madame de Renal had been astonished by Julien's phrase, because the men in her circle kept on repeating that the return of Robespierre was essentially possible by reason of those over-educated young persons of the lower classes. Madame de Renal's coldness lasted a longish time, and struck Julien as marked. The reason was that the fear that she had said something in some way or other disagreeable to him, succeeded her annoyance for his own breach of taste. This unhappiness was vividly reflected in those features which looked so pure and so naive when she was happy and away from intruders. Julien no longer dared to surrender himself to his dreams. Growing calmer and less infatuated, he considered that it was imprudent to go and see Madame de Renal in her room. It was better for her to come to him. If a servant noticed her going about the house, a dozen different excuses could explain it. But this arrangement had also its inconveniences. Julien had received from Fouque some books, which he, as a theology student would never have dared to ask for in a bookshop. He only dared to open them at night. He would often have found it much more convenient not to be interrupted by a visit, the very waiting for which had even on the evening before the little scene in the orchard completely destroyed his mood for reading. He had Madame de Renal to thank for understanding books in quite a new way. He had dared to question her on a number of little things, the ignorance of which cuts quite short the intellectual progress of any young man born out of society, however much natural genius one may choose to ascribe to him. This education given through sheer love by a woman who was extremely ignorant, was a piece of luck. Julien managed to get a clear insight into society such as it is to-day. His mind was not bewildered by the narration of what it had been once, two thousand years ago, or even sixty years ago, in the time of Voltaire and Louis XV. The scales fell from his eyes to his inexpressible joy, and he understood at last what was going on in Verrieres. In the first place there were the very complicated intrigues which had been woven for the last two years around the prefect of Besancon. They were backed up by letters from Paris, written by the cream of the aristocracy. The scheme was to make M. de Moirod (he was the most devout man in the district) the first and not the second deputy of the mayor of Verrieres. He had for a competitor a very rich manufacturer whom it was essential to push back into the place of second deputy. Julien understood at last the innuendoes which he had surprised, when the high society of the locality used to come and dine at M. de Renal's. This privileged society was deeply concerned with the choice of a first deputy, while the rest of the town, and above all, the Liberals, did not even suspect its possibility. The factor which made the matter important was that, as everybody knows, the east side of the main street of Verrieres has to be put more than nine feet back since that street has become a royal route. Now if M. de Moirod, who had three houses liable to have their frontage put back, succeeded in becoming first deputy and consequently mayor in the event of M. de Renal being elected to the chamber, he would shut his eyes, and it would be possible to make little imperceptible repairs in the houses projecting on to the public road, as the result of which they would last a hundred years. In spite of the great piety and proved integrity of M. de Moirod, everyone was certain that he would prove amenable, because he had a great many children. Among the houses liable to have their frontage put back nine belonged to the cream of Verrieres society. In Julien's eyes this intrigue was much more important than the history of the battle of Fontenoy, whose name he now came across for the first time in one of the books which Fouque had sent him. There had been many things which had astonished Julien since the time five years ago when he had started going to the cure's in the evening. But discretion and humility of spirit being the primary qualities of a theological student, it had always been impossible for him to put questions. One day Madame de Renal was giving an order to her husband's valet who was Julien's enemy. "But, Madame, to-day is the last Friday in the month," the man answered in a rather strange manner. "Go," said Madame de Renal. "Well," said Julien, "I suppose he's going to go to that corn shop which was once a church, and has recently been restored to religion, but what is he going to do there? That's one of the mysteries which I have never been able to fathom." "It's a very literary institution, but a very curious one," answered Madame de Renal. "Women are not admitted to it. All I know is, that everybody uses the second person singular. This servant, for instance, will go and meet M. Valenod there, and the haughty prig will not be a bit offended at hearing himself addressed by Saint-Jean in that familiar way, and will answer him in the same way. If you are keen on knowing what takes place, I will ask M. de Maugiron and M. Valenod for details. We pay twenty francs for each servant, to prevent their cutting our throats one fine day." Time flew. The memory of his mistress's charms distracted Julien from his black ambition. The necessity of refraining from mentioning gloomy or intellectual topics since they both belonged to opposing parties, added, without his suspecting it, to the happiness which he owed her, and to the dominion which she acquired over him. On the occasions when the presence of the precocious children reduced them to speaking the language of cold reason, Julien looking at her with eyes sparkling with love, would listen with complete docility to her explanations of the world as it is. Frequently, in the middle of an account of some cunning piece of jobbery, with reference to a road or a contract, Madame de Renal's mind would suddenly wander to the very point of delirium. Julien found it necessary to scold her. She indulged when with him in the same intimate gestures which she used with her own children. The fact was that there were days when she deceived herself that she loved him like her own child. Had she not repeatedly to answer his naive questions about a thousand simple things that a well-born child of fifteen knows quite well? An instant afterwards she would admire him like her master. His genius would even go so far as to frighten her. She thought she should see more clearly every day the future great man in this young abbe. She saw him Pope; she saw him first minister like Richelieu. "Shall I live long enough to see you in your glory?" she said to Julien. "There is room for a great man; church and state have need of one." CHAPTER XVIII A KING AT VERRIERES Do you not deserve to be thrown aside like a plebeian corpse which has no soul and whose blood flows no longer in its veins. _Sermon of the Bishop at the Chapel of Saint Clement_. On the 3rd of September at ten o'clock in the evening, a gendarme woke up the whole of Verrieres by galloping up the main street. He brought the news that His Majesty the King of ---- would arrive the following Sunday, and it was already Tuesday. The prefect authorised, that is to say, demanded the forming of a guard of honour. They were to exhibit all possible pomp. An express messenger was sent to Vergy. M. de Renal arrived during the night and found the town in a commotion. Each individual had his own pretensions; those who were less busy hired balconies to see the King. Who was to command the Guard of Honour? M. de Renal at once realised how essential it was in the interests of the houses liable to have their frontage put back that M. de Moirod should have the command. That might entitle him to the post of first deputy-mayor. There was nothing to say against the devoutness of M. de Moirod. It brooked no comparison, but he had never sat on a horse. He was a man of thirty-six, timid in every way, and equally frightened of falling and of looking ridiculous. The mayor had summoned him as early as five o'clock in the morning. "You see, monsieur, I ask your advice, as though you already occupy that post to which all the people on the right side want to carry you. In this unhappy town, manufacturers are prospering, the Liberal party is becoming possessed of millions, it aspires to power; it will manage to exploit everything to its own ends. Let us consult the interests of the king, the interest of the monarchy, and above all, the interest of our holy religion. Who do you think, monsieur, could be entrusted with the command of the guard of honour?" In spite of the terrible fear with which horses inspired him, M. de Moirod finished by accepting this honour like a martyr. "I shall know how to take the right tone," he said to the mayor. There was scarcely time enough to get ready the uniforms which had served seven years ago on the occasion of the passage of a prince of the blood. At seven o'clock, Madame de Renal arrived at Vergy with Julien and the children. She found her drawing room filled with Liberal ladies who preached the union of all parties and had come to beg her to urge her husband to grant a place to theirs in the guard of honour. One of them actually asserted that if her husband was not chosen he would go bankrupt out of chagrin. Madame de Renal quickly got rid of all these people. She seemed very engrossed. Julien was astonished, and what was more, angry that she should make a mystery of what was disturbing her, "I had anticipated it," he said bitterly to himself. "Her love is being over-shadowed by the happiness of receiving a King in her house. All this hubbub overcomes her. She will love me once more when the ideas of her caste no longer trouble her brain." An astonishing fact, he only loved her the more. The decorators began to fill the house. He watched a long time for the opportunity to exchange a few words. He eventually found her as she was coming out of his own room, carrying one of his suits. They were alone. He tried to speak to her. She ran away, refusing to listen to him. "I am an absolute fool to love a woman like that, whose ambition renders her as mad as her husband." She was madder. One of her great wishes which she had never confessed to Julien for fear of shocking him, was to see him leave off, if only for one day, his gloomy black suit. With an adroitness which was truly admirable in so ingenuous a woman, she secured first from M. de Moirod, and subsequently, from M. the sub-perfect de Maugiron, an assurance that Julien should be nominated a guard of honour in preference to five or six young people, the sons of very well-off manufacturers, of whom two at least, were models of piety. M. de Valenod, who reckoned on lending his carriage to the prettiest women in the town, and on showing off his fine Norman steeds, consented to let Julien (the being he hated most in the whole world) have one of his horses. But all the guards of honour, either possessed or had borrowed, one of those pretty sky-blue uniforms, with two silver colonel epaulettes, which had shone seven years ago. Madame de Renal wanted a new uniform, and she only had four days in which to send to Besancon and get from there the uniform, the arms, the hat, etc., everything necessary for a Guard of Honour. The most delightful part of it was that she thought it imprudent to get Julien's uniform made at Verrieres. She wanted to surprise both him and the town. Having settled the questions of the guards of honour, and of the public welcome finished, the mayor had now to organise a great religious ceremony. The King of ---- did not wish to pass through Verrieres without visiting the famous relic of St. Clement, which is kept at Bray-le-Haut barely a league from the town. The authorities wanted to have a numerous attendance of the clergy, but this matter was the most difficult to arrange. M. Maslon, the new cure, wanted to avoid at any price the presence of M. Chelan. It was in vain that M. de Renal tried to represent to him that it would be imprudent to do so. M. the Marquis de La Mole whose ancestors had been governors of the province for so many generations, had been chosen to accompany the King of ----. He had known the abbe Chelan for thirty years. He would certainly ask news of him when he arrived at Verrieres, and if he found him disgraced he was the very man to go and route him out in the little house to which he had retired, accompanied by all the escort that he had at his disposition. What a rebuff that would be? "I shall be disgraced both here and at Besancon," answered the abbe Maslon, "if he appears among my clergy. A Jansenist, by the Lord." "Whatever you can say, my dear abbe," replied M. de Renal, "I'll never expose the administration of Verrieres to receiving such an affront from M. de la Mole. You do not know him. He is orthodox enough at Court, but here in the provinces, he is a satirical wit and cynic, whose only object is to make people uncomfortable. He is capable of covering us with ridicule in the eyes of the Liberals, simply in order to amuse himself." It was only on the night between the Saturday and the Sunday, after three whole days of negotiations that the pride of the abbe Maslon bent before the fear of the mayor, which was now changing into courage. It was necessary to write a honeyed letter to the abbe Chelan, begging him to be present at the ceremony in connection with the relic of Bray-le-Haut, if of course, his great age and his infirmity allowed him to do so. M. Chelan asked for and obtained a letter of invitation for Julien, who was to accompany him as his sub-deacon. From the beginning of the Sunday morning, thousands of peasants began to arrive from the neighbouring mountains, and to inundate the streets of Verrieres. It was the finest sunshine. Finally, about three o'clock, a thrill swept through all this crowd. A great fire had been perceived on a rock two leagues from Verrieres. This signal announced that the king had just entered the territory of the department. At the same time, the sound of all the bells and the repeated volleys from an old Spanish cannon which belonged to the town, testified to its joy at this great event. Half the population climbed on to the roofs. All the women were on the balconies. The guard of honour started to march, The brilliant uniforms were universally admired; everybody recognised a relative or a friend. They made fun of the timidity of M. de Moirod, whose prudent hand was ready every single minute to catch hold of his saddle-bow. But one remark resulted in all the others being forgotten; the first cavalier in the ninth line was a very pretty, slim boy, who was not recognised at first. He soon created a general sensation, as some uttered a cry of indignation, and others were dumbfounded with astonishment. They recognised in this young man, who was sitting one of the Norman horses of M. Valenod, little Sorel, the carpenter's son. There was a unanimous out-cry against the mayor, above all on the part of the Liberals. What, because this little labourer, who masqueraded as an abbe, was tutor to his brats, he had the audacity to nominate him guard of honour to the prejudice of rich manufacturers like so-and-so and so-and-so! "Those gentlemen," said a banker's wife, "ought to put that insolent gutter-boy in his proper place." "He is cunning and carries a sabre," answered her neighbour. "He would be dastardly enough to slash them in the face." The conversation of aristocratic society was more dangerous. The ladies began to ask each other if the mayor alone was responsible for this grave impropriety. Speaking generally, they did justice to his contempt for lack of birth. Julien was the happiest of men, while he was the subject of so much conversation. Bold by nature, he sat a horse better than the majority of the young men of this mountain town. He saw that, in the eyes of the women, he was the topic of interest. His epaulettes were more brilliant than those of the others, because they were new. His horse pranced at every moment. He reached the zenith of joy. His happiness was unbounded when, as they passed by the old rampart, the noise of the little cannon made his horse prance outside the line. By a great piece of luck he did not fall; from that moment he felt himself a hero. He was one of Napoleon's officers of artillery, and was charging a battery. One person was happier than he. She had first seen him pass from one of the folding windows in the Hotel de Ville. Then taking her carriage and rapidly making a long detour, she arrived in time to shudder when his horse took him outside the line. Finally she put her carriage to the gallop, left by another gate of the town, succeeded in rejoining the route by which the King was to pass, and was able to follow the Guard of Honour at twenty paces distance in the midst of a noble dust. Six thousand peasants cried "Long live the King," when the mayor had the honour to harangue his Majesty. An hour afterwards, when all the speeches had been listened to, and the King was going to enter the town, the little cannon began again to discharge its spasmodic volleys. But an accident ensued, the victim being, not one of the cannoneers who had proved their mettle at Leipsic and at Montreuil, but the future deputy-mayor, M. de Moirod. His horse gently laid him in the one heap of mud on the high road, a somewhat scandalous circumstance, inasmuch as it was necessary to extricate him to allow the King to pass. His Majesty alighted at the fine new church, which was decked out to-day with all its crimson curtains. The King was due to dine, and then afterwards take his carriage again and go and pay his respects to the celebrated relic of Saint Clement. Scarcely was the King in the church than Julien galloped towards the house of M. de Renal. Once there he doffed with a sigh his fine sky-blue uniform, his sabre and his epaulettes, to put on again his shabby little black suit. He mounted his horse again, and in a few moments was at Bray-le-Haut, which was on the summit of a very pretty hill. "Enthusiasm is responsible for these numbers of peasants," thought Julien. It was impossible to move a step at Verrieres, and here there were more than ten thousand round this ancient abbey. Half ruined by the vandalism of the Revolution, it had been magnificently restored since the Restoration, and people were already beginning to talk of miracles. Julien rejoined the abbe Chelan, who scolded him roundly and gave him a cassock and a surplice. He dressed quickly and followed M. Chelan, who was going to pay a call on the young bishop of Agde. He was a nephew of M. de la Mole, who had been recently nominated, and had been charged with the duty of showing the relic to the King. But the bishop was not to be found. The clergy began to get impatient. It was awaiting its chief in the sombre Gothic cloister of the ancient abbey. Twenty-four cures had been brought together so as to represent the ancient chapter of Bray-le-Haut, which before 1789 consisted of twenty-four canons. The cures, having deplored the bishop's youth for three-quarters of an hour, thought it fitting for their senior to visit Monseigneur to apprise him that the King was on the point of arriving, and that it was time to betake himself to the choir. The great age of M. Chelan gave him the seniority. In spite of the bad temper which he was manifesting to Julien, he signed him to follow. Julien was wearing his surplice with distinction. By means of some trick or other of ecclesiastical dress, he had made his fine curling hair very flat, but by a forgetfulness, which redoubled the anger of M. Chelan, the spurs of the Guard of Honour could be seen below the long folds of his cassock. When they arrived at the bishop's apartment, the tall lackeys with their lace-frills scarcely deigned to answer the old cure to the effect that Monseigneur was not receiving. They made fun of him when he tried to explain that in his capacity of senior member of the chapter of Bray-le-Haut, he had the privilege of being admitted at any time to the officiating bishop. Julien's haughty temper was shocked by the lackeys' insolence. He started to traverse the corridors of the ancient abbey, and to shake all the doors which he found. A very small one yielded to his efforts, and he found himself in a cell in the midst of Monseigneur's valets, who were dressed in black suits with chains on their necks. His hurried manner made these gentlemen think that he had been sent by the bishop, and they let him pass. He went some steps further on, and found himself in an immense Gothic hall, which was extremely dark, and completely wainscotted in black oak. The ogive windows had all been walled in with brick except one. There was nothing to disguise the coarseness of this masonry, which offered a melancholy contrast to the ancient magnificence of the woodwork. The two great sides of this hall, so celebrated among Burgundian antiquaries, and built by the Duke, Charles the Bold, about 1470 in expiation of some sin, were adorned with richly sculptured wooden stalls. All the mysteries of the Apocalypse were to be seen portrayed in wood of different colours. This melancholy magnificence, debased as it was by the sight of the bare bricks and the plaster (which was still quite white) affected Julien. He stopped in silence. He saw at the other extremity of the hall, near the one window which let in the daylight, a movable mahogany mirror. A young man in a violet robe and a lace surplice, but with his head bare, was standing still three paces from the glass. This piece of furniture seemed strange in a place like this, and had doubtless been only brought there on the previous day. Julien thought that the young man had the appearance of being irritated. He was solemnly giving benedictions with his right hand close to the mirror. "What can this mean," he thought. "Is this young priest performing some preliminary ceremony? Perhaps he is the bishop's secretary. He will be as insolent as the lackeys. Never mind though! Let us try." He advanced and traversed somewhat slowly the length of the hall, with his gaze fixed all the time on the one window, and looking at the young man who continued without any intermission bestowing slowly an infinite number of blessings. The nearer he approached the better he could distinguish his angry manner. The richness of the lace surplice stopped Julien in spite of himself some paces in front of the mirror. "It is my duty to speak," he said to himself at last. But the beauty of the hall had moved him, and he was already upset by the harsh words he anticipated. The young man saw him in the mirror, turned round, and suddenly discarding his angry manner, said to him in the gentlest tone, "Well, Monsieur, has it been arranged at last?" Julien was dumbfounded. As the young man began to turn towards him, Julien saw the pectoral cross on his breast. It was the bishop of Agde. "As young as that," thought Julien. "At most six or eight years older than I am!" He was ashamed of his spurs. "Monseigneur," he said at last, "I am sent by M. Chelan, the senior of the chapter." "Ah, he has been well recommended to me," said the bishop in a polished tone which doubled Julien's delight, "But I beg your pardon, Monsieur, I mistook you for the person who was to bring me my mitre. It was badly packed at Paris. The silver cloth towards the top has been terribly spoiled. It will look awful," ended the young bishop sadly, "And besides, I am being kept waiting." "Monseigneur, I will go and fetch the mitre if your grace will let me." Julien's fine eyes did their work. "Go, Monsieur," answered the bishop, with charming politeness. "I need it immediately. I am grieved to keep the gentlemen of the chapter waiting." When Julien reached the centre of the hall, he turned round towards the bishop, and saw that he had again commenced giving benedictions. "What can it be?" Julien asked himself. "No doubt it is a necessary ecclesiastical preliminary for the ceremony which is to take place." When he reached the cell in which the valets were congregated, he saw the mitre in their hands. These gentlemen succumbed in spite of themselves to his imperious look, and gave him Monseigneur's mitre. He felt proud to carry it. As he crossed the hall he walked slowly. He held it with reverence. He found the bishop seated before the glass, but from time to time, his right hand, although fatigued, still gave a blessing. Julien helped him to adjust his mitre. The bishop shook his head. "Ah! it will keep on," he said to Julien with an air of satisfaction. "Do you mind going a little way off?" Then the bishop went very quickly to the centre of the room, then approached the mirror, again resumed his angry manner, and gravely began to give blessings. Julien was motionless with astonishment. He was tempted to understand, but did not dare. The bishop stopped, and suddenly abandoning his grave manner looked at him and said: "What do you think of my mitre, monsieur, is it on right?" "Quite right, Monseigneur." "It is not too far back? That would look a little silly, but I mustn't on the other hand wear it down over the eyes like an officer's shako." "It seems to me to be on quite right." "The King of ---- is accustomed to a venerable clergy who are doubtless very solemn. I should not like to appear lacking in dignity, especially by reason of my youth." And the bishop started again to walk about and give benedictions. "It is quite clear," said Julien, daring to understand at last, "He is practising giving his benediction." "I am ready," the bishop said after a few moments. "Go, Monsieur, and advise the senior and the gentlemen of the chapter." Soon M. Chelan, followed by the two oldest cures, entered by a big magnificently sculptured door, which Julien had not previously noticed. But this time he remained in his place quite at the back, and was only able to see the bishop over the shoulders of ecclesiastics who were pressing at the door in crowds. The bishop began slowly to traverse the hall. When he reached the threshold, the cures formed themselves into a procession. After a short moment of confusion, the procession began to march intoning the psalm. The bishop, who was between M. Chelan and a very old cure, was the last to advance. Julien being in attendance on the abbe Chelan managed to get quite near Monseigneur. They followed the long corridors of the abbey of Bray-le-Haut. In spite of the brilliant sun they were dark and damp. They arrived finally at the portico of the cloister. Julien was dumbfounded with admiration for so fine a ceremony. His emotions were divided between thoughts of his own ambition which had been reawakened by the bishop's youth and thoughts of the latter's refinement and exquisite politeness. This politeness was quite different to that of M. de Renal, even on his good days. "The higher you lift yourself towards the first rank of society," said Julien to himself, "the more charming manners you find." They entered the church by a side door; suddenly an awful noise made the ancient walls echo. Julien thought they were going to crumble. It was the little piece of artillery again. It had been drawn at a gallop by eight horses and had just arrived. Immediately on its arrival it had been run out by the Leipsic cannoneers and fired five shots a minute as though the Prussians had been the target. But this admirable noise no longer produced any effect on Julien. He no longer thought of Napoleon and military glory. "To be bishop of Agde so young," he thought. "But where is Agde? How much does it bring in? Two or three hundred thousand francs, perhaps." Monseigneur's lackeys appeared with a magnificent canopy. M. Chelan took one of the poles, but as a matter of fact it was Julien who carried it. The bishop took his place underneath. He had really succeeded in looking old; and our hero's admiration was now quite unbounded. "What can't one accomplish with skill," he thought. The king entered. Julien had the good fortune to see him at close quarters. The bishop began to harangue him with unction, without forgetting a little nuance of very polite anxiety for his Majesty. We will not repeat a description of the ceremony of Bray-le-Haut. They filled all the columns of the journals of the department for a fortnight on end. Julien learnt from the bishop that the king was descended from Charles the Bold. At a later date, it was one of Julien's duties to check the accounts of the cost of this ceremony. M. de la Mole, who had succeeded in procuring a bishopric for his nephew, had wished to do him the favour of being himself responsible for all the expenses. The ceremony alone of Bray-le-Haute cost three thousand eight hundred francs. After the speech of the bishop, and the answer of the king, his Majesty took up a position underneath the canopy, and then knelt very devoutly on a cushion near the altar. The choir was surrounded by stalls, and the stalls were raised two steps from the pavement. It was at the bottom of these steps that Julien sat at the feet of M. de Chelan almost like a train-bearer sitting next to his cardinal in the Sixtine chapel at Rome. There was a _Te Deum_, floods of incense, innumerable volleys of musketry and artillery; the peasants were drunk with happiness and piety. A day like this undoes the work of a hundred numbers of the Jacobin papers. Julien was six paces from the king, who was really praying with devotion. He noticed for the first time a little man with a witty expression, who wore an almost plain suit. But he had a sky-blue ribbon over this very simple suit. He was nearer the king than many other lords, whose clothes were embroidered with gold to such an extent that, to use Julien's expression, it was impossible to see the cloth. He learnt some minutes later that it was Monsieur de la Mole. He thought he looked haughty, and even insolent. "I'm sure this marquis is not so polite as my pretty bishop," he thought. "Ah, the ecclesiastical calling makes men mild and good. But the king has come to venerate the relic, and I don't see a trace of the relic. Where has Saint Clement got to?" A little priest who sat next to him informed him that the venerable relic was at the top of the building in a _chapelle ardente_. "What is a _chapelle ardente_," said Julien to himself. But he was reluctant to ask the meaning of this word. He redoubled his attention. The etiquette on the occasion of a visit of a sovereign prince is that the canons do not accompany the bishop. But, as he started on his march to the _chapelle ardente_, my lord bishop of Agde called the abbe Chelan. Julien dared to follow him. Having climbed up a long staircase, they reached an extremely small door whose Gothic frame was magnificently gilded. This work looked as though it had been constructed the day before. Twenty-four young girls belonging to the most distinguished families in Verrieres were assembled in front of the door. The bishop knelt down in the midst of these pretty maidens before he opened the door. While he was praying aloud, they seemed unable to exhaust their admiration for his fine lace, his gracious mien, and his young and gentle face. This spectacle deprived our hero of his last remnants of reason. At this moment he would have fought for the Inquisition, and with a good conscience. The door suddenly opened. The little chapel was blazing with light. More than a thousand candles could be seen before the altar, divided into eight lines and separated from each other by bouquets of flowers. The suave odour of the purest incense eddied out from the door of the sanctuary. The chapel, which had been newly gilded, was extremely small but very high. Julien noticed that there were candles more than fifteen feet high upon the altar. The young girls could not restrain a cry of admiration. Only the twenty-four young girls, the two cures and Julien had been admitted into the little vestibule of the chapel. Soon the king arrived, followed by Monsieur de la Mole and his great Chamberlain. The guards themselves remained outside kneeling and presenting arms. His Majesty precipitated, rather than threw himself, on to the stool. It was only then that Julien, who was keeping close to the gilded door, perceived over the bare arm of a young girl, the charming statue of St. Clement. It was hidden under the altar, and bore the dress of a young Roman soldier. It had a large wound on its neck, from which the blood seemed to flow. The artist had surpassed himself. The eyes, which though dying were full of grace, were half closed. A budding moustache adored that charming mouth which, though half closed, seemed notwithstanding to be praying. The young girl next to Julien wept warm tears at the sight. One of her tears fell on Julien's hand. After a moment of prayer in the profoundest silence, that was only broken by the distant sound of the bells of all the villages within a radius of ten leagues, the bishop of Agde asked the king's permission to speak. He finished a short but very touching speech with a passage, the very simplicity of which assured its effectiveness: "Never forget, young Christian women, that you have seen one of the greatest kings of the world on his knees before the servants of this Almighty and terrible God. These servants, feeble, persecuted, assassinated as they were on earth, as you can see by the still bleeding wounds of Saint Clement, will triumph in Heaven. You will remember them, my young Christian women, will you not, this day for ever, and will detest the infidel. You will be for ever faithful to this God who is so great, so terrible, but so good?" With these words the bishop rose authoritatively. "You promise me?" he said, lifting up his arm with an inspired air. "We promise," said the young girls melting into tears. "I accept your promise in the name of the terrible God," added the bishop in a thunderous voice, and the ceremony was at an end. The king himself was crying. It was only a long time afterwards that Julien had sufficient self-possession to enquire "where were the bones of the Saint that had been sent from Rome to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy?" He was told that they were hidden in the charming waxen figure. His Majesty deigned to allow the young ladies who had accompanied him into the chapel to wear a red ribbon on which were embroidered these words, "HATE OF THE INFIDEL. PERPETUAL ADORATION." Monsieur de la Mole had ten thousand bottles of wine distributed among the peasants. In the evening at Verrieres, the Liberals made a point of having illuminations which were a hundred times better than those of the Royalists. Before leaving, the king paid a visit to M. de Moirod.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210301223854/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/redblack/section3/

Julien obtains a leave of absence and visits his friend Fouque, who lives in the mountains surrounding Verrieres. Fouque offers Julien a job in the lumber trade, which promises to be quite lucrative in the coming years, but Julien refuses him. Fouque's tempting proposition gives Julien a renewed energy and vigor to climb the social ladder just like his hero Napoleon. When he returns to Verrieres, Julien realizes that Mme. de Renal's constant blushing and new wardrobe mean that she is in love with him. He decides to take their flirtation to its logical conclusion, feeling that it is his duty to become her lover. Like a Napoleonic soldier, he draws up a battle plan, thinking of Mme. de Renal more as an enemy than a lover. One night he sneaks into her bedroom and convinces Mme. de Renal to let him stay the night. Julien's love is still only a form of ambition. Mme. de Renal becomes his mistress and thus makes him feel like he belongs to a higher social class. But Julien soon reminds himself that, although she loves him, Mme. de Renal is, militaristically speaking, part of the enemy camp. He overhears M. de Renal and other Conservatives selecting a new town deputy without any liberal's knowledge and realizes that he cannot trust anyone. Julien's wavering between wanting success in the Church and success in the army climaxes with the visit of a king at Verrieres. Mme. de Renal secures Julien a position in the honor guard that welcomes the king. However, Julien must quickly change out of his military uniform and into his priestly attire in order to assist M. Chelan with the king's services at the church. Although dressing up like a soldier is a dream come true for Julien, he is also inspired by the Bishop of Agde. The bishop's youth convinces Julien that his path to power lies with the Church.

Commentary Fouque's proposal is a defining moment in Julien's life. Fouque offers Julien certain prosperity but little societal glory. Julien is convinced that he can achieve both financial success and political glory at a young age just as Napoleon did. Julien's rejection of Fouque's offer is also a rejection of the bourgeoisie: he believes that true success in French society cannot be bought, it must be won. Julien is immediately confronted with this alternative road to success when he realizes that Mme. de Renal is in love with him. With so few ways to achieve glory under the Restoration, Julien sees his military-like seduction of Mme. de Renal as the only thing left for a soldier to do. Stendhal describes Julien's behavior with bitter irony in this section. Julien really has no idea what he is doing: when Mme. de Renal asks him if he has a nickname, Julien is unable to respond because that question had not been anticipated in his battle plan. Although Julien is a romantic hero, Stendhal's seventeenth-century influences lead him to also describe Julien as "stupid" and "awkward." But Julien does succeed in becoming Mme. de Renal's lover, and forgets that it was his tears and not his bravery that compelled Mme. de Renal to let him spend the night with her. Julien's "victory" makes him think that power can still be attained in French society by following Napoleon's example. Stendhal's reference to the scheming of M. de Renal and other aristocrats proves that Julien is right to think of the Renals as his enemy. However, the king's visit makes Julien reconsider his need to fight battles in order to conquer French society. Wearing the military uniform of an honor guard brings him closer to the glory of Napoleon, but as the day continues he realizes that the Church has become a more powerful institution than the army. This section best illustrates the tension in the title of the novel. Julien must choose between the red uniforms of the army and the black dress of the Church. His indecision is shown at the Verrieres church, where his priestly cassock barely covers the army boots he did not have time to change. Yet, when Julien meets the Bishop of Agde, he decides that the Church is where he can become most powerful. The bishop is only eight years older than Julien, and thus about the same age as Napoleon when he became a famous general. Julien understands that the young Napoleons of his day seek power and glory in the Church. Mme. de Renal realizes this as well, hoping that Julien will become a powerful Church figure with strong ties to the monarchy.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/35.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_5_part_1.txt

Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter xxxv

chapter xxxv

{"name": "Chapter XXXV", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase5-chapter35-44", "summary": "Angel is devastated by Tess's confession of her seduction and the subsequent birth of her son. Indeed, he breaks into \"horrible laughter--as unnatural and ghastly as a laugh in hell\". He leaves the mansion in the middle of the night, with Tess following on his heels. After offering to kill herself, Tess returns distraught to the house to sleep alone in her bridal bed: Angel follows later and sleeps on the downstairs sofa", "analysis": ""}

Her narrative ended; even its re-assertions and secondary explanations were done. Tess's voice throughout had hardly risen higher than its opening tone; there had been no exculpatory phrase of any kind, and she had not wept. But the complexion even of external things seemed to suffer transmutation as her announcement progressed. The fire in the grate looked impish--demoniacally funny, as if it did not care in the least about her strait. The fender grinned idly, as if it too did not care. The light from the water-bottle was merely engaged in a chromatic problem. All material objects around announced their irresponsibility with terrible iteration. And yet nothing had changed since the moments when he had been kissing her; or rather, nothing in the substance of things. But the essence of things had changed. When she ceased, the auricular impressions from their previous endearments seemed to hustle away into the corner of their brains, repeating themselves as echoes from a time of supremely purblind foolishness. Clare performed the irrelevant act of stirring the fire; the intelligence had not even yet got to the bottom of him. After stirring the embers he rose to his feet; all the force of her disclosure had imparted itself now. His face had withered. In the strenuousness of his concentration he treadled fitfully on the floor. He could not, by any contrivance, think closely enough; that was the meaning of his vague movement. When he spoke it was in the most inadequate, commonplace voice of the many varied tones she had heard from him. "Tess!" "Yes, dearest." "Am I to believe this? From your manner I am to take it as true. O you cannot be out of your mind! You ought to be! Yet you are not... My wife, my Tess--nothing in you warrants such a supposition as that?" "I am not out of my mind," she said. "And yet--" He looked vacantly at her, to resume with dazed senses: "Why didn't you tell me before? Ah, yes, you would have told me, in a way--but I hindered you, I remember!" These and other of his words were nothing but the perfunctory babble of the surface while the depths remained paralyzed. He turned away, and bent over a chair. Tess followed him to the middle of the room, where he was, and stood there staring at him with eyes that did not weep. Presently she slid down upon her knees beside his foot, and from this position she crouched in a heap. "In the name of our love, forgive me!" she whispered with a dry mouth. "I have forgiven you for the same!" And, as he did not answer, she said again-- "Forgive me as you are forgiven! _I_ forgive YOU, Angel." "You--yes, you do." "But you do not forgive me?" "O Tess, forgiveness does not apply to the case! You were one person; now you are another. My God--how can forgiveness meet such a grotesque--prestidigitation as that!" He paused, contemplating this definition; then suddenly broke into horrible laughter--as unnatural and ghastly as a laugh in hell. "Don't--don't! It kills me quite, that!" she shrieked. "O have mercy upon me--have mercy!" He did not answer; and, sickly white, she jumped up. "Angel, Angel! what do you mean by that laugh?" she cried out. "Do you know what this is to me?" He shook his head. "I have been hoping, longing, praying, to make you happy! I have thought what joy it will be to do it, what an unworthy wife I shall be if I do not! That's what I have felt, Angel!" "I know that." "I thought, Angel, that you loved me--me, my very self! If it is I you do love, O how can it be that you look and speak so? It frightens me! Having begun to love you, I love you for ever--in all changes, in all disgraces, because you are yourself. I ask no more. Then how can you, O my own husband, stop loving me?" "I repeat, the woman I have been loving is not you." "But who?" "Another woman in your shape." She perceived in his words the realization of her own apprehensive foreboding in former times. He looked upon her as a species of imposter; a guilty woman in the guise of an innocent one. Terror was upon her white face as she saw it; her cheek was flaccid, and her mouth had almost the aspect of a round little hole. The horrible sense of his view of her so deadened her that she staggered, and he stepped forward, thinking she was going to fall. "Sit down, sit down," he said gently. "You are ill; and it is natural that you should be." She did sit down, without knowing where she was, that strained look still upon her face, and her eyes such as to make his flesh creep. "I don't belong to you any more, then; do I, Angel?" she asked helplessly. "It is not me, but another woman like me that he loved, he says." The image raised caused her to take pity upon herself as one who was ill-used. Her eyes filled as she regarded her position further; she turned round and burst into a flood of self-sympathetic tears. Clare was relieved at this change, for the effect on her of what had happened was beginning to be a trouble to him only less than the woe of the disclosure itself. He waited patiently, apathetically, till the violence of her grief had worn itself out, and her rush of weeping had lessened to a catching gasp at intervals. "Angel," she said suddenly, in her natural tones, the insane, dry voice of terror having left her now. "Angel, am I too wicked for you and me to live together?" "I have not been able to think what we can do." "I shan't ask you to let me live with you, Angel, because I have no right to! I shall not write to mother and sisters to say we be married, as I said I would do; and I shan't finish the good-hussif' I cut out and meant to make while we were in lodgings." "Shan't you?" "No, I shan't do anything, unless you order me to; and if you go away from me I shall not follow 'ee; and if you never speak to me any more I shall not ask why, unless you tell me I may." "And if I order you to do anything?" "I will obey you like your wretched slave, even if it is to lie down and die." "You are very good. But it strikes me that there is a want of harmony between your present mood of self-sacrifice and your past mood of self-preservation." These were the first words of antagonism. To fling elaborate sarcasms at Tess, however, was much like flinging them at a dog or cat. The charms of their subtlety passed by her unappreciated, and she only received them as inimical sounds which meant that anger ruled. She remained mute, not knowing that he was smothering his affection for her. She hardly observed that a tear descended slowly upon his cheek, a tear so large that it magnified the pores of the skin over which it rolled, like the object lens of a microscope. Meanwhile reillumination as to the terrible and total change that her confession had wrought in his life, in his universe, returned to him, and he tried desperately to advance among the new conditions in which he stood. Some consequent action was necessary; yet what? "Tess," he said, as gently as he could speak, "I cannot stay--in this room--just now. I will walk out a little way." He quietly left the room, and the two glasses of wine that he had poured out for their supper--one for her, one for him--remained on the table untasted. This was what their _agape_ had come to. At tea, two or three hours earlier, they had, in the freakishness of affection, drunk from one cup. The closing of the door behind him, gently as it had been pulled to, roused Tess from her stupor. He was gone; she could not stay. Hastily flinging her cloak around her she opened the door and followed, putting out the candles as if she were never coming back. The rain was over and the night was now clear. She was soon close at his heels, for Clare walked slowly and without purpose. His form beside her light gray figure looked black, sinister, and forbidding, and she felt as sarcasm the touch of the jewels of which she had been momentarily so proud. Clare turned at hearing her footsteps, but his recognition of her presence seemed to make no difference to him, and he went on over the five yawning arches of the great bridge in front of the house. The cow and horse tracks in the road were full of water, the rain having been enough to charge them, but not enough to wash them away. Across these minute pools the reflected stars flitted in a quick transit as she passed; she would not have known they were shining overhead if she had not seen them there--the vastest things of the universe imaged in objects so mean. The place to which they had travelled to-day was in the same valley as Talbothays, but some miles lower down the river; and the surroundings being open, she kept easily in sight of him. Away from the house the road wound through the meads, and along these she followed Clare without any attempt to come up with him or to attract him, but with dumb and vacant fidelity. At last, however, her listless walk brought her up alongside him, and still he said nothing. The cruelty of fooled honesty is often great after enlightenment, and it was mighty in Clare now. The outdoor air had apparently taken away from him all tendency to act on impulse; she knew that he saw her without irradiation--in all her bareness; that Time was chanting his satiric psalm at her then-- Behold, when thy face is made bare, he that loved thee shall hate; Thy face shall be no more fair at the fall of thy fate. For thy life shall fall as a leaf and be shed as the rain; And the veil of thine head shall be grief, and the crown shall be pain. He was still intently thinking, and her companionship had now insufficient power to break or divert the strain of thought. What a weak thing her presence must have become to him! She could not help addressing Clare. "What have I done--what HAVE I done! I have not told of anything that interferes with or belies my love for you. You don't think I planned it, do you? It is in your own mind what you are angry at, Angel; it is not in me. O, it is not in me, and I am not that deceitful woman you think me!" "H'm--well. Not deceitful, my wife; but not the same. No, not the same. But do not make me reproach you. I have sworn that I will not; and I will do everything to avoid it." But she went on pleading in her distraction; and perhaps said things that would have been better left to silence. "Angel!--Angel! I was a child--a child when it happened! I knew nothing of men." "You were more sinned against than sinning, that I admit." "Then will you not forgive me?" "I do forgive you, but forgiveness is not all." "And love me?" To this question he did not answer. "O Angel--my mother says that it sometimes happens so!--she knows several cases where they were worse than I, and the husband has not minded it much--has got over it at least. And yet the woman had not loved him as I do you!" "Don't, Tess; don't argue. Different societies, different manners. You almost make me say you are an unapprehending peasant woman, who have never been initiated into the proportions of social things. You don't know what you say." "I am only a peasant by position, not by nature!" She spoke with an impulse to anger, but it went as it came. "So much the worse for you. I think that parson who unearthed your pedigree would have done better if he had held his tongue. I cannot help associating your decline as a family with this other fact--of your want of firmness. Decrepit families imply decrepit wills, decrepit conduct. Heaven, why did you give me a handle for despising you more by informing me of your descent! Here was I thinking you a new-sprung child of nature; there were you, the belated seedling of an effete aristocracy!" "Lots of families are as bad as mine in that! Retty's family were once large landowners, and so were Dairyman Billett's. And the Debbyhouses, who now are carters, were once the De Bayeux family. You find such as I everywhere; 'tis a feature of our county, and I can't help it." "So much the worse for the county." She took these reproaches in their bulk simply, not in their particulars; he did not love her as he had loved her hitherto, and to all else she was indifferent. They wandered on again in silence. It was said afterwards that a cottager of Wellbridge, who went out late that night for a doctor, met two lovers in the pastures, walking very slowly, without converse, one behind the other, as in a funeral procession, and the glimpse that he obtained of their faces seemed to denote that they were anxious and sad. Returning later, he passed them again in the same field, progressing just as slowly, and as regardless of the hour and of the cheerless night as before. It was only on account of his preoccupation with his own affairs, and the illness in his house, that he did not bear in mind the curious incident, which, however, he recalled a long while after. During the interval of the cottager's going and coming, she had said to her husband-- "I don't see how I can help being the cause of much misery to you all your life. The river is down there. I can put an end to myself in it. I am not afraid." "I don't wish to add murder to my other follies," he said. "I will leave something to show that I did it myself--on account of my shame. They will not blame you then." "Don't speak so absurdly--I wish not to hear it. It is nonsense to have such thoughts in this kind of case, which is rather one for satirical laughter than for tragedy. You don't in the least understand the quality of the mishap. It would be viewed in the light of a joke by nine-tenths of the world if it were known. Please oblige me by returning to the house, and going to bed." "I will," said she dutifully. They had rambled round by a road which led to the well-known ruins of the Cistercian abbey behind the mill, the latter having, in centuries past, been attached to the monastic establishment. The mill still worked on, food being a perennial necessity; the abbey had perished, creeds being transient. One continually sees the ministration of the temporary outlasting the ministration of the eternal. Their walk having been circuitous, they were still not far from the house, and in obeying his direction she only had to reach the large stone bridge across the main river and follow the road for a few yards. When she got back, everything remained as she had left it, the fire being still burning. She did not stay downstairs for more than a minute, but proceeded to her chamber, whither the luggage had been taken. Here she sat down on the edge of the bed, looking blankly around, and presently began to undress. In removing the light towards the bedstead its rays fell upon the tester of white dimity; something was hanging beneath it, and she lifted the candle to see what it was. A bough of mistletoe. Angel had put it there; she knew that in an instant. This was the explanation of that mysterious parcel which it had been so difficult to pack and bring; whose contents he would not explain to her, saying that time would soon show her the purpose thereof. In his zest and his gaiety he had hung it there. How foolish and inopportune that mistletoe looked now. Having nothing more to fear, having scarce anything to hope, for that he would relent there seemed no promise whatever, she lay down dully. When sorrow ceases to be speculative, sleep sees her opportunity. Among so many happier moods which forbid repose this was a mood which welcomed it, and in a few minutes the lonely Tess forgot existence, surrounded by the aromatic stillness of the chamber that had once, possibly, been the bride-chamber of her own ancestry. Later on that night Clare also retraced his steps to the house. Entering softly to the sitting-room he obtained a light, and with the manner of one who had considered his course he spread his rugs upon the old horse-hair sofa which stood there, and roughly shaped it to a sleeping-couch. Before lying down he crept shoeless upstairs, and listened at the door of her apartment. Her measured breathing told that she was sleeping profoundly. "Thank God!" murmured Clare; and yet he was conscious of a pang of bitterness at the thought--approximately true, though not wholly so--that having shifted the burden of her life to his shoulders, she was now reposing without care. He turned away to descend; then, irresolute, faced round to her door again. In the act he caught sight of one of the d'Urberville dames, whose portrait was immediately over the entrance to Tess's bedchamber. In the candlelight the painting was more than unpleasant. Sinister design lurked in the woman's features, a concentrated purpose of revenge on the other sex--so it seemed to him then. The Caroline bodice of the portrait was low--precisely as Tess's had been when he tucked it in to show the necklace; and again he experienced the distressing sensation of a resemblance between them. The check was sufficient. He resumed his retreat and descended. His air remained calm and cold, his small compressed mouth indexing his powers of self-control; his face wearing still that terrible sterile expression which had spread thereon since her disclosure. It was the face of a man who was no longer passion's slave, yet who found no advantage in his enfranchisement. He was simply regarding the harrowing contingencies of human experience, the unexpectedness of things. Nothing so pure, so sweet, so virginal as Tess had seemed possible all the long while that he had adored her, up to an hour ago; but The little less, and what worlds away! He argued erroneously when he said to himself that her heart was not indexed in the honest freshness of her face; but Tess had no advocate to set him right. Could it be possible, he continued, that eyes which as they gazed never expressed any divergence from what the tongue was telling, were yet ever seeing another world behind her ostensible one, discordant and contrasting? He reclined on his couch in the sitting-room, and extinguished the light. The night came in, and took up its place there, unconcerned and indifferent; the night which had already swallowed up his happiness, and was now digesting it listlessly; and was ready to swallow up the happiness of a thousand other people with as little disturbance or change of mien.

Chapter XXXV

https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase5-chapter35-44

Angel is devastated by Tess's confession of her seduction and the subsequent birth of her son. Indeed, he breaks into "horrible laughter--as unnatural and ghastly as a laugh in hell". He leaves the mansion in the middle of the night, with Tess following on his heels. After offering to kill herself, Tess returns distraught to the house to sleep alone in her bridal bed: Angel follows later and sleeps on the downstairs sofa

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/06.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_1_part_6.txt

Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter vi

chapter vi

{"name": "Chapter VI", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase1-chapter1-11", "summary": "When Tess returns home the following day a letter from Mrs. d'Urberville offering her a job tending fowl awaits her. Despite her mother's ecstatic eagerness, Tess is displeased and looks instead for local jobs to earn money to replace the family's horse. Alec d'Urberville stops by and prompts her mother for an answer about the job. Her efforts to find alternative work prove fruitless and so Tess accepts d'Urberville's offer. She remarks that Mrs. d'Urberville's handwriting looks masculine", "analysis": ""}

Tess went down the hill to Trantridge Cross, and inattentively waited to take her seat in the van returning from Chaseborough to Shaston. She did not know what the other occupants said to her as she entered, though she answered them; and when they had started anew she rode along with an inward and not an outward eye. One among her fellow-travellers addressed her more pointedly than any had spoken before: "Why, you be quite a posy! And such roses in early June!" Then she became aware of the spectacle she presented to their surprised vision: roses at her breasts; roses in her hat; roses and strawberries in her basket to the brim. She blushed, and said confusedly that the flowers had been given to her. When the passengers were not looking she stealthily removed the more prominent blooms from her hat and placed them in the basket, where she covered them with her handkerchief. Then she fell to reflecting again, and in looking downwards a thorn of the rose remaining in her breast accidentally pricked her chin. Like all the cottagers in Blackmoor Vale, Tess was steeped in fancies and prefigurative superstitions; she thought this an ill omen--the first she had noticed that day. The van travelled only so far as Shaston, and there were several miles of pedestrian descent from that mountain-town into the vale to Marlott. Her mother had advised her to stay here for the night, at the house of a cottage-woman they knew, if she should feel too tired to come on; and this Tess did, not descending to her home till the following afternoon. When she entered the house she perceived in a moment from her mother's triumphant manner that something had occurred in the interim. "Oh yes; I know all about it! I told 'ee it would be all right, and now 'tis proved!" "Since I've been away? What has?" said Tess rather wearily. Her mother surveyed the girl up and down with arch approval, and went on banteringly: "So you've brought 'em round!" "How do you know, mother?" "I've had a letter." Tess then remembered that there would have been time for this. "They say--Mrs d'Urberville says--that she wants you to look after a little fowl-farm which is her hobby. But this is only her artful way of getting 'ee there without raising your hopes. She's going to own 'ee as kin--that's the meaning o't." "But I didn't see her." "You zid somebody, I suppose?" "I saw her son." "And did he own 'ee?" "Well--he called me Coz." "An' I knew it! Jacky--he called her Coz!" cried Joan to her husband. "Well, he spoke to his mother, of course, and she do want 'ee there." "But I don't know that I am apt at tending fowls," said the dubious Tess. "Then I don't know who is apt. You've be'n born in the business, and brought up in it. They that be born in a business always know more about it than any 'prentice. Besides, that's only just a show of something for you to do, that you midn't feel beholden." "I don't altogether think I ought to go," said Tess thoughtfully. "Who wrote the letter? Will you let me look at it?" "Mrs d'Urberville wrote it. Here it is." The letter was in the third person, and briefly informed Mrs Durbeyfield that her daughter's services would be useful to that lady in the management of her poultry-farm, that a comfortable room would be provided for her if she could come, and that the wages would be on a liberal scale if they liked her. "Oh--that's all!" said Tess. "You couldn't expect her to throw her arms round 'ee, an' to kiss and to coll 'ee all at once." Tess looked out of the window. "I would rather stay here with father and you," she said. "But why?" "I'd rather not tell you why, mother; indeed, I don't quite know why." A week afterwards she came in one evening from an unavailing search for some light occupation in the immediate neighbourhood. Her idea had been to get together sufficient money during the summer to purchase another horse. Hardly had she crossed the threshold before one of the children danced across the room, saying, "The gentleman's been here!" Her mother hastened to explain, smiles breaking from every inch of her person. Mrs d'Urberville's son had called on horseback, having been riding by chance in the direction of Marlott. He had wished to know, finally, in the name of his mother, if Tess could really come to manage the old lady's fowl-farm or not; the lad who had hitherto superintended the birds having proved untrustworthy. "Mr d'Urberville says you must be a good girl if you are at all as you appear; he knows you must be worth your weight in gold. He is very much interested in 'ee--truth to tell." Tess seemed for the moment really pleased to hear that she had won such high opinion from a stranger when, in her own esteem, she had sunk so low. "It is very good of him to think that," she murmured; "and if I was quite sure how it would be living there, I would go any-when." "He is a mighty handsome man!" "I don't think so," said Tess coldly. "Well, there's your chance, whether or no; and I'm sure he wears a beautiful diamond ring!" "Yes," said little Abraham, brightly, from the window-bench; "and I seed it! and it did twinkle when he put his hand up to his mistarshers. Mother, why did our grand relation keep on putting his hand up to his mistarshers?" "Hark at that child!" cried Mrs Durbeyfield, with parenthetic admiration. "Perhaps to show his diamond ring," murmured Sir John, dreamily, from his chair. "I'll think it over," said Tess, leaving the room. "Well, she's made a conquest o' the younger branch of us, straight off," continued the matron to her husband, "and she's a fool if she don't follow it up." "I don't quite like my children going away from home," said the haggler. "As the head of the family, the rest ought to come to me." "But do let her go, Jacky," coaxed his poor witless wife. "He's struck wi' her--you can see that. He called her Coz! He'll marry her, most likely, and make a lady of her; and then she'll be what her forefathers was." John Durbeyfield had more conceit than energy or health, and this supposition was pleasant to him. "Well, perhaps that's what young Mr d'Urberville means," he admitted; "and sure enough he mid have serious thoughts about improving his blood by linking on to the old line. Tess, the little rogue! And have she really paid 'em a visit to such an end as this?" Meanwhile Tess was walking thoughtfully among the gooseberry-bushes in the garden, and over Prince's grave. When she came in her mother pursued her advantage. "Well, what be you going to do?" she asked. "I wish I had seen Mrs d'Urberville," said Tess. "I think you mid as well settle it. Then you'll see her soon enough." Her father coughed in his chair. "I don't know what to say!" answered the girl restlessly. "It is for you to decide. I killed the old horse, and I suppose I ought to do something to get ye a new one. But--but--I don't quite like Mr d'Urberville being there!" The children, who had made use of this idea of Tess being taken up by their wealthy kinsfolk (which they imagined the other family to be) as a species of dolorifuge after the death of the horse, began to cry at Tess's reluctance, and teased and reproached her for hesitating. "Tess won't go-o-o and be made a la-a-dy of!--no, she says she wo-o-on't!" they wailed, with square mouths. "And we shan't have a nice new horse, and lots o' golden money to buy fairlings! And Tess won't look pretty in her best cloze no mo-o-ore!" Her mother chimed in to the same tune: a certain way she had of making her labours in the house seem heavier than they were by prolonging them indefinitely, also weighed in the argument. Her father alone preserved an attitude of neutrality. "I will go," said Tess at last. Her mother could not repress her consciousness of the nuptial vision conjured up by the girl's consent. "That's right! For such a pretty maid as 'tis, this is a fine chance!" Tess smiled crossly. "I hope it is a chance for earning money. It is no other kind of chance. You had better say nothing of that silly sort about parish." Mrs Durbeyfield did not promise. She was not quite sure that she did not feel proud enough, after the visitor's remarks, to say a good deal. Thus it was arranged; and the young girl wrote, agreeing to be ready to set out on any day on which she might be required. She was duly informed that Mrs d'Urberville was glad of her decision, and that a spring-cart should be sent to meet her and her luggage at the top of the Vale on the day after the morrow, when she must hold herself prepared to start. Mrs d'Urberville's handwriting seemed rather masculine. "A cart?" murmured Joan Durbeyfield doubtingly. "It might have been a carriage for her own kin!" Having at last taken her course Tess was less restless and abstracted, going about her business with some self-assurance in the thought of acquiring another horse for her father by an occupation which would not be onerous. She had hoped to be a teacher at the school, but the fates seemed to decide otherwise. Being mentally older than her mother she did not regard Mrs Durbeyfield's matrimonial hopes for her in a serious aspect for a moment. The light-minded woman had been discovering good matches for her daughter almost from the year of her birth.

Chapter VI

https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase1-chapter1-11

When Tess returns home the following day a letter from Mrs. d'Urberville offering her a job tending fowl awaits her. Despite her mother's ecstatic eagerness, Tess is displeased and looks instead for local jobs to earn money to replace the family's horse. Alec d'Urberville stops by and prompts her mother for an answer about the job. Her efforts to find alternative work prove fruitless and so Tess accepts d'Urberville's offer. She remarks that Mrs. d'Urberville's handwriting looks masculine

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/05.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Far From the Madding Crowd/section_4_part_0.txt

Far From the Madding Crowd.chapter 5

chapter 5

{"name": "Chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-5", "summary": "Gabriel Oak receives news that Bathsheba Everdene has left the neighborhood. Oak knows all about falling in love. He's a pro. But he has a tough time learning how to get out of love. He's uber-depressed at this point and probably is listening to breakup music. If that weren't enough, a really bad thing happens on top of his rejection. One of his dogs, feeling a little too eager, starts chasing his sheep around a field while Oak is asleep. And wouldn't you know it, the dog chases all the sheep right off a cliff into a nearby chalk pit. Nearly every sheep Oak owns is killed. Financially speaking, the guy is toast. Everything he has worked hard for is gone. Oak's eager dog is taken out and shot the next day. At the end of it all, Oak has enough belongings to pay off his debts. But that's it. He comes out of the situation without a dollar to his name. Ugh.", "analysis": ""}

DEPARTURE OF BATHSHEBA--A PASTORAL TRAGEDY The news which one day reached Gabriel, that Bathsheba Everdene had left the neighbourhood, had an influence upon him which might have surprised any who never suspected that the more emphatic the renunciation the less absolute its character. It may have been observed that there is no regular path for getting out of love as there is for getting in. Some people look upon marriage as a short cut that way, but it has been known to fail. Separation, which was the means that chance offered to Gabriel Oak by Bathsheba's disappearance, though effectual with people of certain humours, is apt to idealize the removed object with others--notably those whose affection, placid and regular as it may be, flows deep and long. Oak belonged to the even-tempered order of humanity, and felt the secret fusion of himself in Bathsheba to be burning with a finer flame now that she was gone--that was all. His incipient friendship with her aunt had been nipped by the failure of his suit, and all that Oak learnt of Bathsheba's movements was done indirectly. It appeared that she had gone to a place called Weatherbury, more than twenty miles off, but in what capacity--whether as a visitor, or permanently, he could not discover. Gabriel had two dogs. George, the elder, exhibited an ebony-tipped nose, surrounded by a narrow margin of pink flesh, and a coat marked in random splotches approximating in colour to white and slaty grey; but the grey, after years of sun and rain, had been scorched and washed out of the more prominent locks, leaving them of a reddish-brown, as if the blue component of the grey had faded, like the indigo from the same kind of colour in Turner's pictures. In substance it had originally been hair, but long contact with sheep seemed to be turning it by degrees into wool of a poor quality and staple. This dog had originally belonged to a shepherd of inferior morals and dreadful temper, and the result was that George knew the exact degrees of condemnation signified by cursing and swearing of all descriptions better than the wickedest old man in the neighbourhood. Long experience had so precisely taught the animal the difference between such exclamations as "Come in!" and "D---- ye, come in!" that he knew to a hair's breadth the rate of trotting back from the ewes' tails that each call involved, if a staggerer with the sheep crook was to be escaped. Though old, he was clever and trustworthy still. The young dog, George's son, might possibly have been the image of his mother, for there was not much resemblance between him and George. He was learning the sheep-keeping business, so as to follow on at the flock when the other should die, but had got no further than the rudiments as yet--still finding an insuperable difficulty in distinguishing between doing a thing well enough and doing it too well. So earnest and yet so wrong-headed was this young dog (he had no name in particular, and answered with perfect readiness to any pleasant interjection), that if sent behind the flock to help them on, he did it so thoroughly that he would have chased them across the whole county with the greatest pleasure if not called off or reminded when to stop by the example of old George. Thus much for the dogs. On the further side of Norcombe Hill was a chalk-pit, from which chalk had been drawn for generations, and spread over adjacent farms. Two hedges converged upon it in the form of a V, but without quite meeting. The narrow opening left, which was immediately over the brow of the pit, was protected by a rough railing. One night, when Farmer Oak had returned to his house, believing there would be no further necessity for his attendance on the down, he called as usual to the dogs, previously to shutting them up in the outhouse till next morning. Only one responded--old George; the other could not be found, either in the house, lane, or garden. Gabriel then remembered that he had left the two dogs on the hill eating a dead lamb (a kind of meat he usually kept from them, except when other food ran short), and concluding that the young one had not finished his meal, he went indoors to the luxury of a bed, which latterly he had only enjoyed on Sundays. It was a still, moist night. Just before dawn he was assisted in waking by the abnormal reverberation of familiar music. To the shepherd, the note of the sheep-bell, like the ticking of the clock to other people, is a chronic sound that only makes itself noticed by ceasing or altering in some unusual manner from the well-known idle twinkle which signifies to the accustomed ear, however distant, that all is well in the fold. In the solemn calm of the awakening morn that note was heard by Gabriel, beating with unusual violence and rapidity. This exceptional ringing may be caused in two ways--by the rapid feeding of the sheep bearing the bell, as when the flock breaks into new pasture, which gives it an intermittent rapidity, or by the sheep starting off in a run, when the sound has a regular palpitation. The experienced ear of Oak knew the sound he now heard to be caused by the running of the flock with great velocity. He jumped out of bed, dressed, tore down the lane through a foggy dawn, and ascended the hill. The forward ewes were kept apart from those among which the fall of lambs would be later, there being two hundred of the latter class in Gabriel's flock. These two hundred seemed to have absolutely vanished from the hill. There were the fifty with their lambs, enclosed at the other end as he had left them, but the rest, forming the bulk of the flock, were nowhere. Gabriel called at the top of his voice the shepherd's call: "Ovey, ovey, ovey!" Not a single bleat. He went to the hedge; a gap had been broken through it, and in the gap were the footprints of the sheep. Rather surprised to find them break fence at this season, yet putting it down instantly to their great fondness for ivy in winter-time, of which a great deal grew in the plantation, he followed through the hedge. They were not in the plantation. He called again: the valleys and farthest hills resounded as when the sailors invoked the lost Hylas on the Mysian shore; but no sheep. He passed through the trees and along the ridge of the hill. On the extreme summit, where the ends of the two converging hedges of which we have spoken were stopped short by meeting the brow of the chalk-pit, he saw the younger dog standing against the sky--dark and motionless as Napoleon at St. Helena. A horrible conviction darted through Oak. With a sensation of bodily faintness he advanced: at one point the rails were broken through, and there he saw the footprints of his ewes. The dog came up, licked his hand, and made signs implying that he expected some great reward for signal services rendered. Oak looked over the precipice. The ewes lay dead and dying at its foot--a heap of two hundred mangled carcasses, representing in their condition just now at least two hundred more. Oak was an intensely humane man: indeed, his humanity often tore in pieces any politic intentions of his which bordered on strategy, and carried him on as by gravitation. A shadow in his life had always been that his flock ended in mutton--that a day came and found every shepherd an arrant traitor to his defenseless sheep. His first feeling now was one of pity for the untimely fate of these gentle ewes and their unborn lambs. It was a second to remember another phase of the matter. The sheep were not insured. All the savings of a frugal life had been dispersed at a blow; his hopes of being an independent farmer were laid low--possibly for ever. Gabriel's energies, patience, and industry had been so severely taxed during the years of his life between eighteen and eight-and-twenty, to reach his present stage of progress that no more seemed to be left in him. He leant down upon a rail, and covered his face with his hands. Stupors, however, do not last for ever, and Farmer Oak recovered from his. It was as remarkable as it was characteristic that the one sentence he uttered was in thankfulness:-- "Thank God I am not married: what would SHE have done in the poverty now coming upon me!" Oak raised his head, and wondering what he could do, listlessly surveyed the scene. By the outer margin of the Pit was an oval pond, and over it hung the attenuated skeleton of a chrome-yellow moon which had only a few days to last--the morning star dogging her on the left hand. The pool glittered like a dead man's eye, and as the world awoke a breeze blew, shaking and elongating the reflection of the moon without breaking it, and turning the image of the star to a phosphoric streak upon the water. All this Oak saw and remembered. As far as could be learnt it appeared that the poor young dog, still under the impression that since he was kept for running after sheep, the more he ran after them the better, had at the end of his meal off the dead lamb, which may have given him additional energy and spirits, collected all the ewes into a corner, driven the timid creatures through the hedge, across the upper field, and by main force of worrying had given them momentum enough to break down a portion of the rotten railing, and so hurled them over the edge. George's son had done his work so thoroughly that he was considered too good a workman to live, and was, in fact, taken and tragically shot at twelve o'clock that same day--another instance of the untoward fate which so often attends dogs and other philosophers who follow out a train of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and attempt perfectly consistent conduct in a world made up so largely of compromise. Gabriel's farm had been stocked by a dealer--on the strength of Oak's promising look and character--who was receiving a percentage from the farmer till such time as the advance should be cleared off. Oak found that the value of stock, plant, and implements which were really his own would be about sufficient to pay his debts, leaving himself a free man with the clothes he stood up in, and nothing more.

Chapter 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-5

Gabriel Oak receives news that Bathsheba Everdene has left the neighborhood. Oak knows all about falling in love. He's a pro. But he has a tough time learning how to get out of love. He's uber-depressed at this point and probably is listening to breakup music. If that weren't enough, a really bad thing happens on top of his rejection. One of his dogs, feeling a little too eager, starts chasing his sheep around a field while Oak is asleep. And wouldn't you know it, the dog chases all the sheep right off a cliff into a nearby chalk pit. Nearly every sheep Oak owns is killed. Financially speaking, the guy is toast. Everything he has worked hard for is gone. Oak's eager dog is taken out and shot the next day. At the end of it all, Oak has enough belongings to pay off his debts. But that's it. He comes out of the situation without a dollar to his name. Ugh.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/16.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_15_part_0.txt

The Red and the Black.part 1.chapter 16

part 1, chapter 16

{"name": "Part 1, Chapter 16", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-16", "summary": "The day after Julien and Madame de Renal have slept together, they barely make eye contact when they sit down for lunch. Madame starts to worry that he's not looking at her because he's no longer interested. Madame de Renal's cousin M. Derville sees that something is going on between them and makes sure to always get between them while they're hanging out that day. The next night at 1 a.m., Julien sneaks back into Madame's room for more sex. Julien becomes comfortable with talking to Madame about his doubts and anxieties. It only brings them closer together. Madame often thinks that she should have married a man more like Julien, with a poetic soul. Madame Derville becomes fed up with her cousin's foolish flirtations with Julien. She leaves one day without any explanation. Madame de Renal isn't sad to see her go. Now she gets to be alone with Julien all the time.", "analysis": ""}

CHAPTER XVI THE DAY AFTER He turned his lips to hers and with his hand Called back the tangles of her wandering hair. _Don Juan,_ c. I, st. 170. Happily for Julien's fame, Madame de Renal had been too agitated and too astonished to appreciate the stupidity of the man who had in a single moment become the whole to world her. "Oh, my God!" she said to herself, as she pressed him to retire when she saw the dawn break, "if my husband has heard the noise, I am lost." Julien, who had had the time to make up some phrases, remembered this one, "Would you regret your life?" "Oh, very much at a moment like this, but I should not regret having known you." Julien thought it incumbent on his dignity to go back to his room in broad daylight and with deliberate imprudence. The continuous attention with which he kept on studying his slightest actions with the absurd idea of appearing a man of experience had only one advantage. When he saw Madame de Renal again at breakfast his conduct was a masterpiece of prudence. As for her, she could not look at him without blushing up to the eyes, and could not live a moment without looking at him. She realised her own nervousness, and her efforts to hide it redoubled. Julien only lifted his eyes towards her once. At first Madame de Renal admired his prudence: soon seeing that this single look was not repealed, she became alarmed. "Could it be that he does not love me?" she said to herself. "Alas! I am quite old for him. I am ten years older than he is." As she passed from the dining-room to the garden, she pressed Julien's hand. In the surprise caused by so singular a mark of love, he regarded her with passion, for he had thought her very pretty over breakfast, and while keeping his eyes downcast he had passed his time in thinking of the details of her charms. This look consoled Madame de Renal. It did not take away all her anxiety, but her anxiety tended to take away nearly completely all her remorse towards her husband. The husband had noticed nothing at breakfast. It was not so with Madame Derville. She thought she saw Madame de Renal on the point of succumbing. During the whole day her bold and incisive friendship regaled her cousin with those innuendoes which were intended to paint in hideous colours the dangers she was running. Madame de Renal was burning to find herself alone with Julien. She wished to ask him if he still loved her. In spite of the unalterable sweetness of her character, she was several times on the point of notifying her friend how officious she was. Madame Derville arranged things so adroitly that evening in the garden, that she found herself placed between Madame de Renal and Julien. Madame de Renal, who had thought in her imagination how delicious it would be to press Julien's hand and carry it to her lips, was not able to address a single word to him. This hitch increased her agitation. She was devoured by one pang of remorse. She had so scolded Julien for his imprudence in coming to her room on the preceding night, that she trembled lest he should not come to-night. She left the garden early and went and ensconced herself in her room, but not being able to control her impatience, she went and glued her ear to Julien's door. In spite of the uncertainty and passion which devoured her, she did not dare to enter. This action seemed to her the greatest possible meanness, for it forms the basis of a provincial proverb. The servants had not yet all gone to bed. Prudence at last compelled her to return to her room. Two hours of waiting were two centuries of torture. Julien was too faithful to what he called his duty to fail to accomplish stage by stage what he had mapped out for himself. As one o'clock struck, he escaped softly from his room, assured himself that the master of the house was soundly asleep, and appeared in Madame de Renal's room. To-night he experienced more happiness by the side of his love, for he thought less constantly about the part he had to play. He had eyes to see, and ears to hear. What Madame de Renal said to him about his age contributed to give him some assurance. "Alas! I am ten years older than you. How can you love me?" she repeated vaguely, because the idea oppressed her. Julien could not realise her happiness, but he saw that it was genuine and he forgot almost entirely his own fear of being ridiculous. The foolish thought that he was regarded as an inferior, by reason of his obscure birth, disappeared also. As Julien's transports reassured his timid mistress, she regained a little of her happiness, and of her power to judge her lover. Happily, he had not, on this occasion, that artificial air which had made the assignation of the previous night a triumph rather than a pleasure. If she had realised his concentration on playing a part that melancholy discovery would have taken away all her happiness for ever. She could only have seen in it the result of the difference in their ages. Although Madame de Renal had never thought of the theories of love, difference in age is next to difference in fortune, one of the great commonplaces of provincial witticisms, whenever love is the topic of conversation. In a few days Julien surrendered himself with all the ardour of his age, and was desperately in love. "One must own," he said to himself, "that she has an angelic kindness of soul, and no one in the world is prettier." He had almost completely given up playing a part. In a moment of abandon, he even confessed to her all his nervousness. This confidence raised the passion which he was inspiring to its zenith. "And I have no lucky rival after all," said Madame de Renal to herself with delight. She ventured to question him on the portrait in which he used to be so interested. Julien swore to her that it was that of a man. When Madame de Renal had enough presence of mind left to reflect, she did not recover from her astonishment that so great a happiness could exist; and that she had never had anything of. "Oh," she said to herself, "if I had only known Julien ten years ago when I was still considered pretty." Julien was far from having thoughts like these. His love was still akin to ambition. It was the joy of possessing, poor, unfortunate and despised as he was, so beautiful a woman. His acts of devotion, and his ecstacies at the sight of his mistress's charms finished by reassuring her a little with regard to the difference of age. If she had possessed a little of that knowledge of life which the woman of thirty has enjoyed in the more civilised of countries for quite a long time, she would have trembled for the duration of a love, which only seemed to thrive on novelty and the intoxication of a young man's vanity. In those moments when he forgot his ambition, Julien admired ecstatically even the hats and even the dresses of Madame de Renal. He could not sate himself with the pleasure of smelling their perfume. He would open her mirrored cupboard, and remain hours on end admiring the beauty and the order of everything that he found there. His love leaned on him and looked at him. He was looking at those jewels and those dresses which had had been her wedding presents. "I might have married a man like that," thought Madame de Renal sometimes. "What a fiery soul! What a delightful life one would have with him?" As for Julien, he had never been so near to those terrible instruments of feminine artillery. "It is impossible," he said to himself "for there to be anything more beautiful in Paris." He could find no flaw in his happiness. The sincere admiration and ecstacies of his mistress would frequently make him forget that silly pose which had rendered him so stiff and almost ridiculous during the first moments of the intrigue. There were moments where, in spite of his habitual hypocrisy, he found an extreme delight in confessing to this great lady who admired him, his ignorance of a crowd of little usages. His mistress's rank seemed to lift him above himself. Madame de Renal, on her side, would find the sweetest thrill of intellectual voluptuousness in thus instructing in a number of little things this young man who was so full of genius, and who was looked upon by everyone as destined one day to go so far. Even the sub-prefect and M. Valenod could not help admiring him. She thought it made them less foolish. As for Madame Derville, she was very far from being in a position to express the same sentiments. Rendered desperate by what she thought she divined, and seeing that her good advice was becoming offensive to a woman who had literally lost her head, she left Vergy without giving the explanation, which her friend carefully refrained from asking. Madame de Renal shed a few tears for her, and soon found her happiness greater than ever. As a result of her departure, she found herself alone with her lover nearly the whole day. Julien abandoned himself all the more to the delightful society of his sweetheart, since, whenever he was alone, Fouque's fatal proposition still continued to agitate him. During the first days of his novel life there were moments when the man who had never loved, who had never been loved by anyone, would find so delicious a pleasure in being sincere, that he was on the point of confessing to Madame de Renal that ambition which up to then had been the very essence of his existence. He would have liked to have been able to consult her on the strange temptation which Fouque's offer held out to him, but a little episode rendered any frankness impossible.

Part 1, Chapter 16

https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-16

The day after Julien and Madame de Renal have slept together, they barely make eye contact when they sit down for lunch. Madame starts to worry that he's not looking at her because he's no longer interested. Madame de Renal's cousin M. Derville sees that something is going on between them and makes sure to always get between them while they're hanging out that day. The next night at 1 a.m., Julien sneaks back into Madame's room for more sex. Julien becomes comfortable with talking to Madame about his doubts and anxieties. It only brings them closer together. Madame often thinks that she should have married a man more like Julien, with a poetic soul. Madame Derville becomes fed up with her cousin's foolish flirtations with Julien. She leaves one day without any explanation. Madame de Renal isn't sad to see her go. Now she gets to be alone with Julien all the time.

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/chapters_45_to_47.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_17_part_0.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapters 45-47

chapters 45 - 47

{"name": "Chapters 45 - 47", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820050202/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmTessD55.asp", "summary": "Tess is shocked to see Alec and hear him preaching about his regret over his past mistakes. Trembling with fear at his image, she turns to leave, but not quickly enough. Alec recognizes her and is equally as shocked as Tess has been, but he does not try to flee from her. Instead, he approaches her on the pretense of trying to save her soul. He tells Tess that his mother's death and a pious clergyman named Clare were responsible for his conversion. Tess does not believe he is genuine. Tess tells Alec the troubles that she has endured because of his misdoing. He is unhappy about the revelation and makes Tess promise never to tempt or charm him again.", "analysis": "Notes Tess is unnerved by the image of Alec preaching in the barn. When Alec spies her, he is equally unnerved, for he immediately feels his passion rising. He approaches Tess and tells her that women continue to attract him. He makes Tess swear on an assumed holy cross that she will never tempt him again. Later Tess is horrified to learn that the \"cross-in-hand\" on which she swore is a really a symbol of ill omen. Alec is obviously a sinner trying to cover up his past in an effort to gain salvation, but his religion does not run very deep. As soon as Alec's eyes fall on Tess, the look on his face and in his eyes clearly reveal he has changed little in the intervening years. CHAPTER 46 Summary Alec finds Tess in the fields and shows concern for the ill fortune he has caused her. To make up for his past sins, he asks her to marry him and go with him to Africa on a mission. Alec is surprised when Tess tells him that she is married to someone else and even more shocked to learn that her husband is away. Alec departs when Tess begs him to leave. Alec calls on Tess at her cottage and states that he is unable to rid the image of her from his mind. He asks her to pray for him. Tess, quoting words from Angel, tells Alec that she will not pray for him and expect God to alter his plans on his account. She again begs him to leave, fearing that his presence may cause a scandal and harm Angel's name. Notes Alec's pathetic nature is clearly revealed in this chapter. He finds Tess in the fields and begs her to marry him in order to ease his conscience and guarantee his salvation. He is so unsure of himself that he calls on her again at her cottage and begs Tess to pray for him so that he is not allured by her charm. But it is clearly obvious that Alec again feels passion for Tess, and he wants to possess her again. It is important to note Tess's main reaction to Alec during the two visits. She has no thought of her own well being in his presence. She begs him to leave because she does not want any scandal to be attached to Angel's name. Even though her husband has deserted her for Brazil, it is obvious that Tess still loves him deeply. CHAPTER 47 Summary By March Alec has shed his acquired image of a preacher and comes to share the news with Tess. He tells her that he is in love with her and again asks her to come away with him. Since she is the reason he has renounced the ministry, he says she should \"leave that mule you call husband forever\" and share her life with him. Unwilling to hear a single bad word spoken against Angel, she slaps Alec's face with a leather glove. Infuriated at her boldness, he grabs Tess by the shoulders and screams, \" I will be your master again.\" Notes In this chapter, Tess's supreme love for Angel is again depicted. It is unbearable for her to hear anyone speak ill of him. When Alec dares to call him a mule, Tess's temper flares and she strikes him across the face. In the entire book, it is only Alec who has caused Tess to lose control. Alec is also losing control. He confesses to Tess that \"ever since you told me of that child of ours, it is just as my feelings. . . had suddenly found a way open in the direction of you, and had all at once gushed through.\" He blames Tess for arousing his passion again and swears that he will master her. Tess's already stressful existence simply grows more stressful."}

Till this moment she had never seen or heard from d'Urberville since her departure from Trantridge. The rencounter came at a heavy moment, one of all moments calculated to permit its impact with the least emotional shock. But such was unreasoning memory that, though he stood there openly and palpably a converted man, who was sorrowing for his past irregularities, a fear overcame her, paralyzing her movement so that she neither retreated nor advanced. To think of what emanated from that countenance when she saw it last, and to behold it now! ... There was the same handsome unpleasantness of mien, but now he wore neatly trimmed, old-fashioned whiskers, the sable moustache having disappeared; and his dress was half-clerical, a modification which had changed his expression sufficiently to abstract the dandyism from his features, and to hinder for a second her belief in his identity. To Tess's sense there was, just at first, a ghastly _bizarrerie_, a grim incongruity, in the march of these solemn words of Scripture out of such a mouth. This too familiar intonation, less than four years earlier, had brought to her ears expressions of such divergent purpose that her heart became quite sick at the irony of the contrast. It was less a reform than a transfiguration. The former curves of sensuousness were now modulated to lines of devotional passion. The lip-shapes that had meant seductiveness were now made to express supplication; the glow on the cheek that yesterday could be translated as riotousness was evangelized to-day into the splendour of pious rhetoric; animalism had become fanaticism; Paganism, Paulinism; the bold rolling eye that had flashed upon her form in the old time with such mastery now beamed with the rude energy of a theolatry that was almost ferocious. Those black angularities which his face had used to put on when his wishes were thwarted now did duty in picturing the incorrigible backslider who would insist upon turning again to his wallowing in the mire. The lineaments, as such, seemed to complain. They had been diverted from their hereditary connotation to signify impressions for which Nature did not intend them. Strange that their very elevation was a misapplication, that to raise seemed to falsify. Yet could it be so? She would admit the ungenerous sentiment no longer. D'Urberville was not the first wicked man who had turned away from his wickedness to save his soul alive, and why should she deem it unnatural in him? It was but the usage of thought which had been jarred in her at hearing good new words in bad old notes. The greater the sinner, the greater the saint; it was not necessary to dive far into Christian history to discover that. Such impressions as these moved her vaguely, and without strict definiteness. As soon as the nerveless pause of her surprise would allow her to stir, her impulse was to pass on out of his sight. He had obviously not discerned her yet in her position against the sun. But the moment that she moved again he recognized her. The effect upon her old lover was electric, far stronger than the effect of his presence upon her. His fire, the tumultuous ring of his eloquence, seemed to go out of him. His lip struggled and trembled under the words that lay upon it; but deliver them it could not as long as she faced him. His eyes, after their first glance upon her face, hung confusedly in every other direction but hers, but came back in a desperate leap every few seconds. This paralysis lasted, however, but a short time; for Tess's energies returned with the atrophy of his, and she walked as fast as she was able past the barn and onward. As soon as she could reflect, it appalled her, this change in their relative platforms. He who had wrought her undoing was now on the side of the Spirit, while she remained unregenerate. And, as in the legend, it had resulted that her Cyprian image had suddenly appeared upon his altar, whereby the fire of the priest had been well nigh extinguished. She went on without turning her head. Her back seemed to be endowed with a sensitiveness to ocular beams--even her clothing--so alive was she to a fancied gaze which might be resting upon her from the outside of that barn. All the way along to this point her heart had been heavy with an inactive sorrow; now there was a change in the quality of its trouble. That hunger for affection too long withheld was for the time displaced by an almost physical sense of an implacable past which still engirdled her. It intensified her consciousness of error to a practical despair; the break of continuity between her earlier and present existence, which she had hoped for, had not, after all, taken place. Bygones would never be complete bygones till she was a bygone herself. Thus absorbed, she recrossed the northern part of Long-Ash Lane at right angles, and presently saw before her the road ascending whitely to the upland along whose margin the remainder of her journey lay. Its dry pale surface stretched severely onward, unbroken by a single figure, vehicle, or mark, save some occasional brown horse-droppings which dotted its cold aridity here and there. While slowly breasting this ascent Tess became conscious of footsteps behind her, and turning she saw approaching that well-known form--so strangely accoutred as the Methodist--the one personage in all the world she wished not to encounter alone on this side of the grave. There was not much time, however, for thought or elusion, and she yielded as calmly as she could to the necessity of letting him overtake her. She saw that he was excited, less by the speed of his walk than by the feelings within him. "Tess!" he said. She slackened speed without looking round. "Tess!" he repeated. "It is I--Alec d'Urberville." She then looked back at him, and he came up. "I see it is," she answered coldly. "Well--is that all? Yet I deserve no more! Of course," he added, with a slight laugh, "there is something of the ridiculous to your eyes in seeing me like this. But--I must put up with that. ... I heard you had gone away; nobody knew where. Tess, you wonder why I have followed you?" "I do, rather; and I would that you had not, with all my heart!" "Yes--you may well say it," he returned grimly, as they moved onward together, she with unwilling tread. "But don't mistake me; I beg this because you may have been led to do so in noticing--if you did notice it--how your sudden appearance unnerved me down there. It was but a momentary faltering; and considering what you have been to me, it was natural enough. But will helped me through it--though perhaps you think me a humbug for saying it--and immediately afterwards I felt that of all persons in the world whom it was my duty and desire to save from the wrath to come--sneer if you like--the woman whom I had so grievously wronged was that person. I have come with that sole purpose in view--nothing more." There was the smallest vein of scorn in her words of rejoinder: "Have you saved yourself? Charity begins at home, they say." "_I_ have done nothing!" said he indifferently. "Heaven, as I have been telling my hearers, has done all. No amount of contempt that you can pour upon me, Tess, will equal what I have poured upon myself--the old Adam of my former years! Well, it is a strange story; believe it or not; but I can tell you the means by which my conversion was brought about, and I hope you will be interested enough at least to listen. Have you ever heard the name of the parson of Emminster--you must have done do?--old Mr Clare; one of the most earnest of his school; one of the few intense men left in the Church; not so intense as the extreme wing of Christian believers with which I have thrown in my lot, but quite an exception among the Established clergy, the younger of whom are gradually attenuating the true doctrines by their sophistries, till they are but the shadow of what they were. I only differ from him on the question of Church and State--the interpretation of the text, 'Come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord'--that's all. He is one who, I firmly believe, has been the humble means of saving more souls in this country than any other man you can name. You have heard of him?" "I have," she said. "He came to Trantridge two or three years ago to preach on behalf of some missionary society; and I, wretched fellow that I was, insulted him when, in his disinterestedness, he tried to reason with me and show me the way. He did not resent my conduct, he simply said that some day I should receive the first-fruits of the Spirit--that those who came to scoff sometimes remained to pray. There was a strange magic in his words. They sank into my mind. But the loss of my mother hit me most; and by degrees I was brought to see daylight. Since then my one desire has been to hand on the true view to others, and that is what I was trying to do to-day; though it is only lately that I have preached hereabout. The first months of my ministry have been spent in the North of England among strangers, where I preferred to make my earliest clumsy attempts, so as to acquire courage before undergoing that severest of all tests of one's sincerity, addressing those who have known one, and have been one's companions in the days of darkness. If you could only know, Tess, the pleasure of having a good slap at yourself, I am sure--" "Don't go on with it!" she cried passionately, as she turned away from him to a stile by the wayside, on which she bent herself. "I can't believe in such sudden things! I feel indignant with you for talking to me like this, when you know--when you know what harm you've done me! You, and those like you, take your fill of pleasure on earth by making the life of such as me bitter and black with sorrow; and then it is a fine thing, when you have had enough of that, to think of securing your pleasure in heaven by becoming converted! Out upon such--I don't believe in you--I hate it!" "Tess," he insisted; "don't speak so! It came to me like a jolly new idea! And you don't believe me? What don't you believe?" "Your conversion. Your scheme of religion." "Why?" She dropped her voice. "Because a better man than you does not believe in such." "What a woman's reason! Who is this better man?" "I cannot tell you." "Well," he declared, a resentment beneath his words seeming ready to spring out at a moment's notice, "God forbid that I should say I am a good man--and you know I don't say any such thing. I am new to goodness, truly; but newcomers see furthest sometimes." "Yes," she replied sadly. "But I cannot believe in your conversion to a new spirit. Such flashes as you feel, Alec, I fear don't last!" Thus speaking she turned from the stile over which she had been leaning, and faced him; whereupon his eyes, falling casually upon the familiar countenance and form, remained contemplating her. The inferior man was quiet in him now; but it was surely not extracted, nor even entirely subdued. "Don't look at me like that!" he said abruptly. Tess, who had been quite unconscious of her action and mien, instantly withdrew the large dark gaze of her eyes, stammering with a flush, "I beg your pardon!" And there was revived in her the wretched sentiment which had often come to her before, that in inhabiting the fleshly tabernacle with which Nature had endowed her she was somehow doing wrong. "No, no! Don't beg my pardon. But since you wear a veil to hide your good looks, why don't you keep it down?" She pulled down the veil, saying hastily, "It was mostly to keep off the wind." "It may seem harsh of me to dictate like this," he went on; "but it is better that I should not look too often on you. It might be dangerous." "Ssh!" said Tess. "Well, women's faces have had too much power over me already for me not to fear them! An evangelist has nothing to do with such as they; and it reminds me of the old times that I would forget!" After this their conversation dwindled to a casual remark now and then as they rambled onward, Tess inwardly wondering how far he was going with her, and not liking to send him back by positive mandate. Frequently when they came to a gate or stile they found painted thereon in red or blue letters some text of Scripture, and she asked him if he knew who had been at the pains to blazon these announcements. He told her that the man was employed by himself and others who were working with him in that district, to paint these reminders that no means might be left untried which might move the hearts of a wicked generation. At length the road touched the spot called "Cross-in-Hand." Of all spots on the bleached and desolate upland this was the most forlorn. It was so far removed from the charm which is sought in landscape by artists and view-lovers as to reach a new kind of beauty, a negative beauty of tragic tone. The place took its name from a stone pillar which stood there, a strange rude monolith, from a stratum unknown in any local quarry, on which was roughly carved a human hand. Differing accounts were given of its history and purport. Some authorities stated that a devotional cross had once formed the complete erection thereon, of which the present relic was but the stump; others that the stone as it stood was entire, and that it had been fixed there to mark a boundary or place of meeting. Anyhow, whatever the origin of the relic, there was and is something sinister, or solemn, according to mood, in the scene amid which it stands; something tending to impress the most phlegmatic passer-by. "I think I must leave you now," he remarked, as they drew near to this spot. "I have to preach at Abbot's-Cernel at six this evening, and my way lies across to the right from here. And you upset me somewhat too, Tessy--I cannot, will not, say why. I must go away and get strength. ... How is it that you speak so fluently now? Who has taught you such good English?" "I have learnt things in my troubles," she said evasively. "What troubles have you had?" She told him of the first one--the only one that related to him. D'Urberville was struck mute. "I knew nothing of this till now!" he next murmured. "Why didn't you write to me when you felt your trouble coming on?" She did not reply; and he broke the silence by adding: "Well--you will see me again." "No," she answered. "Do not again come near me!" "I will think. But before we part come here." He stepped up to the pillar. "This was once a Holy Cross. Relics are not in my creed; but I fear you at moments--far more than you need fear me at present; and to lessen my fear, put your hand upon that stone hand, and swear that you will never tempt me--by your charms or ways." "Good God--how can you ask what is so unnecessary! All that is furthest from my thought!" "Yes--but swear it." Tess, half frightened, gave way to his importunity; placed her hand upon the stone and swore. "I am sorry you are not a believer," he continued; "that some unbeliever should have got hold of you and unsettled your mind. But no more now. At home at least I can pray for you; and I will; and who knows what may not happen? I'm off. Goodbye!" He turned to a hunting-gate in the hedge and, without letting his eyes again rest upon her, leapt over and struck out across the down in the direction of Abbot's-Cernel. As he walked his pace showed perturbation, and by-and-by, as if instigated by a former thought, he drew from his pocket a small book, between the leaves of which was folded a letter, worn and soiled, as from much re-reading. D'Urberville opened the letter. It was dated several months before this time, and was signed by Parson Clare. The letter began by expressing the writer's unfeigned joy at d'Urberville's conversion, and thanked him for his kindness in communicating with the parson on the subject. It expressed Mr Clare's warm assurance of forgiveness for d'Urberville's former conduct and his interest in the young man's plans for the future. He, Mr Clare, would much have liked to see d'Urberville in the Church to whose ministry he had devoted so many years of his own life, and would have helped him to enter a theological college to that end; but since his correspondent had possibly not cared to do this on account of the delay it would have entailed, he was not the man to insist upon its paramount importance. Every man must work as he could best work, and in the method towards which he felt impelled by the Spirit. D'Urberville read and re-read this letter, and seemed to quiz himself cynically. He also read some passages from memoranda as he walked till his face assumed a calm, and apparently the image of Tess no longer troubled his mind. She meanwhile had kept along the edge of the hill by which lay her nearest way home. Within the distance of a mile she met a solitary shepherd. "What is the meaning of that old stone I have passed?" she asked of him. "Was it ever a Holy Cross?" "Cross--no; 'twer not a cross! 'Tis a thing of ill-omen, Miss. It was put up in wuld times by the relations of a malefactor who was tortured there by nailing his hand to a post and afterwards hung. The bones lie underneath. They say he sold his soul to the devil, and that he walks at times." She felt the _petite mort_ at this unexpectedly gruesome information, and left the solitary man behind her. It was dusk when she drew near to Flintcomb-Ash, and in the lane at the entrance to the hamlet she approached a girl and her lover without their observing her. They were talking no secrets, and the clear unconcerned voice of the young woman, in response to the warmer accents of the man, spread into the chilly air as the one soothing thing within the dusky horizon, full of a stagnant obscurity upon which nothing else intruded. For a moment the voices cheered the heart of Tess, till she reasoned that this interview had its origin, on one side or the other, in the same attraction which had been the prelude to her own tribulation. When she came close, the girl turned serenely and recognized her, the young man walking off in embarrassment. The woman was Izz Huett, whose interest in Tess's excursion immediately superseded her own proceedings. Tess did not explain very clearly its results, and Izz, who was a girl of tact, began to speak of her own little affair, a phase of which Tess had just witnessed. "He is Amby Seedling, the chap who used to sometimes come and help at Talbothays," she explained indifferently. "He actually inquired and found out that I had come here, and has followed me. He says he's been in love wi' me these two years. But I've hardly answered him." Several days had passed since her futile journey, and Tess was afield. The dry winter wind still blew, but a screen of thatched hurdles erected in the eye of the blast kept its force away from her. On the sheltered side was a turnip-slicing machine, whose bright blue hue of new paint seemed almost vocal in the otherwise subdued scene. Opposite its front was a long mound or "grave", in which the roots had been preserved since early winter. Tess was standing at the uncovered end, chopping off with a bill-hook the fibres and earth from each root, and throwing it after the operation into the slicer. A man was turning the handle of the machine, and from its trough came the newly-cut swedes, the fresh smell of whose yellow chips was accompanied by the sounds of the snuffling wind, the smart swish of the slicing-blades, and the choppings of the hook in Tess's leather-gloved hand. The wide acreage of blank agricultural brownness, apparent where the swedes had been pulled, was beginning to be striped in wales of darker brown, gradually broadening to ribands. Along the edge of each of these something crept upon ten legs, moving without haste and without rest up and down the whole length of the field; it was two horses and a man, the plough going between them, turning up the cleared ground for a spring sowing. For hours nothing relieved the joyless monotony of things. Then, far beyond the ploughing-teams, a black speck was seen. It had come from the corner of a fence, where there was a gap, and its tendency was up the incline, towards the swede-cutters. From the proportions of a mere point it advanced to the shape of a ninepin, and was soon perceived to be a man in black, arriving from the direction of Flintcomb-Ash. The man at the slicer, having nothing else to do with his eyes, continually observed the comer, but Tess, who was occupied, did not perceive him till her companion directed her attention to his approach. It was not her hard taskmaster, Farmer Groby; it was one in a semi-clerical costume, who now represented what had once been the free-and-easy Alec d'Urberville. Not being hot at his preaching there was less enthusiasm about him now, and the presence of the grinder seemed to embarrass him. A pale distress was already on Tess's face, and she pulled her curtained hood further over it. D'Urberville came up and said quietly-- "I want to speak to you, Tess." "You have refused my last request, not to come near me!" said she. "Yes, but I have a good reason." "Well, tell it." "It is more serious than you may think." He glanced round to see if he were overheard. They were at some distance from the man who turned the slicer, and the movement of the machine, too, sufficiently prevented Alec's words reaching other ears. D'Urberville placed himself so as to screen Tess from the labourer, turning his back to the latter. "It is this," he continued, with capricious compunction. "In thinking of your soul and mine when we last met, I neglected to inquire as to your worldly condition. You were well dressed, and I did not think of it. But I see now that it is hard--harder than it used to be when I--knew you--harder than you deserve. Perhaps a good deal of it is owning to me!" She did not answer, and he watched her inquiringly, as, with bent head, her face completely screened by the hood, she resumed her trimming of the swedes. By going on with her work she felt better able to keep him outside her emotions. "Tess," he added, with a sigh of discontent,--"yours was the very worst case I ever was concerned in! I had no idea of what had resulted till you told me. Scamp that I was to foul that innocent life! The whole blame was mine--the whole unconventional business of our time at Trantridge. You, too, the real blood of which I am but the base imitation, what a blind young thing you were as to possibilities! I say in all earnestness that it is a shame for parents to bring up their girls in such dangerous ignorance of the gins and nets that the wicked may set for them, whether their motive be a good one or the result of simple indifference." Tess still did no more than listen, throwing down one globular root and taking up another with automatic regularity, the pensive contour of the mere fieldwoman alone marking her. "But it is not that I came to say," d'Urberville went on. "My circumstances are these. I have lost my mother since you were at Trantridge, and the place is my own. But I intend to sell it, and devote myself to missionary work in Africa. A devil of a poor hand I shall make at the trade, no doubt. However, what I want to ask you is, will you put it in my power to do my duty--to make the only reparation I can make for the trick played you: that is, will you be my wife, and go with me? ... I have already obtained this precious document. It was my old mother's dying wish." He drew a piece of parchment from his pocket, with a slight fumbling of embarrassment. "What is it?" said she. "A marriage licence." "O no, sir--no!" she said quickly, starting back. "You will not? Why is that?" And as he asked the question a disappointment which was not entirely the disappointment of thwarted duty crossed d'Urberville's face. It was unmistakably a symptom that something of his old passion for her had been revived; duty and desire ran hand-in-hand. "Surely," he began again, in more impetuous tones, and then looked round at the labourer who turned the slicer. Tess, too, felt that the argument could not be ended there. Informing the man that a gentleman had come to see her, with whom she wished to walk a little way, she moved off with d'Urberville across the zebra-striped field. When they reached the first newly-ploughed section he held out his hand to help her over it; but she stepped forward on the summits of the earth-rolls as if she did not see him. "You will not marry me, Tess, and make me a self-respecting man?" he repeated, as soon as they were over the furrows. "I cannot." "But why?" "You know I have no affection for you." "But you would get to feel that in time, perhaps--as soon as you really could forgive me?" "Never!" "Why so positive?" "I love somebody else." The words seemed to astonish him. "You do?" he cried. "Somebody else? But has not a sense of what is morally right and proper any weight with you?" "No, no, no--don't say that!" "Anyhow, then, your love for this other man may be only a passing feeling which you will overcome--" "No--no." "Yes, yes! Why not?" "I cannot tell you." "You must in honour!" "Well then ... I have married him." "Ah!" he exclaimed; and he stopped dead and gazed at her. "I did not wish to tell--I did not mean to!" she pleaded. "It is a secret here, or at any rate but dimly known. So will you, PLEASE will you, keep from questioning me? You must remember that we are now strangers." "Strangers--are we? Strangers!" For a moment a flash of his old irony marked his face; but he determinedly chastened it down. "Is that man your husband?" he asked mechanically, denoting by a sign the labourer who turned the machine. "That man!" she said proudly. "I should think not!" "Who, then?" "Do not ask what I do not wish to tell!" she begged, and flashed her appeal to him from her upturned face and lash-shadowed eyes. D'Urberville was disturbed. "But I only asked for your sake!" he retorted hotly. "Angels of heaven!--God forgive me for such an expression--I came here, I swear, as I thought for your good. Tess--don't look at me so--I cannot stand your looks! There never were such eyes, surely, before Christianity or since! There--I won't lose my head; I dare not. I own that the sight of you had waked up my love for you, which, I believed, was extinguished with all such feelings. But I thought that our marriage might be a sanctification for us both. 'The unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband,' I said to myself. But my plan is dashed from me; and I must bear the disappointment!" He moodily reflected with his eyes on the ground. "Married. Married! ... Well, that being so," he added, quite calmly, tearing the licence slowly into halves and putting them in his pocket; "that being prevented, I should like to do some good to you and your husband, whoever he may be. There are many questions that I am tempted to ask, but I will not do so, of course, in opposition to your wishes. Though, if I could know your husband, I might more easily benefit him and you. Is he on this farm?" "No," she murmured. "He is far away." "Far away? From YOU? What sort of husband can he be?" "O, do not speak against him! It was through you! He found out--" "Ah, is it so! ... That's sad, Tess!" "Yes." "But to stay away from you--to leave you to work like this!" "He does not leave me to work!" she cried, springing to the defence of the absent one with all her fervour. "He don't know it! It is by my own arrangement." "Then, does he write?" "I--I cannot tell you. There are things which are private to ourselves." "Of course that means that he does not. You are a deserted wife, my fair Tess--" In an impulse he turned suddenly to take her hand; the buff-glove was on it, and he seized only the rough leather fingers which did not express the life or shape of those within. "You must not--you must not!" she cried fearfully, slipping her hand from the glove as from a pocket, and leaving it in his grasp. "O, will you go away--for the sake of me and my husband--go, in the name of your own Christianity!" "Yes, yes; I will," he said abruptly, and thrusting the glove back to her he turned to leave. Facing round, however, he said, "Tess, as God is my judge, I meant no humbug in taking your hand!" A pattering of hoofs on the soil of the field, which they had not noticed in their preoccupation, ceased close behind them; and a voice reached her ear: "What the devil are you doing away from your work at this time o' day?" Farmer Groby had espied the two figures from the distance, and had inquisitively ridden across, to learn what was their business in his field. "Don't speak like that to her!" said d'Urberville, his face blackening with something that was not Christianity. "Indeed, Mister! And what mid Methodist pa'sons have to do with she?" "Who is the fellow?" asked d'Urberville, turning to Tess. She went close up to him. "Go--I do beg you!" she said. "What! And leave you to that tyrant? I can see in his face what a churl he is." "He won't hurt me. HE'S not in love with me. I can leave at Lady-Day." "Well, I have no right but to obey, I suppose. But--well, goodbye!" Her defender, whom she dreaded more than her assailant, having reluctantly disappeared, the farmer continued his reprimand, which Tess took with the greatest coolness, that sort of attack being independent of sex. To have as a master this man of stone, who would have cuffed her if he had dared, was almost a relief after her former experiences. She silently walked back towards the summit of the field that was the scene of her labour, so absorbed in the interview which had just taken place that she was hardly aware that the nose of Groby's horse almost touched her shoulders. "If so be you make an agreement to work for me till Lady-Day, I'll see that you carry it out," he growled. "'Od rot the women--now 'tis one thing, and then 'tis another. But I'll put up with it no longer!" Knowing very well that he did not harass the other women of the farm as he harassed her out of spite for the flooring he had once received, she did for one moment picture what might have been the result if she had been free to accept the offer just made her of being the monied Alec's wife. It would have lifted her completely out of subjection, not only to her present oppressive employer, but to a whole world who seemed to despise her. "But no, no!" she said breathlessly; "I could not have married him now! He is so unpleasant to me." That very night she began an appealing letter to Clare, concealing from him her hardships, and assuring him of her undying affection. Any one who had been in a position to read between the lines would have seen that at the back of her great love was some monstrous fear--almost a desperation--as to some secret contingencies which were not disclosed. But again she did not finish her effusion; he had asked Izz to go with him, and perhaps he did not care for her at all. She put the letter in her box, and wondered if it would ever reach Angel's hands. After this her daily tasks were gone through heavily enough, and brought on the day which was of great import to agriculturists--the day of the Candlemas Fair. It was at this fair that new engagements were entered into for the twelve months following the ensuing Lady-Day, and those of the farming population who thought of changing their places duly attended at the county-town where the fair was held. Nearly all the labourers on Flintcomb-Ash farm intended flight, and early in the morning there was a general exodus in the direction of the town, which lay at a distance of from ten to a dozen miles over hilly country. Though Tess also meant to leave at the quarter-day, she was one of the few who did not go to the fair, having a vaguely-shaped hope that something would happen to render another outdoor engagement unnecessary. It was a peaceful February day, of wonderful softness for the time, and one would almost have thought that winter was over. She had hardly finished her dinner when d'Urberville's figure darkened the window of the cottage wherein she was a lodger, which she had all to herself to-day. Tess jumped up, but her visitor had knocked at the door, and she could hardly in reason run away. D'Urberville's knock, his walk up to the door, had some indescribable quality of difference from his air when she last saw him. They seemed to be acts of which the doer was ashamed. She thought that she would not open the door; but, as there was no sense in that either, she arose, and having lifted the latch stepped back quickly. He came in, saw her, and flung himself down into a chair before speaking. "Tess--I couldn't help it!" he began desperately, as he wiped his heated face, which had also a superimposed flush of excitement. "I felt that I must call at least to ask how you are. I assure you I had not been thinking of you at all till I saw you that Sunday; now I cannot get rid of your image, try how I may! It is hard that a good woman should do harm to a bad man; yet so it is. If you would only pray for me, Tess!" The suppressed discontent of his manner was almost pitiable, and yet Tess did not pity him. "How can I pray for you," she said, "when I am forbidden to believe that the great Power who moves the world would alter His plans on my account?" "You really think that?" "Yes. I have been cured of the presumption of thinking otherwise." "Cured? By whom?" "By my husband, if I must tell." "Ah--your husband--your husband! How strange it seems! I remember you hinted something of the sort the other day. What do you really believe in these matters, Tess?" he asked. "You seem to have no religion--perhaps owing to me." "But I have. Though I don't believe in anything supernatural." D'Urberville looked at her with misgiving. "Then do you think that the line I take is all wrong?" "A good deal of it." "H'm--and yet I've felt so sure about it," he said uneasily. "I believe in the SPIRIT of the Sermon on the Mount, and so did my dear husband... But I don't believe--" Here she gave her negations. "The fact is," said d'Urberville drily, "whatever your dear husband believed you accept, and whatever he rejected you reject, without the least inquiry or reasoning on your own part. That's just like you women. Your mind is enslaved to his." "Ah, because he knew everything!" said she, with a triumphant simplicity of faith in Angel Clare that the most perfect man could hardly have deserved, much less her husband. "Yes, but you should not take negative opinions wholesale from another person like that. A pretty fellow he must be to teach you such scepticism!" "He never forced my judgement! He would never argue on the subject with me! But I looked at it in this way; what he believed, after inquiring deep into doctrines, was much more likely to be right than what I might believe, who hadn't looked into doctrines at all." "What used he to say? He must have said something?" She reflected; and with her acute memory for the letter of Angel Clare's remarks, even when she did not comprehend their spirit, she recalled a merciless polemical syllogism that she had heard him use when, as it occasionally happened, he indulged in a species of thinking aloud with her at his side. In delivering it she gave also Clare's accent and manner with reverential faithfulness. "Say that again," asked d'Urberville, who had listened with the greatest attention. She repeated the argument, and d'Urberville thoughtfully murmured the words after her. "Anything else?" he presently asked. "He said at another time something like this"; and she gave another, which might possibly have been paralleled in many a work of the pedigree ranging from the _Dictionnaire Philosophique_ to Huxley's _Essays_. "Ah--ha! How do you remember them?" "I wanted to believe what he believed, though he didn't wish me to; and I managed to coax him to tell me a few of his thoughts. I can't say I quite understand that one; but I know it is right." "H'm. Fancy your being able to teach me what you don't know yourself!" He fell into thought. "And so I threw in my spiritual lot with his," she resumed. "I didn't wish it to be different. What's good enough for him is good enough for me." "Does he know that you are as big an infidel as he?" "No--I never told him--if I am an infidel." "Well--you are better off to-day that I am, Tess, after all! You don't believe that you ought to preach my doctrine, and, therefore, do no despite to your conscience in abstaining. I do believe I ought to preach it, but, like the devils, I believe and tremble, for I suddenly leave off preaching it, and give way to my passion for you." "How?" "Why," he said aridly; "I have come all the way here to see you to-day! But I started from home to go to Casterbridge Fair, where I have undertaken to preach the Word from a waggon at half-past two this afternoon, and where all the brethren are expecting me this minute. Here's the announcement." He drew from his breast-pocket a poster whereon was printed the day, hour, and place of meeting, at which he, d'Urberville, would preach the Gospel as aforesaid. "But how can you get there?" said Tess, looking at the clock. "I cannot get there! I have come here." "What, you have really arranged to preach, and--" "I have arranged to preach, and I shall not be there--by reason of my burning desire to see a woman whom I once despised!--No, by my word and truth, I never despised you; if I had I should not love you now! Why I did not despise you was on account of your being unsmirched in spite of all; you withdrew yourself from me so quickly and resolutely when you saw the situation; you did not remain at my pleasure; so there was one petticoat in the world for whom I had no contempt, and you are she. But you may well despise me now! I thought I worshipped on the mountains, but I find I still serve in the groves! Ha! ha!" "O Alec d'Urberville! what does this mean? What have I done!" "Done?" he said, with a soulless sneer in the word. "Nothing intentionally. But you have been the means--the innocent means--of my backsliding, as they call it. I ask myself, am I, indeed, one of those 'servants of corruption' who, 'after they have escaped the pollutions of the world, are again entangled therein and overcome'-- whose latter end is worse than their beginning?" He laid his hand on her shoulder. "Tess, my girl, I was on the way to, at least, social salvation till I saw you again!" he said freakishly shaking her, as if she were a child. "And why then have you tempted me? I was firm as a man could be till I saw those eyes and that mouth again--surely there never was such a maddening mouth since Eve's!" His voice sank, and a hot archness shot from his own black eyes. "You temptress, Tess; you dear damned witch of Babylon--I could not resist you as soon as I met you again!" "I couldn't help your seeing me again!" said Tess, recoiling. "I know it--I repeat that I do not blame you. But the fact remains. When I saw you ill-used on the farm that day I was nearly mad to think that I had no legal right to protect you--that I could not have it; whilst he who has it seems to neglect you utterly!" "Don't speak against him--he is absent!" she cried in much excitement. "Treat him honourably--he has never wronged you! O leave his wife before any scandal spreads that may do harm to his honest name!" "I will--I will," he said, like a man awakening from a luring dream. "I have broken my engagement to preach to those poor drunken boobies at the fair--it is the first time I have played such a practical joke. A month ago I should have been horrified at such a possibility. I'll go away--to swear--and--ah, can I! to keep away." Then, suddenly: "One clasp, Tessy--one! Only for old friendship--" "I am without defence. Alec! A good man's honour is in my keeping-- think--be ashamed!" "Pooh! Well, yes--yes!" He clenched his lips, mortified with himself for his weakness. His eyes were equally barren of worldly and religious faith. The corpses of those old fitful passions which had lain inanimate amid the lines of his face ever since his reformation seemed to wake and come together as in a resurrection. He went out indeterminately. Though d'Urberville had declared that this breach of his engagement to-day was the simple backsliding of a believer, Tess's words, as echoed from Angel Clare, had made a deep impression upon him, and continued to do so after he had left her. He moved on in silence, as if his energies were benumbed by the hitherto undreamt-of possibility that his position was untenable. Reason had had nothing to do with his whimsical conversion, which was perhaps the mere freak of a careless man in search of a new sensation, and temporarily impressed by his mother's death. The drops of logic Tess had let fall into the sea of his enthusiasm served to chill its effervescence to stagnation. He said to himself, as he pondered again and again over the crystallized phrases that she had handed on to him, "That clever fellow little thought that, by telling her those things, he might be paving my way back to her!" It is the threshing of the last wheat-rick at Flintcomb-Ash farm. The dawn of the March morning is singularly inexpressive, and there is nothing to show where the eastern horizon lies. Against the twilight rises the trapezoidal top of the stack, which has stood forlornly here through the washing and bleaching of the wintry weather. When Izz Huett and Tess arrived at the scene of operations only a rustling denoted that others had preceded them; to which, as the light increased, there were presently added the silhouettes of two men on the summit. They were busily "unhaling" the rick, that is, stripping off the thatch before beginning to throw down the sheaves; and while this was in progress Izz and Tess, with the other women-workers, in their whitey-brown pinners, stood waiting and shivering, Farmer Groby having insisted upon their being on the spot thus early to get the job over if possible by the end of the day. Close under the eaves of the stack, and as yet barely visible, was the red tyrant that the women had come to serve--a timber-framed construction, with straps and wheels appertaining-- the threshing-machine which, whilst it was going, kept up a despotic demand upon the endurance of their muscles and nerves. A little way off there was another indistinct figure; this one black, with a sustained hiss that spoke of strength very much in reserve. The long chimney running up beside an ash-tree, and the warmth which radiated from the spot, explained without the necessity of much daylight that here was the engine which was to act as the _primum mobile_ of this little world. By the engine stood a dark, motionless being, a sooty and grimy embodiment of tallness, in a sort of trance, with a heap of coals by his side: it was the engine-man. The isolation of his manner and colour lent him the appearance of a creature from Tophet, who had strayed into the pellucid smokelessness of this region of yellow grain and pale soil, with which he had nothing in common, to amaze and to discompose its aborigines. What he looked he felt. He was in the agricultural world, but not of it. He served fire and smoke; these denizens of the fields served vegetation, weather, frost, and sun. He travelled with his engine from farm to farm, from county to county, for as yet the steam threshing-machine was itinerant in this part of Wessex. He spoke in a strange northern accent; his thoughts being turned inwards upon himself, his eye on his iron charge, hardly perceiving the scenes around him, and caring for them not at all: holding only strictly necessary intercourse with the natives, as if some ancient doom compelled him to wander here against his will in the service of his Plutonic master. The long strap which ran from the driving-wheel of his engine to the red thresher under the rick was the sole tie-line between agriculture and him. While they uncovered the sheaves he stood apathetic beside his portable repository of force, round whose hot blackness the morning air quivered. He had nothing to do with preparatory labour. His fire was waiting incandescent, his steam was at high pressure, in a few seconds he could make the long strap move at an invisible velocity. Beyond its extent the environment might be corn, straw, or chaos; it was all the same to him. If any of the autochthonous idlers asked him what he called himself, he replied shortly, "an engineer." The rick was unhaled by full daylight; the men then took their places, the women mounted, and the work began. Farmer Groby--or, as they called him, "he"--had arrived ere this, and by his orders Tess was placed on the platform of the machine, close to the man who fed it, her business being to untie every sheaf of corn handed on to her by Izz Huett, who stood next, but on the rick; so that the feeder could seize it and spread it over the revolving drum, which whisked out every grain in one moment. They were soon in full progress, after a preparatory hitch or two, which rejoiced the hearts of those who hated machinery. The work sped on till breakfast time, when the thresher was stopped for half an hour; and on starting again after the meal the whole supplementary strength of the farm was thrown into the labour of constructing the straw-rick, which began to grow beside the stack of corn. A hasty lunch was eaten as they stood, without leaving their positions, and then another couple of hours brought them near to dinner-time; the inexorable wheel continuing to spin, and the penetrating hum of the thresher to thrill to the very marrow all who were near the revolving wire-cage. The old men on the rising straw-rick talked of the past days when they had been accustomed to thresh with flails on the oaken barn-floor; when everything, even to winnowing, was effected by hand-labour, which, to their thinking, though slow, produced better results. Those, too, on the corn-rick talked a little; but the perspiring ones at the machine, including Tess, could not lighten their duties by the exchange of many words. It was the ceaselessness of the work which tried her so severely, and began to make her wish that she had never some to Flintcomb-Ash. The women on the corn-rick--Marian, who was one of them, in particular--could stop to drink ale or cold tea from the flagon now and then, or to exchange a few gossiping remarks while they wiped their faces or cleared the fragments of straw and husk from their clothing; but for Tess there was no respite; for, as the drum never stopped, the man who fed it could not stop, and she, who had to supply the man with untied sheaves, could not stop either, unless Marian changed places with her, which she sometimes did for half an hour in spite of Groby's objections that she was too slow-handed for a feeder. For some probably economical reason it was usually a woman who was chosen for this particular duty, and Groby gave as his motive in selecting Tess that she was one of those who best combined strength with quickness in untying, and both with staying power, and this may have been true. The hum of the thresher, which prevented speech, increased to a raving whenever the supply of corn fell short of the regular quantity. As Tess and the man who fed could never turn their heads she did not know that just before the dinner-hour a person had come silently into the field by the gate, and had been standing under a second rick watching the scene and Tess in particular. He was dressed in a tweed suit of fashionable pattern, and he twirled a gay walking-cane. "Who is that?" said Izz Huett to Marian. She had at first addressed the inquiry to Tess, but the latter could not hear it. "Somebody's fancy-man, I s'pose," said Marian laconically. "I'll lay a guinea he's after Tess." "O no. 'Tis a ranter pa'son who's been sniffing after her lately; not a dandy like this." "Well--this is the same man." "The same man as the preacher? But he's quite different!" "He hev left off his black coat and white neckercher, and hev cut off his whiskers; but he's the same man for all that." "D'ye really think so? Then I'll tell her," said Marian. "Don't. She'll see him soon enough, good-now." "Well, I don't think it at all right for him to join his preaching to courting a married woman, even though her husband mid be abroad, and she, in a sense, a widow." "Oh--he can do her no harm," said Izz drily. "Her mind can no more be heaved from that one place where it do bide than a stooded waggon from the hole he's in. Lord love 'ee, neither court-paying, nor preaching, nor the seven thunders themselves, can wean a woman when 'twould be better for her that she should be weaned." Dinner-time came, and the whirling ceased; whereupon Tess left her post, her knees trembling so wretchedly with the shaking of the machine that she could scarcely walk. "You ought to het a quart o' drink into 'ee, as I've done," said Marian. "You wouldn't look so white then. Why, souls above us, your face is as if you'd been hagrode!" It occurred to the good-natured Marian that, as Tess was so tired, her discovery of her visitor's presence might have the bad effect of taking away her appetite; and Marian was thinking of inducing Tess to descend by a ladder on the further side of the stack when the gentleman came forward and looked up. Tess uttered a short little "Oh!" And a moment after she said, quickly, "I shall eat my dinner here--right on the rick." Sometimes, when they were so far from their cottages, they all did this; but as there was rather a keen wind going to-day, Marian and the rest descended, and sat under the straw-stack. The newcomer was, indeed, Alec d'Urberville, the late Evangelist, despite his changed attire and aspect. It was obvious at a glance that the original _Weltlust_ had come back; that he had restored himself, as nearly as a man could do who had grown three or four years older, to the old jaunty, slapdash guise under which Tess had first known her admirer, and cousin so-called. Having decided to remain where she was, Tess sat down among the bundles, out of sight of the ground, and began her meal; till, by-and-by, she heard footsteps on the ladder, and immediately after Alec appeared upon the stack--now an oblong and level platform of sheaves. He strode across them, and sat down opposite of her without a word. Tess continued to eat her modest dinner, a slice of thick pancake which she had brought with her. The other workfolk were by this time all gathered under the rick, where the loose straw formed a comfortable retreat. "I am here again, as you see," said d'Urberville. "Why do you trouble me so!" she cried, reproach flashing from her very finger-ends. "I trouble YOU? I think I may ask, why do you trouble me?" "Sure, I don't trouble you any-when!" "You say you don't? But you do! You haunt me. Those very eyes that you turned upon me with such a bitter flash a moment ago, they come to me just as you showed them then, in the night and in the day! Tess, ever since you told me of that child of ours, it is just as if my feelings, which have been flowing in a strong puritanical stream, had suddenly found a way open in the direction of you, and had all at once gushed through. The religious channel is left dry forthwith; and it is you who have done it!" She gazed in silence. "What--you have given up your preaching entirely?" she asked. She had gathered from Angel sufficient of the incredulity of modern thought to despise flash enthusiasm; but, as a woman, she was somewhat appalled. In affected severity d'Urberville continued-- "Entirely. I have broken every engagement since that afternoon I was to address the drunkards at Casterbridge Fair. The deuce only knows what I am thought of by the brethren. Ah-ha! The brethren! No doubt they pray for me--weep for me; for they are kind people in their way. But what do I care? How could I go on with the thing when I had lost my faith in it?--it would have been hypocrisy of the basest kind! Among them I should have stood like Hymenaeus and Alexander, who were delivered over to Satan that they might learn not to blaspheme. What a grand revenge you have taken! I saw you innocent, and I deceived you. Four years after, you find me a Christian enthusiast; you then work upon me, perhaps to my complete perdition! But Tess, my coz, as I used to call you, this is only my way of talking, and you must not look so horribly concerned. Of course you have done nothing except retain your pretty face and shapely figure. I saw it on the rick before you saw me--that tight pinafore-thing sets it off, and that wing-bonnet--you field-girls should never wear those bonnets if you wish to keep out of danger." He regarded her silently for a few moments, and with a short cynical laugh resumed: "I believe that if the bachelor-apostle, whose deputy I thought I was, had been tempted by such a pretty face, he would have let go the plough for her sake as I do!" Tess attempted to expostulate, but at this juncture all her fluency failed her, and without heeding he added: "Well, this paradise that you supply is perhaps as good as any other, after all. But to speak seriously, Tess." D'Urberville rose and came nearer, reclining sideways amid the sheaves, and resting upon his elbow. "Since I last saw you, I have been thinking of what you said that HE said. I have come to the conclusion that there does seem rather a want of common-sense in these threadbare old propositions; how I could have been so fired by poor Parson Clare's enthusiasm, and have gone so madly to work, transcending even him, I cannot make out! As for what you said last time, on the strength of your wonderful husband's intelligence--whose name you have never told me--about having what they call an ethical system without any dogma, I don't see my way to that at all." "Why, you can have the religion of loving-kindness and purity at least, if you can't have--what do you call it--dogma." "O no! I'm a different sort of fellow from that! If there's nobody to say, 'Do this, and it will be a good thing for you after you are dead; do that, and if will be a bad thing for you,' I can't warm up. Hang it, I am not going to feel responsible for my deeds and passions if there's nobody to be responsible to; and if I were you, my dear, I wouldn't either!" She tried to argue, and tell him that he had mixed in his dull brain two matters, theology and morals, which in the primitive days of mankind had been quite distinct. But owing to Angel Clare's reticence, to her absolute want of training, and to her being a vessel of emotions rather than reasons, she could not get on. "Well, never mind," he resumed. "Here I am, my love, as in the old times!" "Not as then--never as then--'tis different!" she entreated. "And there was never warmth with me! O why didn't you keep your faith, if the loss of it has brought you to speak to me like this!" "Because you've knocked it out of me; so the evil be upon your sweet head! Your husband little thought how his teaching would recoil upon him! Ha-ha--I'm awfully glad you have made an apostate of me all the same! Tess, I am more taken with you than ever, and I pity you too. For all your closeness, I see you are in a bad way--neglected by one who ought to cherish you." She could not get her morsels of food down her throat; her lips were dry, and she was ready to choke. The voices and laughs of the workfolk eating and drinking under the rick came to her as if they were a quarter of a mile off. "It is cruelty to me!" she said. "How--how can you treat me to this talk, if you care ever so little for me?" "True, true," he said, wincing a little. "I did not come to reproach you for my deeds. I came Tess, to say that I don't like you to be working like this, and I have come on purpose for you. You say you have a husband who is not I. Well, perhaps you have; but I've never seen him, and you've not told me his name; and altogether he seems rather a mythological personage. However, even if you have one, I think I am nearer to you than he is. I, at any rate, try to help you out of trouble, but he does not, bless his invisible face! The words of the stern prophet Hosea that I used to read come back to me. Don't you know them, Tess?--'And she shall follow after her lover, but she shall not overtake him; and she shall seek him, but shall not find him; then shall she say, I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now!' ... Tess, my trap is waiting just under the hill, and--darling mine, not his!--you know the rest." Her face had been rising to a dull crimson fire while he spoke; but she did not answer. "You have been the cause of my backsliding," he continued, stretching his arm towards her waist; "you should be willing to share it, and leave that mule you call husband for ever." One of her leather gloves, which she had taken off to eat her skimmer-cake, lay in her lap, and without the slightest warning she passionately swung the glove by the gauntlet directly in his face. It was heavy and thick as a warrior's, and it struck him flat on the mouth. Fancy might have regarded the act as the recrudescence of a trick in which her armed progenitors were not unpractised. Alec fiercely started up from his reclining position. A scarlet oozing appeared where her blow had alighted, and in a moment the blood began dropping from his mouth upon the straw. But he soon controlled himself, calmly drew his handkerchief from his pocket, and mopped his bleeding lips. She too had sprung up, but she sank down again. "Now, punish me!" she said, turning up her eyes to him with the hopeless defiance of the sparrow's gaze before its captor twists its neck. "Whip me, crush me; you need not mind those people under the rick! I shall not cry out. Once victim, always victim--that's the law!" "O no, no, Tess," he said blandly. "I can make full allowance for this. Yet you most unjustly forget one thing, that I would have married you if you had not put it out of my power to do so. Did I not ask you flatly to be my wife--hey? Answer me." "You did." "And you cannot be. But remember one thing!" His voice hardened as his temper got the better of him with the recollection of his sincerity in asking her and her present ingratitude, and he stepped across to her side and held her by the shoulders, so that she shook under his grasp. "Remember, my lady, I was your master once! I will be your master again. If you are any man's wife you are mine!" The threshers now began to stir below. "So much for our quarrel," he said, letting her go. "Now I shall leave you, and shall come again for your answer during the afternoon. You don't know me yet! But I know you." She had not spoken again, remaining as if stunned. D'Urberville retreated over the sheaves, and descended the ladder, while the workers below rose and stretched their arms, and shook down the beer they had drunk. Then the threshing-machine started afresh; and amid the renewed rustle of the straw Tess resumed her position by the buzzing drum as one in a dream, untying sheaf after sheaf in endless succession.

Chapters 45 - 47

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820050202/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmTessD55.asp

Tess is shocked to see Alec and hear him preaching about his regret over his past mistakes. Trembling with fear at his image, she turns to leave, but not quickly enough. Alec recognizes her and is equally as shocked as Tess has been, but he does not try to flee from her. Instead, he approaches her on the pretense of trying to save her soul. He tells Tess that his mother's death and a pious clergyman named Clare were responsible for his conversion. Tess does not believe he is genuine. Tess tells Alec the troubles that she has endured because of his misdoing. He is unhappy about the revelation and makes Tess promise never to tempt or charm him again.

Notes Tess is unnerved by the image of Alec preaching in the barn. When Alec spies her, he is equally unnerved, for he immediately feels his passion rising. He approaches Tess and tells her that women continue to attract him. He makes Tess swear on an assumed holy cross that she will never tempt him again. Later Tess is horrified to learn that the "cross-in-hand" on which she swore is a really a symbol of ill omen. Alec is obviously a sinner trying to cover up his past in an effort to gain salvation, but his religion does not run very deep. As soon as Alec's eyes fall on Tess, the look on his face and in his eyes clearly reveal he has changed little in the intervening years. CHAPTER 46 Summary Alec finds Tess in the fields and shows concern for the ill fortune he has caused her. To make up for his past sins, he asks her to marry him and go with him to Africa on a mission. Alec is surprised when Tess tells him that she is married to someone else and even more shocked to learn that her husband is away. Alec departs when Tess begs him to leave. Alec calls on Tess at her cottage and states that he is unable to rid the image of her from his mind. He asks her to pray for him. Tess, quoting words from Angel, tells Alec that she will not pray for him and expect God to alter his plans on his account. She again begs him to leave, fearing that his presence may cause a scandal and harm Angel's name. Notes Alec's pathetic nature is clearly revealed in this chapter. He finds Tess in the fields and begs her to marry him in order to ease his conscience and guarantee his salvation. He is so unsure of himself that he calls on her again at her cottage and begs Tess to pray for him so that he is not allured by her charm. But it is clearly obvious that Alec again feels passion for Tess, and he wants to possess her again. It is important to note Tess's main reaction to Alec during the two visits. She has no thought of her own well being in his presence. She begs him to leave because she does not want any scandal to be attached to Angel's name. Even though her husband has deserted her for Brazil, it is obvious that Tess still loves him deeply. CHAPTER 47 Summary By March Alec has shed his acquired image of a preacher and comes to share the news with Tess. He tells her that he is in love with her and again asks her to come away with him. Since she is the reason he has renounced the ministry, he says she should "leave that mule you call husband forever" and share her life with him. Unwilling to hear a single bad word spoken against Angel, she slaps Alec's face with a leather glove. Infuriated at her boldness, he grabs Tess by the shoulders and screams, " I will be your master again." Notes In this chapter, Tess's supreme love for Angel is again depicted. It is unbearable for her to hear anyone speak ill of him. When Alec dares to call him a mule, Tess's temper flares and she strikes him across the face. In the entire book, it is only Alec who has caused Tess to lose control. Alec is also losing control. He confesses to Tess that "ever since you told me of that child of ours, it is just as my feelings. . . had suddenly found a way open in the direction of you, and had all at once gushed through." He blames Tess for arousing his passion again and swears that he will master her. Tess's already stressful existence simply grows more stressful.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/57.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_55_part_0.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 56

chapter 56

{"name": "Phase VII: \"Fulfillment,\" Chapter Fifty-Six", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-56", "summary": "The landlady at the hotel, Mrs. Brooks, overheard part of the conversation between Angel and Tess. After Angel leaves, she tiptoes partway up the stairs, and hears anguished moaning from the D'Urberville room. She peeps in at the keyhole, and sees Tess crying at the breakfast table in the outer room, and overhears Alec asking what is wrong. She overhears part of the explanation--Tess saying that she had lost Angel again because of Alec, and that Alec had torn her life to shreds and had caged her forever. Mrs. Brooks is afraid of being caught eavesdropping, so she hurries back downstairs, and heads back to the kitchen to finish her own breakfast. After a while, she looks out the window, and sees Tess leaving the hotel. She doesn't think much of it --her wealthy guests must have had a spat, that's all. But then, after a while, she glances towards the ceiling, and sees a bright red splotch there. She climbs up on a table and touches it--it's blood. She gets a couple of male servants to go with her, and goes upstairs to investigate. Alec has been stabbed to death and is lying in the bed.", "analysis": ""}

Mrs Brooks, the lady who was the householder at The Herons and owner of all the handsome furniture, was not a person of an unusually curious turn of mind. She was too deeply materialized, poor woman, by her long and enforced bondage to that arithmetical demon Profit-and-Loss, to retain much curiousity for its own sake, and apart from possible lodgers' pockets. Nevertheless, the visit of Angel Clare to her well-paying tenants, Mr and Mrs d'Urberville, as she deemed them, was sufficiently exceptional in point of time and manner to reinvigorate the feminine proclivity which had been stifled down as useless save in its bearings to the letting trade. Tess had spoken to her husband from the doorway, without entering the dining-room, and Mrs Brooks, who stood within the partly-closed door of her own sitting-room at the back of the passage, could hear fragments of the conversation--if conversation it could be called--between those two wretched souls. She heard Tess re-ascend the stairs to the first floor, and the departure of Clare, and the closing of the front door behind him. Then the door of the room above was shut, and Mrs Brooks knew that Tess had re-entered her apartment. As the young lady was not fully dressed, Mrs Brooks knew that she would not emerge again for some time. She accordingly ascended the stairs softly, and stood at the door of the front room--a drawing-room, connected with the room immediately behind it (which was a bedroom) by folding-doors in the common manner. This first floor, containing Mrs Brooks's best apartments, had been taken by the week by the d'Urbervilles. The back room was now in silence; but from the drawing-room there came sounds. All that she could at first distinguish of them was one syllable, continually repeated in a low note of moaning, as if it came from a soul bound to some Ixionian wheel-- "O--O--O!" Then a silence, then a heavy sigh, and again-- "O--O--O!" The landlady looked through the keyhole. Only a small space of the room inside was visible, but within that space came a corner of the breakfast table, which was already spread for the meal, and also a chair beside. Over the seat of the chair Tess's face was bowed, her posture being a kneeling one in front of it; her hands were clasped over her head, the skirts of her dressing-gown and the embroidery of her night-gown flowed upon the floor behind her, and her stockingless feet, from which the slippers had fallen, protruded upon the carpet. It was from her lips that came the murmur of unspeakable despair. Then a man's voice from the adjoining bedroom-- "What's the matter?" She did not answer, but went on, in a tone which was a soliloquy rather than an exclamation, and a dirge rather than a soliloquy. Mrs Brooks could only catch a portion: "And then my dear, dear husband came home to me ... and I did not know it! ... And you had used your cruel persuasion upon me ... you did not stop using it--no--you did not stop! My little sisters and brothers and my mother's needs--they were the things you moved me by ... and you said my husband would never come back--never; and you taunted me, and said what a simpleton I was to expect him! ... And at last I believed you and gave way! ... And then he came back! Now he is gone. Gone a second time, and I have lost him now for ever ... and he will not love me the littlest bit ever any more--only hate me! ... O yes, I have lost him now--again because of--you!" In writhing, with her head on the chair, she turned her face towards the door, and Mrs Brooks could see the pain upon it, and that her lips were bleeding from the clench of her teeth upon them, and that the long lashes of her closed eyes stuck in wet tags to her cheeks. She continued: "And he is dying--he looks as if he is dying! ... And my sin will kill him and not kill me! ... O, you have torn my life all to pieces ... made me be what I prayed you in pity not to make me be again! ... My own true husband will never, never--O God--I can't bear this!--I cannot!" There were more and sharper words from the man; then a sudden rustle; she had sprung to her feet. Mrs Brooks, thinking that the speaker was coming to rush out of the door, hastily retreated down the stairs. She need not have done so, however, for the door of the sitting-room was not opened. But Mrs Brooks felt it unsafe to watch on the landing again, and entered her own parlour below. She could hear nothing through the floor, although she listened intently, and thereupon went to the kitchen to finish her interrupted breakfast. Coming up presently to the front room on the ground floor she took up some sewing, waiting for her lodgers to ring that she might take away the breakfast, which she meant to do herself, to discover what was the matter if possible. Overhead, as she sat, she could now hear the floorboards slightly creak, as if some one were walking about, and presently the movement was explained by the rustle of garments against the banisters, the opening and the closing of the front door, and the form of Tess passing to the gate on her way into the street. She was fully dressed now in the walking costume of a well-to-do young lady in which she had arrived, with the sole addition that over her hat and black feathers a veil was drawn. Mrs Brooks had not been able to catch any word of farewell, temporary or otherwise, between her tenants at the door above. They might have quarrelled, or Mr d'Urberville might still be asleep, for he was not an early riser. She went into the back room, which was more especially her own apartment, and continued her sewing there. The lady lodger did not return, nor did the gentleman ring his bell. Mrs Brooks pondered on the delay, and on what probable relation the visitor who had called so early bore to the couple upstairs. In reflecting she leant back in her chair. As she did so her eyes glanced casually over the ceiling till they were arrested by a spot in the middle of its white surface which she had never noticed there before. It was about the size of a wafer when she first observed it, but it speedily grew as large as the palm of her hand, and then she could perceive that it was red. The oblong white ceiling, with this scarlet blot in the midst, had the appearance of a gigantic ace of hearts. Mrs Brooks had strange qualms of misgiving. She got upon the table, and touched the spot in the ceiling with her fingers. It was damp, and she fancied that it was a blood stain. Descending from the table, she left the parlour, and went upstairs, intending to enter the room overhead, which was the bedchamber at the back of the drawing-room. But, nerveless woman as she had now become, she could not bring herself to attempt the handle. She listened. The dead silence within was broken only by a regular beat. Drip, drip, drip. Mrs Brooks hastened downstairs, opened the front door, and ran into the street. A man she knew, one of the workmen employed at an adjoining villa, was passing by, and she begged him to come in and go upstairs with her; she feared something had happened to one of her lodgers. The workman assented, and followed her to the landing. She opened the door of the drawing-room, and stood back for him to pass in, entering herself behind him. The room was empty; the breakfast--a substantial repast of coffee, eggs, and a cold ham--lay spread upon the table untouched, as when she had taken it up, excepting that the carving-knife was missing. She asked the man to go through the folding-doors into the adjoining room. He opened the doors, entered a step or two, and came back almost instantly with a rigid face. "My good God, the gentleman in bed is dead! I think he has been hurt with a knife--a lot of blood had run down upon the floor!" The alarm was soon given, and the house which had lately been so quiet resounded with the tramp of many footsteps, a surgeon among the rest. The wound was small, but the point of the blade had touched the heart of the victim, who lay on his back, pale, fixed, dead, as if he had scarcely moved after the infliction of the blow. In a quarter of an hour the news that a gentleman who was a temporary visitor to the town had been stabbed in his bed, spread through every street and villa of the popular watering-place.

Phase VII: "Fulfillment," Chapter Fifty-Six

https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-56

The landlady at the hotel, Mrs. Brooks, overheard part of the conversation between Angel and Tess. After Angel leaves, she tiptoes partway up the stairs, and hears anguished moaning from the D'Urberville room. She peeps in at the keyhole, and sees Tess crying at the breakfast table in the outer room, and overhears Alec asking what is wrong. She overhears part of the explanation--Tess saying that she had lost Angel again because of Alec, and that Alec had torn her life to shreds and had caged her forever. Mrs. Brooks is afraid of being caught eavesdropping, so she hurries back downstairs, and heads back to the kitchen to finish her own breakfast. After a while, she looks out the window, and sees Tess leaving the hotel. She doesn't think much of it --her wealthy guests must have had a spat, that's all. But then, after a while, she glances towards the ceiling, and sees a bright red splotch there. She climbs up on a table and touches it--it's blood. She gets a couple of male servants to go with her, and goes upstairs to investigate. Alec has been stabbed to death and is lying in the bed.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/52.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_51_part_0.txt

The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 22

part 2, chapter 22

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 22", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-22", "summary": "At the secret political meeting, a servant runs in and announces the arrival of an important Duke. The Duke tells him to be quiet before the guy can even finish, though. The marquis introduces the man to Julien. He mentions that Julien has an incredible memory. The man quizzes Julien on the content of that day's newspaper, and Julien has it all by heart. Julien is sent into the next room for a while, then called back. The men start talking all about what France needs and how they're going to achieve it. By the time he's done, Julien has twenty-six pages of notes. Despite his best intentions, the narrator decides to include some excerpts from these notes. There's some talk of an assassination in France, of a revolution, of an invasion by a foreign country... everyone just sounds like a big blowhard, though. In the end, Julien is asked to memorize the letter and deliver it's message to a certain Duke living outside of France.", "analysis": ""}

CHAPTER LII THE DISCUSSION The republic:--For one man to day who will sacrifice everything for the public welfare, there are thousands and millions who think of nothing except their enjoyments and their vanity. One is requested in Paris by reason of the qualities not of one's self but of one's carriage. --NAPOLEON, Memorial. The footman rushed in saying "Monsieur the duke de ----" "Hold your tongue, you are just a fool," said the duke as he entered. He spoke these words so well, and with so much majesty, that Julien could not help thinking this great person's accomplishments were limited to the science of snubbing a lackey. Julien raised his eyes and immediately lowered them. He had so fully appreciated the significance of the new arrival that he feared that his look might be an indiscretion. The duke was a man of fifty dressed like a dandy and with a jerky walk. He had a narrow head with a large nose and a face that jutted forward; it would have been difficult to have looked at the same time more insignificant. His arrival was the signal for the opening of the meeting. Julien was sharply interrupted in his physiognomical observations by de la Mole's voice. "I present to you M. the abbe Sorel," said the Marquis. "He is gifted with an astonishing memory; it is scarcely an hour ago since I spoke to him of the mission by which he might be honoured, and he has learned the first page of the _Quotidienne_ by heart in order to give proof of his memory." "Ah! foreign news of that poor N--" said the master of the house. He took up the paper eagerly and looked at Julien in a manner rendered humorous by its own self-importance. "Speak, monsieur," he said to him. The silence was profound, all eyes were fixed on Julien. He recited so well that the duke said at the end of twenty lines, "That is enough." The little man who looked like a boar sat down. He was the president, for he had scarcely taken his place before he showed Julien a card-table and signed to him to bring it near him. Julien established himself at it with writing materials. He counted twelve persons seated round the green table cloth. "M. Sorel," said the Duke, "retire into next room, you will be called." The master of the house began to look very anxious. "The shutters are not shut," he said to his neighbour in a semi-whisper. "It is no good looking out of the window," he stupidly cried to Julien--"so here I am more or less mixed up in a conspiracy," thought the latter. "Fortunately it is not one of those which lead to the Place-de-Greve. Even though there were danger, I owe this and even more to the marquis, and should be glad to be given the chance of making up for all the sorrow which my madness may one day occasion him." While thinking of his own madness and his own unhappiness he regarded the place where he was, in such a way as to imprint it upon his memory for ever. He then remembered for the first time that he had never heard the lackey tell the name of the street, and that the marquis had taken a fiacre which he never did in the ordinary way. Julien was left to his own reflections for a long time. He was in a salon upholstered in red velvet with large pieces of gold lace. A large ivory crucifix was on the console-table and a gilt-edged, magnificently bound copy of M. de Maistre's book _The Pope_ was on the mantelpiece. Julien opened it so as not to appear to be eavesdropping. From time to time they talked loudly in the next room. At last the door was opened and he was called in. "Remember, gentlemen," the president was saying "that from this moment we are talking in the presence of the duke of ----. This gentleman," he said, pointing to Julien, "is a young acolyte devoted to our sacred cause who by the aid of his marvellous memory will repeat quite easily our very slightest words." "It is your turn to speak, Monsieur," he said pointing to the paternal looking personage who wore three or four waistcoats. Julien thought it would have been more natural to have called him the gentleman in the waistcoats. He took some paper and wrote a great deal. (At this juncture the author would have liked to have put a page of dots. "That," said his publisher, "would be clumsy and in the case of so light a work clumsiness is death." "Politics," replies the author, "is a stone tied round the neck of literature which submerges it in less than six months. Politics in the midst of imaginative matter is like a pistol shot in the middle of a concert. The noise is racking without being energetic. It does not harmonise with the sound of any instrument. These politics will give mortal offence to one half of the readers and will bore the other half, who will have already read the ideas in question as set out in the morning paper in its own drastic manner." "If your characters don't talk politics," replied the publisher, "they cease to be Frenchmen of 1830, and your book is no longer a mirror as you claim?") Julien's record ran to twenty-six pages. Here is a very diluted extract, for it has been necessary to adopt the invariable practice of suppressing those ludicrous passages, whose violence would have seemed either offensive or intolerable (see the _Gazette des Tribunaux_). The man with the waistcoats and the paternal expression (he was perhaps a bishop) often smiled and then his eyes, which were surrounded with a floating forest of eyebrows, assumed a singular brilliance and an unusually decided expression. This personage whom they made speak first before the duke ("but what duke is it?" thought Julien to himself) with the apparent object of expounding various points of view and fulfilling the functions of an advocate-general, appeared to Julien to fall into the uncertainty and lack of definiteness with which those officials are so often taxed. During the course of the discussion the duke went so far as to reproach him on this score. After several sentences of morality and indulgent philosophy the man in the waistcoats said, "Noble England, under the guiding hand of a great man, the immortal Pitt, has spent forty milliards of francs in opposing the revolution. If this meeting will allow me to treat so melancholy a subject with some frankness, England fails to realise sufficiently that in dealing with a man like Buonaparte, especially when they have nothing to oppose him with, except a bundle of good intentions there is nothing decisive except personal methods." "Ah! praising assassination again!" said the master of the house anxiously. "Spare us your sentimental sermons," cried the president angrily. His boarlike eye shone with a savage brilliance. "Go on," he said to the man with the waistcoats. The cheeks and the forehead of the president became purple. "Noble England," replied the advocate-general, "is crushed to-day: for each Englishman before paying for his own bread is obliged to pay the interest on forty milliards of francs which were used against the Jacobins. She has no more Pitt." "She has the Duke of Wellington," said a military personage looking very important. "Please, gentlemen, silence," exclaimed the president. "If we are still going to dispute, there was no point in having M. Sorel in." "We know that monsieur has many ideas," said the duke irritably, looking at the interrupter who was an old Napoleonic general. Julien saw that these words contained some personal and very offensive allusion. Everybody smiled, the turncoat general appeared beside himself with rage. "There is no longer a Pitt, gentlemen," went on the speaker with all the despondency of a man who has given up all hope of bringing his listeners to reason. "If there were a new Pitt in England, you would not dupe a nation twice over by the same means." "That's why a victorious general, a Buonaparte, will be henceforward impossible in France," exclaimed the military interrupter. On this occasion neither the president nor the duke ventured to get angry, though Julien thought he read in their eyes that they would very much like to have done so. They lowered their eyes, and the duke contented himself with sighing in quite an audible manner. But the speaker was put upon his mettle. "My audience is eager for me to finish," he said vigorously, completely discarding that smiling politeness and that balanced diction that Julien thought had expressed his character so well. "It is eager for me to finish, it is not grateful to me for the efforts I am making to offend nobody's ears, however long they may be. Well, gentlemen, I will be brief. "I will tell you in quite common words: England has not got a sou with which to help the good cause. If Pitt himself were to come back he would never succeed with all his genius in duping the small English landowners, for they know that the short Waterloo campaign alone cost them a milliard of francs. As you like clear phrases," continued the speaker, becoming more and more animated, "I will say this to you: Help yourselves, for England has not got a guinea left to help you with, and when England does not pay, Austria, Russia and Prussia--who will only have courage but have no money--cannot launch more than one or two campaigns against France. "One may hope that the young soldiers who will be recruited by the Jacobins will be beaten in the first campaign, and possibly in the second; but, even though I seem a revolutionary in your prejudiced eyes, in the third campaign--in the third campaign I say--you will have the soldiers of 1794 who were no longer the soldiers enlisted in 1792." At this point interruption broke out simultaneously from three or four quarters. "Monsieur," said the president to Julien, "Go and make a precis in the next room of the beginning of the report which you have written out." Julien went out to his great regret. The speaker was just dealing with the question of probabilities which formed the usual subject for his meditations. "They are frightened of my making fun of them," he thought. When he was called back, M. de la Mole was saying with a seriousness which seemed quite humorous to Julien who knew him so well, "Yes, gentlemen, one finds the phrase, 'is it god, table or tub?' especially applicable to this unhappy people. '_It is god_' exclaims the writer of fables. It is to you, gentlemen, that this noble and profound phrase seems to apply. Act on your own initiative, and noble France will appear again, almost such as our ancestors made her, and as our own eyes have seen her before the death of Louis XVI. "England execrates disgraceful Jacobinism as much as we do, or at any rate her noble lords do. Without English gold, Austria and Prussia would only be able to give battle two or three times. Would that be sufficient to ensure a successful occupation like the one which M. de Richelieu so foolishly failed to exploit in 1817? I do not think so." At this point there was an interruption which was stifled by the hushes of the whole room. It came again from the old Imperial general who wanted the blue ribbon and wished to figure among the authors of the secret note. "I do not think so," replied M. de la Mole, after the uproar had subsided. He laid stress on the "I" with an insolence which charmed Julien. "That's a pretty piece of acting," he said to himself, as he made his pen almost keep pace with the marquis' words. M. de la Mole annihilated the twenty campaigns of the turncoat with a well turned phrase. "It is not only on foreign powers," continued the marquis in a more even tone, "on whom we shall be able to rely for a new military occupation. All those young men who write inflammatory articles in the _Globe_ will provide you with three or four thousand young captains among whom you may find men with the genius, but not the good intentions of a Kleber, a Hoche, a Jourdan, a Pichegru." "We did not know how to glorify him," said the president. "He should have been immortalized." "Finally, it is necessary for France to have two parties," went on M. de la Mole; "but two parties not merely in name, but with clear-cut lines of cleavage. Let us realise what has got to be crushed. On the one hand the journalists and the electors, in a word, public opinion; youth and all that admire it. While it is stupefying itself with the noise of its own vain words, we have certain advantages of administrating the expenditure of the budget." At this point there was another interruption. "As for you, monsieur," said M. de la Mole to the interrupter, with an admirable haughtiness and ease of manner, "you do not spend, if the words chokes you, but you devour the forty thousand francs put down to you in the State budget, and the eighty thousand which you receive from the civil list." "Well, monsieur, since you force me to it, I will be bold enough to take you for an example. Like your noble ancestors, who followed Saint Louis to the crusade, you ought in return for those hundred and twenty thousand francs to show us at any rate a regiment; a company, why, what am I saying? say half a company, even if it only had fifty men, ready to fight and devoted to the good cause to the point of risking their lives in its service. You have nothing but lackeys, who in the event of a rebellion would frighten you yourselves." "Throne, Church, Nobility are liable to perish to-morrow, gentlemen, so long as you refrain from creating in each department a force of five hundred devoted men, devoted I mean, not only with all the French courage, but with all the Spanish constancy. "Half of this force ought to be composed of our children, our nephews, of real gentlemen, in fact. Each of them will have beside him not a little talkative bourgeois ready to hoist the tricolor cockade, if 1815 turns up again, but a good, frank and simple peasant like Cathelineau. Our gentleman will have educated him, it will be his own foster brother if it is possible. Let each of us sacrifice the fifth of his income in order to form this little devoted force of five hundred men in each department. Then you will be able to reckon on a foreign occupation. The foreign soldier will never penetrate even as far as Dijon if he is not certain of finding five hundred friendly soldiers in each department. "The foreign kings will only listen to you when you are in a position to announce to them that you have twenty thousand gentlemen ready to take up arms in order to open to them the gates of France. The service is troublesome, you say. Gentlemen, it is the only way of saving our lives. There is war to the death between the liberty of the press and our existence as gentlemen. Become manufacturers, become peasants, or take up your guns. Be timid if you like, but do not be stupid. Open your eyes. "'_Form your battalions_,' I would say to you in the words of the Jacobin songs. Some noble Gustavus Adolphus will then be found who, touched by the imminent peril of the monarchical principle, will make a dash three hundred leagues from his own country, and will do for you what Gustavus did for the Protestant princes. Do you want to go on talking without acting? In fifty years' time there will be only presidents or republics in Europe and not one king, and with those three letters R. O. I. you will see the last of the priests and the gentlemen. I can see nothing but candidates paying court to squalid majorities. "It is no use your saying that at the present time France has not a single accredited general who is universally known and loved, that the army is only known and organised in the interests of the throne and the church, and that it has been deprived of all its old troopers, while each of the Prussian and Austrian regiments count fifty non-commissioned officers who have seen fire. "Two hundred thousand young men of the middle classes are spoiling for war--" "A truce to disagreeable truths," said a grave personage in a pompous tone. He was apparently a very high ecclesiastical dignitary, for M. de la Mole smiled pleasantly, instead of getting angry, a circumstance which greatly impressed Julien. "A truce to unpleasant truths, let us resume, gentlemen. The man who needs to have a gangrened leg cut off would be ill advised to say to his surgeon, 'this disease is very healthy.' If I may use the metaphor, gentlemen, the noble duke of ---- is our surgeon." "So the great words have at last been uttered," thought Julien. "It is towards the ---- that I shall gallop to-night."

Part 2, Chapter 22

https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-22

At the secret political meeting, a servant runs in and announces the arrival of an important Duke. The Duke tells him to be quiet before the guy can even finish, though. The marquis introduces the man to Julien. He mentions that Julien has an incredible memory. The man quizzes Julien on the content of that day's newspaper, and Julien has it all by heart. Julien is sent into the next room for a while, then called back. The men start talking all about what France needs and how they're going to achieve it. By the time he's done, Julien has twenty-six pages of notes. Despite his best intentions, the narrator decides to include some excerpts from these notes. There's some talk of an assassination in France, of a revolution, of an invasion by a foreign country... everyone just sounds like a big blowhard, though. In the end, Julien is asked to memorize the letter and deliver it's message to a certain Duke living outside of France.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/36.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_35_part_0.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 36

chapter 36

{"name": "Phase V: \"The Woman Pays,\" Chapter Thirty-Six", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-36", "summary": "Angel wakes up early, and sees their supper still sitting on the table, untouched. The woman from the cottage next door arrives to fix their breakfast, and Angel tells her from the window to leave the milk on the doorstep. He gets the rest of their breakfast together from the supplies in the pantry, and calls Tess down to eat. She comes down looking hopeful--maybe he's decided to forgive her. But he looks cold, and they barely speak. She looks so pure that he can hardly believe that her story was true. But she repeats that it was all true. Angel then asks if he's still alive. Tess thinks he means the baby, and replies that the baby died. But Angel meant the man--yes, the man is still alive, and still lives in England. Tess says that he can still get rid of her, if he wants to, by divorcing her. She had assumed that her confession would give him legal grounds to do so, if he wanted to. But he says he can't do that--it would be impossible, because it had happened before their marriage. Tess feels terribly guilty, and says that if she hadn't thought he'd be able to divorce her if he wanted, she would never have married her, and would have killed herself the night before, as she had planned. He asks what she means--apparently she had considered hanging herself from the bedstead, but had lost her courage. He tells her never to think of such a thing again, and she promises. Then Angel goes out and walks to the mill, since he does, after all, need to learn how mills work if he wants to be a farmer. Tess, meanwhile, stays at home to get lunch ready for when he comes home that afternoon. She's so eager to please him that she has the meal on the table exactly as he walks in the door. They discuss the mill as they eat, and he tells her to stop working so hard: she's his wife, not his servant. Tess is so glad to hear him call her his wife that she cries, and says she would never have married him, only he urged her to. Another couple of days pass in the same way. At one point, she puckers up for a kiss, but he turns away, and says that they must part soon, and that he's only stayed with her this long so that people won't gossip. He says that he can't live with her without hating himself, and growing to hate her. He can't live with her while Alec is still alive. Tess had hoped that spending time together, even though they're not talking, would slowly soften him and make him forgive her. But he points out that if they ever had children, their children would be disgraced as much as she would be if anyone ever found out. The next day, Tess says that he's right--they can't be together, and she'll go home to her parents. Angel agrees that that's the only option, and they both begin to pack.", "analysis": ""}

Clare arose in the light of a dawn that was ashy and furtive, as though associated with crime. The fireplace confronted him with its extinct embers; the spread supper-table, whereon stood the two full glasses of untasted wine, now flat and filmy; her vacated seat and his own; the other articles of furniture, with their eternal look of not being able to help it, their intolerable inquiry what was to be done? From above there was no sound; but in a few minutes there came a knock at the door. He remembered that it would be the neighbouring cottager's wife, who was to minister to their wants while they remained here. The presence of a third person in the house would be extremely awkward just now, and, being already dressed, he opened the window and informed her that they could manage to shift for themselves that morning. She had a milk-can in her hand, which he told her to leave at the door. When the dame had gone away he searched in the back quarters of the house for fuel, and speedily lit a fire. There was plenty of eggs, butter, bread, and so on in the larder, and Clare soon had breakfast laid, his experiences at the dairy having rendered him facile in domestic preparations. The smoke of the kindled wood rose from the chimney without like a lotus-headed column; local people who were passing by saw it, and thought of the newly-married couple, and envied their happiness. Angel cast a final glance round, and then going to the foot of the stairs, called in a conventional voice-- "Breakfast is ready!" He opened the front door, and took a few steps in the morning air. When, after a short space, he came back she was already in the sitting-room mechanically readjusting the breakfast things. As she was fully attired, and the interval since his calling her had been but two or three minutes, she must have been dressed or nearly so before he went to summon her. Her hair was twisted up in a large round mass at the back of her head, and she had put on one of the new frocks--a pale blue woollen garment with neck-frillings of white. Her hands and face appeared to be cold, and she had possibly been sitting dressed in the bedroom a long time without any fire. The marked civility of Clare's tone in calling her seemed to have inspired her, for the moment, with a new glimmer of hope. But it soon died when she looked at him. The pair were, in truth, but the ashes of their former fires. To the hot sorrow of the previous night had succeeded heaviness; it seemed as if nothing could kindle either of them to fervour of sensation any more. He spoke gently to her, and she replied with a like undemonstrativeness. At last she came up to him, looking in his sharply-defined face as one who had no consciousness that her own formed a visible object also. "Angel!" she said, and paused, touching him with her fingers lightly as a breeze, as though she could hardly believe to be there in the flesh the man who was once her lover. Her eyes were bright, her pale cheek still showed its wonted roundness, though half-dried tears had left glistening traces thereon; and the usually ripe red mouth was almost as pale as her cheek. Throbbingly alive as she was still, under the stress of her mental grief the life beat so brokenly that a little further pull upon it would cause real illness, dull her characteristic eyes, and make her mouth thin. She looked absolutely pure. Nature, in her fantastic trickery, had set such a seal of maidenhood upon Tess's countenance that he gazed at her with a stupefied air. "Tess! Say it is not true! No, it is not true!" "It is true." "Every word?" "Every word." He looked at her imploringly, as if he would willingly have taken a lie from her lips, knowing it to be one, and have made of it, by some sort of sophistry, a valid denial. However, she only repeated-- "It is true." "Is he living?" Angel then asked. "The baby died." "But the man?" "He is alive." A last despair passed over Clare's face. "Is he in England?" "Yes." He took a few vague steps. "My position--is this," he said abruptly. "I thought--any man would have thought--that by giving up all ambition to win a wife with social standing, with fortune, with knowledge of the world, I should secure rustic innocence as surely as I should secure pink cheeks; but--However, I am no man to reproach you, and I will not." Tess felt his position so entirely that the remainder had not been needed. Therein lay just the distress of it; she saw that he had lost all round. "Angel--I should not have let it go on to marriage with you if I had not known that, after all, there was a last way out of it for you; though I hoped you would never--" Her voice grew husky. "A last way?" "I mean, to get rid of me. You CAN get rid of me." "How?" "By divorcing me." "Good heavens--how can you be so simple! How can I divorce you?" "Can't you--now I have told you? I thought my confession would give you grounds for that." "O Tess--you are too, too--childish--unformed--crude, I suppose! I don't know what you are. You don't understand the law--you don't understand!" "What--you cannot?" "Indeed I cannot." A quick shame mixed with the misery upon his listener's face. "I thought--I thought," she whispered. "O, now I see how wicked I seem to you! Believe me--believe me, on my soul, I never thought but that you could! I hoped you would not; yet I believed, without a doubt, that you could cast me off if you were determined, and didn't love me at--at--all!" "You were mistaken," he said. "O, then I ought to have done it, to have done it last night! But I hadn't the courage. That's just like me!" "The courage to do what?" As she did not answer he took her by the hand. "What were you thinking of doing?" he inquired. "Of putting an end to myself." "When?" She writhed under this inquisitorial manner of his. "Last night," she answered. "Where?" "Under your mistletoe." "My good--! How?" he asked sternly. "I'll tell you, if you won't be angry with me!" she said, shrinking. "It was with the cord of my box. But I could not--do the last thing! I was afraid that it might cause a scandal to your name." The unexpected quality of this confession, wrung from her, and not volunteered, shook him perceptibly. But he still held her, and, letting his glance fall from her face downwards, he said, "Now, listen to this. You must not dare to think of such a horrible thing! How could you! You will promise me as your husband to attempt that no more." "I am ready to promise. I saw how wicked it was." "Wicked! The idea was unworthy of you beyond description." "But, Angel," she pleaded, enlarging her eyes in calm unconcern upon him, "it was thought of entirely on your account--to set you free without the scandal of the divorce that I thought you would have to get. I should never have dreamt of doing it on mine. However, to do it with my own hand is too good for me, after all. It is you, my ruined husband, who ought to strike the blow. I think I should love you more, if that were possible, if you could bring yourself to do it, since there's no other way of escape for 'ee. I feel I am so utterly worthless! So very greatly in the way!" "Ssh!" "Well, since you say no, I won't. I have no wish opposed to yours." He knew this to be true enough. Since the desperation of the night her activities had dropped to zero, and there was no further rashness to be feared. Tess tried to busy herself again over the breakfast-table with more or less success, and they sat down both on the same side, so that their glances did not meet. There was at first something awkward in hearing each other eat and drink, but this could not be escaped; moreover, the amount of eating done was small on both sides. Breakfast over, he rose, and telling her the hour at which he might be expected to dinner, went off to the miller's in a mechanical pursuance of the plan of studying that business, which had been his only practical reason for coming here. When he was gone Tess stood at the window, and presently saw his form crossing the great stone bridge which conducted to the mill premises. He sank behind it, crossed the railway beyond, and disappeared. Then, without a sigh, she turned her attention to the room, and began clearing the table and setting it in order. The charwoman soon came. Her presence was at first a strain upon Tess, but afterwards an alleviation. At half-past twelve she left her assistant alone in the kitchen, and, returning to the sitting-room, waited for the reappearance of Angel's form behind the bridge. About one he showed himself. Her face flushed, although he was a quarter of a mile off. She ran to the kitchen to get the dinner served by the time he should enter. He went first to the room where they had washed their hands together the day before, and as he entered the sitting-room the dish-covers rose from the dishes as if by his own motion. "How punctual!" he said. "Yes. I saw you coming over the bridge," said she. The meal was passed in commonplace talk of what he had been doing during the morning at the Abbey Mill, of the methods of bolting and the old-fashioned machinery, which he feared would not enlighten him greatly on modern improved methods, some of it seeming to have been in use ever since the days it ground for the monks in the adjoining conventual buildings--now a heap of ruins. He left the house again in the course of an hour, coming home at dusk, and occupying himself through the evening with his papers. She feared she was in the way and, when the old woman was gone, retired to the kitchen, where she made herself busy as well as she could for more than an hour. Clare's shape appeared at the door. "You must not work like this," he said. "You are not my servant; you are my wife." She raised her eyes, and brightened somewhat. "I may think myself that--indeed?" she murmured, in piteous raillery. "You mean in name! Well, I don't want to be anything more." "You MAY think so, Tess! You are. What do you mean?" "I don't know," she said hastily, with tears in her accents. "I thought I--because I am not respectable, I mean. I told you I thought I was not respectable enough long ago--and on that account I didn't want to marry you, only--only you urged me!" She broke into sobs, and turned her back to him. It would almost have won round any man but Angel Clare. Within the remote depths of his constitution, so gentle and affectionate as he was in general, there lay hidden a hard logical deposit, like a vein of metal in a soft loam, which turned the edge of everything that attempted to traverse it. It had blocked his acceptance of the Church; it blocked his acceptance of Tess. Moreover, his affection itself was less fire than radiance, and, with regard to the other sex, when he ceased to believe he ceased to follow: contrasting in this with many impressionable natures, who remain sensuously infatuated with what they intellectually despise. He waited till her sobbing ceased. "I wish half the women in England were as respectable as you," he said, in an ebullition of bitterness against womankind in general. "It isn't a question of respectability, but one of principle!" He spoke such things as these and more of a kindred sort to her, being still swayed by the antipathetic wave which warps direct souls with such persistence when once their vision finds itself mocked by appearances. There was, it is true, underneath, a back current of sympathy through which a woman of the world might have conquered him. But Tess did not think of this; she took everything as her deserts, and hardly opened her mouth. The firmness of her devotion to him was indeed almost pitiful; quick-tempered as she naturally was, nothing that he could say made her unseemly; she sought not her own; was not provoked; thought no evil of his treatment of her. She might just now have been Apostolic Charity herself returned to a self-seeking modern world. This evening, night, and morning were passed precisely as the preceding ones had been passed. On one, and only one, occasion did she--the formerly free and independent Tess--venture to make any advances. It was on the third occasion of his starting after a meal to go out to the flour-mill. As he was leaving the table he said "Goodbye," and she replied in the same words, at the same time inclining her mouth in the way of his. He did not avail himself of the invitation, saying, as he turned hastily aside-- "I shall be home punctually." Tess shrank into herself as if she had been struck. Often enough had he tried to reach those lips against her consent--often had he said gaily that her mouth and breath tasted of the butter and eggs and milk and honey on which she mainly lived, that he drew sustenance from them, and other follies of that sort. But he did not care for them now. He observed her sudden shrinking, and said gently-- "You know, I have to think of a course. It was imperative that we should stay together a little while, to avoid the scandal to you that would have resulted from our immediate parting. But you must see it is only for form's sake." "Yes," said Tess absently. He went out, and on his way to the mill stood still, and wished for a moment that he had responded yet more kindly, and kissed her once at least. Thus they lived through this despairing day or two; in the same house, truly; but more widely apart than before they were lovers. It was evident to her that he was, as he had said, living with paralyzed activities in his endeavour to think of a plan of procedure. She was awe-stricken to discover such determination under such apparent flexibility. His consistency was, indeed, too cruel. She no longer expected forgiveness now. More than once she thought of going away from him during his absence at the mill; but she feared that this, instead of benefiting him, might be the means of hampering and humiliating him yet more if it should become known. Meanwhile Clare was meditating, verily. His thought had been unsuspended; he was becoming ill with thinking; eaten out with thinking, withered by thinking; scourged out of all his former pulsating, flexuous domesticity. He walked about saying to himself, "What's to be done--what's to be done?" and by chance she overheard him. It caused her to break the reserve about their future which had hitherto prevailed. "I suppose--you are not going to live with me--long, are you, Angel?" she asked, the sunk corners of her mouth betraying how purely mechanical were the means by which she retained that expression of chastened calm upon her face. "I cannot" he said, "without despising myself, and what is worse, perhaps, despising you. I mean, of course, cannot live with you in the ordinary sense. At present, whatever I feel, I do not despise you. And, let me speak plainly, or you may not see all my difficulties. How can we live together while that man lives?--he being your husband in nature, and not I. If he were dead it might be different... Besides, that's not all the difficulty; it lies in another consideration--one bearing upon the future of other people than ourselves. Think of years to come, and children being born to us, and this past matter getting known--for it must get known. There is not an uttermost part of the earth but somebody comes from it or goes to it from elsewhere. Well, think of wretches of our flesh and blood growing up under a taunt which they will gradually get to feel the full force of with their expanding years. What an awakening for them! What a prospect! Can you honestly say 'Remain' after contemplating this contingency? Don't you think we had better endure the ills we have than fly to others?" Her eyelids, weighted with trouble, continued drooping as before. "I cannot say 'Remain,'" she answered, "I cannot; I had not thought so far." Tess's feminine hope--shall we confess it?--had been so obstinately recuperative as to revive in her surreptitious visions of a domiciliary intimacy continued long enough to break down his coldness even against his judgement. Though unsophisticated in the usual sense, she was not incomplete; and it would have denoted deficiency of womanhood if she had not instinctively known what an argument lies in propinquity. Nothing else would serve her, she knew, if this failed. It was wrong to hope in what was of the nature of strategy, she said to herself: yet that sort of hope she could not extinguish. His last representation had now been made, and it was, as she said, a new view. She had truly never thought so far as that, and his lucid picture of possible offspring who would scorn her was one that brought deadly convictions to an honest heart which was humanitarian to its centre. Sheer experience had already taught her that in some circumstances there was one thing better than to lead a good life, and that was to be saved from leading any life whatever. Like all who have been previsioned by suffering, she could, in the words of M. Sully-Prudhomme, hear a penal sentence in the fiat, "You shall be born," particularly if addressed to potential issue of hers. Yet such is the vulpine slyness of Dame Nature, that, till now, Tess had been hoodwinked by her love for Clare into forgetting it might result in vitalizations that would inflict upon others what she had bewailed as misfortune to herself. She therefore could not withstand his argument. But with the self-combating proclivity of the supersensitive, an answer thereto arose in Clare's own mind, and he almost feared it. It was based on her exceptional physical nature; and she might have used it promisingly. She might have added besides: "On an Australian upland or Texan plain, who is to know or care about my misfortunes, or to reproach me or you?" Yet, like the majority of women, she accepted the momentary presentment as if it were the inevitable. And she may have been right. The intuitive heart of woman knoweth not only its own bitterness, but its husband's, and even if these assumed reproaches were not likely to be addressed to him or to his by strangers, they might have reached his ears from his own fastidious brain. It was the third day of the estrangement. Some might risk the odd paradox that with more animalism he would have been the nobler man. We do not say it. Yet Clare's love was doubtless ethereal to a fault, imaginative to impracticability. With these natures, corporal presence is something less appealing than corporal absence; the latter creating an ideal presence that conveniently drops the defects of the real. She found that her personality did not plead her cause so forcibly as she had anticipated. The figurative phrase was true: she was another woman than the one who had excited his desire. "I have thought over what you say," she remarked to him, moving her forefinger over the tablecloth, her other hand, which bore the ring that mocked them both, supporting her forehead. "It is quite true, all of it; it must be. You must go away from me." "But what can you do?" "I can go home." Clare had not thought of that. "Are you sure?" he inquired. "Quite sure. We ought to part, and we may as well get it past and done. You once said that I was apt to win men against their better judgement; and if I am constantly before your eyes I may cause you to change your plans in opposition to your reason and wish; and afterwards your repentance and my sorrow will be terrible." "And you would like to go home?" he asked. "I want to leave you, and go home." "Then it shall be so." Though she did not look up at him, she started. There was a difference between the proposition and the covenant, which she had felt only too quickly. "I feared it would come to this," she murmured, her countenance meekly fixed. "I don't complain, Angel, I--I think it best. What you said has quite convinced me. Yes, though nobody else should reproach me if we should stay together, yet somewhen, years hence, you might get angry with me for any ordinary matter, and knowing what you do of my bygones, you yourself might be tempted to say words, and they might be overheard, perhaps by my own children. O, what only hurts me now would torture and kill me then! I will go--to-morrow." "And I shall not stay here. Though I didn't like to initiate it, I have seen that it was advisable we should part--at least for a while, till I can better see the shape that things have taken, and can write to you." Tess stole a glance at her husband. He was pale, even tremulous; but, as before, she was appalled by the determination revealed in the depths of this gentle being she had married--the will to subdue the grosser to the subtler emotion, the substance to the conception, the flesh to the spirit. Propensities, tendencies, habits, were as dead leaves upon the tyrannous wind of his imaginative ascendency. He may have observed her look, for he explained-- "I think of people more kindly when I am away from them"; adding cynically, "God knows; perhaps we will shake down together some day, for weariness; thousands have done it!" That day he began to pack up, and she went upstairs and began to pack also. Both knew that it was in their two minds that they might part the next morning for ever, despite the gloss of assuaging conjectures thrown over their proceeding because they were of the sort to whom any parting which has an air of finality is a torture. He knew, and she knew, that, though the fascination which each had exercised over the other--on her part independently of accomplishments--would probably in the first days of their separation be even more potent than ever, time must attenuate that effect; the practical arguments against accepting her as a housemate might pronounce themselves more strongly in the boreal light of a remoter view. Moreover, when two people are once parted--have abandoned a common domicile and a common environment--new growths insensibly bud upward to fill each vacated place; unforeseen accidents hinder intentions, and old plans are forgotten.

Phase V: "The Woman Pays," Chapter Thirty-Six

https://web.archive.org/web/20210424232301/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summary/chapter-36

Angel wakes up early, and sees their supper still sitting on the table, untouched. The woman from the cottage next door arrives to fix their breakfast, and Angel tells her from the window to leave the milk on the doorstep. He gets the rest of their breakfast together from the supplies in the pantry, and calls Tess down to eat. She comes down looking hopeful--maybe he's decided to forgive her. But he looks cold, and they barely speak. She looks so pure that he can hardly believe that her story was true. But she repeats that it was all true. Angel then asks if he's still alive. Tess thinks he means the baby, and replies that the baby died. But Angel meant the man--yes, the man is still alive, and still lives in England. Tess says that he can still get rid of her, if he wants to, by divorcing her. She had assumed that her confession would give him legal grounds to do so, if he wanted to. But he says he can't do that--it would be impossible, because it had happened before their marriage. Tess feels terribly guilty, and says that if she hadn't thought he'd be able to divorce her if he wanted, she would never have married her, and would have killed herself the night before, as she had planned. He asks what she means--apparently she had considered hanging herself from the bedstead, but had lost her courage. He tells her never to think of such a thing again, and she promises. Then Angel goes out and walks to the mill, since he does, after all, need to learn how mills work if he wants to be a farmer. Tess, meanwhile, stays at home to get lunch ready for when he comes home that afternoon. She's so eager to please him that she has the meal on the table exactly as he walks in the door. They discuss the mill as they eat, and he tells her to stop working so hard: she's his wife, not his servant. Tess is so glad to hear him call her his wife that she cries, and says she would never have married him, only he urged her to. Another couple of days pass in the same way. At one point, she puckers up for a kiss, but he turns away, and says that they must part soon, and that he's only stayed with her this long so that people won't gossip. He says that he can't live with her without hating himself, and growing to hate her. He can't live with her while Alec is still alive. Tess had hoped that spending time together, even though they're not talking, would slowly soften him and make him forgive her. But he points out that if they ever had children, their children would be disgraced as much as she would be if anyone ever found out. The next day, Tess says that he's right--they can't be together, and she'll go home to her parents. Angel agrees that that's the only option, and they both begin to pack.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/23042-chapters/7.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/The Tempest/section_6_part_0.txt

The Tempest.act 3.scene 3

scene 3

{"name": "Scene 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219151049/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/the-tempest/summary-and-analysis/act-iii-scene-3", "summary": "The royal party has searched futilely for Ferdinand and collapses, exhausted upon the beach. Unknown to the royal party, Prospero arrives and watches their actions. Within a few moments, a number of ghostly shapes arrive and with them, a lavish banquet. After gesturing to the party that they should approach and eat, the spirit shapes depart. The royal party is incredulous, but they are also hungry and ready to eat. Yet Ariel appears, disguised as a harpy. He makes the banquet disappear and accuses Antonio, Sebastian, and Alonso of being the instruments of sin. Although the men draw their swords, they are frozen in place by magic and unable to lift up their arms. The king is shaken by what he has seen and heard, and he flees, as do Antonio and Sebastian. Worried that they might do themselves harm, Gonzalo sends Adrian and Francisco to watch them.", "analysis": "This scene provides the climax of Prospero's plan and the denouement of Antonio's many plots. Antonio, Sebastian, and Alonso are powerless against Prospero's magic. Their plotting against him -- and Antonio and Sebastian's subsequent plotting against Alonso -- is ineffectual in the face of Prospero's greater power. This is the moment of revenge that Prospero has awaited for 12 long years, and he offers no clue what form the punishment will take. However, because he has encouraged Miranda and Ferdinand's love, it is clear that any retribution directed toward Alonso will not be severe, since he would not risk his daughter's happiness in such a way. That is not the case, however, for Sebastian and Antonio, who have every reason for concern. As he has from the beginning, Ariel carries out Prospero's wishes efficiently and effectively. Ariel, who projects delicacy and eagerness in all that he does, is a spirit of the air. He is eager to be free, and his freedom has been promised in two days, at the conclusion of this mission. Ariel is eager to please Prospero, who freed him from Sycorax, the witch who had imprisoned him in a tree for refusing to do her bidding. Although he wants his freedom in exchange, Ariel approaches his tasks with enthusiasm, quickly doing what is asked and reporting promptly any activities that he observes. Earlier, Ariel had reported the plot to murder Prospero, and now he assists in punishing Prospero's enemies. Ariel's obedience is an important symbol of Prospero's humanity because he ameliorates Prospero's role on the island and humanizes the action that he takes against his old adversaries. Finally, Ariel's willing obedience of Prospero's wishes stands in stark contrast to Caliban's cursing and plotting against the same master. This scene illustrates the deep disparity between what is real and what is imagined. The disappearing banquet was never real, although it briefly appears so to the hungry captives. Ariel appears briefly as a harpy, a mythical creature with a vulture's wings and claws and the face of a woman, yet it is not Ariel's voice that speaks but a deep voice that seems to come from the heavens. Neither the harpy nor the voice is real. None of this is real, and all of it is carefully staged, a theatrical spectacle designed to frighten and punish Prospero's enemies. Prospero is the puppet-master, carefully pulling the strings and manipulating the action. But he remains unseen and, like the deep voice and the banquet, even this scene is illusionary. His victims cannot know that Prospero waits, unseen in the wings. All that is real is the madness that this confrontation has evoked in the three sinners. Glossary Br'r lakin \"By your ladykin\"; a referece to the Virgin Mary. a living drollery probably a puppet-show with live actors. Wallets here, meaning wattle, the fleshy, wrinkled, often brightly colored piece of skin that hangs from throat of a turkey. dowle small feather. too massy unable to move. Here, through magic, the men are paralyzed. bass my trespass Here, meaning that the condemnation was uttered in a deep bass voice. The thunder proclaimed his sin, according to Alonso, like a noise from the heavens."}

SCENE III. _Another part of the island._ _Enter ALONSO, SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, GONZALO, ADRIAN, FRANCISCO, and others._ _Gon._ By'r lakin, I can go no further, sir; My old bones ache: here's a maze trod, indeed, Through forth-rights and meanders! By your patience, I needs must rest me. _Alon._ Old lord, I cannot blame thee, Who am myself attach'd with weariness, 5 To the dulling of my spirits: sit down, and rest. Even here I will put off my hope, and keep it No longer for my flatterer: he is drown'd Whom thus we stray to find; and the sea mocks Our frustrate search on land. Well, let him go. 10 _Ant._ [_Aside to Seb._] I am right glad that he's so out of hope. Do not, for one repulse, forego the purpose That you resolved to effect. _Seb._ [_Aside to Ant._] The next advantage Will we take throughly. _Ant._ [_Aside to Seb._] Let it be to-night; For, now they are oppress'd with travel, they 15 Will not, nor cannot, use such vigilance As when they are fresh. _Seb._ [_Aside to Ant._] I say, to-night: no more. [_Solemn and strange music._ _Alon._ What harmony is this?--My good friends, hark! _Gon._ Marvellous sweet music! _Enter PROSPERO above, invisible. Enter several strange Shapes, bringing in a banquet: they dance about it with gentle actions of salutation; and, inviting the King, &c. to eat, they depart._ _Alon._ Give us kind keepers, heavens!--What were these? 20 _Seb._ A living drollery. Now I will believe That there are unicorns; that in Arabia There is one tree, the phoenix' throne; one phoenix At this hour reigning there. _Ant._ I'll believe both; And what does else want credit, come to me, 25 And I'll be sworn 'tis true: travellers ne'er did lie, Though fools at home condemn 'em. _Gon._ If in Naples I should report this now, would they believe me? If I should say, I saw such islanders,-- For, certes, these are people of the island,-- 30 Who, though they are of monstrous shape, yet, note, Their manners are more gentle-kind than of Our human generation you shall find Many, nay, almost any. _Pros._ [_Aside_] Honest lord, Thou hast said well; for some of you there present 35 Are worse than devils. _Alon._ I cannot too much muse Such shapes, such gesture, and such sound, expressing-- Although they want the use of tongue--a kind Of excellent dumb discourse. _Pros._ [_Aside_] Praise in departing. _Fran._ They vanish'd strangely. _Seb._ No matter, since 40 They have left their viands behind; for we have stomachs.-- Will't please you taste of what is here? _Alon._ Not I. _Gon._ Faith, sir, you need not fear. When we were boys, Who would believe that there were mountaineers Dew-lapp'd like bulls, whose throats had hanging at 'em 45 Wallets of flesh? or that there were such men Whose heads stood in their breasts? which now we find Each putter-out of five for one will bring us Good warrant of. _Alon._ I will stand to, and feed, Although my last: no matter, since I feel 50 The best is past. Brother, my lord the duke, Stand to, and do as we. _Thunder and lightning. Enter ARIEL, like a harpy; claps his wings upon the table; and, with a quaint device, the banquet vanishes._ _Ari._ You are three men of sin, whom Destiny,-- That hath to instrument this lower world And what is in't,--the never-surfeited sea 55 Hath caused to belch up you; and on this island, Where man doth not inhabit,--you 'mongst men Being most unfit to live. I have made you mad; And even with such-like valour men hang and drown Their proper selves. [_Alon., Seb. &c. draw their swords._ You fools! I and my fellows 60 Are ministers of Fate: the elements, Of whom your swords are temper'd, may as well Wound the loud winds, or with bemock'd-at stabs Kill the still-closing waters, as diminish One dowle that's in my plume: my fellow-ministers 65 Are like invulnerable. If you could hurt, Your swords are now too massy for your strengths, And will not be uplifted. But remember,-- For that's my business to you,--that you three From Milan did supplant good Prospero; 70 Exposed unto the sea, which hath requit it, Him and his innocent child: for which foul deed The powers, delaying, not forgetting, have Incensed the seas and shores, yea, all the creatures, Against your peace. Thee of thy son, Alonso, 75 They have bereft; and do pronounce by me: Lingering perdition--worse than any death Can be at once--shall step by step attend You and your ways; whose wraths to guard you from,-- Which here, in this most desolate isle, else falls 80 Upon your heads,--is nothing but heart-sorrow And a clear life ensuing. _He vanishes in thunder; then, to soft music, enter the Shapes again, and dance, with mocks and mows, and carrying out the table._ _Pros._ Bravely the figure of this harpy hast thou Perform'd, my Ariel; a grace it had, devouring: Of my instruction hast thou nothing bated 85 In what thou hadst to say: so, with good life And observation strange, my meaner ministers Their several kinds have done. My high charms work, And these mine enemies are all knit up In their distractions: they now are in my power; 90 And in these fits I leave them, while I visit Young Ferdinand,--whom they suppose is drown'd,-- And his and mine loved darling. [_Exit above._ _Gon._ I' the name of something holy, sir, why stand you In this strange stare? _Alon._ O, it is monstrous, monstrous! 95 Methought the billows spoke, and told me of it; The winds did sing it to me; and the thunder, That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced The name of Prosper: it did bass my trespass. Therefore my son i' th' ooze is bedded; and 100 I'll seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded, And with him there lie mudded. [_Exit._ _Seb._ But one fiend at a time, I'll fight their legions o'er. _Ant._ I'll be thy second. [_Exeunt Seb. and Ant._ _Gon._ All three of them are desperate: their great guilt, Like poison given to work a great time after, 105 Now 'gins to bite the spirits. I do beseech you, That are of suppler joints, follow them swiftly, And hinder them from what this ecstasy May now provoke them to. _Adr._ Follow, I pray you. [_Exeunt._ Notes: III, 3. 2: _ache_] _ake_ F2 F3 F4. _akes_ F1. 3: _forth-rights_] F2 F3 F4. _fourth rights_ F1. 8: _flatterer_] F1. _flatterers_ F2 F3 F4. 17: Prospero above] Malone. Prosper on the top Ff. See note (XIV). 20: _were_] F1 F2 F3. _are_ F4. 26: _'tis true_] _to 't_ Steevens conj. _did lie_] _lied_ Hanmer. 29: _islanders_] F2 F3 F4. _islands_ F1. 32: _gentle-kind_] Theobald. _gentle, kind_ Ff. _gentle kind_ Rowe. 36: _muse_] F1 F2 F3. _muse_, F4. _muse_; Capell. 48: _of five for one_] Ff. _on five for one_ Theobald. _of one for five_ Malone, (Thirlby conj.) See note (XV). 49-51: _I will ... past_] Mason conjectured that these lines formed a rhyming couplet. 53: SCENE IV. Pope. 54: _instrument_] _instruments_ F4. 56: _belch up you_] F1 F2 F3. _belch you up_ F4. _belch up_ Theobald. 60: [... draw their swords] Hanmer. 65: _dowle_] _down_ Pope.] _plume_] Rowe. _plumbe_ F1 F2 F3. _plumb_ F4. 67: _strengths_] _strength_ F4. 79: _wraths_] _wrath_ Theobald. 81: _heart-sorrow_] Edd. _hearts-sorrow_ Ff. _heart's-sorrow_ Rowe. _heart's sorrow_ Pope. 82: mocks] mopps Theobald. 86: _life_] _list_ Johnson conj. 90: _now_] om. Pope. 92: _whom_] _who_ Hanmer. 93: _mine_] _my_ Rowe. [Exit above] Theobald.] 94: _something holy, sir_,] _something, holy Sir_, F4. 99: _bass_] Johnson. _base_ Ff. 106: _do_] om. Pope.

Scene 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219151049/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/the-tempest/summary-and-analysis/act-iii-scene-3

The royal party has searched futilely for Ferdinand and collapses, exhausted upon the beach. Unknown to the royal party, Prospero arrives and watches their actions. Within a few moments, a number of ghostly shapes arrive and with them, a lavish banquet. After gesturing to the party that they should approach and eat, the spirit shapes depart. The royal party is incredulous, but they are also hungry and ready to eat. Yet Ariel appears, disguised as a harpy. He makes the banquet disappear and accuses Antonio, Sebastian, and Alonso of being the instruments of sin. Although the men draw their swords, they are frozen in place by magic and unable to lift up their arms. The king is shaken by what he has seen and heard, and he flees, as do Antonio and Sebastian. Worried that they might do themselves harm, Gonzalo sends Adrian and Francisco to watch them.

This scene provides the climax of Prospero's plan and the denouement of Antonio's many plots. Antonio, Sebastian, and Alonso are powerless against Prospero's magic. Their plotting against him -- and Antonio and Sebastian's subsequent plotting against Alonso -- is ineffectual in the face of Prospero's greater power. This is the moment of revenge that Prospero has awaited for 12 long years, and he offers no clue what form the punishment will take. However, because he has encouraged Miranda and Ferdinand's love, it is clear that any retribution directed toward Alonso will not be severe, since he would not risk his daughter's happiness in such a way. That is not the case, however, for Sebastian and Antonio, who have every reason for concern. As he has from the beginning, Ariel carries out Prospero's wishes efficiently and effectively. Ariel, who projects delicacy and eagerness in all that he does, is a spirit of the air. He is eager to be free, and his freedom has been promised in two days, at the conclusion of this mission. Ariel is eager to please Prospero, who freed him from Sycorax, the witch who had imprisoned him in a tree for refusing to do her bidding. Although he wants his freedom in exchange, Ariel approaches his tasks with enthusiasm, quickly doing what is asked and reporting promptly any activities that he observes. Earlier, Ariel had reported the plot to murder Prospero, and now he assists in punishing Prospero's enemies. Ariel's obedience is an important symbol of Prospero's humanity because he ameliorates Prospero's role on the island and humanizes the action that he takes against his old adversaries. Finally, Ariel's willing obedience of Prospero's wishes stands in stark contrast to Caliban's cursing and plotting against the same master. This scene illustrates the deep disparity between what is real and what is imagined. The disappearing banquet was never real, although it briefly appears so to the hungry captives. Ariel appears briefly as a harpy, a mythical creature with a vulture's wings and claws and the face of a woman, yet it is not Ariel's voice that speaks but a deep voice that seems to come from the heavens. Neither the harpy nor the voice is real. None of this is real, and all of it is carefully staged, a theatrical spectacle designed to frighten and punish Prospero's enemies. Prospero is the puppet-master, carefully pulling the strings and manipulating the action. But he remains unseen and, like the deep voice and the banquet, even this scene is illusionary. His victims cannot know that Prospero waits, unseen in the wings. All that is real is the madness that this confrontation has evoked in the three sinners. Glossary Br'r lakin "By your ladykin"; a referece to the Virgin Mary. a living drollery probably a puppet-show with live actors. Wallets here, meaning wattle, the fleshy, wrinkled, often brightly colored piece of skin that hangs from throat of a turkey. dowle small feather. too massy unable to move. Here, through magic, the men are paralyzed. bass my trespass Here, meaning that the condemnation was uttered in a deep bass voice. The thunder proclaimed his sin, according to Alonso, like a noise from the heavens.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/1232-chapters/chapters_1_to_3.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Prince/section_0_part_0.txt

The Prince.chapters 1-3

section 1: chapters 1-3

{"name": "Section 1: Chapters I-III", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210417004655/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-prince/study-guide/summary-section-1-chapters-i-iii", "summary": "Machiavelli prefaces The Prince with a letter to \"the Magnificent Lorenzo de Medici.\" In fact, the first edition of The Prince was dedicated to Guiliano de Medici, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Guiliano died in 1516, and so Machiavelli rededicated the book to one of Lorenzo's grandsons, the Duke of Urbino, who was also named Lorenzo. The opening letter is abstract enough to allow for these changes: Machiavelli admits that he is seeking favor with \"a prince\" and is offering his book as a gift. \"I...would like to commend myself to your Magnificence with some token of my readiness to serve you,\" he writes. In the first chapter, entitled \"Different Kinds of States, and the Different Ways to Get Them,\" Machiavelli proceeds to map out a classification of states. In short, we have princely states and republics. Princely states are either hereditary or new. The new states are either brand new or freshly joined to an established hereditary state. Of the latter, the conquered territories are accustomed to either living free or living under a prince. The second chapter focuses on hereditary principates. These are easier to rule than new states, as tradition provides a basis for stable government. Machiavelli argues a key point here in regards to a people's desire for change: \"And in the antiquity and continuity of the government,\" he writes, \"people forget not only the reasons for innovations but their very existence, because every new change provides a footing to build on another.\" Chapter III, \"On Mixed Principalities,\" is a longer, more involved consideration of the problematic states: those states that are new and are \"like a graft freshly joined to an old kingdom .\" What we have here is, simply put, the conquest of territory. Machiavelli meditates on what exactly makes such a conquest successful, using two prime examples: the Roman Empire, which succeeded, and King Louis of France, who failed. What did the Romans do correctly? According to Machiavelli, they sent out colonies, a far better strategy than the use of standing armies . The Romans also indulged the less powerful, broke the more powerful, and didn't allow foreigners to gain a stronghold. Never did they let a trouble remain just to avoid going to war over it. As Machiavelli argues, war is never entirely avoidable, but is merely postponed; one should therefore fight it sooner rather than later, attacking those ills that plague a society before they become incurable. Preemption, in other words, is the name of the game. On the subject of colonies, Machiavelli goes one step further, noting that it is better to displace or disrupt the poor and powerless than the rich and powerful. Why? Because the poor cannot fight back. Moreover, \"men ought either to be caressed or destroyed, since they will seek revenge for minor hurts but will not be able to revenge major ones.\" Turning to King Louis, Machiavelli lists his mistakes in an effort to explain his failure to conquer Italian states. Louis entered Italy through the ambition of the Venetians, who wanted to gain control of half of Lombardy. Granted this opportunity, Louis proceeded to squander it. He put down the weaker powers , increased the strength of a major power , introduced a powerful foreigner into the fray , never took up residence in Italy, never set up colonies, and deprived the Venetians of their power. This last error proved fatal: if the Venetians had retained full power, no one would have taken Lombardy from France just to give it to Venice, and the Venetians would not have let others in.", "analysis": "Machiavelli's methodology in these opening chapters is an intrinsically scientific one. He uses a classification system, treating states as varying species to be ordered in a form of political taxonomy. He also bolsters each claim with a historical example, flaunting his knowledge of past men and events, and unfolds his arguments in careful thesis-antithesis fashion, demonstrating the rights and the wrongs as absolute principles to be disregarded at one's own peril. His examples are by and large culled from Italian history. Machiavelli cites the case of the duke of Ferrara, \"who did not yield under attacks either from the Venetians in 1484 or from Pope Julius in 1510\" , and then discusses the Roman Empire, contrasting it with King Louis of France's unsuccessful attempt to gain control of Italy. What Machiavelli is beginning to build is a vision of Italy that is grounded in historical specificity and a set of cardinal rules by which the science of politics operates. There is a curious dialectic between the abstract land Machiavelli seems to invoke when he writes of princes and princedoms as if they were variables in a mathematical equation, and the precision with which he fleshes out Italian history as well as the current events of his land. One can't help but surmise that Italy is the abstract setting of all Machiavelli's formulations, that he has his eye on improving the governance of his own country, and that his emphasis on conquered lands may point the way to a unified Italy, a dream that would not be realized for another three centuries. At the same time, Machiavelli intersperses his layering of details and examples with bits of philosophy and ruminations on the human condition. Indeed, it is not for nothing that he is often referred to as a \"secular humanist.\" Though there are admittedly a few allusions to God, for the most part Machiavelli refers to humans as agents of free will - fickle, noble, full of flaws and merits - and the ultimate barometer of power. What causes princes to succeed or fail? Human nature. Consider the following line: \"men ought either to be caressed or destroyed, since they will seek revenge for minor hurts but will not be able to revenge minor ones.\" Machiavelli bases his political conclusions on basic human impulses: like a great dramatist, he expounds on a set of particular human qualities and uses them to extrapolate broader meanings. He is a humanist insofar as he continually returns to these human impulses in his arguments, thereby positing the larger argument that power and the gain thereof are reflections of a universal human spirit. It is worth noting that Machiavelli never writes, \"the French prefer to be caressed,\" or \"the English are rebellious,\" or \"the Germans are quick to avenge wrongs\"; he is not a nationalist or even an ethnographist, but rather a believer in the universality of man. He writes in categorical terms, presaging Kant and the categorical imperative. Juxtaposed with his reliance on history as example and his emphasis on the comings and goings of his contemporaries is a vision of common man, united by certain fundamental qualities that have persisted since the dawn of civilization and that depend neither on nation nor on creed. In this way, he stands as a quintessential product of the Renaissance."}

All states, all powers, that have held and hold rule over men have been and are either republics or principalities. Principalities are either hereditary, in which the family has been long established; or they are new. The new are either entirely new, as was Milan to Francesco Sforza, or they are, as it were, members annexed to the hereditary state of the prince who has acquired them, as was the kingdom of Naples to that of the King of Spain. Such dominions thus acquired are either accustomed to live under a prince, or to live in freedom; and are acquired either by the arms of the prince himself, or of others, or else by fortune or by ability. I will leave out all discussion on republics, inasmuch as in another place I have written of them at length, and will address myself only to principalities. In doing so I will keep to the order indicated above, and discuss how such principalities are to be ruled and preserved. I say at once there are fewer difficulties in holding hereditary states, and those long accustomed to the family of their prince, than new ones; for it is sufficient only not to transgress the customs of his ancestors, and to deal prudently with circumstances as they arise, for a prince of average powers to maintain himself in his state, unless he be deprived of it by some extraordinary and excessive force; and if he should be so deprived of it, whenever anything sinister happens to the usurper, he will regain it. We have in Italy, for example, the Duke of Ferrara, who could not have withstood the attacks of the Venetians in '84, nor those of Pope Julius in '10, unless he had been long established in his dominions. For the hereditary prince has less cause and less necessity to offend; hence it happens that he will be more loved; and unless extraordinary vices cause him to be hated, it is reasonable to expect that his subjects will be naturally well disposed towards him; and in the antiquity and duration of his rule the memories and motives that make for change are lost, for one change always leaves the toothing for another. But the difficulties occur in a new principality. And firstly, if it be not entirely new, but is, as it were, a member of a state which, taken collectively, may be called composite, the changes arise chiefly from an inherent difficulty which there is in all new principalities; for men change their rulers willingly, hoping to better themselves, and this hope induces them to take up arms against him who rules: wherein they are deceived, because they afterwards find by experience they have gone from bad to worse. This follows also on another natural and common necessity, which always causes a new prince to burden those who have submitted to him with his soldiery and with infinite other hardships which he must put upon his new acquisition. In this way you have enemies in all those whom you have injured in seizing that principality, and you are not able to keep those friends who put you there because of your not being able to satisfy them in the way they expected, and you cannot take strong measures against them, feeling bound to them. For, although one may be very strong in armed forces, yet in entering a province one has always need of the goodwill of the natives. For these reasons Louis the Twelfth, King of France, quickly occupied Milan, and as quickly lost it; and to turn him out the first time it only needed Lodovico's own forces; because those who had opened the gates to him, finding themselves deceived in their hopes of future benefit, would not endure the ill-treatment of the new prince. It is very true that, after acquiring rebellious provinces a second time, they are not so lightly lost afterwards, because the prince, with little reluctance, takes the opportunity of the rebellion to punish the delinquents, to clear out the suspects, and to strengthen himself in the weakest places. Thus to cause France to lose Milan the first time it was enough for the Duke Lodovico(*) to raise insurrections on the borders; but to cause him to lose it a second time it was necessary to bring the whole world against him, and that his armies should be defeated and driven out of Italy; which followed from the causes above mentioned. (*) Duke Lodovico was Lodovico Moro, a son of Francesco Sforza, who married Beatrice d'Este. He ruled over Milan from 1494 to 1500, and died in 1510. Nevertheless Milan was taken from France both the first and the second time. The general reasons for the first have been discussed; it remains to name those for the second, and to see what resources he had, and what any one in his situation would have had for maintaining himself more securely in his acquisition than did the King of France. Now I say that those dominions which, when acquired, are added to an ancient state by him who acquires them, are either of the same country and language, or they are not. When they are, it is easier to hold them, especially when they have not been accustomed to self-government; and to hold them securely it is enough to have destroyed the family of the prince who was ruling them; because the two peoples, preserving in other things the old conditions, and not being unlike in customs, will live quietly together, as one has seen in Brittany, Burgundy, Gascony, and Normandy, which have been bound to France for so long a time: and, although there may be some difference in language, nevertheless the customs are alike, and the people will easily be able to get on amongst themselves. He who has annexed them, if he wishes to hold them, has only to bear in mind two considerations: the one, that the family of their former lord is extinguished; the other, that neither their laws nor their taxes are altered, so that in a very short time they will become entirely one body with the old principality. But when states are acquired in a country differing in language, customs, or laws, there are difficulties, and good fortune and great energy are needed to hold them, and one of the greatest and most real helps would be that he who has acquired them should go and reside there. This would make his position more secure and durable, as it has made that of the Turk in Greece, who, notwithstanding all the other measures taken by him for holding that state, if he had not settled there, would not have been able to keep it. Because, if one is on the spot, disorders are seen as they spring up, and one can quickly remedy them; but if one is not at hand, they are heard of only when they are great, and then one can no longer remedy them. Besides this, the country is not pillaged by your officials; the subjects are satisfied by prompt recourse to the prince; thus, wishing to be good, they have more cause to love him, and wishing to be otherwise, to fear him. He who would attack that state from the outside must have the utmost caution; as long as the prince resides there it can only be wrested from him with the greatest difficulty. The other and better course is to send colonies to one or two places, which may be as keys to that state, for it is necessary either to do this or else to keep there a great number of cavalry and infantry. A prince does not spend much on colonies, for with little or no expense he can send them out and keep them there, and he offends a minority only of the citizens from whom he takes lands and houses to give them to the new inhabitants; and those whom he offends, remaining poor and scattered, are never able to injure him; whilst the rest being uninjured are easily kept quiet, and at the same time are anxious not to err for fear it should happen to them as it has to those who have been despoiled. In conclusion, I say that these colonies are not costly, they are more faithful, they injure less, and the injured, as has been said, being poor and scattered, cannot hurt. Upon this, one has to remark that men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge. But in maintaining armed men there in place of colonies one spends much more, having to consume on the garrison all the income from the state, so that the acquisition turns into a loss, and many more are exasperated, because the whole state is injured; through the shifting of the garrison up and down all become acquainted with hardship, and all become hostile, and they are enemies who, whilst beaten on their own ground, are yet able to do hurt. For every reason, therefore, such guards are as useless as a colony is useful. Again, the prince who holds a country differing in the above respects ought to make himself the head and defender of his less powerful neighbours, and to weaken the more powerful amongst them, taking care that no foreigner as powerful as himself shall, by any accident, get a footing there; for it will always happen that such a one will be introduced by those who are discontented, either through excess of ambition or through fear, as one has seen already. The Romans were brought into Greece by the Aetolians; and in every other country where they obtained a footing they were brought in by the inhabitants. And the usual course of affairs is that, as soon as a powerful foreigner enters a country, all the subject states are drawn to him, moved by the hatred which they feel against the ruling power. So that in respect to those subject states he has not to take any trouble to gain them over to himself, for the whole of them quickly rally to the state which he has acquired there. He has only to take care that they do not get hold of too much power and too much authority, and then with his own forces, and with their goodwill, he can easily keep down the more powerful of them, so as to remain entirely master in the country. And he who does not properly manage this business will soon lose what he has acquired, and whilst he does hold it he will have endless difficulties and troubles. The Romans, in the countries which they annexed, observed closely these measures; they sent colonies and maintained friendly relations with(*) the minor powers, without increasing their strength; they kept down the greater, and did not allow any strong foreign powers to gain authority. Greece appears to me sufficient for an example. The Achaeans and Aetolians were kept friendly by them, the kingdom of Macedonia was humbled, Antiochus was driven out; yet the merits of the Achaeans and Aetolians never secured for them permission to increase their power, nor did the persuasions of Philip ever induce the Romans to be his friends without first humbling him, nor did the influence of Antiochus make them agree that he should retain any lordship over the country. Because the Romans did in these instances what all prudent princes ought to do, who have to regard not only present troubles, but also future ones, for which they must prepare with every energy, because, when foreseen, it is easy to remedy them; but if you wait until they approach, the medicine is no longer in time because the malady has become incurable; for it happens in this, as the physicians say it happens in hectic fever, that in the beginning of the malady it is easy to cure but difficult to detect, but in the course of time, not having been either detected or treated in the beginning, it becomes easy to detect but difficult to cure. Thus it happens in affairs of state, for when the evils that arise have been foreseen (which it is only given to a wise man to see), they can be quickly redressed, but when, through not having been foreseen, they have been permitted to grow in a way that every one can see them, there is no longer a remedy. Therefore, the Romans, foreseeing troubles, dealt with them at once, and, even to avoid a war, would not let them come to a head, for they knew that war is not to be avoided, but is only to be put off to the advantage of others; moreover they wished to fight with Philip and Antiochus in Greece so as not to have to do it in Italy; they could have avoided both, but this they did not wish; nor did that ever please them which is forever in the mouths of the wise ones of our time:--Let us enjoy the benefits of the time--but rather the benefits of their own valour and prudence, for time drives everything before it, and is able to bring with it good as well as evil, and evil as well as good. (*) See remark in the introduction on the word "intrattenere." But let us turn to France and inquire whether she has done any of the things mentioned. I will speak of Louis(*) (and not of Charles)(+) as the one whose conduct is the better to be observed, he having held possession of Italy for the longest period; and you will see that he has done the opposite to those things which ought to be done to retain a state composed of divers elements. (*) Louis XII, King of France, "The Father of the People," born 1462, died 1515. (+) Charles VIII, King of France, born 1470, died 1498. King Louis was brought into Italy by the ambition of the Venetians, who desired to obtain half the state of Lombardy by his intervention. I will not blame the course taken by the king, because, wishing to get a foothold in Italy, and having no friends there--seeing rather that every door was shut to him owing to the conduct of Charles--he was forced to accept those friendships which he could get, and he would have succeeded very quickly in his design if in other matters he had not made some mistakes. The king, however, having acquired Lombardy, regained at once the authority which Charles had lost: Genoa yielded; the Florentines became his friends; the Marquess of Mantua, the Duke of Ferrara, the Bentivogli, my lady of Forli, the Lords of Faenza, of Pesaro, of Rimini, of Camerino, of Piombino, the Lucchese, the Pisans, the Sienese--everybody made advances to him to become his friend. Then could the Venetians realize the rashness of the course taken by them, which, in order that they might secure two towns in Lombardy, had made the king master of two-thirds of Italy. Let any one now consider with what little difficulty the king could have maintained his position in Italy had he observed the rules above laid down, and kept all his friends secure and protected; for although they were numerous they were both weak and timid, some afraid of the Church, some of the Venetians, and thus they would always have been forced to stand in with him, and by their means he could easily have made himself secure against those who remained powerful. But he was no sooner in Milan than he did the contrary by assisting Pope Alexander to occupy the Romagna. It never occurred to him that by this action he was weakening himself, depriving himself of friends and of those who had thrown themselves into his lap, whilst he aggrandized the Church by adding much temporal power to the spiritual, thus giving it greater authority. And having committed this prime error, he was obliged to follow it up, so much so that, to put an end to the ambition of Alexander, and to prevent his becoming the master of Tuscany, he was himself forced to come into Italy. And as if it were not enough to have aggrandized the Church, and deprived himself of friends, he, wishing to have the kingdom of Naples, divided it with the King of Spain, and where he was the prime arbiter in Italy he takes an associate, so that the ambitious of that country and the malcontents of his own should have somewhere to shelter; and whereas he could have left in the kingdom his own pensioner as king, he drove him out, to put one there who was able to drive him, Louis, out in turn. The wish to acquire is in truth very natural and common, and men always do so when they can, and for this they will be praised not blamed; but when they cannot do so, yet wish to do so by any means, then there is folly and blame. Therefore, if France could have attacked Naples with her own forces she ought to have done so; if she could not, then she ought not to have divided it. And if the partition which she made with the Venetians in Lombardy was justified by the excuse that by it she got a foothold in Italy, this other partition merited blame, for it had not the excuse of that necessity. Therefore Louis made these five errors: he destroyed the minor powers, he increased the strength of one of the greater powers in Italy, he brought in a foreign power, he did not settle in the country, he did not send colonies. Which errors, had he lived, were not enough to injure him had he not made a sixth by taking away their dominions from the Venetians; because, had he not aggrandized the Church, nor brought Spain into Italy, it would have been very reasonable and necessary to humble them; but having first taken these steps, he ought never to have consented to their ruin, for they, being powerful, would always have kept off others from designs on Lombardy, to which the Venetians would never have consented except to become masters themselves there; also because the others would not wish to take Lombardy from France in order to give it to the Venetians, and to run counter to both they would not have had the courage. And if any one should say: "King Louis yielded the Romagna to Alexander and the kingdom to Spain to avoid war," I answer for the reasons given above that a blunder ought never to be perpetrated to avoid war, because it is not to be avoided, but is only deferred to your disadvantage. And if another should allege the pledge which the king had given to the Pope that he would assist him in the enterprise, in exchange for the dissolution of his marriage(*) and for the cap to Rouen,(+) to that I reply what I shall write later on concerning the faith of princes, and how it ought to be kept. (*) Louis XII divorced his wife, Jeanne, daughter of Louis XI, and married in 1499 Anne of Brittany, widow of Charles VIII, in order to retain the Duchy of Brittany for the crown. (+) The Archbishop of Rouen. He was Georges d'Amboise, created a cardinal by Alexander VI. Born 1460, died 1510. Thus King Louis lost Lombardy by not having followed any of the conditions observed by those who have taken possession of countries and wished to retain them. Nor is there any miracle in this, but much that is reasonable and quite natural. And on these matters I spoke at Nantes with Rouen, when Valentino, as Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander, was usually called, occupied the Romagna, and on Cardinal Rouen observing to me that the Italians did not understand war, I replied to him that the French did not understand statecraft, meaning that otherwise they would not have allowed the Church to reach such greatness. And in fact it has been seen that the greatness of the Church and of Spain in Italy has been caused by France, and her ruin may be attributed to them. From this a general rule is drawn which never or rarely fails: that he who is the cause of another becoming powerful is ruined; because that predominancy has been brought about either by astuteness or else by force, and both are distrusted by him who has been raised to power.

Section 1: Chapters I-III

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Machiavelli prefaces The Prince with a letter to "the Magnificent Lorenzo de Medici." In fact, the first edition of The Prince was dedicated to Guiliano de Medici, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Guiliano died in 1516, and so Machiavelli rededicated the book to one of Lorenzo's grandsons, the Duke of Urbino, who was also named Lorenzo. The opening letter is abstract enough to allow for these changes: Machiavelli admits that he is seeking favor with "a prince" and is offering his book as a gift. "I...would like to commend myself to your Magnificence with some token of my readiness to serve you," he writes. In the first chapter, entitled "Different Kinds of States, and the Different Ways to Get Them," Machiavelli proceeds to map out a classification of states. In short, we have princely states and republics. Princely states are either hereditary or new. The new states are either brand new or freshly joined to an established hereditary state. Of the latter, the conquered territories are accustomed to either living free or living under a prince. The second chapter focuses on hereditary principates. These are easier to rule than new states, as tradition provides a basis for stable government. Machiavelli argues a key point here in regards to a people's desire for change: "And in the antiquity and continuity of the government," he writes, "people forget not only the reasons for innovations but their very existence, because every new change provides a footing to build on another." Chapter III, "On Mixed Principalities," is a longer, more involved consideration of the problematic states: those states that are new and are "like a graft freshly joined to an old kingdom ." What we have here is, simply put, the conquest of territory. Machiavelli meditates on what exactly makes such a conquest successful, using two prime examples: the Roman Empire, which succeeded, and King Louis of France, who failed. What did the Romans do correctly? According to Machiavelli, they sent out colonies, a far better strategy than the use of standing armies . The Romans also indulged the less powerful, broke the more powerful, and didn't allow foreigners to gain a stronghold. Never did they let a trouble remain just to avoid going to war over it. As Machiavelli argues, war is never entirely avoidable, but is merely postponed; one should therefore fight it sooner rather than later, attacking those ills that plague a society before they become incurable. Preemption, in other words, is the name of the game. On the subject of colonies, Machiavelli goes one step further, noting that it is better to displace or disrupt the poor and powerless than the rich and powerful. Why? Because the poor cannot fight back. Moreover, "men ought either to be caressed or destroyed, since they will seek revenge for minor hurts but will not be able to revenge major ones." Turning to King Louis, Machiavelli lists his mistakes in an effort to explain his failure to conquer Italian states. Louis entered Italy through the ambition of the Venetians, who wanted to gain control of half of Lombardy. Granted this opportunity, Louis proceeded to squander it. He put down the weaker powers , increased the strength of a major power , introduced a powerful foreigner into the fray , never took up residence in Italy, never set up colonies, and deprived the Venetians of their power. This last error proved fatal: if the Venetians had retained full power, no one would have taken Lombardy from France just to give it to Venice, and the Venetians would not have let others in.

Machiavelli's methodology in these opening chapters is an intrinsically scientific one. He uses a classification system, treating states as varying species to be ordered in a form of political taxonomy. He also bolsters each claim with a historical example, flaunting his knowledge of past men and events, and unfolds his arguments in careful thesis-antithesis fashion, demonstrating the rights and the wrongs as absolute principles to be disregarded at one's own peril. His examples are by and large culled from Italian history. Machiavelli cites the case of the duke of Ferrara, "who did not yield under attacks either from the Venetians in 1484 or from Pope Julius in 1510" , and then discusses the Roman Empire, contrasting it with King Louis of France's unsuccessful attempt to gain control of Italy. What Machiavelli is beginning to build is a vision of Italy that is grounded in historical specificity and a set of cardinal rules by which the science of politics operates. There is a curious dialectic between the abstract land Machiavelli seems to invoke when he writes of princes and princedoms as if they were variables in a mathematical equation, and the precision with which he fleshes out Italian history as well as the current events of his land. One can't help but surmise that Italy is the abstract setting of all Machiavelli's formulations, that he has his eye on improving the governance of his own country, and that his emphasis on conquered lands may point the way to a unified Italy, a dream that would not be realized for another three centuries. At the same time, Machiavelli intersperses his layering of details and examples with bits of philosophy and ruminations on the human condition. Indeed, it is not for nothing that he is often referred to as a "secular humanist." Though there are admittedly a few allusions to God, for the most part Machiavelli refers to humans as agents of free will - fickle, noble, full of flaws and merits - and the ultimate barometer of power. What causes princes to succeed or fail? Human nature. Consider the following line: "men ought either to be caressed or destroyed, since they will seek revenge for minor hurts but will not be able to revenge minor ones." Machiavelli bases his political conclusions on basic human impulses: like a great dramatist, he expounds on a set of particular human qualities and uses them to extrapolate broader meanings. He is a humanist insofar as he continually returns to these human impulses in his arguments, thereby positing the larger argument that power and the gain thereof are reflections of a universal human spirit. It is worth noting that Machiavelli never writes, "the French prefer to be caressed," or "the English are rebellious," or "the Germans are quick to avenge wrongs"; he is not a nationalist or even an ethnographist, but rather a believer in the universality of man. He writes in categorical terms, presaging Kant and the categorical imperative. Juxtaposed with his reliance on history as example and his emphasis on the comings and goings of his contemporaries is a vision of common man, united by certain fundamental qualities that have persisted since the dawn of civilization and that depend neither on nation nor on creed. In this way, he stands as a quintessential product of the Renaissance.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/11.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_1_part_11.txt

Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter xi

chapter xi

{"name": "Chapter XI", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase1-chapter1-11", "summary": "Soon, Alec allows the horse to leave the path and Tess finds herself deep in the woods, lost in the fog. After she rebuffs his advances, he tells her that he has bought a new horse for her family and toys for her younger siblings. Although she is grateful, she is unhappy. Alec sets off to find a road, leaving her wrapped in his coat on a nest of leaves. Upon his return, he finds her asleep and takes advantage of her. The narrator attempts to understand why the wrong woman and the wrong man wind up together and states simply that \"it was to be\" and that \"there lay the pity of it\".", "analysis": ". Chapters I-XI. Set in southwestern England in the late-nineteenth century, Thomas Hardy begins Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman with a lush description of the rural undulating landscape. This is an agricultural community seeped in ancient tradition. Its simple inhabitants, who speak with a distinct country dialect, depend totally upon the earth for their survival. Many of these families, including the Durbeyfields, have descended from noble aristocratic Norman families but have, as Hardy writes, \"gone to seed\" over time. Learning of their noble lineage determines the rest of the Durbeyfield family's lives, especially that of the lovely teenage daughter, Tess. Overall, the pessimistic author argues that although individuals might possess superior traits--physical, mental, ethical--which might otherwise enable them to achieve great success, they are sadly condemned to their fate: \"as Tess's own people down in their retreats never tire of saying 'It was to be \"'. Hardy displays a great sense of sympathy for England's lower classes, especially for rural women. Unlike many of the farm women, Tess is pure, her purity represented by the color white. She wears a white dress, carries a white willow branch and white flowers. She is a virgin ready to marry and, in the agricultural sense, to bear a harvest of children. Hardly surprising then, a fairy-tale, prince-like man, an \"Angel\" as his name makes clear, appears to the young virgin in a scene reminiscent of the biblical Angel appearing to the Virgin Mary. However, Tess is disappointed when he fails to choose her to dance. As will become increasingly apparent, Angel Clare will fail Tess further in the future, and the only prince that Tess will ever encounter is the horse Prince, whose death determines her future. In contrast to the light-sinned Clare, the darker skinned \"swarthy\" Alec d'Urberville, who sports a black pointed moustache and tempts Tess to eat strawberries instead of an apple, in the garden, is cast as the villain. From the beginning, Mr. Durbeyfield takes on airs, riding in a carriage and proudly boasting to his drunken comrades at Rolliver's about his noble lineage, and Mrs. Durbeyfield's proud dreams reinforce his plan to change the family's fortunes. But, ultimately \"pride goeth before a fall. After the death of Prince, the guilt-ridden Tess is put forth as the savior of the family. In this regard she is a fairy-tale heroine, like Beauty, who must face the beast, in this case Alec d'Urberville, to save her father. Hardy casts Tess as a superior woman. She is smarter than her parents and far more concerned about her brothers and sisters. She is, in fact, their teacher, an occupation she desires but one she will never achieve because, as Hardy would have us believe, it is not her fate. It is her sense of guilt, and the desire to pay back her family for killing the horse, that spurs Tess into taking a job she doesn't want. While the Durbeyfields might seem to work all day long, they never accomplish anything, but the superior Tess gets the job done, so to speak. At the Trantridge poultry farm, she is set apart from the other servants. While she enjoys their company, she does not drink and find release in the hazy alcohol-fueled world that Hardy describes so poetically: \"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\". The only thing that ever crosses Tess's lips is pure white milk as we shall see later on when Tess goes to work at Talbothays Dairy. Unlike the other working women, she does not take part in the wild dancing and certainly not the sexual revelry: \"by this time every couple had been suitable matched. an inner cloud of dust rose around the prostate figures\". Indeed, Tess is worried about being home early, even though the following morning is Sunday. It is also of interest to note that Tess is asleep when the tragic accident involving Prince occurs. Thus, she's not really to blame. On one hand, it seems that Tess is the only wide-awake Durbeyfield. Unlike her parents, she realizes the true state of the family; she knows that her father will be unable to take the hives to market. However, on the other hand, she seems to go through life half asleep; not completely tuned in, as it were. Also, she is asleep when Alec takes advantage of her sexually or \"ruins her,\" in the Victorian sense of the word. In this manner, Hardy removes Tess from any responsibility. Despite her attempts to retain her chastity, Tess remains pure. It is her fate after all at play. She is without agency: there is nothing she can do. Readers should remember that in the Victorian era, one did not discuss sexual matters and authors could not write of them either. Indeed, some readers are surprised to find that after the night in the woods, Tess is no longer a virgin. Thus, it is important to read between the lines, so to speak. For instance, the other women that Tess walks home with have at earlier times \"stood in relations with d'Urberville,\"--they have also been sexually involved with Alec. So, they know perfectly well what will happen to the girl when she rides off with Alec into the woods, an event which should also be viewed in the metaphorical sense. Will Tess ever really leave the forest or will darkness descend on her forever. In today's world, Alec d'Urberville would certainly face charges and jail. During the Victorian era, however, such a heinous act was oftentimes considered to be an inevitable seduction. Also, the section of woods is called the Chase, which is self-explanatory"}

The twain cantered along for some time without speech, Tess as she clung to him still panting in her triumph, yet in other respects dubious. She had perceived that the horse was not the spirited one he sometimes rose, and felt no alarm on that score, though her seat was precarious enough despite her tight hold of him. She begged him to slow the animal to a walk, which Alec accordingly did. "Neatly done, was it not, dear Tess?" he said by and by. "Yes!" said she. "I am sure I ought to be much obliged to you." "And are you?" She did not reply. "Tess, why do you always dislike my kissing you?" "I suppose--because I don't love you." "You are quite sure?" "I am angry with you sometimes!" "Ah, I half feared as much." Nevertheless, Alec did not object to that confession. He knew that anything was better then frigidity. "Why haven't you told me when I have made you angry?" "You know very well why. Because I cannot help myself here." "I haven't offended you often by love-making?" "You have sometimes." "How many times?" "You know as well as I--too many times." "Every time I have tried?" She was silent, and the horse ambled along for a considerable distance, till a faint luminous fog, which had hung in the hollows all the evening, became general and enveloped them. It seemed to hold the moonlight in suspension, rendering it more pervasive than in clear air. Whether on this account, or from absent-mindedness, or from sleepiness, she did not perceive that they had long ago passed the point at which the lane to Trantridge branched from the highway, and that her conductor had not taken the Trantridge track. She was inexpressibly weary. She had risen at five o'clock every morning of that week, had been on foot the whole of each day, and on this evening had in addition walked the three miles to Chaseborough, waited three hours for her neighbours without eating or drinking, her impatience to start them preventing either; she had then walked a mile of the way home, and had undergone the excitement of the quarrel, till, with the slow progress of their steed, it was now nearly one o'clock. Only once, however, was she overcome by actual drowsiness. In that moment of oblivion her head sank gently against him. D'Urberville stopped the horse, withdrew his feet from the stirrups, turned sideways on the saddle, and enclosed her waist with his arm to support her. This immediately put her on the defensive, and with one of those sudden impulses of reprisal to which she was liable she gave him a little push from her. In his ticklish position he nearly lost his balance and only just avoided rolling over into the road, the horse, though a powerful one, being fortunately the quietest he rode. "That is devilish unkind!" he said. "I mean no harm--only to keep you from falling." She pondered suspiciously, till, thinking that this might after all be true, she relented, and said quite humbly, "I beg your pardon, sir." "I won't pardon you unless you show some confidence in me. Good God!" he burst out, "what am I, to be repulsed so by a mere chit like you? For near three mortal months have you trifled with my feelings, eluded me, and snubbed me; and I won't stand it!" "I'll leave you to-morrow, sir." "No, you will not leave me to-morrow! Will you, I ask once more, show your belief in me by letting me clasp you with my arm? Come, between us two and nobody else, now. We know each other well; and you know that I love you, and think you the prettiest girl in the world, which you are. Mayn't I treat you as a lover?" She drew a quick pettish breath of objection, writhing uneasily on her seat, looked far ahead, and murmured, "I don't know--I wish--how can I say yes or no when--" He settled the matter by clasping his arm round her as he desired, and Tess expressed no further negative. Thus they sidled slowly onward till it struck her they had been advancing for an unconscionable time--far longer than was usually occupied by the short journey from Chaseborough, even at this walking pace, and that they were no longer on hard road, but in a mere trackway. "Why, where be we?" she exclaimed. "Passing by a wood." "A wood--what wood? Surely we are quite out of the road?" "A bit of The Chase--the oldest wood in England. It is a lovely night, and why should we not prolong our ride a little?" "How could you be so treacherous!" said Tess, between archness and real dismay, and getting rid of his arm by pulling open his fingers one by one, though at the risk of slipping off herself. "Just when I've been putting such trust in you, and obliging you to please you, because I thought I had wronged you by that push! Please set me down, and let me walk home." "You cannot walk home, darling, even if the air were clear. We are miles away from Trantridge, if I must tell you, and in this growing fog you might wander for hours among these trees." "Never mind that," she coaxed. "Put me down, I beg you. I don't mind where it is; only let me get down, sir, please!" "Very well, then, I will--on one condition. Having brought you here to this out-of-the-way place, I feel myself responsible for your safe-conduct home, whatever you may yourself feel about it. As to your getting to Trantridge without assistance, it is quite impossible; for, to tell the truth, dear, owing to this fog, which so disguises everything, I don't quite know where we are myself. Now, if you will promise to wait beside the horse while I walk through the bushes till I come to some road or house, and ascertain exactly our whereabouts, I'll deposit you here willingly. When I come back I'll give you full directions, and if you insist upon walking you may; or you may ride--at your pleasure." She accepted these terms, and slid off on the near side, though not till he had stolen a cursory kiss. He sprang down on the other side. "I suppose I must hold the horse?" said she. "Oh no; it's not necessary," replied Alec, patting the panting creature. "He's had enough of it for to-night." He turned the horse's head into the bushes, hitched him on to a bough, and made a sort of couch or nest for her in the deep mass of dead leaves. "Now, you sit there," he said. "The leaves have not got damp as yet. Just give an eye to the horse--it will be quite sufficient." He took a few steps away from her, but, returning, said, "By the bye, Tess, your father has a new cob to-day. Somebody gave it to him." "Somebody? You!" D'Urberville nodded. "O how very good of you that is!" she exclaimed, with a painful sense of the awkwardness of having to thank him just then. "And the children have some toys." "I didn't know--you ever sent them anything!" she murmured, much moved. "I almost wish you had not--yes, I almost wish it!" "Why, dear?" "It--hampers me so." "Tessy--don't you love me ever so little now?" "I'm grateful," she reluctantly admitted. "But I fear I do not--" The sudden vision of his passion for herself as a factor in this result so distressed her that, beginning with one slow tear, and then following with another, she wept outright. "Don't cry, dear, dear one! Now sit down here, and wait till I come." She passively sat down amid the leaves he had heaped, and shivered slightly. "Are you cold?" he asked. "Not very--a little." He touched her with his fingers, which sank into her as into down. "You have only that puffy muslin dress on--how's that?" "It's my best summer one. 'Twas very warm when I started, and I didn't know I was going to ride, and that it would be night." "Nights grow chilly in September. Let me see." He pulled off a light overcoat that he had worn, and put it round her tenderly. "That's it--now you'll feel warmer," he continued. "Now, my pretty, rest there; I shall soon be back again." Having buttoned the overcoat round her shoulders he plunged into the webs of vapour which by this time formed veils between the trees. She could hear the rustling of the branches as he ascended the adjoining slope, till his movements were no louder than the hopping of a bird, and finally died away. With the setting of the moon the pale light lessened, and Tess became invisible as she fell into reverie upon the leaves where he had left her. In the meantime Alec d'Urberville had pushed on up the slope to clear his genuine doubt as to the quarter of The Chase they were in. He had, in fact, ridden quite at random for over an hour, taking any turning that came to hand in order to prolong companionship with her, and giving far more attention to Tess's moonlit person than to any wayside object. A little rest for the jaded animal being desirable, he did not hasten his search for landmarks. A clamber over the hill into the adjoining vale brought him to the fence of a highway whose contours he recognized, which settled the question of their whereabouts. D'Urberville thereupon turned back; but by this time the moon had quite gone down, and partly on account of the fog The Chase was wrapped in thick darkness, although morning was not far off. He was obliged to advance with outstretched hands to avoid contact with the boughs, and discovered that to hit the exact spot from which he had started was at first entirely beyond him. Roaming up and down, round and round, he at length heard a slight movement of the horse close at hand; and the sleeve of his overcoat unexpectedly caught his foot. "Tess!" said d'Urberville. There was no answer. The obscurity was now so great that he could see absolutely nothing but a pale nebulousness at his feet, which represented the white muslin figure he had left upon the dead leaves. Everything else was blackness alike. D'Urberville stooped; and heard a gentle regular breathing. He knelt and bent lower, till her breath warmed his face, and in a moment his cheek was in contact with hers. She was sleeping soundly, and upon her eyelashes there lingered tears. Darkness and silence ruled everywhere around. Above them rose the primeval yews and oaks of The Chase, in which there poised gentle roosting birds in their last nap; and about them stole the hopping rabbits and hares. But, might some say, where was Tess's guardian angel? where was the providence of her simple faith? Perhaps, like that other god of whom the ironical Tishbite spoke, he was talking, or he was pursuing, or he was in a journey, or he was sleeping and not to be awaked. Why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet, there should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive; why so often the coarse appropriates the finer thus, the wrong man the woman, the wrong woman the man, many thousand years of analytical philosophy have failed to explain to our sense of order. One may, indeed, admit the possibility of a retribution lurking in the present catastrophe. Doubtless some of Tess d'Urberville's mailed ancestors rollicking home from a fray had dealt the same measure even more ruthlessly towards peasant girls of their time. But though to visit the sins of the fathers upon the children may be a morality good enough for divinities, it is scorned by average human nature; and it therefore does not mend the matter. As Tess's own people down in those retreats are never tired of saying among each other in their fatalistic way: "It was to be." There lay the pity of it. An immeasurable social chasm was to divide our heroine's personality thereafter from that previous self of hers who stepped from her mother's door to try her fortune at Trantridge poultry-farm. END OF PHASE THE FIRST Phase the Second: Maiden No More

Chapter XI

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Soon, Alec allows the horse to leave the path and Tess finds herself deep in the woods, lost in the fog. After she rebuffs his advances, he tells her that he has bought a new horse for her family and toys for her younger siblings. Although she is grateful, she is unhappy. Alec sets off to find a road, leaving her wrapped in his coat on a nest of leaves. Upon his return, he finds her asleep and takes advantage of her. The narrator attempts to understand why the wrong woman and the wrong man wind up together and states simply that "it was to be" and that "there lay the pity of it".

. Chapters I-XI. Set in southwestern England in the late-nineteenth century, Thomas Hardy begins Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman with a lush description of the rural undulating landscape. This is an agricultural community seeped in ancient tradition. Its simple inhabitants, who speak with a distinct country dialect, depend totally upon the earth for their survival. Many of these families, including the Durbeyfields, have descended from noble aristocratic Norman families but have, as Hardy writes, "gone to seed" over time. Learning of their noble lineage determines the rest of the Durbeyfield family's lives, especially that of the lovely teenage daughter, Tess. Overall, the pessimistic author argues that although individuals might possess superior traits--physical, mental, ethical--which might otherwise enable them to achieve great success, they are sadly condemned to their fate: "as Tess's own people down in their retreats never tire of saying 'It was to be "'. Hardy displays a great sense of sympathy for England's lower classes, especially for rural women. Unlike many of the farm women, Tess is pure, her purity represented by the color white. She wears a white dress, carries a white willow branch and white flowers. She is a virgin ready to marry and, in the agricultural sense, to bear a harvest of children. Hardly surprising then, a fairy-tale, prince-like man, an "Angel" as his name makes clear, appears to the young virgin in a scene reminiscent of the biblical Angel appearing to the Virgin Mary. However, Tess is disappointed when he fails to choose her to dance. As will become increasingly apparent, Angel Clare will fail Tess further in the future, and the only prince that Tess will ever encounter is the horse Prince, whose death determines her future. In contrast to the light-sinned Clare, the darker skinned "swarthy" Alec d'Urberville, who sports a black pointed moustache and tempts Tess to eat strawberries instead of an apple, in the garden, is cast as the villain. From the beginning, Mr. Durbeyfield takes on airs, riding in a carriage and proudly boasting to his drunken comrades at Rolliver's about his noble lineage, and Mrs. Durbeyfield's proud dreams reinforce his plan to change the family's fortunes. But, ultimately "pride goeth before a fall. After the death of Prince, the guilt-ridden Tess is put forth as the savior of the family. In this regard she is a fairy-tale heroine, like Beauty, who must face the beast, in this case Alec d'Urberville, to save her father. Hardy casts Tess as a superior woman. She is smarter than her parents and far more concerned about her brothers and sisters. She is, in fact, their teacher, an occupation she desires but one she will never achieve because, as Hardy would have us believe, it is not her fate. It is her sense of guilt, and the desire to pay back her family for killing the horse, that spurs Tess into taking a job she doesn't want. While the Durbeyfields might seem to work all day long, they never accomplish anything, but the superior Tess gets the job done, so to speak. At the Trantridge poultry farm, she is set apart from the other servants. While she enjoys their company, she does not drink and find release in the hazy alcohol-fueled world that Hardy describes so poetically: "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". The only thing that ever crosses Tess's lips is pure white milk as we shall see later on when Tess goes to work at Talbothays Dairy. Unlike the other working women, she does not take part in the wild dancing and certainly not the sexual revelry: "by this time every couple had been suitable matched. an inner cloud of dust rose around the prostate figures". Indeed, Tess is worried about being home early, even though the following morning is Sunday. It is also of interest to note that Tess is asleep when the tragic accident involving Prince occurs. Thus, she's not really to blame. On one hand, it seems that Tess is the only wide-awake Durbeyfield. Unlike her parents, she realizes the true state of the family; she knows that her father will be unable to take the hives to market. However, on the other hand, she seems to go through life half asleep; not completely tuned in, as it were. Also, she is asleep when Alec takes advantage of her sexually or "ruins her," in the Victorian sense of the word. In this manner, Hardy removes Tess from any responsibility. Despite her attempts to retain her chastity, Tess remains pure. It is her fate after all at play. She is without agency: there is nothing she can do. Readers should remember that in the Victorian era, one did not discuss sexual matters and authors could not write of them either. Indeed, some readers are surprised to find that after the night in the woods, Tess is no longer a virgin. Thus, it is important to read between the lines, so to speak. For instance, the other women that Tess walks home with have at earlier times "stood in relations with d'Urberville,"--they have also been sexually involved with Alec. So, they know perfectly well what will happen to the girl when she rides off with Alec into the woods, an event which should also be viewed in the metaphorical sense. Will Tess ever really leave the forest or will darkness descend on her forever. In today's world, Alec d'Urberville would certainly face charges and jail. During the Victorian era, however, such a heinous act was oftentimes considered to be an inevitable seduction. Also, the section of woods is called the Chase, which is self-explanatory

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/59.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_58_part_0.txt

The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 29

part 2, chapter 29

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 29", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-29", "summary": "Madame de Fervques is starting to find Julien's letters interesting. This is because Prince Korasoff intentionally wrote them to get better over time, nurturing love from a little seed. She is so bored one day that she finally writes a reply letter to Julien. After that, they get into the habit of writing to one another every day. Little does Madame know that all of her letters are tossed into Julien's desk without being read. Mathilde notices the letters coming to her house from Madame and finally snaps. She grabs one of the letters and confronts Julien about it, accusing him of adultery. She thinks that because they've had sex, they are now married. She begs Julien to take her back.", "analysis": ""}

CHAPTER LIX ENNUI Sacrificing one's self to one's passions, let it pass; but sacrificing one's self to passions which one has not got! Oh! melancholy nineteenth century! _Girodet_. Madame de Fervaques had begun reading Julien's long letters without any pleasure, but she now began to think about them; one thing, however, grieved her. "What a pity that M. Sorel was not a real priest! He could then be admitted to a kind of intimacy; but in view of that cross, and that almost lay dress, one is exposed to cruel questions and what is one to answer?" She did not finish the train of thought, "Some malicious woman friend may think, and even spread it about that he is some lower middle-class cousin or other, a relative of my father, some tradesman who has been decorated by the National Guard." Up to the time which she had seen Julien, madame de Fervaque's greatest pleasure had been writing the word marechale after her name. Consequently a morbid parvenu vanity, which was ready to take umbrage at everything, combatted the awakening of her interest in him. "It would be so easy for me," said the marechale, "to make him a grand vicar in some diocese near Paris! but plain M. Sorel, and what is more, a man who is the secretary of M. de la Mole! It is heart-breaking." For the first time in her life this soul, which was afraid of everything, was moved by an interest which was alien to its own pretensions to rank and superiority. Her old porter noticed that whenever he brought a letter from this handsome young man, who always looked so sad, he was certain to see that absent, discontented expression, which the marechale always made a point of assuming on the entry of any of her servants, immediately disappear. The boredom of a mode of life whose ambitions were concentrated on impressing the public without her having at heart any real faculty of enjoyment for that kind of success, had become so intolerable since she had begun to think of Julien that, all that was necessary to prevent her chambermaids being bullied for a whole day, was that their mistress should have passed an hour in the society of this strange young man on the evening of the preceding day. His budding credit was proof against very cleverly written anonymous letters. It was in vain that Tanbeau supplied M. de Luz, de Croisenois, de Caylus, with two or three very clever calumnies which these gentlemen were only too glad to spread, without making too many enquiries of the actual truth of the charges. The marechale, whose temperament was not calculated to be proof against these vulgar expedients related her doubts to Mathilde, and was always consoled by her. One day, madame de Fervaques, after having asked three times if there were any letters for her, suddenly decided to answer Julien. It was a case of the triumph of ennui. On reaching the second letter in his name the marechale almost felt herself pulled up sharp by the unbecomingness of writing with her own hand so vulgar an address as to M. Sorel, care of M. le Marquis de la Mole. "You must bring me envelopes with your address on," she said very drily to Julien in the evening. "Here I am appointed lover and valet in one," thought Julien, and he bowed, amused himself by wrinkling his face up like Arsene, the old valet of the marquis. He brought the envelopes that very evening, and he received the third letter very early on the following day: he read five or six lines at the beginning, and two or three towards the end. There were four pages of a small and very close writing. The lady gradually developed the sweet habit of writing nearly every day. Julien answered by faithful copies of the Russian letters; and such is the advantage of the bombastic style that madame de Fervaques was not a bit astonished by the lack of connection between his answers and her letters. How gravely irritated would her pride have been if the little Tanbeau who had constituted himself a voluntary spy on all Julien's movements had been able to have informed her that all these letters were left unsealed and thrown haphazard into Julien's drawer. One morning the porter was bringing into the library a letter to him from the marechale. Mathilde met the man, saw the letter together with the address in Julien's handwriting. She entered the library as the porter was leaving it, the letter was still on the edge of the table. Julien was very busy with his work and had not yet put it in his drawer. "I cannot endure this," exclaimed Mathilde, as she took possession of the letter, "you are completely forgetting me, me your wife, your conduct is awful, monsieur." At these words her pride, shocked by the awful unseemliness of her proceeding, prevented her from speaking. She burst into tears, and soon seemed to Julien scarcely able to breathe. Julien was so surprised and embarrassed that he did not fully appreciate how ideally fortunate this scene was for himself. He helped Mathilde to sit down; she almost abandoned herself in his arms. The first minute in which he noticed this movement, he felt an extreme joy. Immediately afterwards, he thought of Korasoff: "I may lose everything by a single word." The strain of carrying out his tactics was so great that his arms stiffened. "I dare not even allow myself to press this supple, charming frame to my heart, or she will despise me or treat me badly. What an awful character!" And while he cursed Mathilde's character, he loved her a hundred times more. He thought he had a queen in his arms. Julien's impassive coldness intensified the anguished pride which was lacerating the soul of mademoiselle de la Mole. She was far from having the necessary self-possession to try and read in his eyes what he felt for her at that particular moment. She could not make up her mind to look at him. She trembled lest she might encounter a contemptuous expression. Seated motionless on the library divan, with her head turned in the opposite direction to Julien, she was a prey to the most poignant anguish that pride and love can inflict upon a human soul. What an awful step had she just slipped into taking! "It has been reserved for me, unhappy woman that I am, to see my most unbecoming advances rebuffed! and rebuffed by whom?" added her maddened and wounded pride; "rebuffed by a servant of my father's! That's more than I will put up with," she said aloud, and rising in a fury, she opened the drawer of Julien's table, which was two yards in front of her. She stood petrified with horror when she saw eight or ten unopened letters, completely like the one the porter had just brought up. She recognised Julien's handwriting, though more or less disguised, on all the addresses. "So," she cried, quite beside herself, "you are not only on good terms with her, but you actually despise her. You, a nobody, despise madame la marechale de Fervaques!" "Oh, forgive me, my dear," she added, throwing herself on her knees; "despise me if you wish, but love me. I cannot live without your love." And she fell down in a dead faint. "So our proud lady is lying at my feet," said Julien to himself.

Part 2, Chapter 29

https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-29

Madame de Fervques is starting to find Julien's letters interesting. This is because Prince Korasoff intentionally wrote them to get better over time, nurturing love from a little seed. She is so bored one day that she finally writes a reply letter to Julien. After that, they get into the habit of writing to one another every day. Little does Madame know that all of her letters are tossed into Julien's desk without being read. Mathilde notices the letters coming to her house from Madame and finally snaps. She grabs one of the letters and confronts Julien about it, accusing him of adultery. She thinks that because they've had sex, they are now married. She begs Julien to take her back.

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/43.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Lord Jim/section_41_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapter 43

chapter 43

{"name": "Chapter 43", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim52.asp", "summary": "Doramin finally consents to Jim's request, because he cannot stand the thought of his son leading the fight against Brown; he is afraid that Dain Waris may be wounded or killed. Jim sends his faithful servant, Tamb'Itam, to find Dain Waris and give him the news that Brown's men would be leaving peacefully and must not be attacked; the servant is amazed at this decision and feels that Jim is wrong to trust Brown. Tamb'Itam knows that Dain Waris will also be skeptical of the decision; as a result, Jim sends his ring, given to him by Stein, as a clear indication to Dain Waris that the decision is from him. Tamb'Itam must look on the river for Dain Waris, who has gone with several boats to cut off the retreat of Brown. Jim feels the full responsibility of his challenge; he feels like the lives of all the Bugis are in his hands. As a result, Jim wants to oversee everything until Brown's retreat is complete. He personally patrols the streets to prevent any disturbance. He dispatches Cornelius with a message to Brown, telling him to leave with his men as soon as the full tide rises and not to provoke any of the armed Bugis along the river. Cornelius gives Brown only half of the message; he does not tell Brown about the armed men. Cornelius wants to see a fight, as a revenge on Jim, his enemy. He wants to see the people of Patusan lose their faith in Tuan Jim. Cornelius tells Brown that he knows of another way to get out of the river, which will ensure their safe escape. Brown accompanies Cornelius early the next morning. Jim watches from the other side of the river as Brown gets into his boat. Brown then directs Cornelius to show him the way through the secret passage.", "analysis": "Notes The story is reaching its climax. Jim is totally unaware that he is being set up by Brown and Cornelius. Jim, because of his still guilty conscience, has totally misjudged the enemy. Because he has been given a second chance to prove himself, he feels that Brown should also be given another chance. He foolishly trusts that the evil Brown will leave without incident; he even allows him to remain armed. Jim's character is shown in all its positive qualities in the chapter. He is very much concerned about the success of his plan and the safety of the Bugis. He is worried and cannot leave the matter alone, to the point that he personally patrols the area all night. Tamb'Itam's reaction to Jim's plan foreshadows the upcoming disaster. The fact that this totally loyal servant asks for a token to present to Dain Waris as proof that his message truly comes from Jim is out of character. Stein's ring, given as the token, plays its final role. The ring, which is a token of friendship, becomes the death knell of a friend. The fog, which covers the whole chapter, is symbolic of the ignorance of Jim -- the ignorance that Brown will betray him and the ignorance that he is making a big mistake."}

'Tamb' Itam behind his chair was thunderstruck. The declaration produced an immense sensation. "Let them go because this is best in my knowledge which has never deceived you," Jim insisted. There was a silence. In the darkness of the courtyard could be heard the subdued whispering, shuffling noise of many people. Doramin raised his heavy head and said that there was no more reading of hearts than touching the sky with the hand, but--he consented. The others gave their opinion in turn. "It is best," "Let them go," and so on. But most of them simply said that they "believed Tuan Jim." 'In this simple form of assent to his will lies the whole gist of the situation; their creed, his truth; and the testimony to that faithfulness which made him in his own eyes the equal of the impeccable men who never fall out of the ranks. Stein's words, "Romantic!--Romantic!" seem to ring over those distances that will never give him up now to a world indifferent to his failings and his virtues, and to that ardent and clinging affection that refuses him the dole of tears in the bewilderment of a great grief and of eternal separation. From the moment the sheer truthfulness of his last three years of life carries the day against the ignorance, the fear, and the anger of men, he appears no longer to me as I saw him last--a white speck catching all the dim light left upon a sombre coast and the darkened sea--but greater and more pitiful in the loneliness of his soul, that remains even for her who loved him best a cruel and insoluble mystery. 'It is evident that he did not mistrust Brown; there was no reason to doubt the story, whose truth seemed warranted by the rough frankness, by a sort of virile sincerity in accepting the morality and the consequences of his acts. But Jim did not know the almost inconceivable egotism of the man which made him, when resisted and foiled in his will, mad with the indignant and revengeful rage of a thwarted autocrat. But if Jim did not mistrust Brown, he was evidently anxious that some misunderstanding should not occur, ending perhaps in collision and bloodshed. It was for this reason that directly the Malay chiefs had gone he asked Jewel to get him something to eat, as he was going out of the fort to take command in the town. On her remonstrating against this on the score of his fatigue, he said that something might happen for which he would never forgive himself. "I am responsible for every life in the land," he said. He was moody at first; she served him with her own hands, taking the plates and dishes (of the dinner-service presented him by Stein) from Tamb' Itam. He brightened up after a while; told her she would be again in command of the fort for another night. "There's no sleep for us, old girl," he said, "while our people are in danger." Later on he said jokingly that she was the best man of them all. "If you and Dain Waris had done what you wanted, not one of these poor devils would be alive to-day." "Are they very bad?" she asked, leaning over his chair. "Men act badly sometimes without being much worse than others," he said after some hesitation. 'Tamb' Itam followed his master to the landing-stage outside the fort. The night was clear but without a moon, and the middle of the river was dark, while the water under each bank reflected the light of many fires "as on a night of Ramadan," Tamb' Itam said. War-boats drifted silently in the dark lane or, anchored, floated motionless with a loud ripple. That night there was much paddling in a canoe and walking at his master's heels for Tamb' Itam: up and down the street they tramped, where the fires were burning, inland on the outskirts of the town where small parties of men kept guard in the fields. Tuan Jim gave his orders and was obeyed. Last of all they went to the Rajah's stockade, which a detachment of Jim's people manned on that night. The old Rajah had fled early in the morning with most of his women to a small house he had near a jungle village on a tributary stream. Kassim, left behind, had attended the council with his air of diligent activity to explain away the diplomacy of the day before. He was considerably cold-shouldered, but managed to preserve his smiling, quiet alertness, and professed himself highly delighted when Jim told him sternly that he proposed to occupy the stockade on that night with his own men. After the council broke up he was heard outside accosting this and that deputing chief, and speaking in a loud, gratified tone of the Rajah's property being protected in the Rajah's absence. 'About ten or so Jim's men marched in. The stockade commanded the mouth of the creek, and Jim meant to remain there till Brown had passed below. A small fire was lit on the flat, grassy point outside the wall of stakes, and Tamb' Itam placed a little folding-stool for his master. Jim told him to try and sleep. Tamb' Itam got a mat and lay down a little way off; but he could not sleep, though he knew he had to go on an important journey before the night was out. His master walked to and fro before the fire with bowed head and with his hands behind his back. His face was sad. Whenever his master approached him Tamb' Itam pretended to sleep, not wishing his master to know he had been watched. At last his master stood still, looking down on him as he lay, and said softly, "It is time." 'Tamb' Itam arose directly and made his preparations. His mission was to go down the river, preceding Brown's boat by an hour or more, to tell Dain Waris finally and formally that the whites were to be allowed to pass out unmolested. Jim would not trust anybody else with that service. Before starting, Tamb' Itam, more as a matter of form (since his position about Jim made him perfectly known), asked for a token. "Because, Tuan," he said, "the message is important, and these are thy very words I carry." His master first put his hand into one pocket, then into another, and finally took off his forefinger Stein's silver ring, which he habitually wore, and gave it to Tamb' Itam. When Tamb' Itam left on his mission, Brown's camp on the knoll was dark but for a single small glow shining through the branches of one of the trees the white men had cut down. 'Early in the evening Brown had received from Jim a folded piece of paper on which was written, "You get the clear road. Start as soon as your boat floats on the morning tide. Let your men be careful. The bushes on both sides of the creek and the stockade at the mouth are full of well-armed men. You would have no chance, but I don't believe you want bloodshed." Brown read it, tore the paper into small pieces, and, turning to Cornelius, who had brought it, said jeeringly, "Good-bye, my excellent friend." Cornelius had been in the fort, and had been sneaking around Jim's house during the afternoon. Jim chose him to carry the note because he could speak English, was known to Brown, and was not likely to be shot by some nervous mistake of one of the men as a Malay, approaching in the dusk, perhaps might have been. 'Cornelius didn't go away after delivering the paper. Brown was sitting up over a tiny fire; all the others were lying down. "I could tell you something you would like to know," Cornelius mumbled crossly. Brown paid no attention. "You did not kill him," went on the other, "and what do you get for it? You might have had money from the Rajah, besides the loot of all the Bugis houses, and now you get nothing." "You had better clear out from here," growled Brown, without even looking at him. But Cornelius let himself drop by his side and began to whisper very fast, touching his elbow from time to time. What he had to say made Brown sit up at first, with a curse. He had simply informed him of Dain Waris's armed party down the river. At first Brown saw himself completely sold and betrayed, but a moment's reflection convinced him that there could be no treachery intended. He said nothing, and after a while Cornelius remarked, in a tone of complete indifference, that there was another way out of the river which he knew very well. "A good thing to know, too," said Brown, pricking up his ears; and Cornelius began to talk of what went on in town and repeated all that had been said in council, gossiping in an even undertone at Brown's ear as you talk amongst sleeping men you do not wish to wake. "He thinks he has made me harmless, does he?" mumbled Brown very low. . . . "Yes. He is a fool. A little child. He came here and robbed me," droned on Cornelius, "and he made all the people believe him. But if something happened that they did not believe him any more, where would he be? And the Bugis Dain who is waiting for you down the river there, captain, is the very man who chased you up here when you first came." Brown observed nonchalantly that it would be just as well to avoid him, and with the same detached, musing air Cornelius declared himself acquainted with a backwater broad enough to take Brown's boat past Waris's camp. "You will have to be quiet," he said as an afterthought, "for in one place we pass close behind his camp. Very close. They are camped ashore with their boats hauled up." "Oh, we know how to be as quiet as mice; never fear," said Brown. Cornelius stipulated that in case he were to pilot Brown out, his canoe should be towed. "I'll have to get back quick," he explained. 'It was two hours before the dawn when word was passed to the stockade from outlying watchers that the white robbers were coming down to their boat. In a very short time every armed man from one end of Patusan to the other was on the alert, yet the banks of the river remained so silent that but for the fires burning with sudden blurred flares the town might have been asleep as if in peace-time. A heavy mist lay very low on the water, making a sort of illusive grey light that showed nothing. When Brown's long-boat glided out of the creek into the river, Jim was standing on the low point of land before the Rajah's stockade--on the very spot where for the first time he put his foot on Patusan shore. A shadow loomed up, moving in the greyness, solitary, very bulky, and yet constantly eluding the eye. A murmur of low talking came out of it. Brown at the tiller heard Jim speak calmly: "A clear road. You had better trust to the current while the fog lasts; but this will lift presently." "Yes, presently we shall see clear," replied Brown. 'The thirty or forty men standing with muskets at ready outside the stockade held their breath. The Bugis owner of the prau, whom I saw on Stein's verandah, and who was amongst them, told me that the boat, shaving the low point close, seemed for a moment to grow big and hang over it like a mountain. "If you think it worth your while to wait a day outside," called out Jim, "I'll try to send you down something--a bullock, some yams--what I can." The shadow went on moving. "Yes. Do," said a voice, blank and muffled out of the fog. Not one of the many attentive listeners understood what the words meant; and then Brown and his men in their boat floated away, fading spectrally without the slightest sound. 'Thus Brown, invisible in the mist, goes out of Patusan elbow to elbow with Cornelius in the stern-sheets of the long-boat. "Perhaps you shall get a small bullock," said Cornelius. "Oh yes. Bullock. Yam. You'll get it if he said so. He always speaks the truth. He stole everything I had. I suppose you like a small bullock better than the loot of many houses." "I would advise you to hold your tongue, or somebody here may fling you overboard into this damned fog," said Brown. The boat seemed to be standing still; nothing could be seen, not even the river alongside, only the water-dust flew and trickled, condensed, down their beards and faces. It was weird, Brown told me. Every individual man of them felt as though he were adrift alone in a boat, haunted by an almost imperceptible suspicion of sighing, muttering ghosts. "Throw me out, would you? But I would know where I was," mumbled Cornelius surlily. "I've lived many years here." "Not long enough to see through a fog like this," Brown said, lolling back with his arm swinging to and fro on the useless tiller. "Yes. Long enough for that," snarled Cornelius. "That's very useful," commented Brown. "Am I to believe you could find that backway you spoke of blindfold, like this?" Cornelius grunted. "Are you too tired to row?" he asked after a silence. "No, by God!" shouted Brown suddenly. "Out with your oars there." There was a great knocking in the fog, which after a while settled into a regular grind of invisible sweeps against invisible thole-pins. Otherwise nothing was changed, and but for the slight splash of a dipped blade it was like rowing a balloon car in a cloud, said Brown. Thereafter Cornelius did not open his lips except to ask querulously for somebody to bale out his canoe, which was towing behind the long-boat. Gradually the fog whitened and became luminous ahead. To the left Brown saw a darkness as though he had been looking at the back of the departing night. All at once a big bough covered with leaves appeared above his head, and ends of twigs, dripping and still, curved slenderly close alongside. Cornelius, without a word, took the tiller from his hand.'

Chapter 43

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim52.asp

Doramin finally consents to Jim's request, because he cannot stand the thought of his son leading the fight against Brown; he is afraid that Dain Waris may be wounded or killed. Jim sends his faithful servant, Tamb'Itam, to find Dain Waris and give him the news that Brown's men would be leaving peacefully and must not be attacked; the servant is amazed at this decision and feels that Jim is wrong to trust Brown. Tamb'Itam knows that Dain Waris will also be skeptical of the decision; as a result, Jim sends his ring, given to him by Stein, as a clear indication to Dain Waris that the decision is from him. Tamb'Itam must look on the river for Dain Waris, who has gone with several boats to cut off the retreat of Brown. Jim feels the full responsibility of his challenge; he feels like the lives of all the Bugis are in his hands. As a result, Jim wants to oversee everything until Brown's retreat is complete. He personally patrols the streets to prevent any disturbance. He dispatches Cornelius with a message to Brown, telling him to leave with his men as soon as the full tide rises and not to provoke any of the armed Bugis along the river. Cornelius gives Brown only half of the message; he does not tell Brown about the armed men. Cornelius wants to see a fight, as a revenge on Jim, his enemy. He wants to see the people of Patusan lose their faith in Tuan Jim. Cornelius tells Brown that he knows of another way to get out of the river, which will ensure their safe escape. Brown accompanies Cornelius early the next morning. Jim watches from the other side of the river as Brown gets into his boat. Brown then directs Cornelius to show him the way through the secret passage.

Notes The story is reaching its climax. Jim is totally unaware that he is being set up by Brown and Cornelius. Jim, because of his still guilty conscience, has totally misjudged the enemy. Because he has been given a second chance to prove himself, he feels that Brown should also be given another chance. He foolishly trusts that the evil Brown will leave without incident; he even allows him to remain armed. Jim's character is shown in all its positive qualities in the chapter. He is very much concerned about the success of his plan and the safety of the Bugis. He is worried and cannot leave the matter alone, to the point that he personally patrols the area all night. Tamb'Itam's reaction to Jim's plan foreshadows the upcoming disaster. The fact that this totally loyal servant asks for a token to present to Dain Waris as proof that his message truly comes from Jim is out of character. Stein's ring, given as the token, plays its final role. The ring, which is a token of friendship, becomes the death knell of a friend. The fog, which covers the whole chapter, is symbolic of the ignorance of Jim -- the ignorance that Brown will betray him and the ignorance that he is making a big mistake.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/chapters_42_to_45.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/Sense and Sensibility/section_9_part_0.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapters 42-45

chapters 42-45

{"name": "Chapters 42-45", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210123003206/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/sensibility/section10/", "summary": "In early April, Elinor and Marianne leave London with Mrs. Jennings and Mr. and Mrs. Palmer to spend some time at the Palmers' house at Cleveland before returning home to Barton. Elinor is glad to be on her way home, but Marianne finds it painful to leave the place where her confidence in Willoughby was shattered. When they arrive at Cleveland, Marianne, still melancholy, takes several, long walks in the evenings and catches a violent cold. Elinor and Mrs. Jennings try to nurse Marianne back to health, but her condition continues to deteriorate. Marianne becomes feverish and delirious and calls out for her mother in the middle of the night. Colonel Brandon volunteers to travel to Barton and bring Mrs. Dashwood back with him in his carriage. After several anxious days, Mr. Harris, the Palmers' apothecary, at last announces that Marianne will be all right. Later that evening, just before the expected arrival time of Mrs. Dashwood and Colonel Brandon, Elinor hears a carriage approaching. She is astonished to see that the man emerging from the carriage is none other than John Willoughby! Willoughby states that he wishes to offer Elinor an explanation and apology for his behavior toward Marianne. He tells her that although he always knew that he could never afford to marry Marianne, he did not really appreciate what love was when he first became attached to her. He confesses to marrying Miss Grey for her money; thus, he does not love his wife and will forever hold Marianne in the highest regard. Willoughby asks Elinor to communicate his confession to Marianne and request her forgiveness. Elinor pities Willoughby after hearing his story and agrees to share his confession with Marianne once her health is restored. Mrs. Dashwood and Colonel Brandon arrive at Cleveland and are relieved to learn of Marianne's improved state. Mrs. Dashwood tells Elinor that on the long carriage ride from Barton to Cleveland, Colonel Brandon confessed his love for Marianne. She assures Elinor that she will do everything in her power to encourage this match.", "analysis": "Commentary Marianne's illness is a product both of excessive romantic sensibility and of a sequence of physically plausible reactions. On the one hand, her illness begins as a \"nervous illness\" induced by Willoughby's rejection and her disappointed romantic hopes and dreams. On the other hand, she catches a cold after wandering about the wet grounds of Cleveland. Austen's detailed description of Marianne's physical deterioration prevents readers from dismissing her ailment as a mere case of Victorian female hysteria: she charts the course of Marianne's illness, from a day spent shivering by the fire, to a restless and feverish night, to her feeling that she is \"materially better\" about a week later. Then, a few hours afterward her fever returns, accompanied by delirium. Although the scene in which Marianne cries out for her mother seems Gothic in its melodrama, delirious outcries were a common symptom of fever in Austen's day according to the most commonly consulted medical handbooks. Thus, Marianne's illness is an affliction of both the soul and the physical body. While Marianne lies sick in bed, Elinor must deal not only with her sister's illness but also with the individual who was in part responsible for her condition, John Willoughby. While they were in London, Elinor concluded that Willoughby was \"deep in hardened villainy.\" However, in these chapters, she comes to pity and sympathize with him. Softened by his honesty and passion, Elinor comes to understand, along with the reader, what had seemed a purely cruel change of heart in London. Although Willoughby's behavior is still inexcusable, his confession at least supplies the motivation for his actions. Perhaps Elinor finds it easier to forgive him because she knows that ultimately he has suffered--and will continue to suffer--for his misconduct: he has entered into a loveless marriage with a woman who will never be able to make him happy. Elinor may also have an easier time forgiving Willoughby because she now knows that his love for Marianne was genuine, in spite of his inappropriate behavior. Thus, even the rational and restrained Elinor is moved to forgive Willoughby after hearing his passionate confession. By reintroducing Willoughby at the end of her novel, Austen grants him more depth than an ordinary villain enjoys. Since he is able to speak for himself, Willoughby emerges as a more complicated and nuanced character than George Wickham, who simply carries off Lydia Bennett in Pride and Prejudice and never redeems himself again. Moreover, the reintroduction of Willoughby provides a long-awaited explanation of his mercurial behavior and a confirmation of Marianne's conviction that he loved her very much. Thus, Austen ties up her loose ends before entering her novel's finale."}

One other short call in Harley Street, in which Elinor received her brother's congratulations on their travelling so far towards Barton without any expense, and on Colonel Brandon's being to follow them to Cleveland in a day or two, completed the intercourse of the brother and sisters in town;--and a faint invitation from Fanny, to come to Norland whenever it should happen to be in their way, which of all things was the most unlikely to occur, with a more warm, though less public, assurance, from John to Elinor, of the promptitude with which he should come to see her at Delaford, was all that foretold any meeting in the country. It amused her to observe that all her friends seemed determined to send her to Delaford;--a place, in which, of all others, she would now least chuse to visit, or wish to reside; for not only was it considered as her future home by her brother and Mrs. Jennings, but even Lucy, when they parted, gave her a pressing invitation to visit her there. Very early in April, and tolerably early in the day, the two parties from Hanover Square and Berkeley Street set out from their respective homes, to meet, by appointment, on the road. For the convenience of Charlotte and her child, they were to be more than two days on their journey, and Mr. Palmer, travelling more expeditiously with Colonel Brandon, was to join them at Cleveland soon after their arrival. Marianne, few as had been her hours of comfort in London, and eager as she had long been to quit it, could not, when it came to the point, bid adieu to the house in which she had for the last time enjoyed those hopes, and that confidence, in Willoughby, which were now extinguished for ever, without great pain. Nor could she leave the place in which Willoughby remained, busy in new engagements, and new schemes, in which SHE could have no share, without shedding many tears. Elinor's satisfaction, at the moment of removal, was more positive. She had no such object for her lingering thoughts to fix on, she left no creature behind, from whom it would give her a moment's regret to be divided for ever, she was pleased to be free herself from the persecution of Lucy's friendship, she was grateful for bringing her sister away unseen by Willoughby since his marriage, and she looked forward with hope to what a few months of tranquility at Barton might do towards restoring Marianne's peace of mind, and confirming her own. Their journey was safely performed. The second day brought them into the cherished, or the prohibited, county of Somerset, for as such was it dwelt on by turns in Marianne's imagination; and in the forenoon of the third they drove up to Cleveland. Cleveland was a spacious, modern-built house, situated on a sloping lawn. It had no park, but the pleasure-grounds were tolerably extensive; and like every other place of the same degree of importance, it had its open shrubbery, and closer wood walk, a road of smooth gravel winding round a plantation, led to the front, the lawn was dotted over with timber, the house itself was under the guardianship of the fir, the mountain-ash, and the acacia, and a thick screen of them altogether, interspersed with tall Lombardy poplars, shut out the offices. Marianne entered the house with a heart swelling with emotion from the consciousness of being only eighty miles from Barton, and not thirty from Combe Magna; and before she had been five minutes within its walls, while the others were busily helping Charlotte to show her child to the housekeeper, she quitted it again, stealing away through the winding shrubberies, now just beginning to be in beauty, to gain a distant eminence; where, from its Grecian temple, her eye, wandering over a wide tract of country to the south-east, could fondly rest on the farthest ridge of hills in the horizon, and fancy that from their summits Combe Magna might be seen. In such moments of precious, invaluable misery, she rejoiced in tears of agony to be at Cleveland; and as she returned by a different circuit to the house, feeling all the happy privilege of country liberty, of wandering from place to place in free and luxurious solitude, she resolved to spend almost every hour of every day while she remained with the Palmers, in the indulgence of such solitary rambles. She returned just in time to join the others as they quitted the house, on an excursion through its more immediate premises; and the rest of the morning was easily whiled away, in lounging round the kitchen garden, examining the bloom upon its walls, and listening to the gardener's lamentations upon blights, in dawdling through the green-house, where the loss of her favourite plants, unwarily exposed, and nipped by the lingering frost, raised the laughter of Charlotte,--and in visiting her poultry-yard, where, in the disappointed hopes of her dairy-maid, by hens forsaking their nests, or being stolen by a fox, or in the rapid decrease of a promising young brood, she found fresh sources of merriment. The morning was fine and dry, and Marianne, in her plan of employment abroad, had not calculated for any change of weather during their stay at Cleveland. With great surprise therefore, did she find herself prevented by a settled rain from going out again after dinner. She had depended on a twilight walk to the Grecian temple, and perhaps all over the grounds, and an evening merely cold or damp would not have deterred her from it; but a heavy and settled rain even SHE could not fancy dry or pleasant weather for walking. Their party was small, and the hours passed quietly away. Mrs. Palmer had her child, and Mrs. Jennings her carpet-work; they talked of the friends they had left behind, arranged Lady Middleton's engagements, and wondered whether Mr. Palmer and Colonel Brandon would get farther than Reading that night. Elinor, however little concerned in it, joined in their discourse; and Marianne, who had the knack of finding her way in every house to the library, however it might be avoided by the family in general, soon procured herself a book. Nothing was wanting on Mrs. Palmer's side that constant and friendly good humour could do, to make them feel themselves welcome. The openness and heartiness of her manner more than atoned for that want of recollection and elegance which made her often deficient in the forms of politeness; her kindness, recommended by so pretty a face, was engaging; her folly, though evident was not disgusting, because it was not conceited; and Elinor could have forgiven every thing but her laugh. The two gentlemen arrived the next day to a very late dinner, affording a pleasant enlargement of the party, and a very welcome variety to their conversation, which a long morning of the same continued rain had reduced very low. Elinor had seen so little of Mr. Palmer, and in that little had seen so much variety in his address to her sister and herself, that she knew not what to expect to find him in his own family. She found him, however, perfectly the gentleman in his behaviour to all his visitors, and only occasionally rude to his wife and her mother; she found him very capable of being a pleasant companion, and only prevented from being so always, by too great an aptitude to fancy himself as much superior to people in general, as he must feel himself to be to Mrs. Jennings and Charlotte. For the rest of his character and habits, they were marked, as far as Elinor could perceive, with no traits at all unusual in his sex and time of life. He was nice in his eating, uncertain in his hours; fond of his child, though affecting to slight it; and idled away the mornings at billiards, which ought to have been devoted to business. She liked him, however, upon the whole, much better than she had expected, and in her heart was not sorry that she could like him no more;--not sorry to be driven by the observation of his Epicurism, his selfishness, and his conceit, to rest with complacency on the remembrance of Edward's generous temper, simple taste, and diffident feelings. Of Edward, or at least of some of his concerns, she now received intelligence from Colonel Brandon, who had been into Dorsetshire lately; and who, treating her at once as the disinterested friend of Mr. Ferrars, and the kind confidante of himself, talked to her a great deal of the parsonage at Delaford, described its deficiencies, and told her what he meant to do himself towards removing them.--His behaviour to her in this, as well as in every other particular, his open pleasure in meeting her after an absence of only ten days, his readiness to converse with her, and his deference for her opinion, might very well justify Mrs. Jennings's persuasion of his attachment, and would have been enough, perhaps, had not Elinor still, as from the first, believed Marianne his real favourite, to make her suspect it herself. But as it was, such a notion had scarcely ever entered her head, except by Mrs. Jennings's suggestion; and she could not help believing herself the nicest observer of the two;--she watched his eyes, while Mrs. Jennings thought only of his behaviour;--and while his looks of anxious solicitude on Marianne's feeling, in her head and throat, the beginning of a heavy cold, because unexpressed by words, entirely escaped the latter lady's observation;--SHE could discover in them the quick feelings, and needless alarm of a lover. Two delightful twilight walks on the third and fourth evenings of her being there, not merely on the dry gravel of the shrubbery, but all over the grounds, and especially in the most distant parts of them, where there was something more of wildness than in the rest, where the trees were the oldest, and the grass was the longest and wettest, had--assisted by the still greater imprudence of sitting in her wet shoes and stockings--given Marianne a cold so violent as, though for a day or two trifled with or denied, would force itself by increasing ailments on the concern of every body, and the notice of herself. Prescriptions poured in from all quarters, and as usual, were all declined. Though heavy and feverish, with a pain in her limbs, and a cough, and a sore throat, a good night's rest was to cure her entirely; and it was with difficulty that Elinor prevailed on her, when she went to bed, to try one or two of the simplest of the remedies. Marianne got up the next morning at her usual time; to every inquiry replied that she was better, and tried to prove herself so, by engaging in her accustomary employments. But a day spent in sitting shivering over the fire with a book in her hand, which she was unable to read, or in lying, weary and languid, on a sofa, did not speak much in favour of her amendment; and when, at last, she went early to bed, more and more indisposed, Colonel Brandon was only astonished at her sister's composure, who, though attending and nursing her the whole day, against Marianne's inclination, and forcing proper medicines on her at night, trusted, like Marianne, to the certainty and efficacy of sleep, and felt no real alarm. A very restless and feverish night, however, disappointed the expectation of both; and when Marianne, after persisting in rising, confessed herself unable to sit up, and returned voluntarily to her bed, Elinor was very ready to adopt Mrs. Jennings's advice, of sending for the Palmers' apothecary. He came, examined his patient, and though encouraging Miss Dashwood to expect that a very few days would restore her sister to health, yet, by pronouncing her disorder to have a putrid tendency, and allowing the word "infection" to pass his lips, gave instant alarm to Mrs. Palmer, on her baby's account. Mrs. Jennings, who had been inclined from the first to think Marianne's complaint more serious than Elinor, now looked very grave on Mr. Harris's report, and confirming Charlotte's fears and caution, urged the necessity of her immediate removal with her infant; and Mr. Palmer, though treating their apprehensions as idle, found the anxiety and importunity of his wife too great to be withstood. Her departure, therefore, was fixed on; and within an hour after Mr. Harris's arrival, she set off, with her little boy and his nurse, for the house of a near relation of Mr. Palmer's, who lived a few miles on the other side of Bath; whither her husband promised, at her earnest entreaty, to join her in a day or two; and whither she was almost equally urgent with her mother to accompany her. Mrs. Jennings, however, with a kindness of heart which made Elinor really love her, declared her resolution of not stirring from Cleveland as long as Marianne remained ill, and of endeavouring, by her own attentive care, to supply to her the place of the mother she had taken her from; and Elinor found her on every occasion a most willing and active helpmate, desirous to share in all her fatigues, and often by her better experience in nursing, of material use. Poor Marianne, languid and low from the nature of her malady, and feeling herself universally ill, could no longer hope that tomorrow would find her recovered; and the idea of what tomorrow would have produced, but for this unlucky illness, made every ailment severe; for on that day they were to have begun their journey home; and, attended the whole way by a servant of Mrs. Jennings, were to have taken their mother by surprise on the following forenoon. The little she said was all in lamentation of this inevitable delay; though Elinor tried to raise her spirits, and make her believe, as she THEN really believed herself, that it would be a very short one. The next day produced little or no alteration in the state of the patient; she certainly was not better, and, except that there was no amendment, did not appear worse. Their party was now farther reduced; for Mr. Palmer, though very unwilling to go as well from real humanity and good-nature, as from a dislike of appearing to be frightened away by his wife, was persuaded at last by Colonel Brandon to perform his promise of following her; and while he was preparing to go, Colonel Brandon himself, with a much greater exertion, began to talk of going likewise.--Here, however, the kindness of Mrs. Jennings interposed most acceptably; for to send the Colonel away while his love was in so much uneasiness on her sister's account, would be to deprive them both, she thought, of every comfort; and therefore telling him at once that his stay at Cleveland was necessary to herself, that she should want him to play at piquet of an evening, while Miss Dashwood was above with her sister, &c. she urged him so strongly to remain, that he, who was gratifying the first wish of his own heart by a compliance, could not long even affect to demur; especially as Mrs. Jennings's entreaty was warmly seconded by Mr. Palmer, who seemed to feel a relief to himself, in leaving behind him a person so well able to assist or advise Miss Dashwood in any emergence. Marianne was, of course, kept in ignorance of all these arrangements. She knew not that she had been the means of sending the owners of Cleveland away, in about seven days from the time of their arrival. It gave her no surprise that she saw nothing of Mrs. Palmer; and as it gave her likewise no concern, she never mentioned her name. Two days passed away from the time of Mr. Palmer's departure, and her situation continued, with little variation, the same. Mr. Harris, who attended her every day, still talked boldly of a speedy recovery, and Miss Dashwood was equally sanguine; but the expectation of the others was by no means so cheerful. Mrs. Jennings had determined very early in the seizure that Marianne would never get over it, and Colonel Brandon, who was chiefly of use in listening to Mrs. Jennings's forebodings, was not in a state of mind to resist their influence. He tried to reason himself out of fears, which the different judgment of the apothecary seemed to render absurd; but the many hours of each day in which he was left entirely alone, were but too favourable for the admission of every melancholy idea, and he could not expel from his mind the persuasion that he should see Marianne no more. On the morning of the third day however, the gloomy anticipations of both were almost done away; for when Mr. Harris arrived, he declared his patient materially better. Her pulse was much stronger, and every symptom more favourable than on the preceding visit. Elinor, confirmed in every pleasant hope, was all cheerfulness; rejoicing that in her letters to her mother, she had pursued her own judgment rather than her friend's, in making very light of the indisposition which delayed them at Cleveland; and almost fixing on the time when Marianne would be able to travel. But the day did not close so auspiciously as it began.-- Towards the evening Marianne became ill again, growing more heavy, restless, and uncomfortable than before. Her sister, however, still sanguine, was willing to attribute the change to nothing more than the fatigue of having sat up to have her bed made; and carefully administering the cordials prescribed, saw her, with satisfaction, sink at last into a slumber, from which she expected the most beneficial effects. Her sleep, though not so quiet as Elinor wished to see it, lasted a considerable time; and anxious to observe the result of it herself, she resolved to sit with her during the whole of it. Mrs. Jennings, knowing nothing of any change in the patient, went unusually early to bed; her maid, who was one of the principal nurses, was recreating herself in the housekeeper's room, and Elinor remained alone with Marianne. The repose of the latter became more and more disturbed; and her sister, who watched, with unremitting attention her continual change of posture, and heard the frequent but inarticulate sounds of complaint which passed her lips, was almost wishing to rouse her from so painful a slumber, when Marianne, suddenly awakened by some accidental noise in the house, started hastily up, and, with feverish wildness, cried out,-- "Is mama coming?--" "Not yet," cried the other, concealing her terror, and assisting Marianne to lie down again, "but she will be here, I hope, before it is long. It is a great way, you know, from hence to Barton." "But she must not go round by London," cried Marianne, in the same hurried manner. "I shall never see her, if she goes by London." Elinor perceived with alarm that she was not quite herself, and, while attempting to soothe her, eagerly felt her pulse. It was lower and quicker than ever! and Marianne, still talking wildly of mama, her alarm increased so rapidly, as to determine her on sending instantly for Mr. Harris, and despatching a messenger to Barton for her mother. To consult with Colonel Brandon on the best means of effecting the latter, was a thought which immediately followed the resolution of its performance; and as soon she had rung up the maid to take her place by her sister, she hastened down to the drawing-room, where she knew he was generally to be found at a much later hour than the present. It was no time for hesitation. Her fears and her difficulties were immediately before him. Her fears, he had no courage, no confidence to attempt the removal of:--he listened to them in silent despondence;--but her difficulties were instantly obviated, for with a readiness that seemed to speak the occasion, and the service pre-arranged in his mind, he offered himself as the messenger who should fetch Mrs. Dashwood. Elinor made no resistance that was not easily overcome. She thanked him with brief, though fervent gratitude, and while he went to hurry off his servant with a message to Mr. Harris, and an order for post-horses directly, she wrote a few lines to her mother. The comfort of such a friend at that moment as Colonel Brandon--or such a companion for her mother,--how gratefully was it felt!--a companion whose judgment would guide, whose attendance must relieve, and whose friendship might soothe her!--as far as the shock of such a summons COULD be lessened to her, his presence, his manners, his assistance, would lessen it. HE, meanwhile, whatever he might feel, acted with all the firmness of a collected mind, made every necessary arrangement with the utmost despatch, and calculated with exactness the time in which she might look for his return. Not a moment was lost in delay of any kind. The horses arrived, even before they were expected, and Colonel Brandon only pressing her hand with a look of solemnity, and a few words spoken too low to reach her ear, hurried into the carriage. It was then about twelve o'clock, and she returned to her sister's apartment to wait for the arrival of the apothecary, and to watch by her the rest of the night. It was a night of almost equal suffering to both. Hour after hour passed away in sleepless pain and delirium on Marianne's side, and in the most cruel anxiety on Elinor's, before Mr. Harris appeared. Her apprehensions once raised, paid by their excess for all her former security; and the servant who sat up with her, for she would not allow Mrs. Jennings to be called, only tortured her more, by hints of what her mistress had always thought. Marianne's ideas were still, at intervals, fixed incoherently on her mother, and whenever she mentioned her name, it gave a pang to the heart of poor Elinor, who, reproaching herself for having trifled with so many days of illness, and wretched for some immediate relief, fancied that all relief might soon be in vain, that every thing had been delayed too long, and pictured to herself her suffering mother arriving too late to see this darling child, or to see her rational. She was on the point of sending again for Mr. Harris, or if HE could not come, for some other advice, when the former--but not till after five o'clock--arrived. His opinion, however, made some little amends for his delay, for though acknowledging a very unexpected and unpleasant alteration in his patient, he would not allow the danger to be material, and talked of the relief which a fresh mode of treatment must procure, with a confidence which, in a lesser degree, was communicated to Elinor. He promised to call again in the course of three or four hours, and left both the patient and her anxious attendant more composed than he had found them. With strong concern, and with many reproaches for not being called to their aid, did Mrs. Jennings hear in the morning of what had passed. Her former apprehensions, now with greater reason restored, left her no doubt of the event; and though trying to speak comfort to Elinor, her conviction of her sister's danger would not allow her to offer the comfort of hope. Her heart was really grieved. The rapid decay, the early death of a girl so young, so lovely as Marianne, must have struck a less interested person with concern. On Mrs. Jennings's compassion she had other claims. She had been for three months her companion, was still under her care, and she was known to have been greatly injured, and long unhappy. The distress of her sister too, particularly a favourite, was before her;--and as for their mother, when Mrs. Jennings considered that Marianne might probably be to HER what Charlotte was to herself, her sympathy in HER sufferings was very sincere. Mr. Harris was punctual in his second visit;--but he came to be disappointed in his hopes of what the last would produce. His medicines had failed;--the fever was unabated; and Marianne only more quiet--not more herself--remained in a heavy stupor. Elinor, catching all, and more than all, his fears in a moment, proposed to call in further advice. But he judged it unnecessary: he had still something more to try, some more fresh application, of whose success he was as confident as the last, and his visit concluded with encouraging assurances which reached the ear, but could not enter the heart of Miss Dashwood. She was calm, except when she thought of her mother; but she was almost hopeless; and in this state she continued till noon, scarcely stirring from her sister's bed, her thoughts wandering from one image of grief, one suffering friend to another, and her spirits oppressed to the utmost by the conversation of Mrs. Jennings, who scrupled not to attribute the severity and danger of this attack to the many weeks of previous indisposition which Marianne's disappointment had brought on. Elinor felt all the reasonableness of the idea, and it gave fresh misery to her reflections. About noon, however, she began--but with a caution--a dread of disappointment which for some time kept her silent, even to her friend--to fancy, to hope she could perceive a slight amendment in her sister's pulse;--she waited, watched, and examined it again and again;--and at last, with an agitation more difficult to bury under exterior calmness, than all her foregoing distress, ventured to communicate her hopes. Mrs. Jennings, though forced, on examination, to acknowledge a temporary revival, tried to keep her young friend from indulging a thought of its continuance;--and Elinor, conning over every injunction of distrust, told herself likewise not to hope. But it was too late. Hope had already entered; and feeling all its anxious flutter, she bent over her sister to watch--she hardly knew for what. Half an hour passed away, and the favourable symptom yet blessed her. Others even arose to confirm it. Her breath, her skin, her lips, all flattered Elinor with signs of amendment; and Marianne fixed her eyes on her with a rational, though languid, gaze. Anxiety and hope now oppressed her in equal degrees, and left her no moment of tranquillity till the arrival of Mr. Harris at four o'clock;--when his assurances, his felicitations on a recovery in her sister even surpassing his expectation, gave her confidence, comfort, and tears of joy. Marianne was in every respect materially better, and he declared her entirely out of danger. Mrs. Jennings, perhaps satisfied with the partial justification of her forebodings which had been found in their late alarm, allowed herself to trust in his judgment, and admitted, with unfeigned joy, and soon with unequivocal cheerfulness, the probability of an entire recovery. Elinor could not be cheerful. Her joy was of a different kind, and led to any thing rather than to gaiety. Marianne restored to life, health, friends, and to her doting mother, was an idea to fill her heart with sensations of exquisite comfort, and expand it in fervent gratitude;--but it led to no outward demonstrations of joy, no words, no smiles. All within Elinor's breast was satisfaction, silent and strong. She continued by the side of her sister, with little intermission the whole afternoon, calming every fear, satisfying every inquiry of her enfeebled spirits, supplying every succour, and watching almost every look and every breath. The possibility of a relapse would of course, in some moments, occur to remind her of what anxiety was--but when she saw, on her frequent and minute examination, that every symptom of recovery continued, and saw Marianne at six o'clock sink into a quiet, steady, and to all appearance comfortable, sleep, she silenced every doubt. The time was now drawing on, when Colonel Brandon might be expected back. At ten o'clock, she trusted, or at least not much later her mother would be relieved from the dreadful suspense in which she must now be travelling towards them. The Colonel, too!--perhaps scarcely less an object of pity!--Oh!--how slow was the progress of time which yet kept them in ignorance! At seven o'clock, leaving Marianne still sweetly asleep, she joined Mrs. Jennings in the drawing-room to tea. Of breakfast she had been kept by her fears, and of dinner by their sudden reverse, from eating much;--and the present refreshment, therefore, with such feelings of content as she brought to it, was particularly welcome. Mrs. Jennings would have persuaded her, at its conclusion, to take some rest before her mother's arrival, and allow HER to take her place by Marianne; but Elinor had no sense of fatigue, no capability of sleep at that moment about her, and she was not to be kept away from her sister an unnecessary instant. Mrs. Jennings therefore attending her up stairs into the sick chamber, to satisfy herself that all continued right, left her there again to her charge and her thoughts, and retired to her own room to write letters and sleep. The night was cold and stormy. The wind roared round the house, and the rain beat against the windows; but Elinor, all happiness within, regarded it not. Marianne slept through every blast; and the travellers--they had a rich reward in store, for every present inconvenience. The clock struck eight. Had it been ten, Elinor would have been convinced that at that moment she heard a carriage driving up to the house; and so strong was the persuasion that she DID, in spite of the ALMOST impossibility of their being already come, that she moved into the adjoining dressing-closet and opened a window shutter, to be satisfied of the truth. She instantly saw that her ears had not deceived her. The flaring lamps of a carriage were immediately in view. By their uncertain light she thought she could discern it to be drawn by four horses; and this, while it told the excess of her poor mother's alarm, gave some explanation to such unexpected rapidity. Never in her life had Elinor found it so difficult to be calm, as at that moment. The knowledge of what her mother must be feeling as the carriage stopt at the door--of her doubt--her dread--perhaps her despair!--and of what SHE had to tell!--with such knowledge it was impossible to be calm. All that remained to be done was to be speedy; and, therefore staying only till she could leave Mrs. Jennings's maid with her sister, she hurried down stairs. The bustle in the vestibule, as she passed along an inner lobby, assured her that they were already in the house. She rushed to the drawing-room,--she entered it,--and saw only Willoughby. Elinor, starting back with a look of horror at the sight of him, obeyed the first impulse of her heart in turning instantly to quit the room, and her hand was already on the lock, when its action was suspended by his hastily advancing, and saying, in a voice rather of command than supplication, "Miss Dashwood, for half an hour--for ten minutes--I entreat you to stay." "No, sir," she replied with firmness, "I shall NOT stay. Your business cannot be with ME. The servants, I suppose, forgot to tell you that Mr. Palmer was not in the house." "Had they told me," he cried with vehemence, "that Mr. Palmer and all his relations were at the devil, it would not have turned me from the door. My business is with you, and only you." "With me!"--in the utmost amazement--"well, sir,--be quick--and if you can--less violent." "Sit down, and I will be both." She hesitated; she knew not what to do. The possibility of Colonel Brandon's arriving and finding her there, came across her. But she had promised to hear him, and her curiosity no less than her honor was engaged. After a moment's recollection, therefore, concluding that prudence required dispatch, and that her acquiescence would best promote it, she walked silently towards the table, and sat down. He took the opposite chair, and for half a minute not a word was said by either. "Pray be quick, sir,"--said Elinor, impatiently;--"I have no time to spare." He was sitting in an attitude of deep meditation, and seemed not to hear her. "Your sister," said he, with abruptness, a moment afterwards--"is out of danger. I heard it from the servant. God be praised!--But is it true? is it really true?" Elinor would not speak. He repeated the inquiry with yet greater eagerness. "For God's sake tell me, is she out of danger, or is she not?" "We hope she is." He rose up, and walked across the room. "Had I known as much half an hour ago--But since I AM here,"--speaking with a forced vivacity as he returned to his seat--"what does it signify?--For once, Miss Dashwood--it will be the last time, perhaps--let us be cheerful together.--I am in a fine mood for gaiety.-- Tell me honestly"--a deeper glow overspreading his cheeks--"do you think me most a knave or a fool?" Elinor looked at him with greater astonishment than ever. She began to think that he must be in liquor;--the strangeness of such a visit, and of such manners, seemed no otherwise intelligible; and with this impression she immediately rose, saying, "Mr. Willoughby, I advise you at present to return to Combe--I am not at leisure to remain with you longer.-- Whatever your business may be with me, it will be better recollected and explained to-morrow." "I understand you," he replied, with an expressive smile, and a voice perfectly calm; "yes, I am very drunk.-- A pint of porter with my cold beef at Marlborough was enough to over-set me." "At Marlborough!"--cried Elinor, more and more at a loss to understand what he would be at. "Yes,--I left London this morning at eight o'clock, and the only ten minutes I have spent out of my chaise since that time procured me a nuncheon at Marlborough." The steadiness of his manner, and the intelligence of his eye as he spoke, convincing Elinor, that whatever other unpardonable folly might bring him to Cleveland, he was not brought there by intoxication, she said, after a moment's recollection, "Mr. Willoughby, you OUGHT to feel, and I certainly DO--that after what has passed--your coming here in this manner, and forcing yourself upon my notice, requires a very particular excuse.--What is it, that you mean by it?"-- "I mean,"--said he, with serious energy--"if I can, to make you hate me one degree less than you do NOW. I mean to offer some kind of explanation, some kind of apology, for the past; to open my whole heart to you, and by convincing you, that though I have been always a blockhead, I have not been always a rascal, to obtain something like forgiveness from Ma--from your sister." "Is this the real reason of your coming?" "Upon my soul it is,"--was his answer, with a warmth which brought all the former Willoughby to her remembrance, and in spite of herself made her think him sincere. "If that is all, you may be satisfied already,--for Marianne DOES--she has LONG forgiven you." "Has she?"--he cried, in the same eager tone.-- "Then she has forgiven me before she ought to have done it. But she shall forgive me again, and on more reasonable grounds.--NOW will you listen to me?" Elinor bowed her assent. "I do not know," said he, after a pause of expectation on her side, and thoughtfulness on his own,--"how YOU may have accounted for my behaviour to your sister, or what diabolical motive you may have imputed to me.-- Perhaps you will hardly think the better of me,--it is worth the trial however, and you shall hear every thing. When I first became intimate in your family, I had no other intention, no other view in the acquaintance than to pass my time pleasantly while I was obliged to remain in Devonshire, more pleasantly than I had ever done before. Your sister's lovely person and interesting manners could not but please me; and her behaviour to me almost from the first, was of a kind--It is astonishing, when I reflect on what it was, and what SHE was, that my heart should have been so insensible! But at first I must confess, my vanity only was elevated by it. Careless of her happiness, thinking only of my own amusement, giving way to feelings which I had always been too much in the habit of indulging, I endeavoured, by every means in my power, to make myself pleasing to her, without any design of returning her affection." Miss Dashwood, at this point, turning her eyes on him with the most angry contempt, stopped him, by saying, "It is hardly worth while, Mr. Willoughby, for you to relate, or for me to listen any longer. Such a beginning as this cannot be followed by any thing.-- Do not let me be pained by hearing any thing more on the subject." "I insist on you hearing the whole of it," he replied, "My fortune was never large, and I had always been expensive, always in the habit of associating with people of better income than myself. Every year since my coming of age, or even before, I believe, had added to my debts; and though the death of my old cousin, Mrs. Smith, was to set me free; yet that event being uncertain, and possibly far distant, it had been for some time my intention to re-establish my circumstances by marrying a woman of fortune. To attach myself to your sister, therefore, was not a thing to be thought of;--and with a meanness, selfishness, cruelty--which no indignant, no contemptuous look, even of yours, Miss Dashwood, can ever reprobate too much--I was acting in this manner, trying to engage her regard, without a thought of returning it.--But one thing may be said for me: even in that horrid state of selfish vanity, I did not know the extent of the injury I meditated, because I did not THEN know what it was to love. But have I ever known it?--Well may it be doubted; for, had I really loved, could I have sacrificed my feelings to vanity, to avarice?--or, what is more, could I have sacrificed hers?-- But I have done it. To avoid a comparative poverty, which her affection and her society would have deprived of all its horrors, I have, by raising myself to affluence, lost every thing that could make it a blessing." "You did then," said Elinor, a little softened, "believe yourself at one time attached to her?" "To have resisted such attractions, to have withstood such tenderness!--Is there a man on earth who could have done it?--Yes, I found myself, by insensible degrees, sincerely fond of her; and the happiest hours of my life were what I spent with her when I felt my intentions were strictly honourable, and my feelings blameless. Even THEN, however, when fully determined on paying my addresses to her, I allowed myself most improperly to put off, from day to day, the moment of doing it, from an unwillingness to enter into an engagement while my circumstances were so greatly embarrassed. I will not reason here--nor will I stop for YOU to expatiate on the absurdity, and the worse than absurdity, of scrupling to engage my faith where my honour was already bound. The event has proved, that I was a cunning fool, providing with great circumspection for a possible opportunity of making myself contemptible and wretched for ever. At last, however, my resolution was taken, and I had determined, as soon as I could engage her alone, to justify the attentions I had so invariably paid her, and openly assure her of an affection which I had already taken such pains to display. But in the interim--in the interim of the very few hours that were to pass, before I could have an opportunity of speaking with her in private--a circumstance occurred--an unlucky circumstance, to ruin all my resolution, and with it all my comfort. A discovery took place,"--here he hesitated and looked down.--"Mrs. Smith had somehow or other been informed, I imagine by some distant relation, whose interest it was to deprive me of her favour, of an affair, a connection--but I need not explain myself farther," he added, looking at her with an heightened colour and an enquiring eye--"your particular intimacy--you have probably heard the whole story long ago." "I have," returned Elinor, colouring likewise, and hardening her heart anew against any compassion for him, "I have heard it all. And how you will explain away any part of your guilt in that dreadful business, I confess is beyond my comprehension." "Remember," cried Willoughby, "from whom you received the account. Could it be an impartial one? I acknowledge that her situation and her character ought to have been respected by me. I do not mean to justify myself, but at the same time cannot leave you to suppose that I have nothing to urge--that because she was injured she was irreproachable, and because I was a libertine, SHE must be a saint. If the violence of her passions, the weakness of her understanding--I do not mean, however, to defend myself. Her affection for me deserved better treatment, and I often, with great self-reproach, recall the tenderness which, for a very short time, had the power of creating any return. I wish--I heartily wish it had never been. But I have injured more than herself; and I have injured one, whose affection for me--(may I say it?) was scarcely less warm than hers; and whose mind--Oh! how infinitely superior!"-- "Your indifference, however, towards that unfortunate girl--I must say it, unpleasant to me as the discussion of such a subject may well be--your indifference is no apology for your cruel neglect of her. Do not think yourself excused by any weakness, any natural defect of understanding on her side, in the wanton cruelty so evident on yours. You must have known, that while you were enjoying yourself in Devonshire pursuing fresh schemes, always gay, always happy, she was reduced to the extremest indigence." "But, upon my soul, I did NOT know it," he warmly replied; "I did not recollect that I had omitted to give her my direction; and common sense might have told her how to find it out." "Well, sir, and what said Mrs. Smith?" "She taxed me with the offence at once, and my confusion may be guessed. The purity of her life, the formality of her notions, her ignorance of the world--every thing was against me. The matter itself I could not deny, and vain was every endeavour to soften it. She was previously disposed, I believe, to doubt the morality of my conduct in general, and was moreover discontented with the very little attention, the very little portion of my time that I had bestowed on her, in my present visit. In short, it ended in a total breach. By one measure I might have saved myself. In the height of her morality, good woman! she offered to forgive the past, if I would marry Eliza. That could not be--and I was formally dismissed from her favour and her house. The night following this affair--I was to go the next morning--was spent by me in deliberating on what my future conduct should be. The struggle was great--but it ended too soon. My affection for Marianne, my thorough conviction of her attachment to me--it was all insufficient to outweigh that dread of poverty, or get the better of those false ideas of the necessity of riches, which I was naturally inclined to feel, and expensive society had increased. I had reason to believe myself secure of my present wife, if I chose to address her, and I persuaded myself to think that nothing else in common prudence remained for me to do. A heavy scene however awaited me, before I could leave Devonshire;--I was engaged to dine with you on that very day; some apology was therefore necessary for my breaking this engagement. But whether I should write this apology, or deliver it in person, was a point of long debate. To see Marianne, I felt, would be dreadful, and I even doubted whether I could see her again, and keep to my resolution. In that point, however, I undervalued my own magnanimity, as the event declared; for I went, I saw her, and saw her miserable, and left her miserable--and left her hoping never to see her again." "Why did you call, Mr. Willoughby?" said Elinor, reproachfully; "a note would have answered every purpose.-- Why was it necessary to call?" "It was necessary to my own pride. I could not bear to leave the country in a manner that might lead you, or the rest of the neighbourhood, to suspect any part of what had really passed between Mrs. Smith and myself--and I resolved therefore on calling at the cottage, in my way to Honiton. The sight of your dear sister, however, was really dreadful; and, to heighten the matter, I found her alone. You were all gone I do not know where. I had left her only the evening before, so fully, so firmly resolved within my self on doing right! A few hours were to have engaged her to me for ever; and I remember how happy, how gay were my spirits, as I walked from the cottage to Allenham, satisfied with myself, delighted with every body! But in this, our last interview of friendship, I approached her with a sense of guilt that almost took from me the power of dissembling. Her sorrow, her disappointment, her deep regret, when I told her that I was obliged to leave Devonshire so immediately--I never shall forget it--united too with such reliance, such confidence in me!--Oh, God!--what a hard-hearted rascal I was!" They were both silent for a few moments. Elinor first spoke. "Did you tell her that you should soon return?" "I do not know what I told her," he replied, impatiently; "less than was due to the past, beyond a doubt, and in all likelihood much more than was justified by the future. I cannot think of it.--It won't do.--Then came your dear mother to torture me farther, with all her kindness and confidence. Thank Heaven! it DID torture me. I was miserable. Miss Dashwood, you cannot have an idea of the comfort it gives me to look back on my own misery. I owe such a grudge to myself for the stupid, rascally folly of my own heart, that all my past sufferings under it are only triumph and exultation to me now. Well, I went, left all that I loved, and went to those to whom, at best, I was only indifferent. My journey to town--travelling with my own horses, and therefore so tediously--no creature to speak to--my own reflections so cheerful--when I looked forward every thing so inviting!--when I looked back at Barton, the picture so soothing!--oh, it was a blessed journey!" He stopped. "Well, sir," said Elinor, who, though pitying him, grew impatient for his departure, "and this is all?" "Ah!--no,--have you forgot what passed in town?-- That infamous letter--Did she shew it you?" "Yes, I saw every note that passed." "When the first of hers reached me (as it immediately did, for I was in town the whole time,) what I felt is--in the common phrase, not to be expressed; in a more simple one--perhaps too simple to raise any emotion--my feelings were very, very painful.--Every line, every word was--in the hackneyed metaphor which their dear writer, were she here, would forbid--a dagger to my heart. To know that Marianne was in town was--in the same language--a thunderbolt.--Thunderbolts and daggers!--what a reproof would she have given me!--her taste, her opinions--I believe they are better known to me than my own,--and I am sure they are dearer." Elinor's heart, which had undergone many changes in the course of this extraordinary conversation, was now softened again;--yet she felt it her duty to check such ideas in her companion as the last. "This is not right, Mr. Willoughby.--Remember that you are married. Relate only what in your conscience you think necessary for me to hear." "Marianne's note, by assuring me that I was still as dear to her as in former days, that in spite of the many, many weeks we had been separated, she was as constant in her own feelings, and as full of faith in the constancy of mine as ever, awakened all my remorse. I say awakened, because time and London, business and dissipation, had in some measure quieted it, and I had been growing a fine hardened villain, fancying myself indifferent to her, and chusing to fancy that she too must have become indifferent to me; talking to myself of our past attachment as a mere idle, trifling business, shrugging up my shoulders in proof of its being so, and silencing every reproach, overcoming every scruple, by secretly saying now and then, 'I shall be heartily glad to hear she is well married.'-- But this note made me know myself better. I felt that she was infinitely dearer to me than any other woman in the world, and that I was using her infamously. But every thing was then just settled between Miss Grey and me. To retreat was impossible. All that I had to do, was to avoid you both. I sent no answer to Marianne, intending by that to preserve myself from her farther notice; and for some time I was even determined not to call in Berkeley Street;--but at last, judging it wiser to affect the air of a cool, common acquaintance than anything else, I watched you all safely out of the house one morning, and left my name." "Watched us out of the house!" "Even so. You would be surprised to hear how often I watched you, how often I was on the point of falling in with you. I have entered many a shop to avoid your sight, as the carriage drove by. Lodging as I did in Bond Street, there was hardly a day in which I did not catch a glimpse of one or other of you; and nothing but the most constant watchfulness on my side, a most invariably prevailing desire to keep out of your sight, could have separated us so long. I avoided the Middletons as much as possible, as well as everybody else who was likely to prove an acquaintance in common. Not aware of their being in town, however, I blundered on Sir John, I believe, the first day of his coming, and the day after I had called at Mrs. Jennings's. He asked me to a party, a dance at his house in the evening.--Had he NOT told me as an inducement that you and your sister were to be there, I should have felt it too certain a thing, to trust myself near him. The next morning brought another short note from Marianne--still affectionate, open, artless, confiding--everything that could make MY conduct most hateful. I could not answer it. I tried--but could not frame a sentence. But I thought of her, I believe, every moment of the day. If you CAN pity me, Miss Dashwood, pity my situation as it was THEN. With my head and heart full of your sister, I was forced to play the happy lover to another woman!--Those three or four weeks were worse than all. Well, at last, as I need not tell you, you were forced on me; and what a sweet figure I cut!--what an evening of agony it was!-- Marianne, beautiful as an angel on one side, calling me Willoughby in such a tone!--Oh, God!--holding out her hand to me, asking me for an explanation, with those bewitching eyes fixed in such speaking solicitude on my face!--and Sophia, jealous as the devil on the other hand, looking all that was--Well, it does not signify; it is over now.-- Such an evening!--I ran away from you all as soon as I could; but not before I had seen Marianne's sweet face as white as death.--THAT was the last, last look I ever had of her;--the last manner in which she appeared to me. It was a horrid sight!--yet when I thought of her to-day as really dying, it was a kind of comfort to me to imagine that I knew exactly how she would appear to those, who saw her last in this world. She was before me, constantly before me, as I travelled, in the same look and hue." A short pause of mutual thoughtfulness succeeded. Willoughby first rousing himself, broke it thus: "Well, let me make haste and be gone. Your sister is certainly better, certainly out of danger?" "We are assured of it." "Your poor mother, too!--doting on Marianne." "But the letter, Mr. Willoughby, your own letter; have you any thing to say about that?" "Yes, yes, THAT in particular. Your sister wrote to me again, you know, the very next morning. You saw what she said. I was breakfasting at the Ellisons,--and her letter, with some others, was brought to me there from my lodgings. It happened to catch Sophia's eye before it caught mine--and its size, the elegance of the paper, the hand-writing altogether, immediately gave her a suspicion. Some vague report had reached her before of my attachment to some young lady in Devonshire, and what had passed within her observation the preceding evening had marked who the young lady was, and made her more jealous than ever. Affecting that air of playfulness, therefore, which is delightful in a woman one loves, she opened the letter directly, and read its contents. She was well paid for her impudence. She read what made her wretched. Her wretchedness I could have borne, but her passion--her malice--At all events it must be appeased. And, in short--what do you think of my wife's style of letter-writing?--delicate--tender--truly feminine--was it not?" "Your wife!--The letter was in your own hand-writing." "Yes, but I had only the credit of servilely copying such sentences as I was ashamed to put my name to. The original was all her own--her own happy thoughts and gentle diction. But what could I do!--we were engaged, every thing in preparation, the day almost fixed--But I am talking like a fool. Preparation!--day!--In honest words, her money was necessary to me, and in a situation like mine, any thing was to be done to prevent a rupture. And after all, what did it signify to my character in the opinion of Marianne and her friends, in what language my answer was couched?--It must have been only to one end. My business was to declare myself a scoundrel, and whether I did it with a bow or a bluster was of little importance.-- 'I am ruined for ever in their opinion--' said I to myself--'I am shut out for ever from their society, they already think me an unprincipled fellow, this letter will only make them think me a blackguard one.' Such were my reasonings, as, in a sort of desperate carelessness, I copied my wife's words, and parted with the last relics of Marianne. Her three notes--unluckily they were all in my pocketbook, or I should have denied their existence, and hoarded them for ever--I was forced to put them up, and could not even kiss them. And the lock of hair--that too I had always carried about me in the same pocket-book, which was now searched by Madam with the most ingratiating virulence,--the dear lock--all, every memento was torn from me." "You are very wrong, Mr. Willoughby, very blamable," said Elinor, while her voice, in spite of herself, betrayed her compassionate emotion; "you ought not to speak in this way, either of Mrs. Willoughby or my sister. You had made your own choice. It was not forced on you. Your wife has a claim to your politeness, to your respect, at least. She must be attached to you, or she would not have married you. To treat her with unkindness, to speak of her slightingly is no atonement to Marianne--nor can I suppose it a relief to your own conscience." "Do not talk to me of my wife," said he with a heavy sigh.-- "She does not deserve your compassion.--She knew I had no regard for her when we married.--Well, married we were, and came down to Combe Magna to be happy, and afterwards returned to town to be gay.--And now do you pity me, Miss Dashwood?--or have I said all this to no purpose?-- Am I--be it only one degree--am I less guilty in your opinion than I was before?--My intentions were not always wrong. Have I explained away any part of my guilt?" "Yes, you have certainly removed something--a little.-- You have proved yourself, on the whole, less faulty than I had believed you. You have proved your heart less wicked, much less wicked. But I hardly know--the misery that you have inflicted--I hardly know what could have made it worse." "Will you repeat to your sister when she is recovered, what I have been telling you?--Let me be a little lightened too in her opinion as well as in yours. You tell me that she has forgiven me already. Let me be able to fancy that a better knowledge of my heart, and of my present feelings, will draw from her a more spontaneous, more natural, more gentle, less dignified, forgiveness. Tell her of my misery and my penitence--tell her that my heart was never inconstant to her, and if you will, that at this moment she is dearer to me than ever." "I will tell her all that is necessary to what may comparatively be called, your justification. But you have not explained to me the particular reason of your coming now, nor how you heard of her illness." "Last night, in Drury Lane lobby, I ran against Sir John Middleton, and when he saw who I was--for the first time these two months--he spoke to me.--That he had cut me ever since my marriage, I had seen without surprise or resentment. Now, however, his good-natured, honest, stupid soul, full of indignation against me, and concern for your sister, could not resist the temptation of telling me what he knew ought to--though probably he did not think it WOULD--vex me horridly. As bluntly as he could speak it, therefore, he told me that Marianne Dashwood was dying of a putrid fever at Cleveland--a letter that morning received from Mrs. Jennings declared her danger most imminent--the Palmers are all gone off in a fright, &c.--I was too much shocked to be able to pass myself off as insensible even to the undiscerning Sir John. His heart was softened in seeing mine suffer; and so much of his ill-will was done away, that when we parted, he almost shook me by the hand while he reminded me of an old promise about a pointer puppy. What I felt on hearing that your sister was dying--and dying too, believing me the greatest villain upon earth, scorning, hating me in her latest moments--for how could I tell what horrid projects might not have been imputed? ONE person I was sure would represent me as capable of any thing-- What I felt was dreadful!--My resolution was soon made, and at eight o'clock this morning I was in my carriage. Now you know all." Elinor made no answer. Her thoughts were silently fixed on the irreparable injury which too early an independence and its consequent habits of idleness, dissipation, and luxury, had made in the mind, the character, the happiness, of a man who, to every advantage of person and talents, united a disposition naturally open and honest, and a feeling, affectionate temper. The world had made him extravagant and vain--Extravagance and vanity had made him cold-hearted and selfish. Vanity, while seeking its own guilty triumph at the expense of another, had involved him in a real attachment, which extravagance, or at least its offspring, necessity, had required to be sacrificed. Each faulty propensity in leading him to evil, had led him likewise to punishment. The attachment, from which against honour, against feeling, against every better interest he had outwardly torn himself, now, when no longer allowable, governed every thought; and the connection, for the sake of which he had, with little scruple, left her sister to misery, was likely to prove a source of unhappiness to himself of a far more incurable nature. From a reverie of this kind she was recalled at the end of some minutes by Willoughby, who, rousing himself from a reverie at least equally painful, started up in preparation for going, and said-- "There is no use in staying here; I must be off." "Are you going back to town?" "No--to Combe Magna. I have business there; from thence to town in a day or two. Good bye." He held out his hand. She could not refuse to give him hers;--he pressed it with affection. "And you DO think something better of me than you did?"--said he, letting it fall, and leaning against the mantel-piece as if forgetting he was to go. Elinor assured him that she did;--that she forgave, pitied, wished him well--was even interested in his happiness--and added some gentle counsel as to the behaviour most likely to promote it. His answer was not very encouraging. "As to that," said he, "I must rub through the world as well as I can. Domestic happiness is out of the question. If, however, I am allowed to think that you and yours feel an interest in my fate and actions, it may be the means--it may put me on my guard--at least, it may be something to live for. Marianne to be sure is lost to me for ever. Were I even by any blessed chance at liberty again--" Elinor stopped him with a reproof. "Well,"--he replied--"once more good bye. I shall now go away and live in dread of one event." "What do you mean?" "Your sister's marriage." "You are very wrong. She can never be more lost to you than she is now." "But she will be gained by some one else. And if that some one should be the very he whom, of all others, I could least bear--but I will not stay to rob myself of all your compassionate goodwill, by shewing that where I have most injured I can least forgive. Good bye,--God bless you!" And with these words, he almost ran out of the room. Elinor, for some time after he left her, for some time even after the sound of his carriage had died away, remained too much oppressed by a crowd of ideas, widely differing in themselves, but of which sadness was the general result, to think even of her sister. Willoughby, he, whom only half an hour ago she had abhorred as the most worthless of men, Willoughby, in spite of all his faults, excited a degree of commiseration for the sufferings produced by them, which made her think of him as now separated for ever from her family, with a tenderness, a regret, rather in proportion, as she soon acknowledged within herself--to his wishes than to his merits. She felt that his influence over her mind was heightened by circumstances which ought not in reason to have weight; by that person of uncommon attraction, that open, affectionate, and lively manner which it was no merit to possess; and by that still ardent love for Marianne, which it was not even innocent to indulge. But she felt that it was so, long, long before she could feel his influence less. When at last she returned to the unconscious Marianne, she found her just awaking, refreshed by so long and sweet a sleep to the extent of her hopes. Elinor's heart was full. The past, the present, the future, Willoughby's visit, Marianne's safety, and her mother's expected arrival, threw her altogether into an agitation of spirits which kept off every indication of fatigue, and made her only fearful of betraying herself to her sister. Short was the time, however, in which that fear could affect her, for within half an hour after Willoughby's leaving the house, she was again called down stairs by the sound of another carriage.--Eager to save her mother from every unnecessary moment's horrible suspense, she ran immediately into the hall, and reached the outward door just in time to receive and support her as she entered it. Mrs. Dashwood, whose terror as they drew near the house had produced almost the conviction of Marianne's being no more, had no voice to inquire after her, no voice even for Elinor; but SHE, waiting neither for salutation nor inquiry, instantly gave the joyful relief;--and her mother, catching it with all her usual warmth, was in a moment as much overcome by her happiness, as she had been before by her fears. She was supported into the drawing-room between her daughter and her friend;--and there, shedding tears of joy, though still unable to speak, embraced Elinor again and again, turning from her at intervals to press Colonel Brandon's hand, with a look which spoke at once her gratitude, and her conviction of his sharing with herself in the bliss of the moment. He shared it, however, in a silence even greater than her own. As soon as Mrs. Dashwood had recovered herself, to see Marianne was her first desire; and in two minutes she was with her beloved child, rendered dearer to her than ever by absence, unhappiness, and danger. Elinor's delight, as she saw what each felt in the meeting, was only checked by an apprehension of its robbing Marianne of farther sleep;--but Mrs. Dashwood could be calm, could be even prudent, when the life of a child was at stake, and Marianne, satisfied in knowing her mother was near her, and conscious of being too weak for conversation, submitted readily to the silence and quiet prescribed by every nurse around her. Mrs. Dashwood WOULD sit up with her all night; and Elinor, in compliance with her mother's entreaty, went to bed. But the rest, which one night entirely sleepless, and many hours of the most wearing anxiety seemed to make requisite, was kept off by irritation of spirits. Willoughby, "poor Willoughby," as she now allowed herself to call him, was constantly in her thoughts; she would not but have heard his vindication for the world, and now blamed, now acquitted herself for having judged him so harshly before. But her promise of relating it to her sister was invariably painful. She dreaded the performance of it, dreaded what its effect on Marianne might be; doubted whether after such an explanation she could ever be happy with another; and for a moment wished Willoughby a widower. Then, remembering Colonel Brandon, reproved herself, felt that to HIS sufferings and his constancy far more than to his rival's, the reward of her sister was due, and wished any thing rather than Mrs. Willoughby's death. The shock of Colonel Brandon's errand at Barton had been much softened to Mrs. Dashwood by her own previous alarm; for so great was her uneasiness about Marianne, that she had already determined to set out for Cleveland on that very day, without waiting for any further intelligence, and had so far settled her journey before his arrival, that the Careys were then expected every moment to fetch Margaret away, as her mother was unwilling to take her where there might be infection. Marianne continued to mend every day, and the brilliant cheerfulness of Mrs. Dashwood's looks and spirits proved her to be, as she repeatedly declared herself, one of the happiest women in the world. Elinor could not hear the declaration, nor witness its proofs without sometimes wondering whether her mother ever recollected Edward. But Mrs. Dashwood, trusting to the temperate account of her own disappointment which Elinor had sent her, was led away by the exuberance of her joy to think only of what would increase it. Marianne was restored to her from a danger in which, as she now began to feel, her own mistaken judgment in encouraging the unfortunate attachment to Willoughby, had contributed to place her;--and in her recovery she had yet another source of joy unthought of by Elinor. It was thus imparted to her, as soon as any opportunity of private conference between them occurred. "At last we are alone. My Elinor, you do not yet know all my happiness. Colonel Brandon loves Marianne. He has told me so himself." Her daughter, feeling by turns both pleased and pained, surprised and not surprised, was all silent attention. "You are never like me, dear Elinor, or I should wonder at your composure now. Had I sat down to wish for any possible good to my family, I should have fixed on Colonel Brandon's marrying one of you as the object most desirable. And I believe Marianne will be the most happy with him of the two." Elinor was half inclined to ask her reason for thinking so, because satisfied that none founded on an impartial consideration of their age, characters, or feelings, could be given;--but her mother must always be carried away by her imagination on any interesting subject, and therefore instead of an inquiry, she passed it off with a smile. "He opened his whole heart to me yesterday as we travelled. It came out quite unawares, quite undesignedly. I, you may well believe, could talk of nothing but my child;--he could not conceal his distress; I saw that it equalled my own, and he perhaps, thinking that mere friendship, as the world now goes, would not justify so warm a sympathy--or rather, not thinking at all, I suppose--giving way to irresistible feelings, made me acquainted with his earnest, tender, constant, affection for Marianne. He has loved her, my Elinor, ever since the first moment of seeing her." Here, however, Elinor perceived,--not the language, not the professions of Colonel Brandon, but the natural embellishments of her mother's active fancy, which fashioned every thing delightful to her as it chose. "His regard for her, infinitely surpassing anything that Willoughby ever felt or feigned, as much more warm, as more sincere or constant--which ever we are to call it--has subsisted through all the knowledge of dear Marianne's unhappy prepossession for that worthless young man!--and without selfishness--without encouraging a hope!--could he have seen her happy with another--Such a noble mind!--such openness, such sincerity!--no one can be deceived in HIM." "Colonel Brandon's character," said Elinor, "as an excellent man, is well established." "I know it is,"--replied her mother seriously, "or after such a warning, I should be the last to encourage such affection, or even to be pleased by it. But his coming for me as he did, with such active, such ready friendship, is enough to prove him one of the worthiest of men." "His character, however," answered Elinor, "does not rest on ONE act of kindness, to which his affection for Marianne, were humanity out of the case, would have prompted him. To Mrs. Jennings, to the Middletons, he has been long and intimately known; they equally love and respect him; and even my own knowledge of him, though lately acquired, is very considerable; and so highly do I value and esteem him, that if Marianne can be happy with him, I shall be as ready as yourself to think our connection the greatest blessing to us in the world. What answer did you give him?--Did you allow him to hope?" "Oh! my love, I could not then talk of hope to him or to myself. Marianne might at that moment be dying. But he did not ask for hope or encouragement. His was an involuntary confidence, an irrepressible effusion to a soothing friend--not an application to a parent. Yet after a time I DID say, for at first I was quite overcome--that if she lived, as I trusted she might, my greatest happiness would lie in promoting their marriage; and since our arrival, since our delightful security, I have repeated it to him more fully, have given him every encouragement in my power. Time, a very little time, I tell him, will do everything;--Marianne's heart is not to be wasted for ever on such a man as Willoughby.-- His own merits must soon secure it." "To judge from the Colonel's spirits, however, you have not yet made him equally sanguine." "No.--He thinks Marianne's affection too deeply rooted for any change in it under a great length of time, and even supposing her heart again free, is too diffident of himself to believe, that with such a difference of age and disposition he could ever attach her. There, however, he is quite mistaken. His age is only so much beyond hers as to be an advantage, as to make his character and principles fixed;--and his disposition, I am well convinced, is exactly the very one to make your sister happy. And his person, his manners too, are all in his favour. My partiality does not blind me; he certainly is not so handsome as Willoughby--but at the same time, there is something much more pleasing in his countenance.-- There was always a something,--if you remember,--in Willoughby's eyes at times, which I did not like." Elinor could NOT remember it;--but her mother, without waiting for her assent, continued, "And his manners, the Colonel's manners are not only more pleasing to me than Willoughby's ever were, but they are of a kind I well know to be more solidly attaching to Marianne. Their gentleness, their genuine attention to other people, and their manly unstudied simplicity is much more accordant with her real disposition, than the liveliness--often artificial, and often ill-timed of the other. I am very sure myself, that had Willoughby turned out as really amiable, as he has proved himself the contrary, Marianne would yet never have been so happy with HIM, as she will be with Colonel Brandon." She paused.--Her daughter could not quite agree with her, but her dissent was not heard, and therefore gave no offence. "At Delaford, she will be within an easy distance of me," added Mrs. Dashwood, "even if I remain at Barton; and in all probability,--for I hear it is a large village,--indeed there certainly MUST be some small house or cottage close by, that would suit us quite as well as our present situation." Poor Elinor!--here was a new scheme for getting her to Delaford!--but her spirit was stubborn. "His fortune too!--for at my time of life you know, everybody cares about THAT;--and though I neither know nor desire to know, what it really is, I am sure it must be a good one." Here they were interrupted by the entrance of a third person, and Elinor withdrew to think it all over in private, to wish success to her friend, and yet in wishing it, to feel a pang for Willoughby.

Chapters 42-45

https://web.archive.org/web/20210123003206/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/sensibility/section10/

In early April, Elinor and Marianne leave London with Mrs. Jennings and Mr. and Mrs. Palmer to spend some time at the Palmers' house at Cleveland before returning home to Barton. Elinor is glad to be on her way home, but Marianne finds it painful to leave the place where her confidence in Willoughby was shattered. When they arrive at Cleveland, Marianne, still melancholy, takes several, long walks in the evenings and catches a violent cold. Elinor and Mrs. Jennings try to nurse Marianne back to health, but her condition continues to deteriorate. Marianne becomes feverish and delirious and calls out for her mother in the middle of the night. Colonel Brandon volunteers to travel to Barton and bring Mrs. Dashwood back with him in his carriage. After several anxious days, Mr. Harris, the Palmers' apothecary, at last announces that Marianne will be all right. Later that evening, just before the expected arrival time of Mrs. Dashwood and Colonel Brandon, Elinor hears a carriage approaching. She is astonished to see that the man emerging from the carriage is none other than John Willoughby! Willoughby states that he wishes to offer Elinor an explanation and apology for his behavior toward Marianne. He tells her that although he always knew that he could never afford to marry Marianne, he did not really appreciate what love was when he first became attached to her. He confesses to marrying Miss Grey for her money; thus, he does not love his wife and will forever hold Marianne in the highest regard. Willoughby asks Elinor to communicate his confession to Marianne and request her forgiveness. Elinor pities Willoughby after hearing his story and agrees to share his confession with Marianne once her health is restored. Mrs. Dashwood and Colonel Brandon arrive at Cleveland and are relieved to learn of Marianne's improved state. Mrs. Dashwood tells Elinor that on the long carriage ride from Barton to Cleveland, Colonel Brandon confessed his love for Marianne. She assures Elinor that she will do everything in her power to encourage this match.

Commentary Marianne's illness is a product both of excessive romantic sensibility and of a sequence of physically plausible reactions. On the one hand, her illness begins as a "nervous illness" induced by Willoughby's rejection and her disappointed romantic hopes and dreams. On the other hand, she catches a cold after wandering about the wet grounds of Cleveland. Austen's detailed description of Marianne's physical deterioration prevents readers from dismissing her ailment as a mere case of Victorian female hysteria: she charts the course of Marianne's illness, from a day spent shivering by the fire, to a restless and feverish night, to her feeling that she is "materially better" about a week later. Then, a few hours afterward her fever returns, accompanied by delirium. Although the scene in which Marianne cries out for her mother seems Gothic in its melodrama, delirious outcries were a common symptom of fever in Austen's day according to the most commonly consulted medical handbooks. Thus, Marianne's illness is an affliction of both the soul and the physical body. While Marianne lies sick in bed, Elinor must deal not only with her sister's illness but also with the individual who was in part responsible for her condition, John Willoughby. While they were in London, Elinor concluded that Willoughby was "deep in hardened villainy." However, in these chapters, she comes to pity and sympathize with him. Softened by his honesty and passion, Elinor comes to understand, along with the reader, what had seemed a purely cruel change of heart in London. Although Willoughby's behavior is still inexcusable, his confession at least supplies the motivation for his actions. Perhaps Elinor finds it easier to forgive him because she knows that ultimately he has suffered--and will continue to suffer--for his misconduct: he has entered into a loveless marriage with a woman who will never be able to make him happy. Elinor may also have an easier time forgiving Willoughby because she now knows that his love for Marianne was genuine, in spite of his inappropriate behavior. Thus, even the rational and restrained Elinor is moved to forgive Willoughby after hearing his passionate confession. By reintroducing Willoughby at the end of her novel, Austen grants him more depth than an ordinary villain enjoys. Since he is able to speak for himself, Willoughby emerges as a more complicated and nuanced character than George Wickham, who simply carries off Lydia Bennett in Pride and Prejudice and never redeems himself again. Moreover, the reintroduction of Willoughby provides a long-awaited explanation of his mercurial behavior and a confirmation of Marianne's conviction that he loved her very much. Thus, Austen ties up her loose ends before entering her novel's finale.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/41.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Far From the Madding Crowd/section_40_part_0.txt

Far From the Madding Crowd.chapter 41

chapter 41

{"name": "Chapter 41", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-41", "summary": "Bathsheba gives Troy the silent treatment during the evening after they return from the market, and he doesn't seem to mind all that much. The next day, Troy asks her for twenty pounds, which is a hefty sum of money. She asks him if it's for gambling on the horse races, and after a pause, he says \"Sure, why not?\" We readers know, though, that he's probably getting the money for Fanny. Bathsheba begs him to stay home. Finally, Troy admits that the money isn't for gambling. When he won't tell her what it's for, though, the two get into a terrible argument. Each of them tells the other that they wish they'd never gotten married. Bathsheba eventually gives up and hands over the money. Troy also says he plans on leaving the next day to go to Bath. Again, he won't tell Bathsheba about why he's going. At this point, Troy opens his pocket watch and Bathsheba sees a lock of blond hair fall out of it. She knows instantly that the hair belongs to another woman, though Troy tries to say it's hers. He eventually admits that it's the hair of a young woman he was going to marry before he met Bathsheba. He refuses to say the woman's name, though. But it comes out that the girl they met on the road a few days earlier is someone that Troy used to be engaged to, and that the hair in his watch is hers. At this point, Troy doesn't want to hash out details any longer, so he gets up and leaves the house. Bathsheba dissolves into tears. She leaves the house to walk in the fields. While doing so, she sees Farmer Boldwood at a distance stopping for a chat with Gabriel Oak. Joseph Poorgrass also stops to talk to the men, and then comes up the road to Bathsheba to tell her that her former servant, Fanny Robin, has died in the shelter at Casterbridge. Mr. Boldwood plans on sending a wagon for her body, but Bathsheba says she'll hear nothing of it. Fanny was her servant, so she'll send the cart. During the conversation, Bathsheba learns that Fanny had travelled to Casterbridge along the main road a few days earlier. This, of course, gets her wondering about whether this was the woman she saw with Troy. Apparently, Sergeant Troy has also said in the past that a man from his regiment used to be sweethearts with Fanny Robin. Bathsheba is starting to put two and two together.", "analysis": ""}

SUSPICION--FANNY IS SENT FOR Bathsheba said very little to her husband all that evening of their return from market, and he was not disposed to say much to her. He exhibited the unpleasant combination of a restless condition with a silent tongue. The next day, which was Sunday, passed nearly in the same manner as regarded their taciturnity, Bathsheba going to church both morning and afternoon. This was the day before the Budmouth races. In the evening Troy said, suddenly-- "Bathsheba, could you let me have twenty pounds?" Her countenance instantly sank. "Twenty pounds?" she said. "The fact is, I want it badly." The anxiety upon Troy's face was unusual and very marked. It was a culmination of the mood he had been in all the day. "Ah! for those races to-morrow." Troy for the moment made no reply. Her mistake had its advantages to a man who shrank from having his mind inspected as he did now. "Well, suppose I do want it for races?" he said, at last. "Oh, Frank!" Bathsheba replied, and there was such a volume of entreaty in the words. "Only such a few weeks ago you said that I was far sweeter than all your other pleasures put together, and that you would give them all up for me; and now, won't you give up this one, which is more a worry than a pleasure? Do, Frank. Come, let me fascinate you by all I can do--by pretty words and pretty looks, and everything I can think of--to stay at home. Say yes to your wife--say yes!" The tenderest and softest phases of Bathsheba's nature were prominent now--advanced impulsively for his acceptance, without any of the disguises and defences which the wariness of her character when she was cool too frequently threw over them. Few men could have resisted the arch yet dignified entreaty of the beautiful face, thrown a little back and sideways in the well known attitude that expresses more than the words it accompanies, and which seems to have been designed for these special occasions. Had the woman not been his wife, Troy would have succumbed instantly; as it was, he thought he would not deceive her longer. "The money is not wanted for racing debts at all," he said. "What is it for?" she asked. "You worry me a great deal by these mysterious responsibilities, Frank." Troy hesitated. He did not now love her enough to allow himself to be carried too far by her ways. Yet it was necessary to be civil. "You wrong me by such a suspicious manner," he said. "Such strait-waistcoating as you treat me to is not becoming in you at so early a date." "I think that I have a right to grumble a little if I pay," she said, with features between a smile and a pout. "Exactly; and, the former being done, suppose we proceed to the latter. Bathsheba, fun is all very well, but don't go too far, or you may have cause to regret something." She reddened. "I do that already," she said, quickly. "What do you regret?" "That my romance has come to an end." "All romances end at marriage." "I wish you wouldn't talk like that. You grieve me to my soul by being smart at my expense." "You are dull enough at mine. I believe you hate me." "Not you--only your faults. I do hate them." "'Twould be much more becoming if you set yourself to cure them. Come, let's strike a balance with the twenty pounds, and be friends." She gave a sigh of resignation. "I have about that sum here for household expenses. If you must have it, take it." "Very good. Thank you. I expect I shall have gone away before you are in to breakfast to-morrow." "And must you go? Ah! there was a time, Frank, when it would have taken a good many promises to other people to drag you away from me. You used to call me darling, then. But it doesn't matter to you how my days are passed now." "I must go, in spite of sentiment." Troy, as he spoke, looked at his watch, and, apparently actuated by _non lucendo_ principles, opened the case at the back, revealing, snugly stowed within it, a small coil of hair. Bathsheba's eyes had been accidentally lifted at that moment, and she saw the action and saw the hair. She flushed in pain and surprise, and some words escaped her before she had thought whether or not it was wise to utter them. "A woman's curl of hair!" she said. "Oh, Frank, whose is that?" Troy had instantly closed his watch. He carelessly replied, as one who cloaked some feelings that the sight had stirred. "Why, yours, of course. Whose should it be? I had quite forgotten that I had it." "What a dreadful fib, Frank!" "I tell you I had forgotten it!" he said, loudly. "I don't mean that--it was yellow hair." "Nonsense." "That's insulting me. I know it was yellow. Now whose was it? I want to know." "Very well--I'll tell you, so make no more ado. It is the hair of a young woman I was going to marry before I knew you." "You ought to tell me her name, then." "I cannot do that." "Is she married yet?" "No." "Is she alive?" "Yes." "Is she pretty?" "Yes." "It is wonderful how she can be, poor thing, under such an awful affliction!" "Affliction--what affliction?" he inquired, quickly. "Having hair of that dreadful colour." "Oh--ho--I like that!" said Troy, recovering himself. "Why, her hair has been admired by everybody who has seen her since she has worn it loose, which has not been long. It is beautiful hair. People used to turn their heads to look at it, poor girl!" "Pooh! that's nothing--that's nothing!" she exclaimed, in incipient accents of pique. "If I cared for your love as much as I used to I could say people had turned to look at mine." "Bathsheba, don't be so fitful and jealous. You knew what married life would be like, and shouldn't have entered it if you feared these contingencies." Troy had by this time driven her to bitterness: her heart was big in her throat, and the ducts to her eyes were painfully full. Ashamed as she was to show emotion, at last she burst out:-- "This is all I get for loving you so well! Ah! when I married you your life was dearer to me than my own. I would have died for you--how truly I can say that I would have died for you! And now you sneer at my foolishness in marrying you. O! is it kind to me to throw my mistake in my face? Whatever opinion you may have of my wisdom, you should not tell me of it so mercilessly, now that I am in your power." "I can't help how things fall out," said Troy; "upon my heart, women will be the death of me!" "Well you shouldn't keep people's hair. You'll burn it, won't you, Frank?" Frank went on as if he had not heard her. "There are considerations even before my consideration for you; reparations to be made--ties you know nothing of. If you repent of marrying, so do I." Trembling now, she put her hand upon his arm, saying, in mingled tones of wretchedness and coaxing, "I only repent it if you don't love me better than any woman in the world! I don't otherwise, Frank. You don't repent because you already love somebody better than you love me, do you?" "I don't know. Why do you say that?" "You won't burn that curl. You like the woman who owns that pretty hair--yes; it is pretty--more beautiful than my miserable black mane! Well, it is no use; I can't help being ugly. You must like her best, if you will!" "Until to-day, when I took it from a drawer, I have never looked upon that bit of hair for several months--that I am ready to swear." "But just now you said 'ties'; and then--that woman we met?" "'Twas the meeting with her that reminded me of the hair." "Is it hers, then?" "Yes. There, now that you have wormed it out of me, I hope you are content." "And what are the ties?" "Oh! that meant nothing--a mere jest." "A mere jest!" she said, in mournful astonishment. "Can you jest when I am so wretchedly in earnest? Tell me the truth, Frank. I am not a fool, you know, although I am a woman, and have my woman's moments. Come! treat me fairly," she said, looking honestly and fearlessly into his face. "I don't want much; bare justice--that's all! Ah! once I felt I could be content with nothing less than the highest homage from the husband I should choose. Now, anything short of cruelty will content me. Yes! the independent and spirited Bathsheba is come to this!" "For Heaven's sake don't be so desperate!" Troy said, snappishly, rising as he did so, and leaving the room. Directly he had gone, Bathsheba burst into great sobs--dry-eyed sobs, which cut as they came, without any softening by tears. But she determined to repress all evidences of feeling. She was conquered; but she would never own it as long as she lived. Her pride was indeed brought low by despairing discoveries of her spoliation by marriage with a less pure nature than her own. She chafed to and fro in rebelliousness, like a caged leopard; her whole soul was in arms, and the blood fired her face. Until she had met Troy, Bathsheba had been proud of her position as a woman; it had been a glory to her to know that her lips had been touched by no man's on earth--that her waist had never been encircled by a lover's arm. She hated herself now. In those earlier days she had always nourished a secret contempt for girls who were the slaves of the first good-looking young fellow who should choose to salute them. She had never taken kindly to the idea of marriage in the abstract as did the majority of women she saw about her. In the turmoil of her anxiety for her lover she had agreed to marry him; but the perception that had accompanied her happiest hours on this account was rather that of self-sacrifice than of promotion and honour. Although she scarcely knew the divinity's name, Diana was the goddess whom Bathsheba instinctively adored. That she had never, by look, word, or sign, encouraged a man to approach her--that she had felt herself sufficient to herself, and had in the independence of her girlish heart fancied there was a certain degradation in renouncing the simplicity of a maiden existence to become the humbler half of an indifferent matrimonial whole--were facts now bitterly remembered. Oh, if she had never stooped to folly of this kind, respectable as it was, and could only stand again, as she had stood on the hill at Norcombe, and dare Troy or any other man to pollute a hair of her head by his interference! The next morning she rose earlier than usual, and had the horse saddled for her ride round the farm in the customary way. When she came in at half-past eight--their usual hour for breakfasting--she was informed that her husband had risen, taken his breakfast, and driven off to Casterbridge with the gig and Poppet. After breakfast she was cool and collected--quite herself in fact--and she rambled to the gate, intending to walk to another quarter of the farm, which she still personally superintended as well as her duties in the house would permit, continually, however, finding herself preceded in forethought by Gabriel Oak, for whom she began to entertain the genuine friendship of a sister. Of course, she sometimes thought of him in the light of an old lover, and had momentary imaginings of what life with him as a husband would have been like; also of life with Boldwood under the same conditions. But Bathsheba, though she could feel, was not much given to futile dreaming, and her musings under this head were short and entirely confined to the times when Troy's neglect was more than ordinarily evident. She saw coming up the road a man like Mr. Boldwood. It was Mr. Boldwood. Bathsheba blushed painfully, and watched. The farmer stopped when still a long way off, and held up his hand to Gabriel Oak, who was in a footpath across the field. The two men then approached each other and seemed to engage in earnest conversation. Thus they continued for a long time. Joseph Poorgrass now passed near them, wheeling a barrow of apples up the hill to Bathsheba's residence. Boldwood and Gabriel called to him, spoke to him for a few minutes, and then all three parted, Joseph immediately coming up the hill with his barrow. Bathsheba, who had seen this pantomime with some surprise, experienced great relief when Boldwood turned back again. "Well, what's the message, Joseph?" she said. He set down his barrow, and, putting upon himself the refined aspect that a conversation with a lady required, spoke to Bathsheba over the gate. "You'll never see Fanny Robin no more--use nor principal--ma'am." "Why?" "Because she's dead in the Union." "Fanny dead--never!" "Yes, ma'am." "What did she die from?" "I don't know for certain; but I should be inclined to think it was from general neshness of constitution. She was such a limber maid that 'a could stand no hardship, even when I knowed her, and 'a went like a candle-snoff, so 'tis said. She was took bad in the morning, and, being quite feeble and worn out, she died in the evening. She belongs by law to our parish; and Mr. Boldwood is going to send a waggon at three this afternoon to fetch her home here and bury her." "Indeed I shall not let Mr. Boldwood do any such thing--I shall do it! Fanny was my uncle's servant, and, although I only knew her for a couple of days, she belongs to me. How very, very sad this is!--the idea of Fanny being in a workhouse." Bathsheba had begun to know what suffering was, and she spoke with real feeling.... "Send across to Mr. Boldwood's, and say that Mrs. Troy will take upon herself the duty of fetching an old servant of the family.... We ought not to put her in a waggon; we'll get a hearse." "There will hardly be time, ma'am, will there?" "Perhaps not," she said, musingly. "When did you say we must be at the door--three o'clock?" "Three o'clock this afternoon, ma'am, so to speak it." "Very well--you go with it. A pretty waggon is better than an ugly hearse, after all. Joseph, have the new spring waggon with the blue body and red wheels, and wash it very clean. And, Joseph--" "Yes, ma'am." "Carry with you some evergreens and flowers to put upon her coffin--indeed, gather a great many, and completely bury her in them. Get some boughs of laurustinus, and variegated box, and yew, and boy's-love; ay, and some bunches of chrysanthemum. And let old Pleasant draw her, because she knew him so well." "I will, ma'am. I ought to have said that the Union, in the form of four labouring men, will meet me when I gets to our churchyard gate, and take her and bury her according to the rites of the Board of Guardians, as by law ordained." "Dear me--Casterbridge Union--and is Fanny come to this?" said Bathsheba, musing. "I wish I had known of it sooner. I thought she was far away. How long has she lived there?" "On'y been there a day or two." "Oh!--then she has not been staying there as a regular inmate?" "No. She first went to live in a garrison-town t'other side o' Wessex, and since then she's been picking up a living at seampstering in Melchester for several months, at the house of a very respectable widow-woman who takes in work of that sort. She only got handy the Union-house on Sunday morning 'a b'lieve, and 'tis supposed here and there that she had traipsed every step of the way from Melchester. Why she left her place, I can't say, for I don't know; and as to a lie, why, I wouldn't tell it. That's the short of the story, ma'am." "Ah-h!" No gem ever flashed from a rosy ray to a white one more rapidly than changed the young wife's countenance whilst this word came from her in a long-drawn breath. "Did she walk along our turnpike-road?" she said, in a suddenly restless and eager voice. "I believe she did.... Ma'am, shall I call Liddy? You bain't well, ma'am, surely? You look like a lily--so pale and fainty!" "No; don't call her; it is nothing. When did she pass Weatherbury?" "Last Saturday night." "That will do, Joseph; now you may go." "Certainly, ma'am." "Joseph, come hither a moment. What was the colour of Fanny Robin's hair?" "Really, mistress, now that 'tis put to me so judge-and-jury like, I can't call to mind, if ye'll believe me!" "Never mind; go on and do what I told you. Stop--well no, go on." She turned herself away from him, that he might no longer notice the mood which had set its sign so visibly upon her, and went indoors with a distressing sense of faintness and a beating brow. About an hour after, she heard the noise of the waggon and went out, still with a painful consciousness of her bewildered and troubled look. Joseph, dressed in his best suit of clothes, was putting in the horse to start. The shrubs and flowers were all piled in the waggon, as she had directed; Bathsheba hardly saw them now. "Died of what? did you say, Joseph?" "I don't know, ma'am." "Are you quite sure?" "Yes, ma'am, quite sure." "Sure of what?" "I'm sure that all I know is that she arrived in the morning and died in the evening without further parley. What Oak and Mr. Boldwood told me was only these few words. 'Little Fanny Robin is dead, Joseph,' Gabriel said, looking in my face in his steady old way. I was very sorry, and I said, 'Ah!--and how did she come to die?' 'Well, she's dead in Casterbridge Union,' he said, 'and perhaps 'tisn't much matter about how she came to die. She reached the Union early Sunday morning, and died in the afternoon--that's clear enough.' Then I asked what she'd been doing lately, and Mr. Boldwood turned round to me then, and left off spitting a thistle with the end of his stick. He told me about her having lived by seampstering in Melchester, as I mentioned to you, and that she walked therefrom at the end of last week, passing near here Saturday night in the dusk. They then said I had better just name a hint of her death to you, and away they went. Her death might have been brought on by biding in the night wind, you know, ma'am; for people used to say she'd go off in a decline: she used to cough a good deal in winter time. However, 'tisn't much odds to us about that now, for 'tis all over." "Have you heard a different story at all?" She looked at him so intently that Joseph's eyes quailed. "Not a word, mistress, I assure 'ee!" he said. "Hardly anybody in the parish knows the news yet." "I wonder why Gabriel didn't bring the message to me himself. He mostly makes a point of seeing me upon the most trifling errand." These words were merely murmured, and she was looking upon the ground. "Perhaps he was busy, ma'am," Joseph suggested. "And sometimes he seems to suffer from things upon his mind, connected with the time when he was better off than 'a is now. 'A's rather a curious item, but a very understanding shepherd, and learned in books." "Did anything seem upon his mind whilst he was speaking to you about this?" "I cannot but say that there did, ma'am. He was terrible down, and so was Farmer Boldwood." "Thank you, Joseph. That will do. Go on now, or you'll be late." Bathsheba, still unhappy, went indoors again. In the course of the afternoon she said to Liddy, who had been informed of the occurrence, "What was the colour of poor Fanny Robin's hair? Do you know? I cannot recollect--I only saw her for a day or two." "It was light, ma'am; but she wore it rather short, and packed away under her cap, so that you would hardly notice it. But I have seen her let it down when she was going to bed, and it looked beautiful then. Real golden hair." "Her young man was a soldier, was he not?" "Yes. In the same regiment as Mr. Troy. He says he knew him very well." "What, Mr. Troy says so? How came he to say that?" "One day I just named it to him, and asked him if he knew Fanny's young man. He said, 'Oh yes, he knew the young man as well as he knew himself, and that there wasn't a man in the regiment he liked better.'" "Ah! Said that, did he?" "Yes; and he said there was a strong likeness between himself and the other young man, so that sometimes people mistook them--" "Liddy, for Heaven's sake stop your talking!" said Bathsheba, with the nervous petulance that comes from worrying perceptions.

Chapter 41

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219162644/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary/chapter-41

Bathsheba gives Troy the silent treatment during the evening after they return from the market, and he doesn't seem to mind all that much. The next day, Troy asks her for twenty pounds, which is a hefty sum of money. She asks him if it's for gambling on the horse races, and after a pause, he says "Sure, why not?" We readers know, though, that he's probably getting the money for Fanny. Bathsheba begs him to stay home. Finally, Troy admits that the money isn't for gambling. When he won't tell her what it's for, though, the two get into a terrible argument. Each of them tells the other that they wish they'd never gotten married. Bathsheba eventually gives up and hands over the money. Troy also says he plans on leaving the next day to go to Bath. Again, he won't tell Bathsheba about why he's going. At this point, Troy opens his pocket watch and Bathsheba sees a lock of blond hair fall out of it. She knows instantly that the hair belongs to another woman, though Troy tries to say it's hers. He eventually admits that it's the hair of a young woman he was going to marry before he met Bathsheba. He refuses to say the woman's name, though. But it comes out that the girl they met on the road a few days earlier is someone that Troy used to be engaged to, and that the hair in his watch is hers. At this point, Troy doesn't want to hash out details any longer, so he gets up and leaves the house. Bathsheba dissolves into tears. She leaves the house to walk in the fields. While doing so, she sees Farmer Boldwood at a distance stopping for a chat with Gabriel Oak. Joseph Poorgrass also stops to talk to the men, and then comes up the road to Bathsheba to tell her that her former servant, Fanny Robin, has died in the shelter at Casterbridge. Mr. Boldwood plans on sending a wagon for her body, but Bathsheba says she'll hear nothing of it. Fanny was her servant, so she'll send the cart. During the conversation, Bathsheba learns that Fanny had travelled to Casterbridge along the main road a few days earlier. This, of course, gets her wondering about whether this was the woman she saw with Troy. Apparently, Sergeant Troy has also said in the past that a man from his regiment used to be sweethearts with Fanny Robin. Bathsheba is starting to put two and two together.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/17.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_3_part_4.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 3.chapter 4

book 3, chapter 4

{"name": "book 3, Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section4/", "summary": "The Confession of an Ardent Heart. In Anecdotes Dmitri relates his history with Katerina to Alyosha. Dmitri first met Katerina when she was the daughter of the commanding officer of a camp where Dmitri was stationed as a soldier. Katerina ignored Dmitri until he attempted to trick her into sleeping with him by offering 4,500 rubles to pay off an obligation of her father's. As he began to put his plan into motion, he was suddenly overcome with self--disgust, and, looking at the beautiful, innocent Katerina, decided to give her the money without even trying to seduce her. When she inherited a large amount of money from a relative, she offered to marry Dmitri. But when they returned to Fyodor Pavlovich's town, Dmitri fell swiftly for Grushenka. He even stole 3,000 rubles from Katerina in order to finance his debauchery with Grushenka", "analysis": ""}

Chapter IV. The Confession Of A Passionate Heart--In Anecdote "I was leading a wild life then. Father said just now that I spent several thousand roubles in seducing young girls. That's a swinish invention, and there was nothing of the sort. And if there was, I didn't need money simply for _that_. With me money is an accessory, the overflow of my heart, the framework. To-day she would be my lady, to-morrow a wench out of the streets in her place. I entertained them both. I threw away money by the handful on music, rioting, and gypsies. Sometimes I gave it to the ladies, too, for they'll take it greedily, that must be admitted, and be pleased and thankful for it. Ladies used to be fond of me: not all of them, but it happened, it happened. But I always liked side-paths, little dark back-alleys behind the main road--there one finds adventures and surprises, and precious metal in the dirt. I am speaking figuratively, brother. In the town I was in, there were no such back-alleys in the literal sense, but morally there were. If you were like me, you'd know what that means. I loved vice, I loved the ignominy of vice. I loved cruelty; am I not a bug, am I not a noxious insect? In fact a Karamazov! Once we went, a whole lot of us, for a picnic, in seven sledges. It was dark, it was winter, and I began squeezing a girl's hand, and forced her to kiss me. She was the daughter of an official, a sweet, gentle, submissive creature. She allowed me, she allowed me much in the dark. She thought, poor thing, that I should come next day to make her an offer (I was looked upon as a good match, too). But I didn't say a word to her for five months. I used to see her in a corner at dances (we were always having dances), her eyes watching me. I saw how they glowed with fire--a fire of gentle indignation. This game only tickled that insect lust I cherished in my soul. Five months later she married an official and left the town, still angry, and still, perhaps, in love with me. Now they live happily. Observe that I told no one. I didn't boast of it. Though I'm full of low desires, and love what's low, I'm not dishonorable. You're blushing; your eyes flashed. Enough of this filth with you. And all this was nothing much--wayside blossoms _a la_ Paul de Kock--though the cruel insect had already grown strong in my soul. I've a perfect album of reminiscences, brother. God bless them, the darlings. I tried to break it off without quarreling. And I never gave them away. I never bragged of one of them. But that's enough. You can't suppose I brought you here simply to talk of such nonsense. No, I'm going to tell you something more curious; and don't be surprised that I'm glad to tell you, instead of being ashamed." "You say that because I blushed," Alyosha said suddenly. "I wasn't blushing at what you were saying or at what you've done. I blushed because I am the same as you are." "You? Come, that's going a little too far!" "No, it's not too far," said Alyosha warmly (obviously the idea was not a new one). "The ladder's the same. I'm at the bottom step, and you're above, somewhere about the thirteenth. That's how I see it. But it's all the same. Absolutely the same in kind. Any one on the bottom step is bound to go up to the top one." "Then one ought not to step on at all." "Any one who can help it had better not." "But can you?" "I think not." "Hush, Alyosha, hush, darling! I could kiss your hand, you touch me so. That rogue Grushenka has an eye for men. She told me once that she'd devour you one day. There, there, I won't! From this field of corruption fouled by flies, let's pass to my tragedy, also befouled by flies, that is by every sort of vileness. Although the old man told lies about my seducing innocence, there really was something of the sort in my tragedy, though it was only once, and then it did not come off. The old man who has reproached me with what never happened does not even know of this fact; I never told any one about it. You're the first, except Ivan, of course--Ivan knows everything. He knew about it long before you. But Ivan's a tomb." "Ivan's a tomb?" "Yes." Alyosha listened with great attention. "I was lieutenant in a line regiment, but still I was under supervision, like a kind of convict. Yet I was awfully well received in the little town. I spent money right and left. I was thought to be rich; I thought so myself. But I must have pleased them in other ways as well. Although they shook their heads over me, they liked me. My colonel, who was an old man, took a sudden dislike to me. He was always down upon me, but I had powerful friends, and, moreover, all the town was on my side, so he couldn't do me much harm. I was in fault myself for refusing to treat him with proper respect. I was proud. This obstinate old fellow, who was really a very good sort, kind-hearted and hospitable, had had two wives, both dead. His first wife, who was of a humble family, left a daughter as unpretentious as herself. She was a young woman of four and twenty when I was there, and was living with her father and an aunt, her mother's sister. The aunt was simple and illiterate; the niece was simple but lively. I like to say nice things about people. I never knew a woman of more charming character than Agafya--fancy, her name was Agafya Ivanovna! And she wasn't bad-looking either, in the Russian style: tall, stout, with a full figure, and beautiful eyes, though a rather coarse face. She had not married, although she had had two suitors. She refused them, but was as cheerful as ever. I was intimate with her, not in 'that' way, it was pure friendship. I have often been friendly with women quite innocently. I used to talk to her with shocking frankness, and she only laughed. Many women like such freedom, and she was a girl too, which made it very amusing. Another thing, one could never think of her as a young lady. She and her aunt lived in her father's house with a sort of voluntary humility, not putting themselves on an equality with other people. She was a general favorite, and of use to every one, for she was a clever dressmaker. She had a talent for it. She gave her services freely without asking for payment, but if any one offered her payment, she didn't refuse. The colonel, of course, was a very different matter. He was one of the chief personages in the district. He kept open house, entertained the whole town, gave suppers and dances. At the time I arrived and joined the battalion, all the town was talking of the expected return of the colonel's second daughter, a great beauty, who had just left a fashionable school in the capital. This second daughter is Katerina Ivanovna, and she was the child of the second wife, who belonged to a distinguished general's family; although, as I learnt on good authority, she too brought the colonel no money. She had connections, and that was all. There may have been expectations, but they had come to nothing. "Yet, when the young lady came from boarding-school on a visit, the whole town revived. Our most distinguished ladies--two 'Excellencies' and a colonel's wife--and all the rest following their lead, at once took her up and gave entertainments in her honor. She was the belle of the balls and picnics, and they got up _tableaux vivants_ in aid of distressed governesses. I took no notice, I went on as wildly as before, and one of my exploits at the time set all the town talking. I saw her eyes taking my measure one evening at the battery commander's, but I didn't go up to her, as though I disdained her acquaintance. I did go up and speak to her at an evening party not long after. She scarcely looked at me, and compressed her lips scornfully. 'Wait a bit. I'll have my revenge,' thought I. I behaved like an awful fool on many occasions at that time, and I was conscious of it myself. What made it worse was that I felt that 'Katenka' was not an innocent boarding-school miss, but a person of character, proud and really high-principled; above all, she had education and intellect, and I had neither. You think I meant to make her an offer? No, I simply wanted to revenge myself, because I was such a hero and she didn't seem to feel it. "Meanwhile, I spent my time in drink and riot, till the lieutenant-colonel put me under arrest for three days. Just at that time father sent me six thousand roubles in return for my sending him a deed giving up all claims upon him--settling our accounts, so to speak, and saying that I wouldn't expect anything more. I didn't understand a word of it at the time. Until I came here, Alyosha, till the last few days, indeed, perhaps even now, I haven't been able to make head or tail of my money affairs with father. But never mind that, we'll talk of it later. "Just as I received the money, I got a letter from a friend telling me something that interested me immensely. The authorities, I learnt, were dissatisfied with our lieutenant-colonel. He was suspected of irregularities; in fact, his enemies were preparing a surprise for him. And then the commander of the division arrived, and kicked up the devil of a shindy. Shortly afterwards he was ordered to retire. I won't tell you how it all happened. He had enemies certainly. Suddenly there was a marked coolness in the town towards him and all his family. His friends all turned their backs on him. Then I took my first step. I met Agafya Ivanovna, with whom I'd always kept up a friendship, and said, 'Do you know there's a deficit of 4,500 roubles of government money in your father's accounts?' " 'What do you mean? What makes you say so? The general was here not long ago, and everything was all right.' " 'Then it was, but now it isn't.' "She was terribly scared. " 'Don't frighten me!' she said. 'Who told you so?' " 'Don't be uneasy,' I said, 'I won't tell any one. You know I'm as silent as the tomb. I only wanted, in view of "possibilities," to add, that when they demand that 4,500 roubles from your father, and he can't produce it, he'll be tried, and made to serve as a common soldier in his old age, unless you like to send me your young lady secretly. I've just had money paid me. I'll give her four thousand, if you like, and keep the secret religiously.' " 'Ah, you scoundrel!'--that's what she said. 'You wicked scoundrel! How dare you!' "She went away furiously indignant, while I shouted after her once more that the secret should be kept sacred. Those two simple creatures, Agafya and her aunt, I may as well say at once, behaved like perfect angels all through this business. They genuinely adored their 'Katya,' thought her far above them, and waited on her, hand and foot. But Agafya told her of our conversation. I found that out afterwards. She didn't keep it back, and of course that was all I wanted. "Suddenly the new major arrived to take command of the battalion. The old lieutenant-colonel was taken ill at once, couldn't leave his room for two days, and didn't hand over the government money. Dr. Kravchenko declared that he really was ill. But I knew for a fact, and had known for a long time, that for the last four years the money had never been in his hands except when the Commander made his visits of inspection. He used to lend it to a trustworthy person, a merchant of our town called Trifonov, an old widower, with a big beard and gold-rimmed spectacles. He used to go to the fair, do a profitable business with the money, and return the whole sum to the colonel, bringing with it a present from the fair, as well as interest on the loan. But this time (I heard all about it quite by chance from Trifonov's son and heir, a driveling youth and one of the most vicious in the world)--this time, I say, Trifonov brought nothing back from the fair. The lieutenant-colonel flew to him. 'I've never received any money from you, and couldn't possibly have received any.' That was all the answer he got. So now our lieutenant-colonel is confined to the house, with a towel round his head, while they're all three busy putting ice on it. All at once an orderly arrives on the scene with the book and the order to 'hand over the battalion money immediately, within two hours.' He signed the book (I saw the signature in the book afterwards), stood up, saying he would put on his uniform, ran to his bedroom, loaded his double-barreled gun with a service bullet, took the boot off his right foot, fixed the gun against his chest, and began feeling for the trigger with his foot. But Agafya, remembering what I had told her, had her suspicions. She stole up and peeped into the room just in time. She rushed in, flung herself upon him from behind, threw her arms round him, and the gun went off, hit the ceiling, but hurt no one. The others ran in, took away the gun, and held him by the arms. I heard all about this afterwards. I was at home, it was getting dusk, and I was just preparing to go out. I had dressed, brushed my hair, scented my handkerchief, and taken up my cap, when suddenly the door opened, and facing me in the room stood Katerina Ivanovna. "It's strange how things happen sometimes. No one had seen her in the street, so that no one knew of it in the town. I lodged with two decrepit old ladies, who looked after me. They were most obliging old things, ready to do anything for me, and at my request were as silent afterwards as two cast-iron posts. Of course I grasped the position at once. She walked in and looked straight at me, her dark eyes determined, even defiant, but on her lips and round her mouth I saw uncertainty. " 'My sister told me,' she began, 'that you would give me 4,500 roubles if I came to you for it--myself. I have come ... give me the money!' "She couldn't keep it up. She was breathless, frightened, her voice failed her, and the corners of her mouth and the lines round it quivered. Alyosha, are you listening, or are you asleep?" "Mitya, I know you will tell the whole truth," said Alyosha in agitation. "I am telling it. If I tell the whole truth just as it happened I shan't spare myself. My first idea was a--Karamazov one. Once I was bitten by a centipede, brother, and laid up a fortnight with fever from it. Well, I felt a centipede biting at my heart then--a noxious insect, you understand? I looked her up and down. You've seen her? She's a beauty. But she was beautiful in another way then. At that moment she was beautiful because she was noble, and I was a scoundrel; she in all the grandeur of her generosity and sacrifice for her father, and I--a bug! And, scoundrel as I was, she was altogether at my mercy, body and soul. She was hemmed in. I tell you frankly, that thought, that venomous thought, so possessed my heart that it almost swooned with suspense. It seemed as if there could be no resisting it; as though I should act like a bug, like a venomous spider, without a spark of pity. I could scarcely breathe. Understand, I should have gone next day to ask for her hand, so that it might end honorably, so to speak, and that nobody would or could know. For though I'm a man of base desires, I'm honest. And at that very second some voice seemed to whisper in my ear, 'But when you come to-morrow to make your proposal, that girl won't even see you; she'll order her coachman to kick you out of the yard. "Publish it through all the town," she would say, "I'm not afraid of you." ' I looked at the young lady, my voice had not deceived me. That is how it would be, not a doubt of it. I could see from her face now that I should be turned out of the house. My spite was roused. I longed to play her the nastiest swinish cad's trick: to look at her with a sneer, and on the spot where she stood before me to stun her with a tone of voice that only a shopman could use. " 'Four thousand! What do you mean? I was joking. You've been counting your chickens too easily, madam. Two hundred, if you like, with all my heart. But four thousand is not a sum to throw away on such frivolity. You've put yourself out to no purpose.' "I should have lost the game, of course. She'd have run away. But it would have been an infernal revenge. It would have been worth it all. I'd have howled with regret all the rest of my life, only to have played that trick. Would you believe it, it has never happened to me with any other woman, not one, to look at her at such a moment with hatred. But, on my oath, I looked at her for three seconds, or five perhaps, with fearful hatred--that hate which is only a hair's-breadth from love, from the maddest love! "I went to the window, put my forehead against the frozen pane, and I remember the ice burnt my forehead like fire. I did not keep her long, don't be afraid. I turned round, went up to the table, opened the drawer and took out a banknote for five thousand roubles (it was lying in a French dictionary). Then I showed it her in silence, folded it, handed it to her, opened the door into the passage, and, stepping back, made her a deep bow, a most respectful, a most impressive bow, believe me! She shuddered all over, gazed at me for a second, turned horribly pale--white as a sheet, in fact--and all at once, not impetuously but softly, gently, bowed down to my feet--not a boarding-school curtsey, but a Russian bow, with her forehead to the floor. She jumped up and ran away. I was wearing my sword. I drew it and nearly stabbed myself with it on the spot; why, I don't know. It would have been frightfully stupid, of course. I suppose it was from delight. Can you understand that one might kill oneself from delight? But I didn't stab myself. I only kissed my sword and put it back in the scabbard--which there was no need to have told you, by the way. And I fancy that in telling you about my inner conflict I have laid it on rather thick to glorify myself. But let it pass, and to hell with all who pry into the human heart! Well, so much for that 'adventure' with Katerina Ivanovna. So now Ivan knows of it, and you--no one else." Dmitri got up, took a step or two in his excitement, pulled out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead, then sat down again, not in the same place as before, but on the opposite side, so that Alyosha had to turn quite round to face him.

book 3, Chapter 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section4/

The Confession of an Ardent Heart. In Anecdotes Dmitri relates his history with Katerina to Alyosha. Dmitri first met Katerina when she was the daughter of the commanding officer of a camp where Dmitri was stationed as a soldier. Katerina ignored Dmitri until he attempted to trick her into sleeping with him by offering 4,500 rubles to pay off an obligation of her father's. As he began to put his plan into motion, he was suddenly overcome with self--disgust, and, looking at the beautiful, innocent Katerina, decided to give her the money without even trying to seduce her. When she inherited a large amount of money from a relative, she offered to marry Dmitri. But when they returned to Fyodor Pavlovich's town, Dmitri fell swiftly for Grushenka. He even stole 3,000 rubles from Katerina in order to finance his debauchery with Grushenka

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/44747-chapters/20.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_19_part_0.txt

The Red and the Black.part 1.chapter 20

part 1, chapter 20

{"name": "Part 1, Chapter 20", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-20", "summary": "To be safe, Julien tells Madame de Renal that he won't be able to visit her at night. If the anonymous letter written to Monsieur de Renal says what Julien thinks it does, it would be crazy to try and sleep with Madame. The next day, Madame sends him a secret note asking whether he loves her anymore. She can't believe that he has stood her up. She also says that it doesn't matter if her husband has received a letter about her. It's not the first attempt to question her honor. Madame claims that she's going to convince her husband that the anonymous letter came from Monsieur Valenod and that Monsieur is just jealous that Madame has never given in to his sexual advances. Madame writes out a letter to her husband that she wants Julien to create by cutting words out of papers and magazines. The letter basically makes it obvious that Mr. Valenod is trying to steal Madame away from her husband.", "analysis": ""}

CHAPTER XX ANONYMOUS LETTERS Do not give dalliance Too much the rein; the strongest oaths are straw To the fire i' the blood.--_Tempest_. As they left the drawing-room about midnight, Julien had time to say to his love, "Don't let us see each other to-night. Your husband has suspicions. I would swear that that big letter he read with a sigh was an anonymous letter." Fortunately, Julien locked himself into his room. Madame de Renal had the mad idea that this warning was only a pretext for not seeing her. She absolutely lost her head, and came to his door at the accustomed hour. Julien, who had heard the noise in the corridor, immediately blew out his lamp. Someone was trying to open the door. Was it Madame de Renal? Was it a jealous husband? Very early next morning the cook, who liked Julien, brought him a book, on the cover of which he read these words written in Italian: _Guardate alla pagina_ 130. Julien shuddered at the imprudence, looked for page 130, and found pinned to it the following letter hastily written, bathed with tears, and full of spelling mistakes. Madame de Renal was usually very correct. He was touched by this circumstance, and somewhat forgot the awfulness of the indiscretion. "So you did not want to receive me to-night? There are moments when I think that I have never read down to the depths of your soul. Your looks frighten me. I am afraid of you. Great God! perhaps you have never loved me? In that case let my husband discover my love, and shut me up in a prison in the country far away from my children. Perhaps God wills it so. I shall die soon, but you will have proved yourself a monster. "Do you not love me? Are you tired of my fits of folly and of remorse, you wicked man? Do you wish to ruin me? I will show you an easy way. Go and show this letter to all Verrieres, or rather show it to M. Valenod. Tell him that I love you, nay, do not utter such a blasphemy, tell him I adore you, that it was only on the day I saw you that my life commenced; that even in the maddest moments of my youth I never even dreamt of the happiness that I owe to you, that I have sacrificed my life to you and that I am sacrificing my soul. You know that I am sacrificing much more. But does that man know the meaning of sacrifice? Tell him, I say, simply to irritate him, that I will defy all evil tongues, that the only misfortune for me in the whole world would be to witness any change in the only man who holds me to life. What a happiness it would be to me to lose my life, to offer it up as a sacrifice and to have no longer any fear for my children. "Have no doubt about it, dear one, if it is an anonymous letter, it comes from that odious being who has persecuted me for the last six years with his loud voice, his stories about his jumps on horseback, his fatuity, and the never ending catalogue of all his advantages. "Is there an anonymous letter? I should like to discuss that question with you, you wicked man; but no, you acted rightly. Clasping you in my arms perhaps for the last time, I should never have been able to argue as coldly as I do, now that I am alone. From this moment our happiness will no longer be so easy. Will that be a vexation for you? Yes, on those days when you haven't received some amusing book from M. Fouque. The sacrifice is made; to-morrow, whether there is or whether there is not any anonymous letter, I myself will tell my husband I have received an anonymous letter and that it is necessary to give you a golden bridge at once, find some honourable excuse, and send you back to your parents without delay. "Alas, dear one, we are going to be separated for a fortnight, perhaps a month! Go, I will do you justice, you will suffer as much as I, but anyway, this is the only means of disposing of this anonymous letter. It is not the first that my husband has received, and on my score too. Alas! how I used to laugh over them! "My one aim is to make my husband think that the letter comes from M. Valenod; I have no doubt that he is its author. If you leave the house, make a point of establishing yourself at Verrieres; I will manage that my husband should think of passing a fortnight there in order to prove to the fools there was no coldness between him and me. Once at Verrieres, establish ties of friendship with everyone, even with the Liberals. I am sure that all their ladies will seek you out. "Do not quarrel with M. Valenod, or cut off his ears, as you said you would one day. Try, on the contrary, to ingratiate yourself with him. The essential point is that it should be notorious in Verrieres that you are going to enter the household either of Valenod or of someone else to take charge of the children's education. "That is what my husband will never put up with. If he does feel bound to resign himself to it, well, at any rate, you will be living in Verrieres and I shall be seeing you sometimes. My children, who love you so much, will go and see you. Great God! I feel that I love my children all the more because they love you. How is all this going to end? I am wandering.... Anyway you understand your line of conduct. Be nice, polite, but not in any way disdainful to those coarse persons. I ask you on my knees; they will be the arbiters of our fate. Do not fear for a moment but that, so far as you are concerned, my husband will conform to what public opinion lays down for him. "It is you who will supply me with the anonymous letter. Equip yourself with patience and a pair of scissors, cut out from a book the words which you will see, then stick them with the mouth-glue on to the leaf of loose paper which I am sending you. It comes to me from M. Valenod. Be on your guard against a search in your room; burn the pages of the book which you are going to mutilate. If you do not find the words ready-made, have the patience to form them letter by letter. I have made the anonymous letter too short. ANONYMOUS LETTER. 'MADAME, All your little goings-on are known, but the persons interested in stopping have been warned. I have still sufficient friendship left for you to urge you to cease all relations with the little peasant. If you are sensible enough to do this, your husband will believe that the notification he has received is misleading, and he will be left in his illusion. Remember that I have your secret; tremble, unhappy woman, you must now _walk straight_ before me.' "As soon as you have finished glueing together the words that make up this letter (have you recognised the director's special style of speech) leave the house, I will meet you. "I will go into the village and come back with a troubled face. As a matter of fact I shall be very much troubled. Great God! What a risk I run, and all because you thought you guessed an anonymous letter. Finally, looking very much upset, I shall give this letter to my husband and say that an unknown man handed it to me. As for you, go for a walk with the children, on the road to the great woods, and do not come back before dinner-time. "You will be able to see the tower of the dovecot from the top of the rocks. If things go well for us, I will place a white handkerchief there, in case of the contrary, there will be nothing at all. "Ungrateful man, will not your heart find out some means of telling me that you love me before you leave for that walk. Whatever happens, be certain of one thing: I shall never survive our final separation by a single day. Oh, you bad mother! but what is the use of my writing those two words, dear Julien? I do not feel them, at this moment I can only think of you. I have only written them so as not to be blamed by you, but what is the good of deception now that I find myself face to face with losing you? Yes, let my soul seem monstrous to you, but do not let me lie to the man whom I adore. I have already deceived only too much in this life of mine. Go! I forgive you if you love me no more. I have not the time to read over my letter. It is a small thing in my eyes to pay for the happy days that I have just passed in your arms with the price of my life. You know that they will cost me more."

Part 1, Chapter 20

https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-20

To be safe, Julien tells Madame de Renal that he won't be able to visit her at night. If the anonymous letter written to Monsieur de Renal says what Julien thinks it does, it would be crazy to try and sleep with Madame. The next day, Madame sends him a secret note asking whether he loves her anymore. She can't believe that he has stood her up. She also says that it doesn't matter if her husband has received a letter about her. It's not the first attempt to question her honor. Madame claims that she's going to convince her husband that the anonymous letter came from Monsieur Valenod and that Monsieur is just jealous that Madame has never given in to his sexual advances. Madame writes out a letter to her husband that she wants Julien to create by cutting words out of papers and magazines. The letter basically makes it obvious that Mr. Valenod is trying to steal Madame away from her husband.

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/19.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Sense and Sensibility/section_18_part_0.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 19

chapter 19

{"name": "Chapter 19", "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."}

Edward remained a week at the cottage; he was earnestly pressed by Mrs. Dashwood to stay longer; but, as if he were bent only on self-mortification, he seemed resolved to be gone when his enjoyment among his friends was at the height. His spirits, during the last two or three days, though still very unequal, were greatly improved--he grew more and more partial to the house and environs--never spoke of going away without a sigh--declared his time to be wholly disengaged--even doubted to what place he should go when he left them--but still, go he must. Never had any week passed so quickly--he could hardly believe it to be gone. He said so repeatedly; other things he said too, which marked the turn of his feelings and gave the lie to his actions. He had no pleasure at Norland; he detested being in town; but either to Norland or London, he must go. He valued their kindness beyond any thing, and his greatest happiness was in being with them. Yet, he must leave them at the end of a week, in spite of their wishes and his own, and without any restraint on his time. Elinor placed all that was astonishing in this way of acting to his mother's account; and it was happy for her that he had a mother whose character was so imperfectly known to her, as to be the general excuse for every thing strange on the part of her son. Disappointed, however, and vexed as she was, and sometimes displeased with his uncertain behaviour to herself, she was very well disposed on the whole to regard his actions with all the candid allowances and generous qualifications, which had been rather more painfully extorted from her, for Willoughby's service, by her mother. His want of spirits, of openness, and of consistency, were most usually attributed to his want of independence, and his better knowledge of Mrs. Ferrars's disposition and designs. The shortness of his visit, the steadiness of his purpose in leaving them, originated in the same fettered inclination, the same inevitable necessity of temporizing with his mother. The old well-established grievance of duty against will, parent against child, was the cause of all. She would have been glad to know when these difficulties were to cease, this opposition was to yield,--when Mrs. Ferrars would be reformed, and her son be at liberty to be happy. But from such vain wishes she was forced to turn for comfort to the renewal of her confidence in Edward's affection, to the remembrance of every mark of regard in look or word which fell from him while at Barton, and above all to that flattering proof of it which he constantly wore round his finger. "I think, Edward," said Mrs. Dashwood, as they were at breakfast the last morning, "you would be a happier man if you had any profession to engage your time and give an interest to your plans and actions. Some inconvenience to your friends, indeed, might result from it--you would not be able to give them so much of your time. But (with a smile) you would be materially benefited in one particular at least--you would know where to go when you left them." "I do assure you," he replied, "that I have long thought on this point, as you think now. It has been, and is, and probably will always be a heavy misfortune to me, that I have had no necessary business to engage me, no profession to give me employment, or afford me any thing like independence. But unfortunately my own nicety, and the nicety of my friends, have made me what I am, an idle, helpless being. We never could agree in our choice of a profession. I always preferred the church, as I still do. But that was not smart enough for my family. They recommended the army. That was a great deal too smart for me. The law was allowed to be genteel enough; many young men, who had chambers in the Temple, made a very good appearance in the first circles, and drove about town in very knowing gigs. But I had no inclination for the law, even in this less abstruse study of it, which my family approved. As for the navy, it had fashion on its side, but I was too old when the subject was first started to enter it--and, at length, as there was no necessity for my having any profession at all, as I might be as dashing and expensive without a red coat on my back as with one, idleness was pronounced on the whole to be most advantageous and honourable, and a young man of eighteen is not in general so earnestly bent on being busy as to resist the solicitations of his friends to do nothing. I was therefore entered at Oxford and have been properly idle ever since." "The consequence of which, I suppose, will be," said Mrs. Dashwood, "since leisure has not promoted your own happiness, that your sons will be brought up to as many pursuits, employments, professions, and trades as Columella's." "They will be brought up," said he, in a serious accent, "to be as unlike myself as is possible. In feeling, in action, in condition, in every thing." "Come, come; this is all an effusion of immediate want of spirits, Edward. You are in a melancholy humour, and fancy that any one unlike yourself must be happy. But remember that the pain of parting from friends will be felt by every body at times, whatever be their education or state. Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience--or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope. Your mother will secure to you, in time, that independence you are so anxious for; it is her duty, and it will, it must ere long become her happiness to prevent your whole youth from being wasted in discontent. How much may not a few months do?" "I think," replied Edward, "that I may defy many months to produce any good to me." This desponding turn of mind, though it could not be communicated to Mrs. Dashwood, gave additional pain to them all in the parting, which shortly took place, and left an uncomfortable impression on Elinor's feelings especially, which required some trouble and time to subdue. But as it was her determination to subdue it, and to prevent herself from appearing to suffer more than what all her family suffered on his going away, she did not adopt the method so judiciously employed by Marianne, on a similar occasion, to augment and fix her sorrow, by seeking silence, solitude and idleness. Their means were as different as their objects, and equally suited to the advancement of each. Elinor sat down to her drawing-table as soon as he was out of the house, busily employed herself the whole day, neither sought nor avoided the mention of his name, appeared to interest herself almost as much as ever in the general concerns of the family, and if, by this conduct, she did not lessen her own grief, it was at least prevented from unnecessary increase, and her mother and sisters were spared much solicitude on her account. Such behaviour as this, so exactly the reverse of her own, appeared no more meritorious to Marianne, than her own had seemed faulty to her. The business of self-command she settled very easily;--with strong affections it was impossible, with calm ones it could have no merit. That her sister's affections WERE calm, she dared not deny, though she blushed to acknowledge it; and of the strength of her own, she gave a very striking proof, by still loving and respecting that sister, in spite of this mortifying conviction. Without shutting herself up from her family, or leaving the house in determined solitude to avoid them, or lying awake the whole night to indulge meditation, Elinor found every day afforded her leisure enough to think of Edward, and of Edward's behaviour, in every possible variety which the different state of her spirits at different times could produce,--with tenderness, pity, approbation, censure, and doubt. There were moments in abundance, when, if not by the absence of her mother and sisters, at least by the nature of their employments, conversation was forbidden among them, and every effect of solitude was produced. Her mind was inevitably at liberty; her thoughts could not be chained elsewhere; and the past and the future, on a subject so interesting, must be before her, must force her attention, and engross her memory, her reflection, and her fancy. From a reverie of this kind, as she sat at her drawing-table, she was roused one morning, soon after Edward's leaving them, by the arrival of company. She happened to be quite alone. The closing of the little gate, at the entrance of the green court in front of the house, drew her eyes to the window, and she saw a large party walking up to the door. Amongst them were Sir John and Lady Middleton and Mrs. Jennings, but there were two others, a gentleman and lady, who were quite unknown to her. She was sitting near the window, and as soon as Sir John perceived her, he left the rest of the party to the ceremony of knocking at the door, and stepping across the turf, obliged her to open the casement to speak to him, though the space was so short between the door and the window, as to make it hardly possible to speak at one without being heard at the other. "Well," said he, "we have brought you some strangers. How do you like them?" "Hush! they will hear you." "Never mind if they do. It is only the Palmers. Charlotte is very pretty, I can tell you. You may see her if you look this way." As Elinor was certain of seeing her in a couple of minutes, without taking that liberty, she begged to be excused. "Where is Marianne? Has she run away because we are come? I see her instrument is open." "She is walking, I believe." They were now joined by Mrs. Jennings, who had not patience enough to wait till the door was opened before she told HER story. She came hallooing to the window, "How do you do, my dear? How does Mrs. Dashwood do? And where are your sisters? What! all alone! you will be glad of a little company to sit with you. I have brought my other son and daughter to see you. Only think of their coming so suddenly! I thought I heard a carriage last night, while we were drinking our tea, but it never entered my head that it could be them. I thought of nothing but whether it might not be Colonel Brandon come back again; so I said to Sir John, I do think I hear a carriage; perhaps it is Colonel Brandon come back again"-- Elinor was obliged to turn from her, in the middle of her story, to receive the rest of the party; Lady Middleton introduced the two strangers; Mrs. Dashwood and Margaret came down stairs at the same time, and they all sat down to look at one another, while Mrs. Jennings continued her story as she walked through the passage into the parlour, attended by Sir John. Mrs. Palmer was several years younger than Lady Middleton, and totally unlike her in every respect. She was short and plump, had a very pretty face, and the finest expression of good humour in it that could possibly be. Her manners were by no means so elegant as her sister's, but they were much more prepossessing. She came in with a smile, smiled all the time of her visit, except when she laughed, and smiled when she went away. Her husband was a grave looking young man of five or six and twenty, with an air of more fashion and sense than his wife, but of less willingness to please or be pleased. He entered the room with a look of self-consequence, slightly bowed to the ladies, without speaking a word, and, after briefly surveying them and their apartments, took up a newspaper from the table, and continued to read it as long as he staid. Mrs. Palmer, on the contrary, who was strongly endowed by nature with a turn for being uniformly civil and happy, was hardly seated before her admiration of the parlour and every thing in it burst forth. "Well! what a delightful room this is! I never saw anything so charming! Only think, Mama, how it is improved since I was here last! I always thought it such a sweet place, ma'am! (turning to Mrs. Dashwood) but you have made it so charming! Only look, sister, how delightful every thing is! How I should like such a house for myself! Should not you, Mr. Palmer?" Mr. Palmer made her no answer, and did not even raise his eyes from the newspaper. "Mr. Palmer does not hear me," said she, laughing; "he never does sometimes. It is so ridiculous!" This was quite a new idea to Mrs. Dashwood; she had never been used to find wit in the inattention of any one, and could not help looking with surprise at them both. Mrs. Jennings, in the meantime, talked on as loud as she could, and continued her account of their surprise, the evening before, on seeing their friends, without ceasing till every thing was told. Mrs. Palmer laughed heartily at the recollection of their astonishment, and every body agreed, two or three times over, that it had been quite an agreeable surprise. "You may believe how glad we all were to see them," added Mrs. Jennings, leaning forward towards Elinor, and speaking in a low voice as if she meant to be heard by no one else, though they were seated on different sides of the room; "but, however, I can't help wishing they had not travelled quite so fast, nor made such a long journey of it, for they came all round by London upon account of some business, for you know (nodding significantly and pointing to her daughter) it was wrong in her situation. I wanted her to stay at home and rest this morning, but she would come with us; she longed so much to see you all!" Mrs. Palmer laughed, and said it would not do her any harm. "She expects to be confined in February," continued Mrs. Jennings. Lady Middleton could no longer endure such a conversation, and therefore exerted herself to ask Mr. Palmer if there was any news in the paper. "No, none at all," he replied, and read on. "Here comes Marianne," cried Sir John. "Now, Palmer, you shall see a monstrous pretty girl." He immediately went into the passage, opened the front door, and ushered her in himself. Mrs. Jennings asked her, as soon as she appeared, if she had not been to Allenham; and Mrs. Palmer laughed so heartily at the question, as to show she understood it. Mr. Palmer looked up on her entering the room, stared at her some minutes, and then returned to his newspaper. Mrs. Palmer's eye was now caught by the drawings which hung round the room. She got up to examine them. "Oh! dear, how beautiful these are! Well! how delightful! Do but look, mama, how sweet! I declare they are quite charming; I could look at them for ever." And then sitting down again, she very soon forgot that there were any such things in the room. When Lady Middleton rose to go away, Mr. Palmer rose also, laid down the newspaper, stretched himself and looked at them all around. "My love, have you been asleep?" said his wife, laughing. He made her no answer; and only observed, after again examining the room, that it was very low pitched, and that the ceiling was crooked. He then made his bow, and departed with the rest. Sir John had been very urgent with them all to spend the next day at the park. Mrs. Dashwood, who did not chuse to dine with them oftener than they dined at the cottage, absolutely refused on her own account; her daughters might do as they pleased. But they had no curiosity to see how Mr. and Mrs. Palmer ate their dinner, and no expectation of pleasure from them in any other way. They attempted, therefore, likewise, to excuse themselves; the weather was uncertain, and not likely to be good. But Sir John would not be satisfied--the carriage should be sent for them and they must come. Lady Middleton too, though she did not press their mother, pressed them. Mrs. Jennings and Mrs. Palmer joined their entreaties, all seemed equally anxious to avoid a family party; and the young ladies were obliged to yield. "Why should they ask us?" said Marianne, as soon as they were gone. "The rent of this cottage is said to be low; but we have it on very hard terms, if we are to dine at the park whenever any one is staying either with them, or with us." "They mean no less to be civil and kind to us now," said Elinor, "by these frequent invitations, than by those which we received from them a few weeks ago. The alteration is not in them, if their parties are grown tedious and dull. We must look for the change elsewhere."

Chapter 19

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.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/110-chapters/54.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_6_part_1.txt

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 53

chapter 53

{"name": "Chapter 53", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-7-chapters-53-59", "summary": "Reverend and Mrs. Clare await the return of their son, and when they see him Mrs. Clare is shocked to see him sickly and angular. He asserts that he is fine now, but then nearly faints. The Clares give Angel the latest letter they received from Tess, which asserts that Tess will try to forget him. Mrs. Clare tells him not to worry about such a mere child of the soil, but Angel retorts that they are all children of the soil. Angel sends a line to Marlott announcing his return and his hope that Tess is still living there, but in several days receives a letter from Joan Durbeyfield telling him that they are no longer at Marlott and Tess is not with them and she does not know when Tess will return. Angel decides to wait for another letter, but then rereads an earlier letter by Tess in which she claims that she would die for him. He determines that her more recent note does not show her true feelings, and decides to find Tess. Angel realizes that Tess has not asked for money from the Clares because of their special charity toward sinners. As Angel packs, he finds the note from Marian and Izz.", "analysis": "The several letters sent to Angel Clare during his separation from Tess play a critical role in determining Angel's course of action once he returns from Brazil. Since these letters give contradictory information concerning whether or not Tess will accept Angel once more, Angel must decide which of the two letters written by Tess reveals her true feelings for him. Even the letter written by Marian and Izz bolsters Angel's decision to seek Tess. Angel displays a resolve toward Tess that recalls his insistence when he wished to marry her, showing that he has accepted Tess as his wife despite her past. Hardy indicates that Angel's suffering in Brazil has influenced this development. Angel returns to England aged and sickly, having suffered greatly and matured from the obstinate idealism he once displayed. However, despite Angel's resolve that he shall be reunited with his wife, Hardy implies that Tess may no longer desire a reconciliation. Her final letter to Angel certainly indicates as such, while Joan Durbeyfield's claim that she does not know where Tess is implies that either Tess does not want Angel to find her or Tess is in a dire situation in which she is unable to be located"}

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."

Chapter 53

https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-7-chapters-53-59

Reverend and Mrs. Clare await the return of their son, and when they see him Mrs. Clare is shocked to see him sickly and angular. He asserts that he is fine now, but then nearly faints. The Clares give Angel the latest letter they received from Tess, which asserts that Tess will try to forget him. Mrs. Clare tells him not to worry about such a mere child of the soil, but Angel retorts that they are all children of the soil. Angel sends a line to Marlott announcing his return and his hope that Tess is still living there, but in several days receives a letter from Joan Durbeyfield telling him that they are no longer at Marlott and Tess is not with them and she does not know when Tess will return. Angel decides to wait for another letter, but then rereads an earlier letter by Tess in which she claims that she would die for him. He determines that her more recent note does not show her true feelings, and decides to find Tess. Angel realizes that Tess has not asked for money from the Clares because of their special charity toward sinners. As Angel packs, he finds the note from Marian and Izz.

The several letters sent to Angel Clare during his separation from Tess play a critical role in determining Angel's course of action once he returns from Brazil. Since these letters give contradictory information concerning whether or not Tess will accept Angel once more, Angel must decide which of the two letters written by Tess reveals her true feelings for him. Even the letter written by Marian and Izz bolsters Angel's decision to seek Tess. Angel displays a resolve toward Tess that recalls his insistence when he wished to marry her, showing that he has accepted Tess as his wife despite her past. Hardy indicates that Angel's suffering in Brazil has influenced this development. Angel returns to England aged and sickly, having suffered greatly and matured from the obstinate idealism he once displayed. However, despite Angel's resolve that he shall be reunited with his wife, Hardy implies that Tess may no longer desire a reconciliation. Her final letter to Angel certainly indicates as such, while Joan Durbeyfield's claim that she does not know where Tess is implies that either Tess does not want Angel to find her or Tess is in a dire situation in which she is unable to be located

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/28054-chapters/71.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_13_part_3.txt

The Brothers Karamazov.book 11.chapter 2

book 11, chapter 2

{"name": "book 11, Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section14/", "summary": "An Ailing Little Foot Before Alyosha speaks to Dmitri, he must pay a visit to Madame Khokhlakov and Lise. Madame Khokhlakov speaks to him before he sees Lise, and tells him something very curious: Ivan has recently paid a visit to Lise, after which Lise's already erratic moods have become even more unbalanced. Madame Khokhlakov asks Alyosha to find out what is troubling Lise and to tell her after he has found out", "analysis": ""}

Chapter II. The Injured Foot The first of these things was at the house of Madame Hohlakov, and he hurried there to get it over as quickly as possible and not be too late for Mitya. Madame Hohlakov had been slightly ailing for the last three weeks: her foot had for some reason swollen up, and though she was not in bed, she lay all day half-reclining on the couch in her boudoir, in a fascinating but decorous _deshabille_. Alyosha had once noted with innocent amusement that, in spite of her illness, Madame Hohlakov had begun to be rather dressy--top-knots, ribbons, loose wrappers, had made their appearance, and he had an inkling of the reason, though he dismissed such ideas from his mind as frivolous. During the last two months the young official, Perhotin, had become a regular visitor at the house. Alyosha had not called for four days and he was in haste to go straight to Lise, as it was with her he had to speak, for Lise had sent a maid to him the previous day, specially asking him to come to her "about something very important," a request which, for certain reasons, had interest for Alyosha. But while the maid went to take his name in to Lise, Madame Hohlakov heard of his arrival from some one, and immediately sent to beg him to come to her "just for one minute." Alyosha reflected that it was better to accede to the mamma's request, or else she would be sending down to Lise's room every minute that he was there. Madame Hohlakov was lying on a couch. She was particularly smartly dressed and was evidently in a state of extreme nervous excitement. She greeted Alyosha with cries of rapture. "It's ages, ages, perfect ages since I've seen you! It's a whole week--only think of it! Ah, but you were here only four days ago, on Wednesday. You have come to see Lise. I'm sure you meant to slip into her room on tiptoe, without my hearing you. My dear, dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, if you only knew how worried I am about her! But of that later, though that's the most important thing, of that later. Dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, I trust you implicitly with my Lise. Since the death of Father Zossima--God rest his soul!" (she crossed herself)--"I look upon you as a monk, though you look charming in your new suit. Where did you find such a tailor in these parts? No, no, that's not the chief thing--of that later. Forgive me for sometimes calling you Alyosha; an old woman like me may take liberties," she smiled coquettishly; "but that will do later, too. The important thing is that I shouldn't forget what is important. Please remind me of it yourself. As soon as my tongue runs away with me, you just say 'the important thing?' Ach! how do I know now what is of most importance? Ever since Lise took back her promise--her childish promise, Alexey Fyodorovitch--to marry you, you've realized, of course, that it was only the playful fancy of a sick child who had been so long confined to her chair--thank God, she can walk now!... that new doctor Katya sent for from Moscow for your unhappy brother, who will to-morrow--But why speak of to- morrow? I am ready to die at the very thought of to-morrow. Ready to die of curiosity.... That doctor was with us yesterday and saw Lise.... I paid him fifty roubles for the visit. But that's not the point, that's not the point again. You see, I'm mixing everything up. I am in such a hurry. Why am I in a hurry? I don't understand. It's awful how I seem growing unable to understand anything. Everything seems mixed up in a sort of tangle. I am afraid you are so bored you will jump up and run away, and that will be all I shall see of you. Goodness! Why are we sitting here and no coffee? Yulia, Glafira, coffee!" Alyosha made haste to thank her, and said that he had only just had coffee. "Where?" "At Agrafena Alexandrovna's." "At ... at that woman's? Ah, it's she has brought ruin on every one. I know nothing about it though. They say she has become a saint, though it's rather late in the day. She had better have done it before. What use is it now? Hush, hush, Alexey Fyodorovitch, for I have so much to say to you that I am afraid I shall tell you nothing. This awful trial ... I shall certainly go, I am making arrangements. I shall be carried there in my chair; besides I can sit up. I shall have people with me. And, you know, I am a witness. How shall I speak, how shall I speak? I don't know what I shall say. One has to take an oath, hasn't one?" "Yes; but I don't think you will be able to go." "I can sit up. Ah, you put me out! Ah! this trial, this savage act, and then they are all going to Siberia, some are getting married, and all this so quickly, so quickly, everything's changing, and at last--nothing. All grow old and have death to look forward to. Well, so be it! I am weary. This Katya, _cette charmante personne_, has disappointed all my hopes. Now she is going to follow one of your brothers to Siberia, and your other brother is going to follow her, and will live in the nearest town, and they will all torment one another. It drives me out of my mind. Worst of all--the publicity. The story has been told a million times over in all the papers in Moscow and Petersburg. Ah! yes, would you believe it, there's a paragraph that I was 'a dear friend' of your brother's ----, I can't repeat the horrid word. Just fancy, just fancy!" "Impossible! Where was the paragraph? What did it say?" "I'll show you directly. I got the paper and read it yesterday. Here, in the Petersburg paper _Gossip_. The paper began coming out this year. I am awfully fond of gossip, and I take it in, and now it pays me out--this is what gossip comes to! Here it is, here, this passage. Read it." And she handed Alyosha a sheet of newspaper which had been under her pillow. It was not exactly that she was upset, she seemed overwhelmed and perhaps everything really was mixed up in a tangle in her head. The paragraph was very typical, and must have been a great shock to her, but, fortunately perhaps, she was unable to keep her mind fixed on any one subject at that moment, and so might race off in a minute to something else and quite forget the newspaper. Alyosha was well aware that the story of the terrible case had spread all over Russia. And, good heavens! what wild rumors about his brother, about the Karamazovs, and about himself he had read in the course of those two months, among other equally credible items! One paper had even stated that he had gone into a monastery and become a monk, in horror at his brother's crime. Another contradicted this, and stated that he and his elder, Father Zossima, had broken into the monastery chest and "made tracks from the monastery." The present paragraph in the paper _Gossip_ was under the heading, "The Karamazov Case at Skotoprigonyevsk." (That, alas! was the name of our little town. I had hitherto kept it concealed.) It was brief, and Madame Hohlakov was not directly mentioned in it. No names appeared, in fact. It was merely stated that the criminal, whose approaching trial was making such a sensation--retired army captain, an idle swaggerer, and reactionary bully--was continually involved in amorous intrigues, and particularly popular with certain ladies "who were pining in solitude." One such lady, a pining widow, who tried to seem young though she had a grown-up daughter, was so fascinated by him that only two hours before the crime she offered him three thousand roubles, on condition that he would elope with her to the gold mines. But the criminal, counting on escaping punishment, had preferred to murder his father to get the three thousand rather than go off to Siberia with the middle-aged charms of his pining lady. This playful paragraph finished, of course, with an outburst of generous indignation at the wickedness of parricide and at the lately abolished institution of serfdom. Reading it with curiosity, Alyosha folded up the paper and handed it back to Madame Hohlakov. "Well, that must be me," she hurried on again. "Of course I am meant. Scarcely more than an hour before, I suggested gold mines to him, and here they talk of 'middle-aged charms' as though that were my motive! He writes that out of spite! God Almighty forgive him for the middle-aged charms, as I forgive him! You know it's-- Do you know who it is? It's your friend Rakitin." "Perhaps," said Alyosha, "though I've heard nothing about it." "It's he, it's he! No 'perhaps' about it. You know I turned him out of the house.... You know all that story, don't you?" "I know that you asked him not to visit you for the future, but why it was, I haven't heard ... from you, at least." "Ah, then you've heard it from him! He abuses me, I suppose, abuses me dreadfully?" "Yes, he does; but then he abuses every one. But why you've given him up I haven't heard from him either. I meet him very seldom now, indeed. We are not friends." "Well, then, I'll tell you all about it. There's no help for it, I'll confess, for there is one point in which I was perhaps to blame. Only a little, little point, so little that perhaps it doesn't count. You see, my dear boy"--Madame Hohlakov suddenly looked arch and a charming, though enigmatic, smile played about her lips--"you see, I suspect ... You must forgive me, Alyosha. I am like a mother to you.... No, no; quite the contrary. I speak to you now as though you were my father--mother's quite out of place. Well, it's as though I were confessing to Father Zossima, that's just it. I called you a monk just now. Well, that poor young man, your friend, Rakitin (Mercy on us! I can't be angry with him. I feel cross, but not very), that frivolous young man, would you believe it, seems to have taken it into his head to fall in love with me. I only noticed it later. At first--a month ago--he only began to come oftener to see me, almost every day; though, of course, we were acquainted before. I knew nothing about it ... and suddenly it dawned upon me, and I began to notice things with surprise. You know, two months ago, that modest, charming, excellent young man, Pyotr Ilyitch Perhotin, who's in the service here, began to be a regular visitor at the house. You met him here ever so many times yourself. And he is an excellent, earnest young man, isn't he? He comes once every three days, not every day (though I should be glad to see him every day), and always so well dressed. Altogether, I love young people, Alyosha, talented, modest, like you, and he has almost the mind of a statesman, he talks so charmingly, and I shall certainly, certainly try and get promotion for him. He is a future diplomat. On that awful day he almost saved me from death by coming in the night. And your friend Rakitin comes in such boots, and always stretches them out on the carpet.... He began hinting at his feelings, in fact, and one day, as he was going, he squeezed my hand terribly hard. My foot began to swell directly after he pressed my hand like that. He had met Pyotr Ilyitch here before, and would you believe it, he is always gibing at him, growling at him, for some reason. I simply looked at the way they went on together and laughed inwardly. So I was sitting here alone--no, I was laid up then. Well, I was lying here alone and suddenly Rakitin comes in, and only fancy! brought me some verses of his own composition--a short poem, on my bad foot: that is, he described my foot in a poem. Wait a minute--how did it go? A captivating little foot. It began somehow like that. I can never remember poetry. I've got it here. I'll show it to you later. But it's a charming thing--charming; and, you know, it's not only about the foot, it had a good moral, too, a charming idea, only I've forgotten it; in fact, it was just the thing for an album. So, of course, I thanked him, and he was evidently flattered. I'd hardly had time to thank him when in comes Pyotr Ilyitch, and Rakitin suddenly looked as black as night. I could see that Pyotr Ilyitch was in the way, for Rakitin certainly wanted to say something after giving me the verses. I had a presentiment of it; but Pyotr Ilyitch came in. I showed Pyotr Ilyitch the verses and didn't say who was the author. But I am convinced that he guessed, though he won't own it to this day, and declares he had no idea. But he says that on purpose. Pyotr Ilyitch began to laugh at once, and fell to criticizing it. 'Wretched doggerel,' he said they were, 'some divinity student must have written them,' and with such vehemence, such vehemence! Then, instead of laughing, your friend flew into a rage. 'Good gracious!' I thought, 'they'll fly at each other.' 'It was I who wrote them,' said he. 'I wrote them as a joke,' he said, 'for I think it degrading to write verses.... But they are good poetry. They want to put a monument to your Pushkin for writing about women's feet, while I wrote with a moral purpose, and you,' said he, 'are an advocate of serfdom. You've no humane ideas,' said he. 'You have no modern enlightened feelings, you are uninfluenced by progress, you are a mere official,' he said, 'and you take bribes.' Then I began screaming and imploring them. And, you know, Pyotr Ilyitch is anything but a coward. He at once took up the most gentlemanly tone, looked at him sarcastically, listened, and apologized. 'I'd no idea,' said he. 'I shouldn't have said it, if I had known. I should have praised it. Poets are all so irritable,' he said. In short, he laughed at him under cover of the most gentlemanly tone. He explained to me afterwards that it was all sarcastic. I thought he was in earnest. Only as I lay there, just as before you now, I thought, 'Would it, or would it not, be the proper thing for me to turn Rakitin out for shouting so rudely at a visitor in my house?' And, would you believe it, I lay here, shut my eyes, and wondered, would it be the proper thing or not. I kept worrying and worrying, and my heart began to beat, and I couldn't make up my mind whether to make an outcry or not. One voice seemed to be telling me, 'Speak,' and the other 'No, don't speak.' And no sooner had the second voice said that than I cried out, and fainted. Of course, there was a fuss. I got up suddenly and said to Rakitin, 'It's painful for me to say it, but I don't wish to see you in my house again.' So I turned him out. Ah! Alexey Fyodorovitch, I know myself I did wrong. I was putting it on. I wasn't angry with him at all, really; but I suddenly fancied--that was what did it--that it would be such a fine scene.... And yet, believe me, it was quite natural, for I really shed tears and cried for several days afterwards, and then suddenly, one afternoon, I forgot all about it. So it's a fortnight since he's been here, and I kept wondering whether he would come again. I wondered even yesterday, then suddenly last night came this _Gossip_. I read it and gasped. Who could have written it? He must have written it. He went home, sat down, wrote it on the spot, sent it, and they put it in. It was a fortnight ago, you see. But, Alyosha, it's awful how I keep talking and don't say what I want to say. Ah! the words come of themselves!" "It's very important for me to be in time to see my brother to-day," Alyosha faltered. "To be sure, to be sure! You bring it all back to me. Listen, what is an aberration?" "What aberration?" asked Alyosha, wondering. "In the legal sense. An aberration in which everything is pardonable. Whatever you do, you will be acquitted at once." "What do you mean?" "I'll tell you. This Katya ... Ah! she is a charming, charming creature, only I never can make out who it is she is in love with. She was with me some time ago and I couldn't get anything out of her. Especially as she won't talk to me except on the surface now. She is always talking about my health and nothing else, and she takes up such a tone with me, too. I simply said to myself, 'Well, so be it. I don't care'... Oh, yes. I was talking of aberration. This doctor has come. You know a doctor has come? Of course, you know it--the one who discovers madmen. You wrote for him. No, it wasn't you, but Katya. It's all Katya's doing. Well, you see, a man may be sitting perfectly sane and suddenly have an aberration. He may be conscious and know what he is doing and yet be in a state of aberration. And there's no doubt that Dmitri Fyodorovitch was suffering from aberration. They found out about aberration as soon as the law courts were reformed. It's all the good effect of the reformed law courts. The doctor has been here and questioned me about that evening, about the gold mines. 'How did he seem then?' he asked me. He must have been in a state of aberration. He came in shouting, 'Money, money, three thousand! Give me three thousand!' and then went away and immediately did the murder. 'I don't want to murder him,' he said, and he suddenly went and murdered him. That's why they'll acquit him, because he struggled against it and yet he murdered him." "But he didn't murder him," Alyosha interrupted rather sharply. He felt more and more sick with anxiety and impatience. "Yes, I know it was that old man Grigory murdered him." "Grigory?" cried Alyosha. "Yes, yes; it was Grigory. He lay as Dmitri Fyodorovitch struck him down, and then got up, saw the door open, went in and killed Fyodor Pavlovitch." "But why, why?" "Suffering from aberration. When he recovered from the blow Dmitri Fyodorovitch gave him on the head, he was suffering from aberration; he went and committed the murder. As for his saying he didn't, he very likely doesn't remember. Only, you know, it'll be better, ever so much better, if Dmitri Fyodorovitch murdered him. And that's how it must have been, though I say it was Grigory. It certainly was Dmitri Fyodorovitch, and that's better, ever so much better! Oh! not better that a son should have killed his father, I don't defend that. Children ought to honor their parents, and yet it would be better if it were he, as you'd have nothing to cry over then, for he did it when he was unconscious or rather when he was conscious, but did not know what he was doing. Let them acquit him--that's so humane, and would show what a blessing reformed law courts are. I knew nothing about it, but they say they have been so a long time. And when I heard it yesterday, I was so struck by it that I wanted to send for you at once. And if he is acquitted, make him come straight from the law courts to dinner with me, and I'll have a party of friends, and we'll drink to the reformed law courts. I don't believe he'd be dangerous; besides, I'll invite a great many friends, so that he could always be led out if he did anything. And then he might be made a justice of the peace or something in another town, for those who have been in trouble themselves make the best judges. And, besides, who isn't suffering from aberration nowadays?--you, I, all of us are in a state of aberration, and there are ever so many examples of it: a man sits singing a song, suddenly something annoys him, he takes a pistol and shoots the first person he comes across, and no one blames him for it. I read that lately, and all the doctors confirm it. The doctors are always confirming; they confirm anything. Why, my Lise is in a state of aberration. She made me cry again yesterday, and the day before, too, and to-day I suddenly realized that it's all due to aberration. Oh, Lise grieves me so! I believe she's quite mad. Why did she send for you? Did she send for you or did you come of yourself?" "Yes, she sent for me, and I am just going to her." Alyosha got up resolutely. "Oh, my dear, dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, perhaps that's what's most important," Madame Hohlakov cried, suddenly bursting into tears. "God knows I trust Lise to you with all my heart, and it's no matter her sending for you on the sly, without telling her mother. But forgive me, I can't trust my daughter so easily to your brother Ivan Fyodorovitch, though I still consider him the most chivalrous young man. But only fancy, he's been to see Lise and I knew nothing about it!" "How? What? When?" Alyosha was exceedingly surprised. He had not sat down again and listened standing. "I will tell you; that's perhaps why I asked you to come, for I don't know now why I did ask you to come. Well, Ivan Fyodorovitch has been to see me twice, since he came back from Moscow. First time he came as a friend to call on me, and the second time Katya was here and he came because he heard she was here. I didn't, of course, expect him to come often, knowing what a lot he has to do as it is, _vous comprenez, cette affaire et la mort terrible de votre papa_. But I suddenly heard he'd been here again, not to see me but to see Lise. That's six days ago now. He came, stayed five minutes, and went away. And I didn't hear of it till three days afterwards, from Glafira, so it was a great shock to me. I sent for Lise directly. She laughed. 'He thought you were asleep,' she said, 'and came in to me to ask after your health.' Of course, that's how it happened. But Lise, Lise, mercy on us, how she distresses me! Would you believe it, one night, four days ago, just after you saw her last time, and had gone away, she suddenly had a fit, screaming, shrieking, hysterics! Why is it I never have hysterics? Then, next day another fit, and the same thing on the third, and yesterday too, and then yesterday that aberration. She suddenly screamed out, 'I hate Ivan Fyodorovitch. I insist on your never letting him come to the house again.' I was struck dumb at these amazing words, and answered, 'On what grounds could I refuse to see such an excellent young man, a young man of such learning too, and so unfortunate?'--for all this business is a misfortune, isn't it? She suddenly burst out laughing at my words, and so rudely, you know. Well, I was pleased; I thought I had amused her and the fits would pass off, especially as I wanted to refuse to see Ivan Fyodorovitch anyway on account of his strange visits without my knowledge, and meant to ask him for an explanation. But early this morning Lise waked up and flew into a passion with Yulia and, would you believe it, slapped her in the face. That's monstrous; I am always polite to my servants. And an hour later she was hugging Yulia's feet and kissing them. She sent a message to me that she wasn't coming to me at all, and would never come and see me again, and when I dragged myself down to her, she rushed to kiss me, crying, and as she kissed me, she pushed me out of the room without saying a word, so I couldn't find out what was the matter. Now, dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, I rest all my hopes on you, and, of course, my whole life is in your hands. I simply beg you to go to Lise and find out everything from her, as you alone can, and come back and tell me--me, her mother, for you understand it will be the death of me, simply the death of me, if this goes on, or else I shall run away. I can stand no more. I have patience; but I may lose patience, and then ... then something awful will happen. Ah, dear me! At last, Pyotr Ilyitch!" cried Madame Hohlakov, beaming all over as she saw Perhotin enter the room. "You are late, you are late! Well, sit down, speak, put us out of suspense. What does the counsel say. Where are you off to, Alexey Fyodorovitch?" "To Lise." "Oh, yes. You won't forget, you won't forget what I asked you? It's a question of life and death!" "Of course, I won't forget, if I can ... but I am so late," muttered Alyosha, beating a hasty retreat. "No, be sure, be sure to come in; don't say 'If you can.' I shall die if you don't," Madame Hohlakov called after him, but Alyosha had already left the room.

book 11, Chapter 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section14/

An Ailing Little Foot Before Alyosha speaks to Dmitri, he must pay a visit to Madame Khokhlakov and Lise. Madame Khokhlakov speaks to him before he sees Lise, and tells him something very curious: Ivan has recently paid a visit to Lise, after which Lise's already erratic moods have become even more unbalanced. Madame Khokhlakov asks Alyosha to find out what is troubling Lise and to tell her after he has found out

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/107-chapters/46.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Far from the Madding Crowd/section_45_part_0.txt

Far from the Madding Crowd.chapter 46

chapter 46

{"name": "Chapter 46", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-46", "summary": "One of the ugly gargoyles of the church parapet jutted out over the area newly assigned for charity graves. This stony land had been uncared for, and as a heavy downpour developed, water gushed forth, falling upon the grave of Fanny Robin some seventy feet below. The carefully planted bulbs were washed away and floated off in the mud. When he awoke, Troy was stunned into disbelief \"The planting of flowers on Fanny's grave had been perhaps but a species of elusion of the primary grief, and now it was as if his intention had been known and circumvented. Almost for the first time in his life Troy, as he stood by this dismantled grave, wished himself another man.\" Not informing anyone, he left the village. Bathsheba remained imprisoned by her own choice. The night before, Liddy had noticed the light of Troy's lantern in the graveyard, and they both had watched it for a time, not knowing whose it was. In the morning both women commented on the heavy rain and the noise of the water coming from the spouts. Liddy noted that the water used to merely spatter on the stones, but \"this was like the boiling of a pot.\" Asking whether Bathsheba wished to see the gravesite, Liddy also volunteered the information that the master must have gone to Budmouth, for Laban had seen him on that road. Bathsheba went to Fanny's corner of the churchyard. Here she saw the spattered tomb. Gabriel was standing nearby. He had already seen the inscription: \"Erected by Francis Troy in Beloved Memory of Fanny Robin.\" He looked to see how Bathsheba would react to this. He himself was astonished, but Bathsheba was calm. She asked Gabriel to fill in the hole, and, picking up the plants, she carefully set back those that had been washed out. She requested Gabriel to ask the wardens to redirect the mouth of the gargoyle to a different angle. Before departing, she wiped the tomb clean.", "analysis": "Providence is often hostile to man in Hardy's world. Troy wants to change, as his gesture toward Fanny shows, \"but to find that Providence, far from helping him into a new course . . . actually jeered his first trembling and critical attempt in that kind, was more than nature could bear.\""}

THE GURGOYLE: ITS DOINGS The tower of Weatherbury Church was a square erection of fourteenth-century date, having two stone gurgoyles on each of the four faces of its parapet. Of these eight carved protuberances only two at this time continued to serve the purpose of their erection--that of spouting the water from the lead roof within. One mouth in each front had been closed by bygone church-wardens as superfluous, and two others were broken away and choked--a matter not of much consequence to the wellbeing of the tower, for the two mouths which still remained open and active were gaping enough to do all the work. It has been sometimes argued that there is no truer criterion of the vitality of any given art-period than the power of the master-spirits of that time in grotesque; and certainly in the instance of Gothic art there is no disputing the proposition. Weatherbury tower was a somewhat early instance of the use of an ornamental parapet in parish as distinct from cathedral churches, and the gurgoyles, which are the necessary correlatives of a parapet, were exceptionally prominent--of the boldest cut that the hand could shape, and of the most original design that a human brain could conceive. There was, so to speak, that symmetry in their distortion which is less the characteristic of British than of Continental grotesques of the period. All the eight were different from each other. A beholder was convinced that nothing on earth could be more hideous than those he saw on the north side until he went round to the south. Of the two on this latter face, only that at the south-eastern corner concerns the story. It was too human to be called like a dragon, too impish to be like a man, too animal to be like a fiend, and not enough like a bird to be called a griffin. This horrible stone entity was fashioned as if covered with a wrinkled hide; it had short, erect ears, eyes starting from their sockets, and its fingers and hands were seizing the corners of its mouth, which they thus seemed to pull open to give free passage to the water it vomited. The lower row of teeth was quite washed away, though the upper still remained. Here and thus, jutting a couple of feet from the wall against which its feet rested as a support, the creature had for four hundred years laughed at the surrounding landscape, voicelessly in dry weather, and in wet with a gurgling and snorting sound. Troy slept on in the porch, and the rain increased outside. Presently the gurgoyle spat. In due time a small stream began to trickle through the seventy feet of aerial space between its mouth and the ground, which the water-drops smote like duckshot in their accelerated velocity. The stream thickened in substance, and increased in power, gradually spouting further and yet further from the side of the tower. When the rain fell in a steady and ceaseless torrent the stream dashed downward in volumes. We follow its course to the ground at this point of time. The end of the liquid parabola has come forward from the wall, has advanced over the plinth mouldings, over a heap of stones, over the marble border, into the midst of Fanny Robin's grave. The force of the stream had, until very lately, been received upon some loose stones spread thereabout, which had acted as a shield to the soil under the onset. These during the summer had been cleared from the ground, and there was now nothing to resist the down-fall but the bare earth. For several years the stream had not spouted so far from the tower as it was doing on this night, and such a contingency had been over-looked. Sometimes this obscure corner received no inhabitant for the space of two or three years, and then it was usually but a pauper, a poacher, or other sinner of undignified sins. The persistent torrent from the gurgoyle's jaws directed all its vengeance into the grave. The rich tawny mould was stirred into motion, and boiled like chocolate. The water accumulated and washed deeper down, and the roar of the pool thus formed spread into the night as the head and chief among other noises of the kind created by the deluging rain. The flowers so carefully planted by Fanny's repentant lover began to move and writhe in their bed. The winter-violets turned slowly upside down, and became a mere mat of mud. Soon the snowdrop and other bulbs danced in the boiling mass like ingredients in a cauldron. Plants of the tufted species were loosened, rose to the surface, and floated off. Troy did not awake from his comfortless sleep till it was broad day. Not having been in bed for two nights his shoulders felt stiff, his feet tender, and his head heavy. He remembered his position, arose, shivered, took the spade, and again went out. The rain had quite ceased, and the sun was shining through the green, brown, and yellow leaves, now sparkling and varnished by the raindrops to the brightness of similar effects in the landscapes of Ruysdael and Hobbema, and full of all those infinite beauties that arise from the union of water and colour with high lights. The air was rendered so transparent by the heavy fall of rain that the autumn hues of the middle distance were as rich as those near at hand, and the remote fields intercepted by the angle of the tower appeared in the same plane as the tower itself. He entered the gravel path which would take him behind the tower. The path, instead of being stony as it had been the night before, was browned over with a thin coating of mud. At one place in the path he saw a tuft of stringy roots washed white and clean as a bundle of tendons. He picked it up--surely it could not be one of the primroses he had planted? He saw a bulb, another, and another as he advanced. Beyond doubt they were the crocuses. With a face of perplexed dismay Troy turned the corner and then beheld the wreck the stream had made. The pool upon the grave had soaked away into the ground, and in its place was a hollow. The disturbed earth was washed over the grass and pathway in the guise of the brown mud he had already seen, and it spotted the marble tombstone with the same stains. Nearly all the flowers were washed clean out of the ground, and they lay, roots upwards, on the spots whither they had been splashed by the stream. Troy's brow became heavily contracted. He set his teeth closely, and his compressed lips moved as those of one in great pain. This singular accident, by a strange confluence of emotions in him, was felt as the sharpest sting of all. Troy's face was very expressive, and any observer who had seen him now would hardly have believed him to be a man who had laughed, and sung, and poured love-trifles into a woman's ear. To curse his miserable lot was at first his impulse, but even that lowest stage of rebellion needed an activity whose absence was necessarily antecedent to the existence of the morbid misery which wrung him. The sight, coming as it did, superimposed upon the other dark scenery of the previous days, formed a sort of climax to the whole panorama, and it was more than he could endure. Sanguine by nature, Troy had a power of eluding grief by simply adjourning it. He could put off the consideration of any particular spectre till the matter had become old and softened by time. The planting of flowers on Fanny's grave had been perhaps but a species of elusion of the primary grief, and now it was as if his intention had been known and circumvented. Almost for the first time in his life, Troy, as he stood by this dismantled grave, wished himself another man. It is seldom that a person with much animal spirit does not feel that the fact of his life being his own is the one qualification which singles it out as a more hopeful life than that of others who may actually resemble him in every particular. Troy had felt, in his transient way, hundreds of times, that he could not envy other people their condition, because the possession of that condition would have necessitated a different personality, when he desired no other than his own. He had not minded the peculiarities of his birth, the vicissitudes of his life, the meteor-like uncertainty of all that related to him, because these appertained to the hero of his story, without whom there would have been no story at all for him; and it seemed to be only in the nature of things that matters would right themselves at some proper date and wind up well. This very morning the illusion completed its disappearance, and, as it were, all of a sudden, Troy hated himself. The suddenness was probably more apparent than real. A coral reef which just comes short of the ocean surface is no more to the horizon than if it had never been begun, and the mere finishing stroke is what often appears to create an event which has long been potentially an accomplished thing. He stood and meditated--a miserable man. Whither should he go? "He that is accursed, let him be accursed still," was the pitiless anathema written in this spoliated effort of his new-born solicitousness. A man who has spent his primal strength in journeying in one direction has not much spirit left for reversing his course. Troy had, since yesterday, faintly reversed his; but the merest opposition had disheartened him. To turn about would have been hard enough under the greatest providential encouragement; but to find that Providence, far from helping him into a new course, or showing any wish that he might adopt one, actually jeered his first trembling and critical attempt in that kind, was more than nature could bear. He slowly withdrew from the grave. He did not attempt to fill up the hole, replace the flowers, or do anything at all. He simply threw up his cards and forswore his game for that time and always. Going out of the churchyard silently and unobserved--none of the villagers having yet risen--he passed down some fields at the back, and emerged just as secretly upon the high road. Shortly afterwards he had gone from the village. Meanwhile, Bathsheba remained a voluntary prisoner in the attic. The door was kept locked, except during the entries and exits of Liddy, for whom a bed had been arranged in a small adjoining room. The light of Troy's lantern in the churchyard was noticed about ten o'clock by the maid-servant, who casually glanced from the window in that direction whilst taking her supper, and she called Bathsheba's attention to it. They looked curiously at the phenomenon for a time, until Liddy was sent to bed. Bathsheba did not sleep very heavily that night. When her attendant was unconscious and softly breathing in the next room, the mistress of the house was still looking out of the window at the faint gleam spreading from among the trees--not in a steady shine, but blinking like a revolving coast-light, though this appearance failed to suggest to her that a person was passing and repassing in front of it. Bathsheba sat here till it began to rain, and the light vanished, when she withdrew to lie restlessly in her bed and re-enact in a worn mind the lurid scene of yesternight. Almost before the first faint sign of dawn appeared she arose again, and opened the window to obtain a full breathing of the new morning air, the panes being now wet with trembling tears left by the night rain, each one rounded with a pale lustre caught from primrose-hued slashes through a cloud low down in the awakening sky. From the trees came the sound of steady dripping upon the drifted leaves under them, and from the direction of the church she could hear another noise--peculiar, and not intermittent like the rest, the purl of water falling into a pool. Liddy knocked at eight o'clock, and Bathsheba un-locked the door. "What a heavy rain we've had in the night, ma'am!" said Liddy, when her inquiries about breakfast had been made. "Yes, very heavy." "Did you hear the strange noise from the churchyard?" "I heard one strange noise. I've been thinking it must have been the water from the tower spouts." "Well, that's what the shepherd was saying, ma'am. He's now gone on to see." "Oh! Gabriel has been here this morning!" "Only just looked in in passing--quite in his old way, which I thought he had left off lately. But the tower spouts used to spatter on the stones, and we are puzzled, for this was like the boiling of a pot." Not being able to read, think, or work, Bathsheba asked Liddy to stay and breakfast with her. The tongue of the more childish woman still ran upon recent events. "Are you going across to the church, ma'am?" she asked. "Not that I know of," said Bathsheba. "I thought you might like to go and see where they have put Fanny. The trees hide the place from your window." Bathsheba had all sorts of dreads about meeting her husband. "Has Mr. Troy been in to-night?" she said. "No, ma'am; I think he's gone to Budmouth." Budmouth! The sound of the word carried with it a much diminished perspective of him and his deeds; there were thirteen miles interval betwixt them now. She hated questioning Liddy about her husband's movements, and indeed had hitherto sedulously avoided doing so; but now all the house knew that there had been some dreadful disagreement between them, and it was futile to attempt disguise. Bathsheba had reached a stage at which people cease to have any appreciative regard for public opinion. "What makes you think he has gone there?" she said. "Laban Tall saw him on the Budmouth road this morning before breakfast." Bathsheba was momentarily relieved of that wayward heaviness of the past twenty-four hours which had quenched the vitality of youth in her without substituting the philosophy of maturer years, and she resolved to go out and walk a little way. So when breakfast was over, she put on her bonnet, and took a direction towards the church. It was nine o'clock, and the men having returned to work again from their first meal, she was not likely to meet many of them in the road. Knowing that Fanny had been laid in the reprobates' quarter of the graveyard, called in the parish "behind church," which was invisible from the road, it was impossible to resist the impulse to enter and look upon a spot which, from nameless feelings, she at the same time dreaded to see. She had been unable to overcome an impression that some connection existed between her rival and the light through the trees. Bathsheba skirted the buttress, and beheld the hole and the tomb, its delicately veined surface splashed and stained just as Troy had seen it and left it two hours earlier. On the other side of the scene stood Gabriel. His eyes, too, were fixed on the tomb, and her arrival having been noiseless, she had not as yet attracted his attention. Bathsheba did not at once perceive that the grand tomb and the disturbed grave were Fanny's, and she looked on both sides and around for some humbler mound, earthed up and clodded in the usual way. Then her eye followed Oak's, and she read the words with which the inscription opened:-- ERECTED BY FRANCIS TROY IN BELOVED MEMORY OF FANNY ROBIN Oak saw her, and his first act was to gaze inquiringly and learn how she received this knowledge of the authorship of the work, which to himself had caused considerable astonishment. But such discoveries did not much affect her now. Emotional convulsions seemed to have become the commonplaces of her history, and she bade him good morning, and asked him to fill in the hole with the spade which was standing by. Whilst Oak was doing as she desired, Bathsheba collected the flowers, and began planting them with that sympathetic manipulation of roots and leaves which is so conspicuous in a woman's gardening, and which flowers seem to understand and thrive upon. She requested Oak to get the churchwardens to turn the leadwork at the mouth of the gurgoyle that hung gaping down upon them, that by this means the stream might be directed sideways, and a repetition of the accident prevented. Finally, with the superfluous magnanimity of a woman whose narrower instincts have brought down bitterness upon her instead of love, she wiped the mud spots from the tomb as if she rather liked its words than otherwise, and went again home. [2] [Footnote 2: The local tower and churchyard do not answer precisely to the foregoing description.]

Chapter 46

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101052914/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/far-from-the-madding-crowd/summary-and-analysis/chapter-46

One of the ugly gargoyles of the church parapet jutted out over the area newly assigned for charity graves. This stony land had been uncared for, and as a heavy downpour developed, water gushed forth, falling upon the grave of Fanny Robin some seventy feet below. The carefully planted bulbs were washed away and floated off in the mud. When he awoke, Troy was stunned into disbelief "The planting of flowers on Fanny's grave had been perhaps but a species of elusion of the primary grief, and now it was as if his intention had been known and circumvented. Almost for the first time in his life Troy, as he stood by this dismantled grave, wished himself another man." Not informing anyone, he left the village. Bathsheba remained imprisoned by her own choice. The night before, Liddy had noticed the light of Troy's lantern in the graveyard, and they both had watched it for a time, not knowing whose it was. In the morning both women commented on the heavy rain and the noise of the water coming from the spouts. Liddy noted that the water used to merely spatter on the stones, but "this was like the boiling of a pot." Asking whether Bathsheba wished to see the gravesite, Liddy also volunteered the information that the master must have gone to Budmouth, for Laban had seen him on that road. Bathsheba went to Fanny's corner of the churchyard. Here she saw the spattered tomb. Gabriel was standing nearby. He had already seen the inscription: "Erected by Francis Troy in Beloved Memory of Fanny Robin." He looked to see how Bathsheba would react to this. He himself was astonished, but Bathsheba was calm. She asked Gabriel to fill in the hole, and, picking up the plants, she carefully set back those that had been washed out. She requested Gabriel to ask the wardens to redirect the mouth of the gargoyle to a different angle. Before departing, she wiped the tomb clean.

Providence is often hostile to man in Hardy's world. Troy wants to change, as his gesture toward Fanny shows, "but to find that Providence, far from helping him into a new course . . . actually jeered his first trembling and critical attempt in that kind, was more than nature could bear."

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/161-chapters/40.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Sense and Sensibility/section_39_part_0.txt

Sense and Sensibility.chapter 40

chapter 40

{"name": "Chapter 40", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820034609/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmSenseSensibility55.asp", "summary": "Three days after the incident at John Dashwood's house, Mrs. Jennings and Elinor go out for a walk to Kensington gardens. After separating from Mrs. Jennings, Elinor meets Anne Steele, and the two talk about Lucy and the unhappy incident. Miss Steele also tells Elinor about Edward's visit that morning and how she had overheard an intimate conversation between him and Lucy. Elinor is disgusted at her behavior. After reaching home, she relates the incident to Mrs. Jennings. Later, she receives a letter from Lucy by the two-penny post informing her of their current circumstances. She seeks the help of the Middletons or Palmers to offer a position to Edward. Elinor shows the letter to Mrs. Jennings. The old lady is impressed by the letter.", "analysis": "Notes The chapter reveals the somewhat crass behavior of the Steele sisters. Miss Steele reveals to Elinor that she had purposely stood outside the door of the locked room in which Lucy and Edward were conversing. She does not feel guilty about her behavior; her justification is that even Lucy had eavesdropped earlier. Lucy's letter also exposes her selfishness and base nature. Lucy asks Elinor to recommend her case to anyone who will be willing to provide a position to Edward. She looks forward to the help of Mrs. Jennings, the Middletons and the Palmers. Lucy is not ashamed to ask favors of others. CHAPTER 39 Summary Elinor and Marianne are invited by the Palmers to Cleveland. At the insistence of Mrs. Jennings, they decide to accept the invitation. One day Colonel Brandon visits them and asks Elinor to inform Edward that he is prepared to give a position at Delaford to him. Edward could lead a comfortable life on an income of two thousand pounds, but he would not be able to afford a wife. Mrs. Jennings, who observes Elinor and Colonel Brandon talking animatedly, concludes that they must be talking about a wedding. Notes In answer to Marianne's wish that they go home, the sisters are invited to accompany Mrs. Jennings to Cleveland. Since it will be easy for them to reach Barton from Cleveland, they accept the invitation. Mrs. Jennings, who is always engaged in matchmaking, starts imagining the Colonel to be in love with Elinor. Thus, when she hears the phrase, \"I am afraid it cannot take place very soon,\" she is angry with the Colonel for postponing their wedding. Misunderstanding causes much humor in the scene. Colonel Brandon can be rightly identified as a generous man who willingly offers a living to Edward in Delaford. His love for Marianne and respect for Elinor makes him extend help to their friends. It is ironic that he chooses Elinor to convey this information to Edward. CHAPTER 40 Summary Mrs. Jennings approaches Elinor soon after the Colonel's exit. She congratulates her and asks her many questions, which gradually reveal her mistaken assumption that there is an engagement between Elinor and the Colonel. Elinor mentions Brandon's generosity and his request to her to convey the information to Edward. Mrs. Jennings is puzzled, and as she is in a hurry to leave, she decides to speak further with Elinor upon her return. When Edward arrives, Elinor tells him the good news. He is pleasantly surprised. He promises to meet the Colonel and thank him for his generosity. Mrs. Jennings returns to the house and asks Elinor if Edward is prepared to get ordained to perform her marriage to the Colonel. Elinor is shocked to hear Mrs. Jennings' words. She corrects the misunderstanding by informing the old lady of the Colonel's offer to Edward. Notes This chapter demonstrates the misunderstandings that arise when a character like Mrs. Jennings gives her interpretation of the events that she witnesses. The conversation between Elinor and Mrs. Jennings is amusing as each misinterprets the other's words. Elinor is unaware of Mrs. Jennings' suspicions, and hence she talks about informing Edward of the Colonel's offer. Mrs. Jennings is then unable to understand why Edward should be informed of the Colonel's proposal. She surmises that Elinor and the Colonel might have decided to get married only after Edward has been ordained and is ready to perform their wedding. Much humor results from this confused conversation. Edward Ferrars is obviously surprised when Elinor informs him of the Colonel's generous offer at Delaford: in this time of crisis, assistance from such an unexpected quarter is astonishing. Like Mrs. Jennings, he believes the Colonel to be in love with Elinor. He feels that Brandon has offered him help only to please Elinor. Thus he thanks Elinor for helping him."}

"Well, Miss Dashwood," said Mrs. Jennings, sagaciously smiling, as soon as the gentleman had withdrawn, "I do not ask you what the Colonel has been saying to you; for though, upon my honour, I TRIED to keep out of hearing, I could not help catching enough to understand his business. And I assure you I never was better pleased in my life, and I wish you joy of it with all my heart." "Thank you, ma'am," said Elinor. "It is a matter of great joy to me; and I feel the goodness of Colonel Brandon most sensibly. There are not many men who would act as he has done. Few people who have so compassionate a heart! I never was more astonished in my life." "Lord! my dear, you are very modest. I an't the least astonished at it in the world, for I have often thought of late, there was nothing more likely to happen." "You judged from your knowledge of the Colonel's general benevolence; but at least you could not foresee that the opportunity would so very soon occur." "Opportunity!" repeated Mrs. Jennings--"Oh! as to that, when a man has once made up his mind to such a thing, somehow or other he will soon find an opportunity. Well, my dear, I wish you joy of it again and again; and if ever there was a happy couple in the world, I think I shall soon know where to look for them." "You mean to go to Delaford after them I suppose," said Elinor, with a faint smile. "Aye, my dear, that I do, indeed. And as to the house being a bad one, I do not know what the Colonel would be at, for it is as good a one as ever I saw." "He spoke of its being out of repair." "Well, and whose fault is that? why don't he repair it?--who should do it but himself?" They were interrupted by the servant's coming in to announce the carriage being at the door; and Mrs. Jennings immediately preparing to go, said,-- "Well, my dear, I must be gone before I have had half my talk out. But, however, we may have it all over in the evening; for we shall be quite alone. I do not ask you to go with me, for I dare say your mind is too full of the matter to care for company; and besides, you must long to tell your sister all about it." Marianne had left the room before the conversation began. "Certainly, ma'am, I shall tell Marianne of it; but I shall not mention it at present to any body else." "Oh! very well," said Mrs. Jennings rather disappointed. "Then you would not have me tell it to Lucy, for I think of going as far as Holborn to-day." "No, ma'am, not even Lucy if you please. One day's delay will not be very material; and till I have written to Mr. Ferrars, I think it ought not to be mentioned to any body else. I shall do THAT directly. It is of importance that no time should be lost with him, for he will of course have much to do relative to his ordination." This speech at first puzzled Mrs. Jennings exceedingly. Why Mr. Ferrars was to have been written to about it in such a hurry, she could not immediately comprehend. A few moments' reflection, however, produced a very happy idea, and she exclaimed;-- "Oh, ho!--I understand you. Mr. Ferrars is to be the man. Well, so much the better for him. Ay, to be sure, he must be ordained in readiness; and I am very glad to find things are so forward between you. But, my dear, is not this rather out of character? Should not the Colonel write himself?--sure, he is the proper person." Elinor did not quite understand the beginning of Mrs. Jennings's speech, neither did she think it worth inquiring into; and therefore only replied to its conclusion. "Colonel Brandon is so delicate a man, that he rather wished any one to announce his intentions to Mr. Ferrars than himself." "And so YOU are forced to do it. Well THAT is an odd kind of delicacy! However, I will not disturb you (seeing her preparing to write.) You know your own concerns best. So goodby, my dear. I have not heard of any thing to please me so well since Charlotte was brought to bed." And away she went; but returning again in a moment, "I have just been thinking of Betty's sister, my dear. I should be very glad to get her so good a mistress. But whether she would do for a lady's maid, I am sure I can't tell. She is an excellent housemaid, and works very well at her needle. However, you will think of all that at your leisure." "Certainly, ma'am," replied Elinor, not hearing much of what she said, and more anxious to be alone, than to be mistress of the subject. How she should begin--how she should express herself in her note to Edward, was now all her concern. The particular circumstances between them made a difficulty of that which to any other person would have been the easiest thing in the world; but she equally feared to say too much or too little, and sat deliberating over her paper, with the pen in her hand, till broken in on by the entrance of Edward himself. He had met Mrs. Jennings at the door in her way to the carriage, as he came to leave his farewell card; and she, after apologising for not returning herself, had obliged him to enter, by saying that Miss Dashwood was above, and wanted to speak with him on very particular business. Elinor had just been congratulating herself, in the midst of her perplexity, that however difficult it might be to express herself properly by letter, it was at least preferable to giving the information by word of mouth, when her visitor entered, to force her upon this greatest exertion of all. Her astonishment and confusion were very great on his so sudden appearance. She had not seen him before since his engagement became public, and therefore not since his knowing her to be acquainted with it; which, with the consciousness of what she had been thinking of, and what she had to tell him, made her feel particularly uncomfortable for some minutes. He too was much distressed; and they sat down together in a most promising state of embarrassment.--Whether he had asked her pardon for his intrusion on first coming into the room, he could not recollect; but determining to be on the safe side, he made his apology in form as soon as he could say any thing, after taking a chair. "Mrs. Jennings told me," said he, "that you wished to speak with me, at least I understood her so--or I certainly should not have intruded on you in such a manner; though at the same time, I should have been extremely sorry to leave London without seeing you and your sister; especially as it will most likely be some time--it is not probable that I should soon have the pleasure of meeting you again. I go to Oxford tomorrow." "You would not have gone, however," said Elinor, recovering herself, and determined to get over what she so much dreaded as soon as possible, "without receiving our good wishes, even if we had not been able to give them in person. Mrs. Jennings was quite right in what she said. I have something of consequence to inform you of, which I was on the point of communicating by paper. I am charged with a most agreeable office (breathing rather faster than usual as she spoke.) Colonel Brandon, who was here only ten minutes ago, has desired me to say, that understanding you mean to take orders, he has great pleasure in offering you the living of Delaford now just vacant, and only wishes it were more valuable. Allow me to congratulate you on having so respectable and well-judging a friend, and to join in his wish that the living--it is about two hundred a-year--were much more considerable, and such as might better enable you to--as might be more than a temporary accommodation to yourself--such, in short, as might establish all your views of happiness." What Edward felt, as he could not say it himself, it cannot be expected that any one else should say for him. He LOOKED all the astonishment which such unexpected, such unthought-of information could not fail of exciting; but he said only these two words, "Colonel Brandon!" "Yes," continued Elinor, gathering more resolution, as some of the worst was over, "Colonel Brandon means it as a testimony of his concern for what has lately passed--for the cruel situation in which the unjustifiable conduct of your family has placed you--a concern which I am sure Marianne, myself, and all your friends, must share; and likewise as a proof of his high esteem for your general character, and his particular approbation of your behaviour on the present occasion." "Colonel Brandon give ME a living!--Can it be possible?" "The unkindness of your own relations has made you astonished to find friendship any where." "No," replied he, with sudden consciousness, "not to find it in YOU; for I cannot be ignorant that to you, to your goodness, I owe it all.--I feel it--I would express it if I could--but, as you well know, I am no orator." "You are very much mistaken. I do assure you that you owe it entirely, at least almost entirely, to your own merit, and Colonel Brandon's discernment of it. I have had no hand in it. I did not even know, till I understood his design, that the living was vacant; nor had it ever occurred to me that he might have had such a living in his gift. As a friend of mine, of my family, he may, perhaps--indeed I know he HAS, still greater pleasure in bestowing it; but, upon my word, you owe nothing to my solicitation." Truth obliged her to acknowledge some small share in the action, but she was at the same time so unwilling to appear as the benefactress of Edward, that she acknowledged it with hesitation; which probably contributed to fix that suspicion in his mind which had recently entered it. For a short time he sat deep in thought, after Elinor had ceased to speak;--at last, and as if it were rather an effort, he said, "Colonel Brandon seems a man of great worth and respectability. I have always heard him spoken of as such, and your brother I know esteems him highly. He is undoubtedly a sensible man, and in his manners perfectly the gentleman." "Indeed," replied Elinor, "I believe that you will find him, on farther acquaintance, all that you have heard him to be, and as you will be such very near neighbours (for I understand the parsonage is almost close to the mansion-house,) it is particularly important that he SHOULD be all this." Edward made no answer; but when she had turned away her head, gave her a look so serious, so earnest, so uncheerful, as seemed to say, that he might hereafter wish the distance between the parsonage and the mansion-house much greater. "Colonel Brandon, I think, lodges in St. James Street," said he, soon afterwards, rising from his chair. Elinor told him the number of the house. "I must hurry away then, to give him those thanks which you will not allow me to give YOU; to assure him that he has made me a very--an exceedingly happy man." Elinor did not offer to detain him; and they parted, with a very earnest assurance on HER side of her unceasing good wishes for his happiness in every change of situation that might befall him; on HIS, with rather an attempt to return the same good will, than the power of expressing it. "When I see him again," said Elinor to herself, as the door shut him out, "I shall see him the husband of Lucy." And with this pleasing anticipation, she sat down to reconsider the past, recall the words and endeavour to comprehend all the feelings of Edward; and, of course, to reflect on her own with discontent. When Mrs. Jennings came home, though she returned from seeing people whom she had never seen before, and of whom therefore she must have a great deal to say, her mind was so much more occupied by the important secret in her possession, than by anything else, that she reverted to it again as soon as Elinor appeared. "Well, my dear," she cried, "I sent you up the young man. Did not I do right?--And I suppose you had no great difficulty--You did not find him very unwilling to accept your proposal?" "No, ma'am; THAT was not very likely." "Well, and how soon will he be ready?--For it seems all to depend upon that." "Really," said Elinor, "I know so little of these kind of forms, that I can hardly even conjecture as to the time, or the preparation necessary; but I suppose two or three months will complete his ordination." "Two or three months!" cried Mrs. Jennings; "Lord! my dear, how calmly you talk of it; and can the Colonel wait two or three months! Lord bless me!--I am sure it would put ME quite out of patience!--And though one would be very glad to do a kindness by poor Mr. Ferrars, I do think it is not worth while to wait two or three months for him. Sure somebody else might be found that would do as well; somebody that is in orders already." "My dear ma'am," said Elinor, "what can you be thinking of?-- Why, Colonel Brandon's only object is to be of use to Mr. Ferrars." "Lord bless you, my dear!--Sure you do not mean to persuade me that the Colonel only marries you for the sake of giving ten guineas to Mr. Ferrars!" The deception could not continue after this; and an explanation immediately took place, by which both gained considerable amusement for the moment, without any material loss of happiness to either, for Mrs. Jennings only exchanged one form of delight for another, and still without forfeiting her expectation of the first. "Aye, aye, the parsonage is but a small one," said she, after the first ebullition of surprise and satisfaction was over, "and very likely MAY be out of repair; but to hear a man apologising, as I thought, for a house that to my knowledge has five sitting rooms on the ground-floor, and I think the housekeeper told me could make up fifteen beds!--and to you too, that had been used to live in Barton cottage!-- It seems quite ridiculous. But, my dear, we must touch up the Colonel to do some thing to the parsonage, and make it comfortable for them, before Lucy goes to it." "But Colonel Brandon does not seem to have any idea of the living's being enough to allow them to marry." "The Colonel is a ninny, my dear; because he has two thousand a-year himself, he thinks that nobody else can marry on less. Take my word for it, that, if I am alive, I shall be paying a visit at Delaford Parsonage before Michaelmas; and I am sure I shan't go if Lucy an't there." Elinor was quite of her opinion, as to the probability of their not waiting for any thing more.

Chapter 40

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820034609/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmSenseSensibility55.asp

Three days after the incident at John Dashwood's house, Mrs. Jennings and Elinor go out for a walk to Kensington gardens. After separating from Mrs. Jennings, Elinor meets Anne Steele, and the two talk about Lucy and the unhappy incident. Miss Steele also tells Elinor about Edward's visit that morning and how she had overheard an intimate conversation between him and Lucy. Elinor is disgusted at her behavior. After reaching home, she relates the incident to Mrs. Jennings. Later, she receives a letter from Lucy by the two-penny post informing her of their current circumstances. She seeks the help of the Middletons or Palmers to offer a position to Edward. Elinor shows the letter to Mrs. Jennings. The old lady is impressed by the letter.

Notes The chapter reveals the somewhat crass behavior of the Steele sisters. Miss Steele reveals to Elinor that she had purposely stood outside the door of the locked room in which Lucy and Edward were conversing. She does not feel guilty about her behavior; her justification is that even Lucy had eavesdropped earlier. Lucy's letter also exposes her selfishness and base nature. Lucy asks Elinor to recommend her case to anyone who will be willing to provide a position to Edward. She looks forward to the help of Mrs. Jennings, the Middletons and the Palmers. Lucy is not ashamed to ask favors of others. CHAPTER 39 Summary Elinor and Marianne are invited by the Palmers to Cleveland. At the insistence of Mrs. Jennings, they decide to accept the invitation. One day Colonel Brandon visits them and asks Elinor to inform Edward that he is prepared to give a position at Delaford to him. Edward could lead a comfortable life on an income of two thousand pounds, but he would not be able to afford a wife. Mrs. Jennings, who observes Elinor and Colonel Brandon talking animatedly, concludes that they must be talking about a wedding. Notes In answer to Marianne's wish that they go home, the sisters are invited to accompany Mrs. Jennings to Cleveland. Since it will be easy for them to reach Barton from Cleveland, they accept the invitation. Mrs. Jennings, who is always engaged in matchmaking, starts imagining the Colonel to be in love with Elinor. Thus, when she hears the phrase, "I am afraid it cannot take place very soon," she is angry with the Colonel for postponing their wedding. Misunderstanding causes much humor in the scene. Colonel Brandon can be rightly identified as a generous man who willingly offers a living to Edward in Delaford. His love for Marianne and respect for Elinor makes him extend help to their friends. It is ironic that he chooses Elinor to convey this information to Edward. CHAPTER 40 Summary Mrs. Jennings approaches Elinor soon after the Colonel's exit. She congratulates her and asks her many questions, which gradually reveal her mistaken assumption that there is an engagement between Elinor and the Colonel. Elinor mentions Brandon's generosity and his request to her to convey the information to Edward. Mrs. Jennings is puzzled, and as she is in a hurry to leave, she decides to speak further with Elinor upon her return. When Edward arrives, Elinor tells him the good news. He is pleasantly surprised. He promises to meet the Colonel and thank him for his generosity. Mrs. Jennings returns to the house and asks Elinor if Edward is prepared to get ordained to perform her marriage to the Colonel. Elinor is shocked to hear Mrs. Jennings' words. She corrects the misunderstanding by informing the old lady of the Colonel's offer to Edward. Notes This chapter demonstrates the misunderstandings that arise when a character like Mrs. Jennings gives her interpretation of the events that she witnesses. The conversation between Elinor and Mrs. Jennings is amusing as each misinterprets the other's words. Elinor is unaware of Mrs. Jennings' suspicions, and hence she talks about informing Edward of the Colonel's offer. Mrs. Jennings is then unable to understand why Edward should be informed of the Colonel's proposal. She surmises that Elinor and the Colonel might have decided to get married only after Edward has been ordained and is ready to perform their wedding. Much humor results from this confused conversation. Edward Ferrars is obviously surprised when Elinor informs him of the Colonel's generous offer at Delaford: in this time of crisis, assistance from such an unexpected quarter is astonishing. Like Mrs. Jennings, he believes the Colonel to be in love with Elinor. He feels that Brandon has offered him help only to please Elinor. Thus he thanks Elinor for helping him.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/5658-chapters/chapters_38_to_39.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Lord Jim/section_22_part_0.txt

Lord Jim.chapters 38-39

chapters 38-39

{"name": "Chapters 38-39", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219145744/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/l/lord-jim/summary-and-analysis/chapters-3839", "summary": "Marlow's first sentence focuses on \"the man called Brown.\" Brown was the terror of the Polynesian islands; he was a well-known, much-feared, immoral pirate who operated off the Australian coast. He did some gun-running, and he robbed and killed and even maimed people for little or no reason. It was also reported that he once kidnapped the young wife of a missionary. He was infamous for his arrogance and for his uncontrollable temper, and he was particularly contemptuous of men who were weak, \"quiet and unoffending.\" At the height of Jim's fame as the beloved Lord Jim of Patusan, Brown had a run of bad luck. Finally, he was captured by a Spanish patrol. They intended to imprison him, but when they docked at a small Spanish settlement, Brown and his men stole a schooner and headed through the Straits of Macassar. They planned to take the ship to Madagascar, but first, they had to cross the Indian Ocean and, in order to do that, they needed both food and water. Thus, they anchored off the mouth of the river leading to Patusan, hoping to find provisions there. Brown and fourteen of his crew headed upriver. When they reached Patusan, they were fired upon, but they were able to secure themselves on a knoll about nine hundred yards from Rajah Allang's stockade. They were far from safe, however. As they looked down into the town, they could see the village swarming with \"thousands of angry men.\" Brown was in utter disbelief at the size of the place. Jim was away when Brown's party was fired upon. He had been away in the interior for over a week, and Dain Waris was in charge. Dain Waris wanted to kill Brown and his men immediately, but the Bugis were not convinced that it was necessary to massacre the white men. It was a decision that Lord Jim would have to make. They trusted only Lord Jim's judgment. Besides, Dain Waris might be killed. In contrast, Jim was the physical incarnation of Truth; he was invincible. Thus, he had to decide what must be done. And so, in Jim's absence, the villagers crowded into his stockade, much like uncertain children waiting for a parent to return home. Like Dain Waris, Jewel tried to convince the villagers to destroy Brown's band of pirates, but they would not listen to her. Jewel even had the key to the hut in which five hundred kegs of explosive powder were stored, but no one was willing to initiate such violence. Old Doramin, of course, could have decided the fate of Brown and his men, but he too hesitated; he feared for his son's safety. Nonetheless, he finally ordered that some powder, bullets, and percussion caps be distributed under Jewel's supervision. Almost immediately, wild and exaggerated rumors began spreading that a large, armed vessel might be moving upriver to aid Brown, so Doramin sent Dain Waris downriver in order to cut off Brown's retreat and to prevent another ship from assisting Brown. A native called Kassim, a representative of Rajah Allang, arranged for the slimy Cornelius to make contact with Brown's party. Kasumi secretly wanted to take over Patusan, and he knew that he could count on Cornelius to help him by telling Brown about the \"unusual,\" white, Lord Jim who \"ruled\" Patusan. Jim was a man whom Kassim could not understand; he could not figure out how to take the country from him. Jim was not like the other white men he knew. But Brown was another matter. Brown had a criminal nature, and Kassim could manipulate that kind of man -- providing Brown was sufficiently tempted to try and take Patusan by force. Cornelius, of course, hated Jim, and so he tried to make the possibility of conquest seem as easy as possible. Jim, he told Brown, would be a pushover. Jim was an idealist with no real bravery. The natives had been \"captured\" by the man's charisma, not by his physical courage. Once Jim was dead, Cornelius vowed, the country would belong to Brown.", "analysis": "Chapters 38 and 39 present more of Gentleman Brown's background, further showing his corruptness, his evil nature, and his amorality. Brown kills for the sake of killing: he is \"a blind accomplice to the Dark Powers.\" What makes Brown so dangerous is the fact that he \"was tired of his life and not afraid of death.\" In fact, Brown would rather be killed than face the possibility of imprisonment. This lack of a fear of death is what makes Brown such a danger to everyone. It is ironic that Lord Jim is trusted so thoroughly by the people of Patusan that they will not do anything on their own concerning the fate of Gentleman Brown. Even though Dain Waris and Jewel both want the evil man to be killed, the other natives want to wait until Jim's return. Thus, by the very trust that the natives have for Jim, they place Jim in a position of having to make a decision about Brown's life, a decision which will ultimately bring about the deaths of many people, including Dain Waris and Jim himself. These two chapters also present the other forces aligned against Jim. Kassim is a bitter and evil person who hates without reason, and Cornelius has long despised Jim and has longed for his death because Jim is so perfect and good. Rajah Allang wants Jim dead so that he can return to terrorizing the natives again. Thus, they are all aligned in their treachery against Jim and the forces for good."}

'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.'

Chapters 38-39

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Marlow's first sentence focuses on "the man called Brown." Brown was the terror of the Polynesian islands; he was a well-known, much-feared, immoral pirate who operated off the Australian coast. He did some gun-running, and he robbed and killed and even maimed people for little or no reason. It was also reported that he once kidnapped the young wife of a missionary. He was infamous for his arrogance and for his uncontrollable temper, and he was particularly contemptuous of men who were weak, "quiet and unoffending." At the height of Jim's fame as the beloved Lord Jim of Patusan, Brown had a run of bad luck. Finally, he was captured by a Spanish patrol. They intended to imprison him, but when they docked at a small Spanish settlement, Brown and his men stole a schooner and headed through the Straits of Macassar. They planned to take the ship to Madagascar, but first, they had to cross the Indian Ocean and, in order to do that, they needed both food and water. Thus, they anchored off the mouth of the river leading to Patusan, hoping to find provisions there. Brown and fourteen of his crew headed upriver. When they reached Patusan, they were fired upon, but they were able to secure themselves on a knoll about nine hundred yards from Rajah Allang's stockade. They were far from safe, however. As they looked down into the town, they could see the village swarming with "thousands of angry men." Brown was in utter disbelief at the size of the place. Jim was away when Brown's party was fired upon. He had been away in the interior for over a week, and Dain Waris was in charge. Dain Waris wanted to kill Brown and his men immediately, but the Bugis were not convinced that it was necessary to massacre the white men. It was a decision that Lord Jim would have to make. They trusted only Lord Jim's judgment. Besides, Dain Waris might be killed. In contrast, Jim was the physical incarnation of Truth; he was invincible. Thus, he had to decide what must be done. And so, in Jim's absence, the villagers crowded into his stockade, much like uncertain children waiting for a parent to return home. Like Dain Waris, Jewel tried to convince the villagers to destroy Brown's band of pirates, but they would not listen to her. Jewel even had the key to the hut in which five hundred kegs of explosive powder were stored, but no one was willing to initiate such violence. Old Doramin, of course, could have decided the fate of Brown and his men, but he too hesitated; he feared for his son's safety. Nonetheless, he finally ordered that some powder, bullets, and percussion caps be distributed under Jewel's supervision. Almost immediately, wild and exaggerated rumors began spreading that a large, armed vessel might be moving upriver to aid Brown, so Doramin sent Dain Waris downriver in order to cut off Brown's retreat and to prevent another ship from assisting Brown. A native called Kassim, a representative of Rajah Allang, arranged for the slimy Cornelius to make contact with Brown's party. Kasumi secretly wanted to take over Patusan, and he knew that he could count on Cornelius to help him by telling Brown about the "unusual," white, Lord Jim who "ruled" Patusan. Jim was a man whom Kassim could not understand; he could not figure out how to take the country from him. Jim was not like the other white men he knew. But Brown was another matter. Brown had a criminal nature, and Kassim could manipulate that kind of man -- providing Brown was sufficiently tempted to try and take Patusan by force. Cornelius, of course, hated Jim, and so he tried to make the possibility of conquest seem as easy as possible. Jim, he told Brown, would be a pushover. Jim was an idealist with no real bravery. The natives had been "captured" by the man's charisma, not by his physical courage. Once Jim was dead, Cornelius vowed, the country would belong to Brown.

Chapters 38 and 39 present more of Gentleman Brown's background, further showing his corruptness, his evil nature, and his amorality. Brown kills for the sake of killing: he is "a blind accomplice to the Dark Powers." What makes Brown so dangerous is the fact that he "was tired of his life and not afraid of death." In fact, Brown would rather be killed than face the possibility of imprisonment. This lack of a fear of death is what makes Brown such a danger to everyone. It is ironic that Lord Jim is trusted so thoroughly by the people of Patusan that they will not do anything on their own concerning the fate of Gentleman Brown. Even though Dain Waris and Jewel both want the evil man to be killed, the other natives want to wait until Jim's return. Thus, by the very trust that the natives have for Jim, they place Jim in a position of having to make a decision about Brown's life, a decision which will ultimately bring about the deaths of many people, including Dain Waris and Jim himself. These two chapters also present the other forces aligned against Jim. Kassim is a bitter and evil person who hates without reason, and Cornelius has long despised Jim and has longed for his death because Jim is so perfect and good. Rajah Allang wants Jim dead so that he can return to terrorizing the natives again. Thus, they are all aligned in their treachery against Jim and the forces for good.